The Psychopathy of Free Creation

Escalate... escalate... escalate...

On July 30, 2019, I wrote the following:

I am absolutely convinced that there are a significant amount of people out there who want certain people out there to literally die.

Oh, they say they just want certain people to “go away,” but there’s never really anything said about where it would be OK to go away to. Because there isn’t. So... what does that leave?

And that they want anyone who doesn’t share this opinion to similarly “disappear.” I fall into this category.

And anyone who remains associated with dissenters like me, should be subject to the same treatment: “Disappear.”

Mentally I know this is exaggeration, I know this is an insane way to think about it... but on an emotional level, I feel like I am up against people who literally want me dead. And I can now only work with people who are just fine with having dozens or hundreds (who knows how many) of people leaning on them. “Nice hobby/career you got there. Would be a shame if you completely wrecked it by associating with THOSE people. Conform or ‘disappear.’”

August 6, 2019, after getting home from Gen Con:

For example, the online anger I've been getting, and having been abandoned by so many people I was working with/going to work with, over the past few months had me expecting an actively hostile reaction here at Gen Con. We were even prepared for violence, had a talk at Exhibitor Services about what to do in case of an “incident” and if our required vendor insurance covered injuries if we were attacked and having plans for someone to take over the booth if I ended up getting kicked out or even injured in such an incident. That’s the mindset I was in, showing up prepared for war both in attitude and print.

Excerpts from my September 20, 2019 post, written after people decided they didn’t like a certain book for sale up at DriveThruRPG:

I made a post to the company Facebook page Friday night, answered a couple of replies, and then went to bed, feeling OK.

But I woke up Saturday morning to find I was crying and had been crying in my sleep. I was not feeling anything, just all voidy, maybe some confusion, a throbbing in the base of my skull, but I was crying. I haven’t cried for many months, much longer than maybe it should have been considering things that have happened in the meantime. And later on in the day, I actually shit myself a bit, because apparently the numbness isn’t just mental…

… I can’t do nothing, or people will think I’m a horrible person who is refusing to do the obvious right thing and I’m fucking with peoples’ lives because of it.

I can’t do what some people want, or the rest think I’m a horrible person who is refusing to do the obvious right thing and I’m fucking with peoples’ lives because of it.

I can’t do what other people want, or the rest think I’m a horrible person who is refusing to do the obvious right thing and I’m fucking with peoples’ lives because of it.

I can’t do what I want, or everyone thinks I’m a horrible person who is refusing to do the obvious right thing and I’m fucking with peoples’ lives because of it.

In trying to thread that needle, in making choices that both I could live with making, and realizing that it's not just about me and I have responsibilities to other people... I have blown up every important relationship in my life this year. Not just lost... but completely and thoroughly destroyed. And it's ruined me. My sources of strength are all gone…

But that they feel they are under real threat and actual danger... because of me? I don’t recognize that person they’re talking about, not in who I am or the motivations they’re attributing to me. And the thing behind my face is just wringing itself out trying to get a handle on it all.

All I want to do is make the coolest make-believe fantasyland books I can, and I want to team up with the people that can help me do that. End of. That's all it should be. That's it.

I know how this ends. (It will likely have already ended by the time I post this; I started writing this Saturday morning and I'm not going to look...) Because when that mob is at your door, and they’re telling you that this thing they’re angry about makes you complicit in abuse and harm, doing everything they can to make you feel absolutely filthy... It’s just pure panic and a sense of dread felt on every single side of the issue. And when it’s in front of you, all that matters is making it go away. And what’s going to be the easiest way to do that for the store? Defending the thing’s right to exist there, or just burn the book? Or better yet, burn the witch… My only hope here is that the people there are braver than I have been. (a hell of a thing to wait around to find out, let me tell you)

I don't want to be a psychopath that doesn't listen to what anyone else says. Why are people trying to turn me into one?

