A Message from #Ukraine

One of my Youtube viewers from Ukraine left this comment on my Youtube video about the situation. I couldn’t possibly have covered the full nuance, so I felt this was worth giving some wider exposure.

Hey, Ukrainian here. From one of the bordering regions, no less; one of the locations where Russians tanks are now cruising the roads, and troops try to take over city administrations. Long time watching, first time writing, etc.

I don’t want to engage in a full-scale political discussion, not least because I’ve tried to avoid politics for a long time. This is just a perspective from a random guy whose home country is being invaded. First, Ukraine is not just “one of the ex-Soviet territories”. Kievan Rus dates back centuries, and actually predates Moscow and Russia. As time went on, our countries went our separate ways. Yes, there are similarities in cultures and languages, but by no means are we the same.

After the rise of the Russian Empire, Ukraine (or “Little Russia”, as it was known back then. A very pleasant term, right) has been suffering under its rule, with serfs being basically slaves to be re-sold and exploited to death. Granted, Russians wasn’t the only ones feeding off Ukrainian people, – Polish and Hungarian aristocrates were also living the dream at our expense; but I don’t see Poland invading us now, so, you know.

This stuff is reflected in a ton of our classic literature, it is taught in schools. Not in the way of “fuck those guys, they screwed us centuries ago”, more like “our people have been under the boot of assholes before, let’s not let that happen again, kids”. Fast forward to the USSR. Nothing special to mention here, it was the same as everywhere else in the Soviets: strong but messy totalitarian empire. From a personal perspective, my father did tell me stories of a few of his friends who were repressed and never seen again. However, both of my parents agreed that, when the system worked peacefully, it did work. And then Holodomor happens (literally “killing with starvation”), where, due to the ruling party’s miscalculations and deficits, tons and tons of food supplies were taken away from Ukraine, leaving people here to starve.

I cannot speak for other Soviet territories that suffered this fate; but I can tell you for a fact that thousands of Ukrainian people died because of something the Soviets did. When the USSR imploded, it sucked here as much as it did in other ex-Soviet countries. But we persevered, built up as much as we could, and took course for the brave new modern world.

Fast forward again, to more recent and pressing events. 2004, election year. Yushchenko (pro-Ukrainian, pro-Western candidate) versus Yanukovych (pro-Russian candidate, who never even bothered to learn the language properly). People expressed their dissatisfaction with the latter in a very clear and loud way, mocking him in memes and arranging rallys against him. Feel free to speculate just how much of a role propaganda served in this outcry, but the fact is, Yushchenko becomes president, and Ukrainians are excited for Western-oriented political moves.

This presidency was… fine, I guess? Not much happened, not much changed; it left people mostly dissatisfied, because the promised political course was not implemented. By the next elections, Yanukovych threw a massive propaganda campaign in some of our eastern regions (the separatist ones, yes), and there were no other prominent candidates, and he won.

2014. This is where shit hits the fan. President Yanukovych announces that trade and general help deals with Europe and the US will not be happening, and the general goal is instead to closely associate with Russia. People are PISSED: “we’ve JUST left the USSR, we want to be with the modern West, what the hell?!” There are protests all over the country, the most populated ones being held in the Kiev’s center, the Maidan (“public square”). Protests were peaceful, but intense, and at some point Yanukovych mobilizes defence forces to open fire at the protesters. And medics carrying wounded protesters away. And everyone in the vicinity. I know people who lost friends during those events. At this point folks realize that Yanukovych is a Russian puppet, and, not without losses, throw him out – he escapes to Russia begging for sanctuary.

This is the turning point, this is where Ukrainians fully get that Russia is not letting go of us. And then Russia takes Crimea, shouting “it’s not us, it’s their civil war” (a lot of Russian military guys later got medals for this war where they were technically not present. Weird). And then separatists in the East, who supported Yanukovych, form their pseudo-countries, and open their borders to Russian mercenaries.

Russia, again, shouts “it’s not us, it’s them”, but the weaponry used, the prisoners of war taken, and the social pages info of Russian vatniks (jingos and Russian nationalists) speak otherwise. Ever since, the Russian propaganda has been painting Ukraine as basically nazi bastads who took what they didn’t own (which is… our own country? wat?), who oppress the Russian-speaking population (which is thoroughly untrue. My parents barely know the Ukrainian language, and never have they seen any oppression. As for the laws stipulating Ukrainian as the national language, and not Russian… well, it is our language. Of this here our country), who take arms against Russia along with the West, which is “THE ENEMY” (this Cold War-era shit still very much flies there).

