Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wincenworks" data-source="post: 9604264" data-attributes="member: 7038835">I don't really see how anyone can reasonably conclude there should be a x day memorandum on having a negative opinion on a dead person - you feel what you feel and to pretend otherwise is insincere. Lots of people weren't super comfortable with the Irish chanting "Lizzy's in a box!" when the Queen died, but it was a natural extension of their relationship with her and to pretend otherwise or ask them to wait a week would have been absurd. All policing negative sentiment to the dead does is help people who need Ernie to be a saint because he was "on their side" (or rather, cannot deny it now he's passed on). In this case, where there is various bits of misinformation floating about Ernie was essentially the architect of the response to his passing.In liability law there is a lot of complexity around situations where someone's actions combined with inactions,  influenced people. What people allow themselves to be associated with can be as harmful as they actively doing things - particularly if they associate themselves with a thing, and allow people to claim they have further involvement.  You can be found to be liable in partnerships etc you left if you fail to correct people who announce you're involved in your presence.  This is why you sometimes see celebrities make tweets, clearly drafted by a lawyer, about they left x project on y date and are not involved in any other work with z person. (Or more entertainingly, <a href="https://www.gamesradar.com/games/fps/you-are-incorrect-john-romero-has-been-correcting-doom-history-for-the-past-4-years-and-hes-not-about-to-stop-now/" target="_blank">John Romero's infamous "I hope you're doing well." posts</a>. That one is more of a moral obligation, rather than a legal one - but the same principle applies). The logic is simple, most people do not have the time to investigate everything and will draw their conclusions off limited information - you can't control everything, but you have a responsibility to take reasonable steps even when the need to do so it thrust upon you. This is one of the hazards of being a person of particular note or a public figure, which numerous influencers are slowly learning the hard way. Ernie never claimed to be just like his father, but he leaned into being the first son who bears his father's name, and allowed others to present him as the divine successor. He never spoke up against claims the DHSM and nuTSR would benefit "Gary's children" and "the Gygax family". He didn't even step get involved when Luke started scrapping over it. He's kind of responsible for this reflecting on his whole family.Ernie presented nuTSR as the rebirth of TSR Inc, and while he did not directly participate in the trademark nonsense he allowed people to use him as a war banner in it. He rarely spoke up against x product being a real TSR product, and when he did it was usually only on his own groups where he banned people for raising concerns (me included). He's kind of responsible for people thinking of him as a personification of nuTSR.Ernie never claimed to be creative powerhouse, but he never about up about Tenser and allowed LaNasa and Dinehart to use his name and allude to him being involved in projects past and present. He never spoke up when people claimed he approved things, was going to be editing/guiding, etc.  He's kind of responsible for people thinking he contributed to the deplorable products put out by nuTSR (including SFNG).Ernie didn't personally participate in writing SFNG, but he talked about giving his ideas the people in nuTSR (mostly The Evil DM on The Cult of Abaddon) and giving them background, and he never spoke out against it or distanced himself when it was revealed. He never spoke up that it wasn't even a Gygax property, that he wasn't a significant part of it, and Gary would never had approved a product like that, etc. He's kind of responsible for people thinking he contributed to to the problems.Ernie didn't publicly attack trans people, but he did post a lot of condescending statements and remained publicly close to raging transphobes. He did same some racist things, but not as many as we associate with nuTSR. He never publicly chastised DHSM or supported a positive cause, or made a commitment to improving his behaviour etc.  He's kind of responsible for people thinking he shared the bigotry of nuTSR's other members.Also a lot of the stuff he did do isn't being talked about, but is arguably as bad to many (particularly the stuff involving Luke's reputation). So correction is a zero sum game in many ways - and since there can be no lies between us, Ernie was never important enough to the wider world to warrant in depth chronicles.Ultimately both the people dancing on his grave, and the people rushing in to defend him aren't talking about Ernie, the person who lived and died. They are not weighing his heart to see if it was lighter than a feather, they're talking about Ernie as a presence in public, specific events, and in social battles over the hobby. They are talking about his public simulacrum. They may have knowledge and experience from his personal life, but ultimately the main issue is his public persona. Ernie enabled that during his life and it cannot now magically be decoupled from him. Ernie is, sadly, also an accessible target to vent at because there are no Proud Boys or army of lawyers ready to exploit the opportunity.Notably I think no small number of the people urgently trying to set the record straight are doing so because they feel their callouts etc may have contributed to the hate directed at the simulacrum. They vigorously criticised him in life, and now feel bad/guilt/anger over the perception of him following his death.  It's something I am sympathetic towards as the only reference to Jim Ward's final work on Wikipedia is my unflattering review of GiantLands. But it's not a reason to tell the people who hate the simulacrum to just change their minds. GiantLands is objectively bad and Jim chose to stay associated with Wonderfilled, Ernie was frequently out of pocket and he chose to stay associated with nuTSR/LaNasa. Those are the facts, and the bigger risk to Jim and Ernie's legacies is reactionaries trying to use their corpse as a battering rams and define them entirely by their connection to these groups.Reactionaries and people who thrive on hate see these sorts of events as golden opportunities to self-promote and also vilify the people they've been bullying.  Many of them will not hesitate to use it as an attack. See for example, how Michael (who did nothing, far as I could find, when Jennell was besmirched by his old boss) is trying to get Mark Kern to deputize him over Ernie's death.Every marginalized person who gets their voice silenced because they want to vent at the simulacrum is another victory for the people who want hate to define the hobby. It's Ernie's fault he's a lightning rod for this, and arguably another irresponsible action that led to more problems both for his family, and everyone else he had an impact on that it is now unresolved.It sucks, but it is what it is. I hope it all passes soon for his family's sake, and the sake of people who get targeted by the causes that want to claim and weaponize his memory.  I also hope everyone else who has unresolved feeling regarding him finds a space to resolve them, and we keep track of the actual facts of the matter as long as is necessary.</blockquote>

Verification