Showing posts with label #GamerGate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #GamerGate. Show all posts

Monday, June 12, 2017

A Reflection on my Past Views on #GamerGate and Other "Sins"

A mildly political post.  If you're sick to death of these things (and I have mostly been avoiding posting them), feel free to backclick away and come back for the next H-space Monster Girl Bestiary story this weekend.

E3 was last weekend.  One of the games that generated some initial buzz was an indie title called The Last Night.  Here is its youtube trailer:



It looks very stylish and Blade Runner-esque.  There was a lot of buzz about the visual aesthetic.

Then somebody did some digging and discovered that the game dev, Tim Soret, had said some vaguely supportive things about #GamerGate back in 2014.  Cue shit show...



This made me think about some of the things I'd written in the past about #GamerGate, #SadPuppies and similar nontroversies.  Would I in future also be dragged up to the drum and forced to account for my past comments?  Not just comments - I'd even penned a short story depicting a #GamerGate protagonist in a vaguely sympathetic light.  The heresy!

Surely, given that #GamerGate was a vicious misogynist campaign to drive women out of gaming (the media says so, so it must be true), I must be ashamed of my past self.  That if it ever came to light, I'd have to disavow those past comments.

Okay, so I should address that now for my new readers.

Here it comes.

..

..

My views haven't changed at all.



Written games journalism is still infested with shitty horrible people more interested in student-level politics and stirring up shit rather than writing about computer games.  If you want proper games coverage and reviews nowadays you're better off following the twitch streams/youtube channels of people like TotalBiscuit.

SJWs - with their hypocrisy, faulty logic, doxxing, harassment of creators, and other general toxicity - would occupy the position of biggest shitstains on social media if that spot wasn't already taken by ISIS.

My own personal opinion is I don't care what your sex, gender, race, sexual orientation, etc is.  Everyone is equally deserving of respect as a human being.

That said, if you go around harassing people, or try to dictate what creators/artists can or can't create, I'm going to think you're a cunt, dick, ass, knob, penis, duodenum, [insert part of the human anatomy you wish to use as a slur] regardless of your sex, gender, race, sexual orientation, etc, etc.

Hope that makes things clear.

(and no, I don't want to drive women out of computer gaming)

Friday, December 04, 2015

New Story: "A Trial in Vennington"

Should I do a foreword for this one?  I suppose I must.

This is the #GamerGate story, the story I originally wanted to enter into Literotica's Halloween contest, but didn't get finished in time.  This turned out to be a good thing as the original had some characters and aspects that weren't working.

I intended the story as a parody (with sex!) of another story I read on the internet that began with the same premise, but took a different path with vastly different characters.  How I've treated the #GamerGate controversy might ruffle a few feathers, but these are feathers that needed to be ruffled as far as I'm concerned.  While the scenario and characters are intentionally far-fetched (the presence of an extra-dimensional sex demon should be a giveaway!),  I did want to sneak a few serious points in.  I hope they don't detract from the other fun and sexy stuff too much.

Oh, and because it references #GamerGate and SJWs, there's a chance some of you might be new readers unfamiliar with my other work.  If you're wondering why the story suddenly lurches into hardcore succubus smut, well that's what I write and what I'm known for.  If gratuitous descriptions of sex make you feel uncomfortable, now would be a good time to click the back button on your internet browser.  Same goes for anyone under 18, you really shouldn't be here right now! :)

Feel free to leave any criticism in the comments.  Even call me rude names if you feel strongly enough.  But be warned, I'm a bit of a masochist, so any nasty insults will likely turn me on... sexually. ;)


A Trial in Vennington

"Bring him out!"

Gary Garrett quaked beneath a black hood.  His hands were bound together behind his back by some kind of plastic tie.

Who were they?  Al Qaeda?  ISIS?  The IRA?

Was the IRA even a thing anymore?

What did they want with him?  He was a nobody.  He worked as a community manager for one of the smaller DoTA-type online games.  The job didn't pay particularly well, but it allowed Gary to work in an area he loved.

He'd been walking home from the bus stop when a van had pulled up alongside him, masked men had jumped out, shoved a hood over his head and bundled him inside.  He hadn't even got a glimpse of their faces.  After a short drive Gary had been shoved out and left in a small room with a bare concrete floor for what seemed like hours.

Gary was pulled, roughly, to his feet and led outside.  The hood was taken off his head and almost took his spectacles with it.  They snagged on the rough fabric, but only slid a few centimetres up his forehead before dropping back into place on the bridge of his nose.

It was night time.  A blood-red moon hung above them in a cloudless sky.  He was standing in the yard of what appeared to be a disused farm.  The surrounding buildings were ramshackle and moss-encrusted, as if the farm had been in a state of disuse for some time.  The yard was lit up by a ring of burning torches.

Gary didn't know what to make of his captors.  They definitely weren't ISIS.  He counted seven of them—two women and five men, although it was harder to determine with the men as all five wore dark clothing and black bandanas over the lower half of their faces.  They looked more like student activists than terrorists.  The two women made no attempt to hide their faces.  One looked an obvious radical student feminist—right down to her bright red hair and horn-rimmed spectacles.  The other girl also had dyed hair—light blue in her case—but had chosen more eclectic attire.  She wore a long white leather trench coat and looked like a mashup between gothic spy and urban warlock.

"Do you know why you're here?" the woman with red hair asked.

Gary shook his head.  He looked around.  Other than the blue-haired girl in the white trench coat his captors looked like the same sort of people he'd seen on YouTube videos of campus demonstrations, the sort of people that claimed to be liberal and yet pulled fire alarms and blocked entrances to prevent people they didn't like giving talks at universities.  It couldn't be them, though.  Those campus activists might be extremists, but surely they weren't extreme enough to yank people off streets in broad daylight.

"You, Gary Garrett, are to face trial for your crimes against feminism," Red informed him.

Whaaat?  Gary gawped at her.  He would have laughed out loud at the silliness of it had he not been so terrified he'd already wet himself.

"You are a member of GamerGate, that vile online misogynist hate movement devoted to driving women out of the games industry and off the internet."

Gary opened his mouth to speak.

Red pushed out a hand to interrupt.  "Don't try to deny it," she said sharply.  "Your Twitter handle is @TheMagnificentGGG and you post on Reddit as GaimerGaryGarrett.  We have your posting history for the last six months.  We know you were at the GamerGate meetup last night."