They say that our country exists only because the Soviets have allowed it. That our language is not real, it’s a sad parody of the Russian language. (Let’s not also forget the trolls, who are all to eager to tell you exactly what they intend to do to your girlfriends and daughters.) All of this is fucking bullshit, and they know it, and they still perpetuate it.

All we want is to join the modern times and be left alone. Look, regarding the point about Ukrainian nationalists. First, I’m pretty sure there are assholes and idiots everywhere; we never had any more of them than other places. BUT, Russia did a lot of bad shit to our people, keeps painting us as either “allies of THE ENEMY” or “lost sheep to be led back to the flock”. And then there’s all the military shit, which has now escalated to the point of actual fucking war. Putin himself forces us to hate him and Russia. Not all Russians, but the ones who support his regime – most definitely.

It’s not nationalism, it’s a desire to be our own country. Don’t see anything wrong with that. If anything, Russian rhetoric to the point of “your country is not a country, your nation is not a nation, your language is not a language; you are all just a big misunderstanding, which we simply must correct”.. This is actual fascism, innit? Putin, or Putler, if you will, is a fascist. Or ruscist, if you will. As are those who support him (including Lukashenko of Belarus, who is Putin’s slut at this point, and Kadyrov of Chechnya, who is a goddamn animal believing he’s still in the Middle Ages).

Anyway… People are dying all over Ukraine, there are bombings and shootouts. there is either panic or somber waiting among the civilians. There are invaders, with tanks and guns, in my city. We expect the Internet, power, and utilities to go down at any moment, we prepare supplies and look for bomb shelters. Russia is sanctioned to all hell (though not nearly enough, I say), everyone hates it, but they just keep going. All because Putler can’t let go of his dictatorial fever dreams. It is not our fault, it is not our military storming us. It is all Putin’s doing. It fucking sucks, man.

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The Problem of Being Evil

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How U2 can rite gud!

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Inside Gamergate Full Playlist

The complete playlist of Inside Gamergate is up.

You can find it HERE.

If you want to purchase the book you can find it at LULU and AMAZON.

“A fair glimpse at what really happened not the false narrative a corrupt media pushed.”

“This has to be the best telling of GG.”

“Read this if you want an accurate and well written depiction of gamergate as it would be presented by most of the “gators”. Every story has at least two sides, and this book is as good a pro-gamergate argument as you could hope to find.”

“It does a good job explaining Internet culture and the drama that revolved around the movement, It doesn’t come off as one sided or shove the message down the reader’s throat. If you have a friend or know anyone who doesn’t know anything about GamerGate I recommend showing them this book. “

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D.E.D. Talk – Stereotypes

Stereotypes are bad, right? We’re not supposed to consign broad categories of people into these simplistic kinds of caricatures and yet… we do. We all do it because it’s a kind of mental shorthand for how to react to and deal with people. Some of us make a conscious effort not to give in to the temptation but no matter how hard you try you have to deal with that stereotype and consciously overcome it.

Why do we do it?

The sad truth is that a lot of the time it’s perfectly valid to stereotype. Most blustering, red-faced religious conservatives are fairly interchangeable – at least on the surface. People dress, speak and otherwise present themselves according to stereotypes to express some aspect of who they are and how they want to be treated. We run into problems when the presentation and the intention don’t match, but it’s still true.

The OED defines a stereotype as: “A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.”

That’s, perhaps, a little uncharitable. Another way to view it, if you’ll forgive me a little pretentiousness for a moment, is that of the Jungian archetype, which often sound more like an eclectic tarot set than a psychological concept. Some of Jung’s archetypes included the mother, the father, the trickster, the child and in motifs such as the flood, creation, the apocalypse.

In terms of stereotyping what you have there are stereotypes and clichés.

