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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saracenus" data-source="post: 8323196" data-attributes="member: 47839">I am going to just say, I am an old fart. With that out of way I will attempt to share a bit of my hard won wisdom with some of the younger folk here.When you dig into the past, even the near past, you are going to find all kinds of ugly mixed in with the good. Virtually no one, including myself, is free of it. If you believe that “evil” is a stain on the soul and permanently marks you then eventually everyone is going to be evil with that world view. I am not evil, but I am not purely good either.Gary Gygax was a human being and like all humans he had flaws and weaknesses. Some of them have been brought to light here in this very thread. But Gary also had a profound impact on my life. The game he developed with Dave Arneson gave me a social life line that probably saved my life. I, the flawed human that I am, can hold these contradictory versions of Gary in my head because both are true. I am appalled by his belief in biological determinism but at the same time I am grateful for the joy he made possible in my early, very unhappy life.There are no easy answers here. The world is messy. People are complex. Despite the last 5 years here in the USA, people are rarely just cartoon villains twirling their evil mustaches.I cannot tell you how Gary raised his children. I wasn’t there. One of the few people here who was is Rob Kuntz. I can tell you that damning Gary for the sins of one of them and ignoring the counter examples of his other children is a reductive and frankly not fair.Do not let the trauma that Ernie has inflicted on others disconnect us from our own humanity. The anger at him is real and frankly necessary. But allowing that anger to ask for Ernie’s family to disown him? No. If Ernie is going to have a chance to redeem himself, he is going to need the support of his family (I include Rob in that mix) to do it.If you want to understand how someone can fall down a bad rabbit hole, you don’t have to look further than the documentary “The Brainwashing of My Dad” by Jen Senko or read “A Game Designer’s Analysis of QAnon by Reed Berkowitz.Links:[URL unfurl="true"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brainwashing_of_My_Dad[/URL][MEDIA=medium]580972548be5[/MEDIA]This means nothing if you don’t hold out hope for redemption (real redemption, not the non-apology he tried to give).Me, I am going to hope that the intervention of Ernies family will bring him back to the light.Peace.</blockquote>

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