"I wasn't going to deny it," Gary said.  "Yes, I'm pro-GG, but it's not what—"

Red held up a hand.  "Stop!" she said.

She looked around at the other goons with a smug smile on her lips.

"Anyone want to finish for him?"

"Actually, it's about ethics in videogames journalism," one of the goons mocked in a silly voice.  It was followed by snerks and sniggers from the others.

Yeah, he'd walked right into that one, Gary thought.

"I haven't harassed anyone," he said.  "I only started posting in support of the tag because I was fed up with the gaming press constantly shitting on its audience."

"Aw diddums," Red said.  "Did the straight white man with all the privilege in the world get his fee-fees hurt?"

"Um, you do realise this is kidnapping," Gary said.  "I'm pretty sure that's still a fairly serious crime.  You could all go to prison for this."

Red's face twisted in a snarl.  "We do not recognise or acknowledge your patriarchal system of abuse and oppression."

Gary watched with a wide-eyed mix of both astonishment and horror.

They were mad.  Not just extreme.  Mad.

He'd had the misfortune of running into people like this on the internet before.  Everyone called them Social Justice Warriors, or SJWs for short.  It was a label meant to be ironic on both counts.  They were only interested in social justice in as much as it gave them a convenient club to bash people with and an equally convenient shield to deflect criticism when others tried to call out their bullying and harassment.  Thankfully—like the Keyboard Warrior meme they were descended from—their 'warrioring' was mostly confined to getting angry and shouting at people on social media.  Until now...

Someone gave Gary a solid kick to the back of his legs.  He buckled and fell down to his knees.

"GamerGate has gone on too long," Red said.  "The authorities won't do anything about it, so we've been forced to take matters into our own hands.  Your harassment and women hating must stop."

"But I don't hate women," Gary protested.  "There are two girls on my regular League of Legends team.  One of them even taught me how to get good."

Someone hit him on the back of his head.  It was an open-handed slap rather than a full-blooded punch, but it still rattled his brain inside his skull.

"We do not use girl!" Red roared.  "Girl is a diminutive used to deny full-grown women the respect they deserve."

"Um, she's like fifteen," Gary said.  "And she hates anti-GG even more than I do."

He was struck again.  This time it was a closed fist.  It knocked his head to the side and left his glasses resting lopsidedly on the bridge of his nose.

"You deserve this, GamerGate scum," Red said.

"I haven't harassed anyone!" Gary wailed.

Red wagged a finger at him.  "There's no point lying, Gary Garrett.  We did our research."  She picked up a tablet computer from the low wall next to her.  "Your history of crimes against women goes back further than GamerGate.  We know all about the woman you raped back at university."

This.  Again?  Inwardly he sighed.  Was he ever going to be free of it?

"If you've read your research you'll know I didn't rape her," he said.

"I'm sure you didn't," Red snarked.  "I'm sure it was all a big misunderstanding and you really thought she'd consented to having sex with you."

"No, I didn't rape her as I wasn't in the same part of the city where the assault took place.  I was playing Magic in the student union bar all night.  There's CCTV footage.  It's in the court documents and why the case was thrown out.  You'd know this if you'd read them instead of just the newspaper headlines."

It wouldn't matter.

Red scowled and put the tablet aside.  "I don't need to read them to know they're the typical lies put out by the patriarchy."

It was the same with every SJW he'd attempted to reason with online.  The moment they were given a fact or piece of evidence that didn't agree with their carefully cultivated and blinkered worldview it was all block, block, block.  He might as well debate a brick.

This wasn't online.  Neither was it debate.

They'd kidnapped him in broad daylight.  If they were okay with that, what else were they okay with...?

"We've heard enough," Red said.  "You are guilty and now it's time to pass sentence."

She picked up another object.  It reflected the light from the burning torches.  The blood drained from Gary's face as he realised it was a wickedly-sharp scalpel.

ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck

Something broke in Gary as he realised they were going to go as far as his worst fears.  He started babbling.

"I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.  I'll leave GamerGate.  I'll stop posting on Reddit.  I'll delete my Twitter account."

He didn't want to die.  Not over something as trivial and stupid as this.

He tried to stand up.  Somebody stamped on the back of his calf.

"Please don't kill me.  I'm sorry."

His stomach convulsed and he threw up.  He lifted his head and saw the contemptuous eyes of the activists all around him.

"Too late," Red said.  "GamerGate's reign of oppression has lasted for over a year now.  But no longer.  For you, GamerGate is over.  It ends tonight."

Those last three words triggered something in Gary.  He didn't know where the laughter came from.  They were going to kill him.  That was nothing to laugh about, yet laugh he did.  Maybe it was the absurdity of the situation.  Maybe it was a memory of the mockery a prominent anti-GGer had received when they'd used those exact same three words on Twitter.  First it was a nervous giggle, then a chuckle, and finally an uncontrollable guffaw welling up from the depths of his belly.

Someone punched him from the left.

He kept laughing.

Another punch came in from the right.  Gary went over.  His glasses left his face and bounced off the grit in front of him.

He couldn't stop giggling, even as they hit him.

Fuck, he hadn't taken a beating like this since some bullies had gone after him one time in secondary school.  All he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and bawl his eyes out until someone in authority came by.

No.  Fuck it.

Gary spat out a bloodied tooth.

It hadn't worked back then and it wouldn't work for adult him either.

He awkwardly levered himself back to his knees and stared defiantly at Red.

"I'm laughing because you're ridiculous.  You disrupt meetings with bomb threats, harass people off social media, even get people fired for comments taken out of context, and you say we're the hate group.  Look at you.  Even now you probably still think you're the victim in all this even as your goons literally knock my teeth out.

"You're losing.  You took advantage of people's basic empathy and decency, but now that sympathy is running out.  They're seeing through your screen of diversity, trigger warnings and safe spaces to see you for what you really are—another extremist authoritarian group that wants the power to dictate what other people can say, think and create.

"And, like all extremist authoritarian groups that don't get what they want, you fall back on intimidation and violence.  In your twisted worldview I bet you don't even think you're doing anything wrong.  No bad tactics only bad targets, am I right?

"Well guess what.  That's not how it works in the real world, not in the eyes of the law.  You're going to be put away for a very long time for this."

He stared from activist to activist.  He doubted any of them were past college age.

"All of you."