(emphasis new as of this posting)

And now July 11, 2021:

The hell I am bringing to the world soon must be done with confidence and without apology. And the closer we get to that day when the public knows what we’ve been up to (and what all the talent finds out will be released under a common banner as their own work) the more that I am convinced that I am indeed bringing hell.

So about a month ago, June 2021, a project fell into my lap, from right out of the sky. As it turns out I’d had some discussions with the author about a potential project back in August/September 2020, but by this point, I’d completely forgotten about it.

But there it was, in my inbox. It had been played, and even layout and graphic design were ready to go. (well, needed a copyedit and some things like ISBN info and such added, but otherwise…)

I liked it. I laughed. First thought: “This seems… fun!”

Second thought?

“This will be a problem.”

It deals with a lot of… let’s call them ‘themes’… that are very sensitive these days. This is a minefield that must be tread very carefully else one gets all blowed up. bbuuutttt the charm of this thing is that it takes this subject matter and just doesn’t give a shit about it. It is, as the kids say, “irreverent” in its treatment of things.

It is free in its expression.

And I decided that no matter how pressured I feel, no matter how awful it was the last time I published something “unpopular,” and even allowing that maybe I’m just once-bitten-twice-shy and making mountains out of molehills, I have to create and publish as if I am free to do so.

After all, who’s in charge of this monkey farm, anyway?

A very good question.

Because I wonder if I actually am making decisions as if I am creatively free. I sometimes think that what I publish is not what I’d do if I was just left alone to do it, but in fact reacting to the criticism I receive, ratcheting up the difficult elements just to convince myself that I am maintaining independence in my creative output.

But I wasn’t reacting to anything in particular when I decided to have Cannibal Corpse artist Vincent Locke illustrate a zombie punching up through somebody’s hoo-ha, a piece which is still in the main rulebook to this day. I wasn’t under any sort of real pressure when I decided to write about and commission an illustration portraying an undead fetus dragging its screaming mother around by the umbilical cord (Death Love Doom), or decided that yes, it’s a good idea to title a book Fuck For Satan featuring an alien penis monster. Or releasing a book called Fish Fuckers featuring some real how-do-you-do art. Nobody twisted my arm to release hardcover (!) books for Free RPG Day titled Vaginas are Magic! and James Edward Raggi IV’s Eldritch Cock.

That’s the sort of stuff I already sometimes (not always!) do when I feel free to create. It is the sort of stuff I sometimes (not always!) enjoy in movies, music, and other entertainment media.

Yet when pushed I do… things. The Doom Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children, and of course Zak Had Nothing To Do With This Book are the obvious examples. And surely I wouldn’t have thought to publish Carcosa in such a fancy-ass edition back in 2011 if it hadn’t been to prove a point against those who had so vociferously attacked it and its author when the original edition came out in 2008.

But now I’m in a position where I have ten things being prepared for press, and four of them I expect to cause trouble. Some more than others, but in the end, four pieces of trouble that will confirm that I’m that sort of person¹ to those sorts of people. Four? Maybe just the two that twang on what I perceive as very raw nerves. Or maybe it’s none. The rules seem arbitrary sometimes, and this leaves six other things that I’m not expecting to be a problem, but what do I know? Maybe I’m worried about the wrong things. I can’t say I have any idea where the line is.

Paradise PD on Netflix is apparently not over the line, as this screengrab from a 2021 episode that hasn’t ended anyone’s career yet seems to indicate. Which is good, because that show is funny as hell. And weird as fuck. But… ah… how does one look at this and be able to come up with any conception of there actually being “a line”?

And the worry is not the old “Oh, is this too far, is nobody going to be interested in this and the book will be a financial pit with a pallet of books rotting in a warehouse until the end of time?” way I used to worry about my mischief.

It’s in the “are people going to try to destroy my life and the life of any associate that doesn’t immediately disavow me?” Which, reviewing the linked posts I opened this essay with, I am reminded that this literally means “Are people going to try to kill me?” Because the two things are not different.

