I waited 3 days, or, Nonefucks for Z.S.

Edit: 18 July, 2023.... START HERE 

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For background, if you have no idea what I'm on about with this, I'd suggest you start here & here. Patrick and Scrap were closer to Zak than I, and both have (I suspect from reading their writings and musings) stronger critical faculties than I do myself.

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Like many people out there, Vornheim brought me back to d&d after many years of Burning Wheel, Vincent Baker games, and similar products. It was to me a revelation of art and design, a testament to how little need be provided to create a lush-feeling setting, and it was what showed me first the glorious, useful beauty that a random table could be.

I came to his work that way, and stuck around for the awesome ideas on his blog, like: random advancement tables, reskinning Carcosa for any hex crawl, constantcon, reinterpreting Deities & Demigods as a way to model cults, or lists of encounters pulled from whatever comic he'd recently been reading. There's some good game material there. I won't link to any of it now. Or later. I think I've removed links to his work in my prior posts, but please do tell me if you run across one that I've missed.

I waited three days

not because I thought Zak would post some riveting defense which would sway my opinion and "tell what really happened", but because I thought maybe, just maaaybe, Zak would join the rest of us in stepping past his carefully-curated persona and start grappling with the harm that his exceptional intellect and disregard for integrity have brought to both those he professes to love, and to a wider swath of gaming-related peoples. I waited because there was the possibility he'd choose differently.

That's not what happened. Instead he doubled down on his well-practiced choices and denied everything - with a side of 'here is the objective view of what happened, not like that confused ones you already read'. Plus he just doesn't address some of the more heinous allegations (like murder as a stated consequence of any pregnancy). Though he has apparently talked to a lawyer.

With regards to his response: any version of "but everyone who knew us at the time said we had the ideal relationship and were so in love!" is worthless as a defense. It's just a story about a limited context. 

There is always a broader context. There are always stories and views and opinions about "known events" that we are not privy to and do not imagine (given the circumscribed world our previous experience allows for). Most every misunderstanding boils down to some relevant context not being known, or not being accepted. The moments when we are introduced to these new concepts and contexts, I feel, are the moments when we make some of our most powerful and long-lasting choices as humans. They are the moments in which can choose to accept that the world is broader, deeper, and more nuanced (and perhaps 'uglier') than we had first imagined, or in which we choose to reject entirely some aspect of the world, which generally involves rejecting the experience of some other human(s). They are the moments when we decide that we are still learning and growing and receiving information, or not.

I believe Mandy because I too have been in a relationship wherein someone else, through ruthless intellect and emotional manipulation and angry outbursts, tried to enforce their context as the only context. I believe Mandy because I too, for a span of years, believed my abuser when they asserted that their experience was the only one that was real, and because being in that position when you still care for the other person is a sanity-straining experience. I know what it feels like to live within the context and rules that someone else demands you accept as your only facts, and how that warps your trust in your own experiences, and how you find yourself defending them and repeating the arguments they've provided for you to third parties. 

I know how successfully a pleasing public facade for a dysfunctional private relationship can be manufactured.

So,

No Fucks for Zak. None.

I am keeping my prior posts about aR&PL and MotBM up (with links back to this post added) because I feel it is an important historical record:

It is important to remember that people behave these ways. 

It is important to remember I too can (still) be fooled, given a lack of context. 

It is important to me to not remove the evidence of my foolishness.

I understand the impulse to scourge all mention of his name or work from one's blog or other personal work, yet I see a greater value in letting the festering reminder remain, lest people later forget the far-reaching extent of this deception.

Context, and the communication of context, defines everything we hold as 'known', and when I (and others) later look back I do not want a carefully-erased silhouette, some historical negative space, to exist which might allow the implications and reach of this sort of behavior to be mistaken for less than it is.