He lingered last on Red.  She was furious.  This wasn't part of the script.  He was supposed to huddle up on the ground and beg for mercy from their righteous judgment.

Fuck her.  He'd been forced to bow to bullies before.  No more, and not to ones as pathetic as this.

Red looked so pissed Gary thought she might charge over and stab him right there and then.  Her companion in the white trench coat put a hand on her arm.

"Let him rage against imaginary persecution.  He is in a higher court now," she said.

Red calmed down.  "Your defence has been noted and rejected as the usual paranoid ramblings of chan trash.  Sentence will be carried out."  Red gave Gary a spiteful smile.  "And for you the punishment will be deliciously ironic."

Skinny Blue, the blue-haired girl with the white trench coat, stepped forwards.  Evidently it was her turn in the spotlight.

"We're not going to kill you," she said.  Her thin lips were curled up in a smile Gary didn't like in the slightest.  "The demon will do that."

Gary turned to look in the direction Skinny Blue indicated.  His vision was blurry without his glasses.  He saw a woman leaning casually against the crumbling wall of a dilapidated outbuilding.  She was dressed in an outfit that had it existed in a game the SJWs would have attacked it for being problematic.  It consisted of lots of tight black PVC that displayed more flesh than it covered, including a generous amount of her quite spectacular cleavage.

Demon?  She looked more like a kinky adult film actress or professional dominatrix.  The woman looked a little bored by the proceedings, as if she'd seen it all before and was eager to get it over and done with so she could collect her pay check.

Had the SJWs hired a sex worker... to what?  Prank him?  Rough him up, maybe even sexually abuse him in some twisted idea of payback?

Another student activist with a bandana obscuring the lower half of their face entered the open area.  They carried an inflated airbed.  They dragged it over to Gary and plonked it down amongst the weeds and gravel.

"Where's Anthony?" Red asked.

The man shrugged.

"I thought he wanted to see this," Red said.

See what? Gary thought.

They'd piqued the interest of the woman dressed as a dominatrix.  She detached from the wall and approached them.

"Have you heard of succubi?" Skinny Blue asked.  "In ancient times they were described as demons from hell that lured men into sexual congress in order to weaken and sometimes even kill them.  Of course, our knowledge has advanced since those superstitious times.  We now know demons are entities that inhabit an adjacent plane of existence to our own."

Gary knew what a succubus was.  He'd played enough computer RPGs.

The woman approaching had horns, wings and a tail.  What he first took to be a dominatrix outfit took on a more sinister, occult tinge.

He also knew demons were fiction.  This was cosplay.  Superbly put together cosplay, right down to the Morrigan-esque bat wings sticking out of the side of her head, but still cosplay.

"Demonology is a science nowadays," Skinny Blue said, "albeit an exclusive and carefully hidden one.  Strip away the silly superstitions and pare the rituals right down to their core components and it's not all that dissimilar from computer programming.  Carry out the correct set of instructions and it's possible to bring one of those entities into our plane of existence and bind them to your will."

The 'demon' walked up to Gary.  Up close Gary's vision was less blurry and he saw she had both stunning looks and figure.  She had high, pointed cheekbones and while her face was model-perfect, it was also very pale and possessed an aristocratic severity.  Her long black hair was swept back and tied up in an austere ponytail.  A PVC corset cinched her waist and emphasised the curves of her chest and ass.  It looked both sexy and painful.

She nudged the airbed with her foot.  "A little basic, but it will suffice."  Her accent was clipped and full of Received Pronunciation—posh totty with hints of a filthy nature underneath.

She loosened her corset and turned the top down until her substantial breasts popped out.  They were large, firm and perfectly round.  Gary hadn't seen anything like them outside of anime—and that was supposed to be unrealistic!

"Shall we begin?" she asked.

"Oh, the myths were right about one thing," Skinny Blue said.  "Succubi are like vampires.  They feed off the energy given out during sexual intercourse, often depleting their victims entirely.  That's why we don't need to worry about the authorities.  When they find your body, your death will be put down to a tragic and untimely heart attack.  Extradimensional sex vampires are extremely handy in that regard."

Red stepped up and cut the ties binding Gary's wrists.

"The irony is perfect," she said.  "You misogynist shitlords idolise the unrealistic forms of beauty that oppress real women.  It's fitting your end will come from a living embodiment of your own puerile masturbation fantasies."

Gary didn't know what to say.  They were totally fucking loopy.

He looked at the semi-naked woman in the PVC bondage outfit.  Was she in on this lunacy?

They had to be trolling.  Yeah, that's what it was—dress a Barbie-doll model up in a stripperific dominatrix outfit and scare the shit out of him to make the point they weren't just sex objects.

Top kek, SJWs.  You got me.  You do have a sense of humour, who'd have thought it.  Can we go home now? he thought.

It was then he noticed his knees were knocking together.  Shaking.  Trembling.  It was like a chill creeping up from the ground.  It slithered up his legs in gelid ropes and crawled up his spine on icy fingers.  The sensation of dread rustled through the hairs on the back of his neck.  His teeth started chattering even though the early October night wasn't that chilly.

This wasn't cold.  It was an atavistic sensation of pure terror—an ancestral memory from back when humanity was small and fluffy and the nights were filled with teeth and claws.  Black dread radiated out of the figure standing before him in pulsing waves.

He noticed her eyes, or rather the lack of them.  At first he thought they were hidden in shadow, now he saw they were black wells sunk into an infinite abyss.  Her horns, wings and tail were not cosplay accessories, they were the real thing.  The spade tip of her tail flicked back and forth like a menacing snake.

All his senses screamed at him.  This... thing... should not exist on this physical plane.  Its wrongness caused his guts to twist and knot inside him, as if they wanted to turn themselves inside out.

Gary wanted to run.  It was an overpowering instinct that wrapped talons around his primitive hindbrain and squeezed.

The demon reached over and caressed his right cheek.  Black static crackled between nails as long as claws.  Her cold black lips turned up at the corner in an equally cold smile.

Gary couldn't move.  His legs were locked and shivering.  He might as well have been frozen to the floor with great sheets of black ice.

"Look at how terrified he is," one of the masked goons said.

"It's because he's never seen a real woman's tits in the flesh before," another laughed.

Did they not see it?  Did they not see what she—it—was?

"Mmm, the smell of your fear is delicious," the demon said.  Her voice had picked up jagged cadences, like rusty metal scraping together.