No, they won’t be coming at me with bullets or blades (… probably?), or even fists (although I was not so convinced of that at Gen Con and I sure did behave as if random physical attacks were possible, even when out and about in Indianapolis)… but the methods they do use are just as dangerous, and potentially just as deadly.

As I review potential final layouts before sending these projects to the printer, I am genuinely wondering if sending these projects off to the printer will be my final act as a whole and intact person.

But what if it’s like Gen Con ’19, with me showing up preparing for war… and there’s no war? That takes a toll as well. I can’t not prepare myself, but the preparation itself is damaging.

But in the end… no matter how scared I am, no matter what it does to my physical or mental health (and I still see all the scars of the last go round whenever I look at myself)… I have to pretend that I don’t care.

I have to be prepared to sacrifice myself so that these silly little things may exist in exactly the form they should exist in.

Which is fucking bonkers. I publish fictional nonsense. Fuck this world and the people in it.

ok.

Calm down.

I am working myself into a panic. A lot, lately.

But that’s what they want. Fear.

I have to pretend not to care.

Breathe.

Deep breaths.

OK.

You know Garfunkel and Oates’ song God’s Loophole? Surely if you’re reading this you’ve heard it. Just check pretty much any live version… like this one to get you all caught up:

That first time they do the “fuck me in the ass ‘cause I love Jesus” line, and the crowd erupts in applause? And then the two of them give each other that “yup, we got ‘em!” look to each other?

There’s an audience that looks at my stuff and has that reaction. And when I find them, I get that same look on my face.

This is what I’m doing with my game (game for crying out loud). Obviously. Obviously. You know it, I know it… and whoever needs to be told, won’t be reading this. (this is blogging therapy more than anything else…) So obvious that even having to write any of this seems… the world is stupid. But it’s the only world I have to live in.

---

So that was all written two weeks ago in a state of great uurrghh. As I’ve been working through the new material and making sure everything is as top quality as possible before sending it to press, I’ve thought more and more about it.

I’m less panicked. Just resigned to the fact that “sending these projects off to the printer will be my final act as a whole and intact person” is completely on the table².

Because I’ve been breaking my internet/social media embargo more and more to see what’s going on out there. And it’s only getting worse. You know the score: Speech is violence, silence is violence too. Jokes are violence. Books are violence. Having an different opinion on certain topics is violence. Someone seeing something that makes them uncomfortable is violence. Anything that someone doesn’t like, anything, is being described by someone somewhere as being violent.

And if that is not a rhetorical device, if that is actually true, then Lamentations of the Flame Princess has been a terrorist organization since the advent of the metal zine back in 1998.

I even said as much in the Referee book introduction I wrote in 2015 (that people will never believe was written back in 2015 when they see it), but I was being facetious then. I’m not so sure now.

Quotes from past posts above, and the “just as dangerous, and potentially just as deadly” line, would imply that I have some affinity for the “words are violence” perspective. But I don’t. I feared violence, yes, but I was never subjected to any. I was insulted, verbally attacked, and suffered efforts to have my business deplatformed and my livelihood ruined. And I do indeed believe that people who try to do that want me to die³.

But I was not offered violence. The feeling of violence was from the aggregate. No one person, no matter how vicious their words, was being violent.

It’s an unsolvable problem. To be successful on any human level in media, you have to be visible and accessible. To be visible and accessible is to expose yourself to the death-of-a-thousand-cuts-without-their-being-any-actual-cuts of social media. What, are you going to get anywhere being invisible? What, are you going to give pretty much every single person on Earth instant real-time ability to broadcast their thought of the moment, and access to pretty much every other single person on Earth, and they’re not going to use it? hah.

And this will happen again. All the time, to somebody, and definitely to me, again. Every time I am honest about anything… at least that’s how it feels. Who knows how that feeling will correspond with reality.