So should we banish stereotypes to the dustbin of history or should we embrace them? Archetypes and motifs, stereotypes and clichés have too much power and usefulness to be completely abandoned, though we may need to revise our lists somewhat. The ‘Uncle Tom’ stereotype of the past is probably no longer appropriate unless writing historical fiction, but that doesn’t mean others don’t retain their general usefulness.

A good stereotype or cliché, if such a thing exists, is a weapon in a creative person’s arsenal. Sure, it may seem lazy but in short stories, games and fiction with restricted amounts of text, dialogue or screen time you often need to convey a lot of information in a very short space of time. Stereotypes are a sort of ‘macro’, like stealing someone else’s piece of code and using it in your own programming to save time, or using stock footage in a film.

The thug, the whore with a heart of gold, the dumb guard, the gravel-voiced vigilante, these all serve useful purposes and whether you’re charitable and call them archetypes or uncharitable and call them stereotypes, they convey a lot of information in one go.

This is even more useful when you’re playing roleplaying games and the vast majority of people you run into are unimportant side characters. Without any personality they’re just a cipher, with a stereotype they at least have a little character and you have something to build on.

The ruddy-faced innkeeper, the greedy shopkeeper, the jobsworth guard, these can all be dropped into just about any game at a moment’s notice and they don’t detract from it by being a stereotype, they add an element of character and personality where – perhaps – there was none before.

A stereotype doesn’t have to end there though. While it can be enough it can also serve as a mere foundation.

Consider pretty much every character in, say, The Simpsons. Every single one is a stereotype from the motherly, disapproving Marge to the oafish, irresponsible slob Homer, to the somewhat dodgy Asian stereotype of Apu.

At least, they all started out that way and yet The Simpsons was, from the get go, a big success – once they were free of Tracey Ullman anyway. Why? Because everything was instantly recognisable and we all ‘got it’, because of the use of stereotypes. In 25 years though, every character has developed some nuance, some background (even if continuity is just something that happens to other people) and from those stereotypes have emerged more rounded comedic characters.

The Fast Show was essentially a string of these, centred around mostly stereotypical characters such as Rowley Birkin QC – who was based on a real person. These sorts of stock characters are not a remotely new concept, the idea of the ‘stock character’ a, formalised stereotype, goes all the way back to Classical Greece where, in 319 BCE Theophrastus wrote extensively on character sketches and character as a genre, with thirty stock characters including such recognisable tropes as The Talkative Man, The Coward and The Man of Petty Ambition. Later classical writers and playwrights added to this and the tradition survives to this day in comedy, much of it via the tradition of the music hall.

Returning to games, unless you’re working very intensely with a set character and a set storyline you’re going to need to anticipate certain stereotypes, even more so the case with many computer games which must anticipate and program for the actions of the players, but also within tabletop roleplaying games where the three main archetypes are the magician, the rogue and the fighter.

You can see that in Numenera replaced with Nano, Jack and Glaive.

You can see that in Cyberpunk with Netrunner, Fixer and Solo.

You can see it in almost every game, implicit or explicit, with character classes or without.

Every game starts with a baseline idea of a set of stereotypes, which you can then work with or against, exemplify or contradict.

And that’s where the fun really comes in, where you fill out the details, where you defy the stereotypes or sub-specialise within them to create something new and individual and that can happen over time as you grow more attached to the character and more versatile or powerful, learning new things about their background.

In designing my game Forever Summer I went looking to the source material – kids adventure movies and series, most especially the favourites I saw growing up like Goonies – and saw the use of stereotypes there. Whether it’s Stand by Me or Explorers you know largely all you really need to know about the characters within the first half hour of the film, if not before. Stereotypes get all that introductory mess out of the way, leaving the film free to get on with the story with some more detail about the characters coming out – as a form of character development but not really – as you go along.

Nobody said every game, every roleplaying session, every book, comic or magazine had to be completely stellar and groundbreaking or that you must avoid stereotypes, even when they really do exist in real life. There are people I know in real life who would be unacceptable characters in books or TV series because they seem like crass stereotypes, yet they’re real people.

Seriously, don’t worry about it. Stereotypes are just another tool in the toolbox and if you muck about with them and keep revisiting them, they won’t say stereotypes for long.