Gary's bladder let go.  Warm urine flooded his underpants and flowed down his legs.  The demon reached down and cupped a hand beneath his sodden genitals.  She brought it back to her face and licked her palm with a tongue as black as a bruise.  She wrapped equally black lips around a long finger and gave it a suggestive suck.

"Mmm, tastes delicious as well," she purred.

Her face was a perfect doll's mask—as pale as porcelain with two abyssal pits for eyes.  Gary tried to avoid meeting her stare.  He feared being dragged into those dark wells and lost forever in endless darkness and cold.

"Where is the fire I heard earlier?" the demon asked.

"F-f-f-fu-fu-fu..."

Gary's chattering jaw wouldn't allow him to shape the retort.  Instead he stared at the demon with sullen defiance.

She chuckled.  Her lips, sensual and plump despite being as black as plague buboes, turned up at the corners in the facsimile of a smile.

"That's more like it," she said.  "I like to see a little fight."

And then, as if it'd been turned off by a switch, the paralysing sensation of dread locking up Gary's bones was gone.  It was as if what was visible of the demoness was a shadow behind a shrouding curtain.  The others saw the silhouette of a beautiful woman.  He'd been permitted a glimpse between the curtains and saw what really lay on the other side.  But only for a moment, before the veils swished back across and the shadow of a beautiful woman returned.

Gary blinked.  The feeling of overwhelming dread had vanished so quickly and completely he wondered if it had ever been real in the first place.  Maybe it was just a temporary blip of brain chemistry brought on by the stress of the situation.

The girl smiled at him.  His gaze roamed all over her stunning figure.  She really did look like an anime succubus given flesh, improbable proportions and all.  His gaze kept sticking on the perfect round globes of her tits.  It triggered a primal sense of longing in him he hadn't felt since he was an awkward teen and completely clueless about love and sex.

Wait.  Wasn't she a demon?  She had horns.  And wings.  And that was definitely a tail swinging behind the delightful curves of her rump.

Gary's brow wrinkled.

And then his gaze switched back to the pale swell of her exposed breasts.  He followed her smooth curves and was drawn into the soft pink canyon of her cleavage.  His heart throbbed with need and was seconded by a similar throb in his loins.

"Why don't you take your clothes off and lie back on this comfortable airbed here?" she asked sweetly.

And then Gary was naked and lying on his back on the airbed.  The details on precisely how he'd got here were a little hazy.  The succubus stood astride him with her bat wings partially extended.  Beyond her he saw the blood-red moon hanging in a cloudless sky.

"The succubus will now carry out sentence," Red stated.

Somebody muttered something that caused their neighbour to giggle.  Red turned, face twisted in anger.

"Do not objectify the succubus!" she roared.  "She is a divine instrument of feminist vengeance."

"Diabolic," Skinny Blue quietly corrected.

There was an unhealthy gleam in her eyes as she looked down at Gary.  One hand had strayed inside her white jacket and was level with her crotch.

"Ignore them," the succubus said.  "You should only have eyes for me."

She stood astride Gary like a colossus painted in shiny black PVC.  Her big breasts curved out in two perfect hemispheres.  Completely defying gravity, they floated above Gary like a pair of pale moons.  Beyond them a perfect doll-mask face stared down at him with unrestrained lust.  His eyes weren't going anywhere else.

The succubus reached down and undid a zipper at her crotch.  She parted the shiny PVC to expose the hairless folds of her sex.  A warm wave cascaded down and flowed over Gary, covering him and shutting out the chill October air like an invisible duvet.  It brought with it traces of an exotic musk that caused Gary's nostrils to dilate and triggered a surge of excitement.

She made a gesture and Gary's erection rose like a cobra in thrall to a snake charmer.  Pouting seductively, the sexy demoness bent her knees and squatted down on him.  Her labia parted around his swollen glans as she impaled herself on him.  She didn't go all the way down.  Instead she took in maybe an inch of his length and teased him with little up and down motions that caused her moist inner walls to rub against his foreskin.

"I don't know why they think you're a virgin," the woman astride him said.  "I taste three women on this prick.  Mmm, one was good.  I like that.  There's no challenge when they haven't had a really good lay to compare you with."

Her labia fluffed out as she sank down and took his whole length inside her.  She was tight.  Wet enough for him slide up inside her with minimal resistance, but still tight.  Very tight.  And hot.  Not just warm... hot.

Gary was fucking a demon.

A demon that had been summoned by a group of SJWs to punish him for transgressions that existed only in their heads.

This was fucked up.

He knew this and yet seemed powerless to do anything.  It was like he was weirdly dislocated.  He felt her rise up and down on him, felt the mattress rock and bounce beneath him to her motions, and yet he also felt like a passenger watching it all from afar.

The succubus smoothly moved her hips up and down.  Her big breasts bounced and swayed with her movements.  She let out low erotic moans.

"We should film this," one of the goons said.

"It wouldn't work," Skinny Blue said.  "She is not of this plane of existence.  Her form won't register on any recording device."

The succubus moved up and down with smooth grace.  Gary felt his cock slide back and forth into her wet heat.  Her vagina was incredible.  He fit so snugly inside her it was like her parts had been specifically moulded to match his.  It felt so good that even with the audience and strangeness of circumstances, Gary couldn't resist the urge to respond.  He flexed his buttocks and thrust up to meet her.

The succubus slammed down on him and growled.  The message was clear.  She was the boss.  Gary lay back and let her get on with it.

"She's so dominant," Skinny Blue said.  Her hand was inside her coat, down between her legs, and she made no attempt to hide what she was doing with it.

The woman continued riding Gary.  She wriggled her hips with each stroke, as if wanting to make sure no single millimetre of Gary's cock remained unexplored by her moist vaginal folds.  Gary had never experienced sex with a partner as experienced as this.  She really was a professional.  She even had fine control over the muscular walls of her vagina.  With each downstroke the walls of her pussy gave his erection a teasing little squeeze.

This didn't make sense.  This was his punishment?  She was fucking him like she was auditioning for a breakout part in the porn industry.

One of the activists evidently felt the same as he raised the same point.

"It's a statement," Red explained.

"I'm not so... comfortable watching this," the dissenting activist said.  "It's too much like watching porn."

"Oh don't be so sex-negative," Red said.  "If you're that uncomfortable go and look for Anthony.  He'll be disappointed if he misses the climax."