And it will happen in the work.

Because I do believe that the proper subject of creative work is anything that is happening, anything that has happened, anything that could happen, and even anything that couldn’t ever happen. If you can think about it, you can create based off of it.

And the tone of that creation is entirely up to the creator. Serious? Support? Absurdist nonsense? Mocking? Critique? Taking an oppositional view of one’s actual opinion as an intellectual exercise? Full throated actual opposition?

What effect do you want to have on the audience? Do you want them to laugh? Cry? Be happy? Angry? Sad? Do you want to uplift them, or destroy them? Motivate, or cause despondency?

All of these approaches are equally valid and should be readily available in the marketplace.

I don’t believe that heresy or blasphemy are actual things; those concepts are the fabrications of people who want to command other people what to think and what to say.

When other people speak, sometimes my feelings are hurt.

That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t speak or were wrong to say what they did.

When I speak, or facilitate others' speech, sometimes other peoples’ feelings are hurt.

That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t speak or were wrong to say what we did.

Being “offended” means “I don’t like that.” Nothing more. “Offended” is simply an attempt to transform a personal opinion into something more.

“Problematic,” “harmful,” “violent,” it’s just a progressing of more and more persuasive words to convey the same thing.

“I don’t like that.”

That’s all it is. I have no doubt that some people actually do feel hurt when they see a book espousing beliefs they do not hold, when they see concepts they hold so dear treated like frivolous entertainment and played with casually.

But I don’t believe in that God, or any God, so it’s not even possible to hurt it, but if that God did exist, or any God, it would be humanity’s responsibility to injure it so anyway.

It just comes down to whether we are free to think and imagine and express ourselves.

If we’re not, life is not worth living, so I will live the life worth living and let other people decide if my thought and game crimes are severe enough for them to issue their fatwas or summon the Inquisition.

It is no accident that I am using the language of religious dissent in describing this. It’s not taking creative license, and it’s not speaking metaphorically. That’s exactly what it is, if not technically, then functionally.

---

So I read this article over at Salon, and I think it summarizes a lot of what I think is behind this insistence that entertainment be overtly and specifically political. Specifically, this line:

“For comedy and sports to have real impact, or serve real purpose, this requires uncomfortable, necessary conversations about identity and lived experience.”

(substitute in any entertainment form in the place of comedy and sports, of course)

This of course is complete nonsense. This sort of thinking always seems to remind of religious equivalents (again with this shit…), and to me this is the exact same thing as being told once upon a time “this song/movie/book doesn’t praise Jesus/God and is therefore worthless/bad.”

Actually, this thinking is not nonsense. It’s worse that that. Any insistence that creative work is only worthwhile if it functions as propaganda, and for a specific ideology at that, is the absolute demolition of imagination and expression.

It is inhuman and must be actively resisted at every turn.

People wouldn’t like it if I tackled Important Contemporary Issues through LotFP anyway… because what that would end up looking something like this:

Or this:

… and everyone really loved the last time one of my publication’s content was ripped from today’s headlines. :P Actually, with the speed LotFP’s normal releases gets done, we’d be just about ready to release an adventure that serves as a scathing rebuke of how Janet Jackson was treated after her Super Bowl performance with Justin Timberlake. Fuck the FCC!

but yeah, I’m sure my promoting specific angles on real-world issues would be much better received than the fictional and/or historical nonsense because all of my views on the issues of the day (and the views of many of the authors) are completely in line with the sort of people that want creative work to Make a Difference.

And time to play that old hit: My sense of how to deal with what is supposedly good and proper and what is depraved and unworthy of attention was formed in the age of video nasties and the Moral Majority and the PMRC and the Satanic Panic and all that shit I will never shut up about, where they establish a line of acceptability and it is then the duty of artists to tell these people to go fuck themselves and to obliterate that line. It was not, and is not, the duty of artists to police each other, but to egg each other on.

