You rolled a natural twenty! Go straight to hell!

Apparently someone thought enough of Jack Chick’s original tract that they decided to run a Poe-alarm-tweaking Kickstarter to get this movie made. Seriously, this thing is self-parodying, so I cannot tell if this JR Rails character is doing this in earnest, or as a parody. But either way, with the amount of money the Kickstarter made, we can expect such gems as this:

Stretch Goal #2: $21,000 – One of the most powerful ways to get across the powerful emotions that a serious drama like this raises is through song. I’d like to include a dream sequence where Debbie visualizes her internal struggle through verse:

(Debbie, in a sad, thoughtful singsong:)
“Is this God in my hand, or is it just a d4?
Oh can anyone tell me what I’m rolling for?
Are there traps and daggers, magic missiles galore?
No, this ain’t God in my hand, it is just a d4.”

(Ms Frost, cackling:)
“You have mastered the magic, you have mastered the spell,
You are ready to unleash the powers of hell!
You have God in your hand, and you have your d4.”
Now I hope that you know what you’re rolling for.”

Do Christians still get all jimmie-rustled over Dungeons and Dragons? Really? Its popularity explosion was a passing fad and an unnecessary moral panic, sadly. Now the kids are all about their Pokeymans and their hairy potters.

Hat tip to James.

UPDATE: Sasha Pixlee’s sharp eyes and incredible stamina for scrolling on monolithic websites clued him in to something I missed — he points out that if you go to the homepage and read the FAQs carefully, it’s pretty plain that it’s a satire-and-parody claiming honest representation by virtue of what Chick actually believed. It’ll only read as parody to us because it’s already so outlandish. Dude’s one of us, going for “very earnest Poe”.

You rolled a natural twenty! Go straight to hell!
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Anatomy of an apology

People are talking a lot lately about what qualities a genuine apology might take — what sort of apology, for instance, Ron Lindsay might be expected to make if many of the feminists he’s so undercut with his opening speech are going to actually accept it and thereafter find it in their hearts to resume their support of CFI, given that most of us have explicitly ASKED for such an apology.

Kickstarter gave us a great example that we can dissect, even where it has a few rough edges yet. They even did it in exactly the right order.

The backstory: a really horrid pick-up artist manual with first draft material including passages like:

Pull out your cock and put her hand on it. Remember, she is letting you do this because you have established yourself as a LEADER. Don’t ask for permission, GRAB HER HAND, and put it right on your dick.

In the context of a relationship where you’re not particularly familiar with a person, there’s good reason why there was an outcry against this rape-culture-steeped, utterly empathy-free, deep-fried nonsense, and why Kickstarter has apologized for not acting in time to shut it down. The Kickstarter was fully funded, and they were made aware with only two hours left before it closed. They were not able to stop the automated processes from finishing, and so this pick-up artist’s manual on how to input Konami codes into women to unlock Sex Mode will probably come into being.

(Then again, it probably would anyway — I have no idea what the kickstarter would actually fund, short of vanity press publishing.)

So, despite the damage that was done, why does Kickstarter’s apology work?
Continue reading “Anatomy of an apology”

Anatomy of an apology

CONvergence: The Horror In Clay

I’m dyin’ of con crud here still. First day back at work, too. And I have a huge backlog of things to blog, but I’ll have to plug away at it as time allows.

I got to meet several FtB commenters at CONvergence, but one of my favorite new friends practically handed me a blog post within ten seconds of meeting. Niki M, who comments very infrequently but has started coming out of her lurker-shell recently, expressed adoration of me and Stephanie Zvan — while PZ Myers was in the room with us. She mentioned both of us specifically as people she reads regularly, while completely slighting PZ. This, needless to say, made me ecstatic and I had to shout “EAT IT, PZ! WE HAVE FANS THAT YOU DON’T!”
Continue reading “CONvergence: The Horror In Clay”

CONvergence: The Horror In Clay