Speaking of climaxes, Gary's wasn't far off.  As the sumptuous inner walls of the dominatrix stroked up and down Gary's shaft he felt pressure building in his balls.

"Are you going to come for me, baby?" the woman in tight black PVC asked him.

That sounded like a splendid idea to Gary.

"Yes, come," Red said with a ghoulish glee.  "Let her take your worthless soul."

"She is an embodiment of anti-life," Skinny Blue elaborated for the benefit of Gary.  "Her corrupt womb takes life rather than creating it."

Oh.  Yeah.  Not a hot dominatrix escort.  Demon.

Coming no longer sounded like such a splendid idea to Gary.

He tried to lift his arms.  The succubus folded her body over his and pinned his arms back to the mattress.  She stared into his eyes as her hips pumped up and down.  Faster.  Harder.  He heard the fleshy slaps as their bodies came together, heard the inflatable mattress squeaking beneath them.

He felt pressure building in his balls.

Nope, nope, nope.  Bad.  Coming was bad.  Really bad. He had to think unsexy thoughts—old grannies with wrinkly tits, STDs, pustulent gunk dripping from infected dicks.  Think gross stuff.  Infected dicks going into wrinkly granny pussy.  Don't think about her soft vaginal walls stroking him inexorably to ecstasy.  Don't look at her beautiful round breasts bouncing as she rode him.

The pressure grew.  Gary's toes were curling.  His whole body was trembling.

"I love it when they try to hold back," the demon said.  "It's always futile."

Her hips came down in one final downstroke that engulfed Gary's whole length.  She sat upright, closed her eyes and her black bat wings extended behind her.  Her pussy seemed to melt around Gary, as if he'd sunk his cock into soft, warm dough.

"Yes," she murmured.  "Yes, yes, yes."

No, no, no, Gary thought.

It was no good.  Malleable flesh rippled up his shaft like lapping tongues.  Softer lips kissed and suckled on the tip.  He couldn't hold back anymore.  His hips bucked and a slow explosion of pleasure rattled through him as he spurted a big load of semen up into her tight vagina.

Noooo!

She was going to drain his life and suck out all his fluids until only a shrivelled husk remained.  She was going to tear out his soul.  She was going to...

The violent throbbing pulses of ejaculation lessened and left behind the glow of post-orgasmic bliss.  The succubus milked the dregs out of his pipes with gentle squeezes of her sex.  Then, once the orgasm had subsided for both of them, she stood up, stretched and then zipped up her crotch.

"Mmm, that was rather pleasant," she said.

Gary looked up at her and blinked.  He was still alive.  At least he thought so.  Aside from feeling like he'd just been run over by a steamroller made out of pure sex, he otherwise felt intact.

Was this supposed to happen?

The activists didn't think so.  They looked at each other and chattered in confusion.

Skinny Blue addressed the demon in black PVC.  "Succubus, what is going on?  Why have you not slain and taken the soul of this human as per the conditions of our contract?"

The succubus turned to her.  Her face was a mask of innocence.  "You summoned me to slay and take the soul of one who has abused and is abusive to women.  I have done as you desired."

She smiled down at Gary.

"I am also grateful for this additional offering of sex you have provided me.  He was most agreeable, despite not being a virgin."

Skinny Blue looked puzzled.

So did Red.  Then her head jerked up.  "Where's Anthony?" she asked.

A door to one of the outbuildings opened.  The masked activist that had left earlier because he felt uncomfortable stumbled out into the courtyard.  He clawed off the bandana obscuring the lower half of his face.  The skin beneath was pale and waxy.  He turned and threw up over the wall.

The succubus's pale face was a picture of innocence.  Apart from her eyes.  They shone with dark amusement.

The activists chattered amongst themselves and went over to the outbuilding.  One went through the doorway.  He returned moments later with vomit already spilling down his chin.  He doubled up next to the entrance and splattered the gravel with the contents of his stomach.

The succubus took Gary's hand and helped him to his feet.

"Now would be a really good time to make a run for it," she whispered in his ear.

THE END

Thursday, September 03, 2015

Stepping aside from SJW nonsense... for now

I was going to put up a long post about blacklists and cliques, but it was coming out more like a puling whinefest than the motivational piece I intended, so into the recycling bin it went.

It was intended for just-starting-out writers in the light of some of the demoralised comments I'd seen in the aftermath of the ugly Hugo Awards debacle.  The basic gist was this:

Yes, cliques exist.  Yes they're annoying and frustrating, but as you get older you will learn to find ways around them.  Reroute around damage.  Create the works you want to create.

I was also going to do a long piece on SJWs, but I suspect my readers' patience is wearing thin on that particular subject.  I know mine is.  If it wasn't for the fact I'm acutely sensitive to censorship (and this includes the various forms of quasi-censorship people swear blind aren't actual censorship even though they result in the same outcome) I'd stay out of this clusterfuck altogether.

Thankfully, my fears of an SJW-ideological chokehold on the creative process are receding.  Say what you will about Vox Day, his strategy of adopting the same tactics manual and hitting back twice as hard has been brutally effective.  While the more thuggish members of the SJW crowd are kept busy breaking their fists on the rock face of Vox, #GamerGate, and other groups stubbornly resistant to their shaming tactics, they don't have the time to bother the rest of us.  Having the left and right ends of the horseshoe negate each other in ideological combat across social media is win-win as far as I'm concerned.

So I think I'll quietly step away from all that nonsense and get back to the succubus smut.  I have a review of Camel's latest Card Quest game I'm hoping to get out by the weekend, "Sandwiched by Scyllas" for the week after, and that Succubus Summoning 201 ebook isn't going to write itself.

The same message applies:

Reroute around damage.  Create the works you want to create.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The End of All Hugos to Come: Of Clubhouses and the Young Devouring the Old

Well, this year's Hugo Awards certainly didn't disappoint in terms of drama...

Here's the background for those unaware.  Concerned about a political bias in the awards and dissatisfied with the quality of recent nominees, a group of right-wing authors started a campaign, #SadPuppies, to get work they and their fans liked on the ballot (there was also a related, more radical campaign – #RabidPuppies).  Their campaign was a little too successful and their nominees flooded the ballots, locking up all five slots in some categories.  This riled up the rest of Fandom, resulting in a lot of ugliness and bad feeling, and culminated in an award ceremony on Saturday that saw five categories No Awarded as a protest against the slate-voting tactics of the Puppies/because none of the nominees were of sufficient quality/because of the politics of the nominees (*insert own truth).