But… maybe that’s just me being old and out of touch and that’s why I’m only seeing the Current Cultural Moment as simply a close variation of a previous one.

I haven’t even watched the Simpsons since 1992.

The joke is on you. I was never with it.

Going just by the memes without having watched the show in almost thirty years, I get the feeling that Groening understands aging pretty well.

But, ya know… Not all change is progress, and neither truth nor authenticity have sell-by dates. And it is my right and privilege to have old man opinions simply for the fact that I haven’t died yet. Even if they are shared by zero other human beings, because consensus doesn’t mean shit. I am a middle-aged man who was a weirdo and an eccentric and out of step with the general public and never accepted even in my prime (I felt old and alone when I turned 21…), so I’m certainly not about to give two shits about what the popular attitudes are now. Especially not in the role-playing field, when half the reason I fell into this hobby in the first place was because it was for weirdos and eccentrics and those out of step with the general public. (The other half was that it could include anything you can imagine!) And hell, my hairline is receding, and it’s probably not too many years before I look like mid-00s Devin Townsend or the Nifelheim twins, because I’m not cutting my hair. That’ll help, right?

How I see myself in five years.

How I think other people will see me in five years.

How I’ll actually be in five years.

To be serious though, I was born in ‘74, so I grew up in the 80s and have gone back to gain a healthy appreciation for the creative work of the 70s that I was (far) too young to have enjoyed at the time. Man… the 70s. Looking back through 2021 eyes, it seems that it was a time of anything goes, but in a completely unselfconscious way. Innocent in their transgressions, if you will. Even the things intended to promote social responsibility did so in a way that is a complete hammerblow compared to how it’s done now. The creative attitudes that inspired the PMRC etc. into being was so refreshing, and still seems so.

The explosion of grindhouse and exploitation cinema (the Hays code having been abandoned in 1968), underground comix, independent “real” comics (yes I make the distinction… Elfquest! Cerebus!), mainstream comics forcing change to the Comics Code (and at times telling it to go piss up a rope by publishing certain stories without it!), prog rock, punk rock, heavy metal, role-playing games… everything worthwhile today is so because people in the 70s just ignored the rules of how things should be done and just did their own thing. It seems so… irresponsible in every good way imaginable. Even when it was commercially driven, it still seems today that they were so naïve in performing commerciality that it still seems weird and different⁴ from what it “should” be⁵.

That’s the spirit and the space that LotFP tries to inhabit. That spirit of underground creativity and freedom… but I had the absolutely mental goal of wanting to produce books that had this sort of content and that could be on a shelf next to what Wizards and Paizo⁶ and compare favorably in production values. You don’t have to be bland mass appeal bullshit to have top quality.

And it worked beautifully just until the world cottoned on to the fact that we really aren’t with them, just among them. And when the world figured out we don’t think like them… The pressure was on. Join us or die.

I’ll take death, thank you very much. I do what I do to begin with because what you do isn’t worth anything to me. I’d love to be able to have all the things I do exist in the world without having to do it. I’d love to not have to be creative, to not have to foster the creativity of others, because the world already satisfies these urges.

I do what I do because there is a great big gaping hole in the world, which in turn creates a great big gaping hole in me… and I must fill that hole. Both in myself and the world. Or die.

But we’re not dead yet. Working a little more hand-to-mouth than we used to, and with these big releases all being a do-or-die risk I can’t help but think death is coming because luck can’t hold and we can’t count on support when the entire philosophy behind the game requires exploration into topics and presentations that intentionally test and stress support. Audience capture is to be resisted as much as anything else. They aren’t running this monkey farm either.

And to bring this down with a couple more thoughts before we go to the outro…

Last year someone made… I want to call it a plea but I’m sure this person would describe it differently… so I’ll call it a suggestion that I employ sensitivity readers for my work. Not to change what the work is, no no of course not, but just to label it. You know, so we can advertise all the ways we’re problematic right there in the books.