Said the long-haired, bearded, role-player with a house full of books…

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Normal Universes Will be Resumed as Soon as Possible

Well that’s all been a jolly bit of fun eh? Who would have suspected that defending the right of creative people to explore difficult topics would have been such a contentious issue. Foolishly, perhaps, I thought the creative community of writers, games designers, artists and so on would be all for free expression. It seems not.

You see, really, the whole point of the original article was that creative people should be free to examine, tackle and explore any topic however difficult or ‘offensive’ and that it should be judged on quality rather than content.

Ironically, people judged the post on its content. They saw the title and their lizard brain went into overdrive. If I had simply said:

Creative people should be free to write about any topic and judged on the quality of their work, rather than its content.

Would there have been this storm? Would even 1/10th of the number of people who have seen the post looked at it? It’s just a shame so few actually read it because the points made really aren’t contentious and one could go though the same process for any difficult or controversial topic, as I did for murder.

See… this is what so many of you do in all these instances. You don’t stop to think, or look, or confirm. You see that a game, book, TV show or whatever includes an element and that’s enough for you to pick up your pitchfork and join the mob.

Your reaction to my post only reinforces it’s point.

I really have a hard time believing that many people can’t read, or that my communication skill is that poor, considering the number of people who DID understand what I was saying, even if they disagreed.

There’s something else going on, some suspension of rational thought, some determination to present an ‘acceptable’ viewpoint rather than to actually think about the topic.

That’s a shame.

Anyway, this’ll – hopefully – be the final word on this here. The Outrage Posse will be on to the next thing in a day or two, probably a comic cover or a video game trailer. I have friends over the weekend for gaming and a podcast interview, so I may not be able to get back to Shanks this week but I’ll be back to it as soon as I can.

It has been suggested that I engaged in all this for self-publicity, rather than to broach a serious topic. Clearly being hated so much by so many people for no real reason is a great trade off for a couple of sales. If there’s one thing of mine I would want my detractors to look at after this, it would be the game The Little Grey Book, which is free. So don’t worry about giving ‘that rapist arsehole’ any money.

Pax

x

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In Defence of Murder

Murder a dude, get made untouchable. God seems a little conflicted on this one.

Murder or attempted murder is a fucking awesome plot element.

Attempted murder can place a character in jeopardy where the readers’ care about what happens, without necessarily taking the character out of the story. It’s a threat with implications, but not as final as death itself. It forces the character into a life-or-death situation that tests their mettle.

Murder can have interesting knock-on effects on a character’s relationships and their relationships with each other. If a character murders how do the character’s friends and family react? Who do they confide in – if anyone? Can you use this as a springboard to explore legal procedure and policing in your setting? What if nobody cared about who was murdered? What if it’s a frame up?

If you lose someone close to you how hard is it for the character to endure that? What’s the effect of the act on the murderer, the relatives of the victim, the witnesses? Why did the murder happen? Can murder ever be legitimate? Can someone ever deserve it? Who decides that? Do the forces of law and order turn a blind eye?

How does the event change the people involved? Is the murderer remorseful? Does the victim become transformed by their death into a secular saint despite their character flaws? Is there an afterlife in the world of your book? Is the ghost vengeful? Can it do anything more than simply observe?

There’s not a great deal of media in which death doesn’t occur. A body presents an intriguing puzzle for a detective. A hero in an action franchise litters the ground behind him with corpses. Science Fiction and Fantasy often include wars, battles, fights because they’re exciting and get the blood pumping. Who hasn’t imagined having gun triggers on the steering wheel of their car?

There’s more, but I think that amply shows that it needn’t be lazy writing and as story material it goes right the way back to the oldest human myths. It’s a story-making tool that should be available to you as a storyteller, great or small. Whole genres of popular TV show and book hang upon murder. What about Cluedo as a game as well? What about Risk?

So, part two.

Does the existence of murder stories, even as a cheap jab to get someone’s emotions involved, somehow trivialise or normalise killing?

Hopefully by this point most of you are nodding along and going ‘I see what you did there…’ and let’s hope to fuck you actually do. If you reacted that badly to the previous article without thinking, just because it had a hot-button word for you then you’re really no different to someone who calls GTA a ”Murder simulator’.

Grow up.

This is a follow up article to THIS.

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Reading from The Black Rat

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Mimsy Burogrove – A Reading

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Face For Radio: Extracts from The Doc and The Bastard

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