This is just the barebones.  There's plenty more elsewhere on the internet if you want to read up more.  As with all political controversies, most of what's written is heavily slanted to one side or the other, so I'd recommend reading from sources on both sides of the fracture to get the full picture.  I'd also recommend avoiding reading anything from mainstream media sources such as The Guardian.  Over the past couple of years mainstream media has either been utterly inept or wilfully duplicitous in their reporting on flare-ups in online nerd/geek spaces and this is sadly more of the same.  The argument that this is a conspiracy by old racist, misogynist white dudes to keep minorities and women out of Sci-Fi doesn't really hold up under closer inspection (the number of women on their ballots and the fact that one of the "racist" Sad Puppies organisers, Brad Torgersen, has been happily married to a black woman for over two decades are fairly big giveaways).

For me personally I don't have a dog in this fight.  I write succubus porn for a tiny niche audience and have the networking skills of an octoplegic arachnid.  The probability of my work being noticed and put forward for an award like the Hugo is somewhere about the same as the Earth spontaneously imploding.

It doesn't affect me much as a reader either.  My reading preferences lean more towards horror than either science fiction or fantasy, and awards have been functionally useless in suggesting books I'd want to read for some time now.

While the stated aims of the Sad Puppies are laudable, replacing one clique with another—and unfortunately that's how it looks to an outside eye once you unpick the spiderwebs of who's connected to who—doesn't feel like significant improvement to either writer-me or reader-me.  All this latest dust-up has achieved is to reinforce my impression that the whole of SFF (capital-F) Fandom is nuts, probably hazardous-to-career/productivity and best viewed from afar with a strong telescope.

What I find interesting is how the whole Hugo Awards controversy is playing out as an extension of the wider Libertarian vs. Authoritarian culture war currently waging in online nerd communities.  #GamerGate has been raging for a year now, an unprecedented amount of time in the age of social media.  #GamerGate should have been a trivial bit of kerfuffle about a minor figure in the indie dev scene that blew over in a week, but then virtually all of the online gaming press decided to declare war on their own audience and, twelve months later, a good chunk of that audience is still raging.  At this point I don't think #GamerGate is ever going away.  It's gone beyond a protest movement/hate group (*insert own truth) and coalesced into a community... a very angry community furious about how they've been demonised by the media.

How does this relate to the Hugos?  One of the accusations levelled at the Puppies is that they dragged those evil GamerGaters into the nomination process.  As with most of the racist/misogynist/homophobic claims, it doesn't hold up under closer inspection.  One of the regular tweeters for #GamerGate, @Daddy_Warpig, is a fan of some of the Puppy writers and #RabidPuppies ringleader Vox Day identifies as a #GamerGate supporter, but that's about it.  Or at least, was about it.  Plenty of #GamerGaters kept a close eye on the awards and they did not like what they saw.

Still, who gives a fuck about #GamerGate?  They're just the same old bunch of whiny white dudes crying because someone let some women and minorities into their clubhouse to play with their toys... right?  And there's only like a handful of them anyway... right?

That seems to be the usual narrative about #GamerGate and every other online controversy where geeks and nerds get angry on the internet.  They're old white male dinosaurs—reactionary relics lashing out a world moving away from them.  That world is moving to a bright, shiny future filled with inclusivity and diversity, and nerd culture—be it games, comics, films, books—would be there already if these inconvenient old straight white male neckbeards would just shift their inconvenient fat carcasses out of the way and jump in the nearest canal.  That seems to be the message from a cultural media elite with their blogs and opinion columns—"We are the future, you are the past.  Your extinction is at hand, now kindly accept it and fuck off."

One thing that struck me about the aftermath of the Hugo Awards on social media was that the people most mad about the No Awarding didn't strike me as these old dinosaurs raging at their usurpation.  They sounded young.

Young.  Disenfranchised.  Angry.

And this is #GamerGate in a nutshell.  It's not about excluding women, it's not even about ethics in games journalism.  It's anger.  And most of this anger is directed at an elite media class that doesn't understand them and has repeatedly lied about and demonised them.  If they're white and male, they're angry at being lectured to about privilege by writers with far greater reach and social capital.  If they're female or a minority, they're angry at being dismissed as sock puppets, or of having "internalized misogyny".  They're angry at being called misogynists, racists and homophobes for questioning logic in media narratives that don't add up to them.  They're angry at being smeared as terrorists and rapists for having the temerity of speaking back.

One of the things I found most telling was a twitter exchange between one of these angry young nerds and a multi-award-winning author.  The author described it as Fandom successfully keeping out interlopers trying to gate-crash the clubhouse.  And then it clicked for me.  The roles are all wrong.  The angry young nerd isn't angry because they think they're being kicked out of the clubhouse to let in a more diverse female/PoC/LGBT crowd.  They've never even been inside the clubhouse.

I don't think the people that write the blogs and newspaper articles understand this.  They've made careers and names out of "punching up" and "speaking truth to power".  I don't think they recognise that to the young people coming up, they've become the establishment putting bars on the doors and windows of the clubhouse.

Now we come back to #SadPuppies and the Hugo Awards.  My personal opinion is that while I'm sympathetic to the #SadPuppies cause, ending up with a situation where the rest of the voters were left with a choice of voting for one of the Puppy picks or none at all was a mistake (and not entirely the #SadPuppies fault—it was the additions of Vox Day's overlapping #RabidPuppies slate that ended up locking out some of the categories).  People being the contrary buggers they are, voters going "fuck you" and plumping for none at all was always a likely outcome in that scenario.

The thing is, all those angry young nerds currently raging on the internet aren't going to see that.  These people have zero trust in the media after fighting a bruising campaign against it over the past year.  They've even been blamed for contributing to this controversy and casually smeared, again.

Then they see the Hugo Awards play out.  They see a bunch of people cheering the announcement of No Award and then gloating afterwards about denying people based on their politics rather than the quality of their writing.  They hear about a distinguished female editor with a long history in the field walking out because she'd had enough of the mockery.  They read the account of another female writer having what should be a dream occasion turned to utter shit.  They hear about the multi-millionaire author throwing an after-show party for his buddies in a big mansion and giving out awards to the people the in-group thought "should" have won.  Is it any wonder they came to the conclusion the whole thing is as rotten as hell?   The raging you're seeing on social media is their "speaking truth to power".