I saw problems with this.

1. I see the role of a sensitivity reader as being paid by a creator to censor the creator. Period. “This thing you want to say? It’s insensitive. Therefore bad. Do better.” Yeah, fuck you.

2. I’m sure the sort of person that would want to work as a sensitivity reader will feel very fulfilled in their work if the end result is simply a cataloging of their notes for advertising purposes with no changes made to the actual work.

3. I can’t speak for anyone I work with, but once I saw the sorts of things a sensitivity reader actually flags, I know I’d be writing for that. “I only got 63 notes last time, this time I want at least 100!”

A creative work should display the strengths and faults and neutral quirks of its creator if it’s to be an honest exhibition of creativity, and trying to smooth any of that out simply creates bland, impersonal garbage not fit for print.

And the last thought… six years ago there was a controversy in the RPG world that didn’t involve me, but it did disturb me. Someone out there was publishing a hentai-themed RPG called Black Tokyo. Not my thing, but what is? More power to any freaks out there getting together to play such a thing.

They went and published a supplement called Tournament of Rapists. It caused a to-do when people saw it on DriveThru RPG, and inspired the creation of DriveThru’s Offensive Content Policy. (details here and here)

As the publisher of Carcosa and Fuck For Satan and Death Love Doom, not to mention being in the process of preparing Towers Two at that time (a title that contains Death Fuck Magic and the Cunt Whip among other lovely ideas… thanks Jobe! I’m sure your new book won’t cause me any grief and certainly isn’t in the four I’m worried about finishing me off! noooooooooo…), I was quite concerned.

I’d even made a public statement at the time (on Google +… damn them for killing their archives, I had a few good posts there over the years now lost forever) that if they banned one of my books, I was going to take everything down from their service.

But I didn’t have any problems. Not until 2019, anyway. I couldn’t understand how things like Towers Two or Fish Fuckers got by their net. Then Zak Has Nothing To Do With This Book got banned. Which didn’t have any offensive material in it⁷, but twanged some raw nerves. (due to my fraying nerves and bank account I did not follow through on my pledge to just take everything down…) I figured out DriveThru’s real policy.

“We’re fine with anything as long as people don’t complain about it,” is… accurate but snarky. More tactful: “Everything is fine unless its title pisses people off.” That’s it, isn’t it? Seems you can produce the most depraved content imaginable and sell it there as long as you title it something like “Fighting the Evil Overlord!”

Carcosa and Fuck For Satan got by because, well, they were years old by the time their content policies went into effect, and let’s be honest, the complaining ‘thinking or imagining or pretending or joking about it means you really believe it’ classes are juusstt fiinneee with Satan and diddling kids⁸ so why would they consider those offensive? Fish Fuckers you’d have thought would have been flagged because it’s called Fish Fuckers and the cover art is a dude raping a deep one.

I think they gave this one a pass just to deliberately obscure where the line is and keep everyone on edge and never sure what the rules are, because if this wasn’t over the line, what the fuck is even the line?

My only guess is the complaining classes are juusstt fiinneee with bestiality⁹ too¹⁰.

But even if my “the titles are the thing” hypothesis of DriveThru’s Offensive Content Policy is correct, I need to once again decide what I’m going to do when¹¹ they shitcan one (or more…) of my upcoming releases.

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So after all that bloviating, at long last the question is… why do I do this to myself? Why do I remain in, and try to make a living in, a hobby and a business which exhibits such hostility, and why do I continue to produce things within that business that all but guarantee that hostility is directed at me at levels that do harm me?

Well, as I’ve said before… if I can’t be creative and express my own tastes here… then where? And if I don’t make this stuff… who will?

And… here’s the thing. I’m not doing it to myself. What I’m doing to myself is working with people to publish creative work, taking the financial risk that enough people will be interested in these works to make it at least self-sustaining, and hopefully enough to also sustain me and future projects.