This has been reported as a victory for progressive attitudes over a reactionary backlash of old white dudes stuck in the past, further evidence that the old guard are being elbowed aside and the future of SFF is a bright one with social justice at its heart.  I think there's a problem here.  It relies on the assumption that the current backlash is coming from old dinosaurs clinging grimly on to power.  They're thinning out.  Less and less people are sharing their attitudes.  Soon they'll be gone and the cultural shift will be complete.

Except there's a good chance that all the folks raging in twitter and reddit posts are younger than the more connected folk writing all the nice blogposts about SFF's bright and rainbow-coloured future.  Which would mean what we're seeing now is not a reactionary backlash from a generation on the way out, but a backlash against perceived authoritarianism from a generation on the way in.  They're really angry at the current media class.  Their numbers are growing and they're getting angrier.  They will also bring a cultural shift, but it might not be the one you're expecting and it might not be pleasant.

That's the thing about being the future, you always end up being someone else's past.

The young replace the old.

Currently the young are very angry.  Then someone like Vox Day comes along.  Vox is an asshole.  He doesn't pretend to be anything else.  Most of these angry young nerds are not assholes.  They don't even like Vox.  A cursory glance at #GamerGate HQ, the KotakuInAction subreddit, shows this.  Every time his name comes up it's usually followed by, "Ugh, that guy," or words to the same effect.  But the thing is, if you're caught between two sides and one side is throwing rocks at your head, it's human nature to gravitate to the side not currently throwing rocks at your head.

I find it ironic that in the same year Mixon received a Hugo for her exposĂ© of Requires Hate, Fandom seems wilfully unaware that people are still using the same hacks to spread toxicity from behind a shield of supposed social justice.  This is great for Vox Day.  Whenever one of Team "Social Justice" posts another of their venomous screeds about young white men being the most useless and deficient individuals in society, the Dark Lord of Evil rubs his hands and welcomes more Vile Faceless Minions to the fold.

It's why Vox's "SJWs Always Lie" sticks.  They keep proving him right ALL THE GODDAMN TIME.  This resonates with the young angry nerds—they've seen mainstream media lie about them constantly for the past year.  They look at #SadPuppies and recognise the same smears and hit pieces.

It's no surprise right-wing outlets such as Breitbart.com are taking an interest in these young angry nerds.  For the first time in half a century the Right sees an opportunity to not be the stop-having-fun side of politics amongst the young.  Because this is the young—the next generation coming through.  They're going to be the people writing about SFF and Fandom in the future.  Do you really want to leave them to be shaped by people like Vox Day?

Monday, February 16, 2015

"Why don't you post your Let's Plays of Violated Hero and such on a site like XVideos?"

This question came up in the comments for the last blog post (thanks, anonymous!).  I was going to answer it there and then thought of a whole bunch of other stuff while I was writing and decided to splurge them out in a full post instead.

The short answer is I have absolutely no experience or knowledge on how to put together videos, edit them and upload them to sites like Youtube, Twitch, etc.  This is not a particularly good excuse as I could probably read up on these things and figure them out.  I even have the free time to attempt this if so inclined.

The bigger question is: Would it work?

One of the more interesting things I've learned from following #GamerGate over the last few months is just how popular youtubers like TotalBiscuit and Boogie2988 are.  I knew this kind of videogames coverage was out there, but I hadn't realised just how huge it was.  In fact, one of the more interesting narrative frames that can be applied to #GamerGate is that it's about one form of media (traditional blogging/journalism producing written articles for gaming websites) being supplanted by another form of media (new youtubers/twitchers producing gameplay videos for Youtube, etc) and raging at their own oncoming obsolescence.

(It is by no means the only narrative frame that can be applied to #GamerGate, but we're not going there.  Nope, definitely not going there.)

Let's Play videos are a big thing now.  Unfortunately, doing them for the type of monster girl hentai games I like runs into problems with hosting venues and audience expectation.  Youtube and Twitch have fairly strict anti-lewd rules which rule out a lot of explicit content.  There are Let's Plays of Monster Girl Quest that get around the problem by sticking black squares (or more humorous censors) over the lewd bits, but MGQ is a weird case in that the story and characters are still entertaining even without the lewdness.  It's still less than ideal though.  After all, what's the point of Let's Playing an eroge if you can't show off a nice pair of giant round tits.

Cap'n, we don't have a black square big enough!

The other option, as suggested, would be to go to one of the porn youtube clones like XVideos.  I don't think this would work because of audience expectation.  People go to Youtube for entertainment.  Person providing commentary while playing through something like Monster Girl Quest could be entertaining.  People go to porn youtube clones to fap.  Random British guy wittering over monster girl hentai game - not fap material.

I think Let's Play videos of various monster girl hentai games could be highly entertaining, I just don't think there's a good place to showcase them at the moment.  For that type of Let's Play video anyway.

While I was thinking of ideas, one thing I thought would work is to have a voice actress with a sexy voice play through the game and read out the dialogue of the female characters.  I think that could work very well on the porn youtube clones, but it does rely on the Let's Player being female, having a sexy voice, and not giving two fucks about weird smutty material.

Sexy voice + Alma Elma RP = profit?
 
As a lumpen Brit with a lumpen voice, this isn't really an option for me.

Could be a good opportunity for the right person though...

Thursday, September 04, 2014

#GamerGate, The Ratner Effect, and how to get rid of a SJW infection

I should be writing other things, but this #GamerGate thing currently causing some seismic upheavals in the videogaming community has burrowed into my head and I’m going to have to write something on it to get rid of the damn thing so I can get back to my other writing projects.  What is #GamerGate?  Uh, it’s complex.  In summary, a section of gaming community has risen up against a gaming press they no longer believe represents their interests.  A good summary can be found here.  And this piece here covers the background leading up to it.

This is something like my third or fourth attempt to write this.  On the previous attempts my utter loathing of Social Justice Warriors (SJW) - a group I despise for their intolerance, shocking hypocrisy, and quickness to censor and stifle opinions they don’t agree with – rose to the surface and drowned the piece in too much hate.  I do have a bias towards the #GamerGate side, but another screaming rant about interfering SJWs doesn’t really add anything new to the discussion.