That’s all I’m doing to myself, the same as any producer does, no matter how mainstream or niche their tastes or intended market.

The attacks that I fear against me, against my collaborators… that’s not my doing. Even if I predict what I do will draw such attacks, even if I know for sure what draws such attacks and I still choose to do those things, it’s still other people deciding that instead of ignoring the things they dislike, instead of understanding that different people will have different tastes and imaginations and that they must express those differences, they will attack.

They are doing it.

If I were to surrender to them in advance, if I were to allow them to dictate what I may or may not imagine, to dictate what books may or may not exist, if in fear of them I kill my own creative instincts and prevent the things that bring succor to myself and perhaps many more besides from ever existing in the first place…

That would be me doing it to myself. That would be me making the same attack against myself, in hopes that others don’t get to.

This seems to be the choice one has to make when one thinks differently from the crowd… slit your own throat or make them go through the effort of slitting it.

So fuck it. I don’t think I can win. I don’t think I have the strength anymore to even put up a decent fight. But… surrender is not an option. If I am going to go down, it’ll be other people who put me down.

The quality of the people inside the camps is going to be better than those who put them in there, so let them come.

And if they come… I’ve watched this situation play out again and again in many different areas. I’m not crazy to think it’s a possibility that they will come. And I know what happens when they do. I don’t have confidence that the businesses I work with will stand by me. I don’t have confidence that my fellow collaborators will stand by me¹².

But I have full confidence in the work that I am presenting. 100%.

So, yeah, fuck it.

Just fuck it.

1. For the record, none of the things I’m releasing this time around touch the problems that resulted in those 2019 posts. To put it bluntly: None of them are by or about Zak. As far as I know, anyway. One of the perks of this job (and that is not sarcasm) is finding out after publication, sometimes way way later, about all the little Easter eggs the authors slip into their works that I didn’t notice.

2. Of course, having felt the need to write this post might indicate I am already not whole and intact.

3. Not my inspiration for the thought as it came out afterwards, but relevant… the link should be timestamped at 7:20

4. Just taking a moment to recognize the issues in “creating content” in the 70s. So many of the tools we now take for granted just didn’t exist then. If you wrote, it was by hand or on a typewriter. There was no software for page layouts. No cgi, no digital editing bays, photoshop, no protools… everything made back then required such an investment in human craft in doing everything by hand that it can’t all help but seem personal and distinct by our current standards, even if was absolute garbage.

5. Two thoughts… yes, there must have been enormous piles of shit in the 70s that just isn’t in even the most hardcore afficionado’s headspace anymore, so what we remember and still collect and enjoy is going to be only the most memorable from that decade… and if the 70s seem so reckless and awesome now from the 2020s point of view, if we continue on this same progression of commercial calculation and controversy avoidance, how bloody plastic and sterile and void of creativity is the entertainment of the 2070s going to be, where they will look back on us now like these were the wild days?

6. Or whoever sits next to Wizards as a top dog today, I don’t pay attention anymore who’s popular… I just every so often go down to the game store and page through things to see what’s out and how it looks… and come to think of it, I haven’t even done that in over a year…

7. The thing people were most offended by was not and never was in the PDF version of the book, and thus never on DriveThru’s service… but DriveThru executives wanted to see that print-version-only material on the way to making their decision to band the book from their platform.

8. I… I don’t even know if I’m joking here.

9. Again, I think I’m joking, but… uhh… I’m not totally sure this isn’t really the answer.

10. I mean, I know it’s a lazy piece of nutpicking, but the rainbow dildo butt monkey stuff didn’t come from anywhere near my non-Euclidian corner of the political spectrum.

11. Not “if,” by my expectations.

12. I look forward to having multiple collaborators at the same time disavow me and their work done with me, because of how angry they are (and how much public flak they are receiving) because of the others’ new books! MAKE IT HAPPEN!