It’s not about them anyway.  Oh, they play a part, but it’s not the full story.

After following the story on social media for a while, there seem to be several distinct complaints coming out of the gamer camp.

Some are unhappy about the corruption and cronyism displayed in the gaming press.  They think the relationship between some game devs and some game journalists is too pally and this is making the reporting untrustworthy.

Some are unhappy with the adversarial and condescending attitudes of some game journalists.  They’re fed up of going to read articles on their hobby only to be insulted and denigrated as “neckbeards”, “misogynists”, “manchildren” and other slurs.

Some are unhappy with the infiltration of the gaming press by SJWs.  They want to read articles on gaming, not political opinion pieces telling them that game they liked is sexist/racist and they’re a piece of shit for liking it.

On the other side, the gaming press think it’s about angry white males being misogynist assholes, again.  Which is why they’re in a lot more trouble than they realise.

I’ve followed it festering away in the background for the last couple of weeks.  It was when the main gaming sites all put out very similar articles announcing the death of the “gamer” within roughly the same 24 hour period that I sat up and took notice.

I’ve not seen this before.  I’ve not seen media declare war on their own consumers and viciously attack them, which is what the gaming press appeared to be doing.  The reason I’ve not seen it before is because it’s totally fucking insane.  Generally speaking, unless you’re a dominatrix running a BDSM parlour, insulting your own customers is usually a very quick way to go out of business.  A lot of the gaming press (and some gaming devs) seem to have completely forgotten this and are still in attack mode, not realising the only thing they’ll win from this fight is a pink slip from the audience they just alienated.

It reminds me of the Ratner Effect.  Before working as a software developer I spent some years working in the jewellery industry.  Most of my family still work in the same industry.  In 1991 Gerald Ratner was head of one of the biggest jewellery companies in Britain.  During a speech he jokingly referred to his product as cheap and “total crap”.  His customers took this as an insult and voted with their feet.  Within a year Ratner’s off-the-cuff joke had wiped 500 million off the value of his company and nearly destroyed it.

Ratner disconnected himself from his customers.  They wanted nice jewellery.  He told them it was tacky shit.  They went elsewhere.  He lost his job.

What’s happening with #GamerGate looks remarkably similar.  There is a disconnect between producers (gaming press and to some extent game devs) and a large chunk of their consumers (gamers).  Only in this case the relationship has become hostile and extremely ill-tempered.

This can be seen by how #GamerGate is covered.

Some sections of the gaming press have blamed it on misogyny because they’ve become unhealthily fixated on what they see as misogyny in gaming.  Unfortunately this has left them out of touch with the majority of their audience, who are currently upset about issues of content and transparency, and are well and truly hacked off with being branded misogynist for not toeing the media line.  (Not all of the people tweeting the #GamerGate tag are white males.  There are a lot of women and persons of colour.  The one thing they have in common is they’re all dissatisfied with the current gaming press.)

This is a problem I’ve noticed with people who are heavily interested in social justice (As an aside, I believe social justice is a good thing and a laudable aim.  I also think it’s a completely different thing from social justice warriors, who are basically scum), they’re not always aware that other people don’t share their interest to the same intensity.  For the worst of them, the ones that tip over into SJW-asshattery, they see lack of interest as evidence of sexism, racism, etc., and are quick to accuse others of it.  For most normal well-adjusted people that aren’t sexist, racist, homophobic or transphobic, being accused of any of these things is extremely insulting.  The typical human reaction is to lash back . . . and then you end up with the vicious trench warfare seen over the last couple of weeks.

Again it’s a disconnect between media and audience.  Imagine you and your friends are watching an awesome movie.  But you have that one friend that can’t help themselves and has to drone on and on about how the crew was mistreated, that the wildlife was disturbed, that one of the female characters is being objectified, that the foreign character is a negative stereotype.  At some point you’re going to snap and say, “Shut the fuck up!  We’re trying to enjoy this awesome movie here.”

This is why some gaming sites are in real trouble.

Gaming sites have disconnected from gamers.  Gamers wanted cool articles about gaming.  They got academic and political analysis that didn’t interest them.  Gamers wanted trustworthy reviews they could use to determine where they should spend their money.  They got hints of conflicts of interest and possible corruption.  Gamers raised concerns.  They were told they were “dead” and irrelevant.  Gamers will go elsewhere.  Some journalists will lose their jobs.  Some sites will die.

How do you get rid of an SJW infection?  Same way you get rid of any business that no longer serves your needs in a free market – you stop giving them money and they go bust.

While sections of the gaming press are still trumpeting about the misogyny problem (and attacking their readers), their former audience has stolen a play from the classic SJW manual.  They’re boycotting the sites, journalists and game devs they believe no longer speak to them.  Not only that, they’re contacting the advertisers to these sites and telling them they will also see a reduction in business and brand damage for associating with the broken sections of the games press.

By the way, the above, way way more effective than impotent rage-fuelled death threats.

I’m curious to see how this will all pan out.  It could be a seismic change that completely changes the landscape.  Or it could be another one of those internet things that has plenty of sound and fury, but fizzles out after a couple of days and is forgotten after a couple of weeks.

The current web traffic stats for the more hated websites make for interesting reading.  The expression “falling off a cliff” comes to mind.  I’m cautious about reading too much into those graphs (you can google them – alexa + [name of site]) as I don’t know the seasonal variations in web traffic for gaming sites.  However, they do appear to show a sharp downward trend.  I wonder what will happen if these sharp downward trends are still happening a couple of weeks from now.  Will we start to see personnel changes and grovelling apologies?

“Hey gamers, you know when we said you were dead.  We didn’t mean it.  Please come back.  Pleeeeeeeassssse.”

Remember that xkcd cartoon about free speech.

It doesn’t only apply to bigoted old duck-whistle guys.  Insult your audience and they will show you the door.

I wonder if we’re at the beginning of what will be known as The Great Gaming Website Cull of 2014?

UPDATE

I found a link to an article that came out just after mine that comes to the same conclusions, but is much better sourced.  There are more links there explaining the background and also to the articles that detail exactly where the gaming press committed collective suicide.  The writer also keeps a more detached tone (I've had too many run ins with unpleasant SJWs to be able to remain totally objective on that subject unfortunately).

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/09/gamergate_explodes_gaming_journalists_declare_the_gamers_are_over_but_they.html