Right ok people... it's a fun Friday and it seems me and my mice have been quite the topic of conversation! A thread if you will allow me...... bear with me this isn't a hax thread so god knows how long I will ramble on for (just thank ur stars I'm not talking!)

so as you may we be aware someone starting to attack myself and #HackerMouse today caliming that #HackerMouse was anti-sematic! This was quite a shock to me given that I'm the creator of the characters and I've now spent hour disussing this matter both publically and privatley.

So, let's (try) and clear a few things up. Firstly, I'm super amazed and happy that #HackerMouse has taken off like it has. The mini CTF started as a spark of a joke with @hackerfantastic which had nothing to do with a CTF to start with. I woke up the next day with a burning idea

The idea was how could we spread some joy and cheer in these troubling times but also how do we share our love for technology and hacking with the younger generation? I knew it.. I had a mouse... and I build labs and CTFs and games for all to enjoy... so what if we made...

A CTF and knowledge sharing platform that would hopefully mean the future generation's don't have to live in the technology and cybersecurity mess that we currently live in. What if we could also try and help break down those HR gatekeepers and weird job descriptions that...

we constantly battle (or make fun of) asking us to have 10 years experiance, an exam that requires 5 years experiance to take for a job which is classed as junior, isn't market aligned but also most people would be scared to apply for.

So i opened notepad (yes i'm not even kidding) and powerpoint and I started to make a new CTF game but also a new fantasy world to play in. One where we could go and explore technology in a way that's accessable and not so jargon filled.

so I came up with a hero, our awesome little friend #HackerMouse. and I like that because he could be like game character with no real name because the player could either support or assume the role. He started off as a mouse I bought from stock art.

so great I had a hero.. and you know he was a white coloured mouse, not by choice but that litterally is how you buy him from the artist (i didn't draw hackermouse I bought him). I'm not gonna lie.. i worried straight away that people might attack me for using a white mouse....

now remember this is an evolution and my thoughts had gone from nerd joke to helping people and creating a cute little mouse. so I was like.. let's keep drawing and see where the little mouse goes.

so as the code (haha notepad code) was flowing and art was developing and story in my head evolving #HackerMouse the hero needed a protagonist. you can see one my my first wip slides.

so i'm working away and Matt and I had chatted and Matt had suggested a British hero mouse and i think (RAM/Cache is full) a protagonist Russian mouse. i really liked the idea of red vs blue stuff (you know that's why i called it pwnDefend) so i was drawing stuff out

and you can see another of my slides.. I wanted a funky name for the antogonist so that we could have a story evolve. anyone that knows me and my games know i LOVE a ctf with a story.. like i need a good story for my players

I came up with the name (which i made up the spelling off, given I'm dyslexic i have no fucking idea how u actually pronounce it when reading it) which i thought was silly sounding but also a bit like a James Bond villian (can't imagine why that was!)

so that's how the name was formed.. I didn't do any research and i have no idea how u pronounce that in any language. in my head he was just like Ernst Stavros Blofeld. but you know a pixel mouse in a game designed to show kids some hax and defence stuff.

so i sat there and was like... ok so the mice are cool but they are clones. I litterally decided that my copy and pasta was a cloning machine so i thought right so lets maybe make them actual clones and the hackermouse hero went one way and the other mouse went the other

so i thought wouldn't it be funny to put a little hat on him to make him different not based on colour (i kept with white and black as whitehat vs blackhat) or intent but also a cool little hat and bowtie! I kind of figured that make him like Professor Moriarty from sherlock

so there we had a the pair of them.. the same except white hat black hat and lulz the blackhat has a fucking black hat on him (i mean seriosuly if that's not funny i don't know what is)

so that's the story of how the two were born and created. Hackermouse's backstory then evolved to a scenario where he had to be augmented because he was injured during a battle with Mousekechwitz in a lab and had to have augmentations! (he got this oufit from community feedbak)

so we had a good side and an evil side. and again I carried on coding and making social media accounts and powerpoint slides and ctf puzzles! boy i did not expect that from an in joke with a mate online. and so we had a nano augmented mouse who was our hero character.

anyway so that was that, ez pz. we have some mice and we can make jokes about RATs and MIMIKATZ and we have a theme and we can strart to make a world. I kind of figured that I didn't want race, religion, politics or any of that shit to be invovled. I just wanted to build a world

that kids would find fun, adults could cope with and provide some context and story fort the CTF games. So all that seemed pretty standard and easy until this afternoon when I notice @find_evil (a person who I blocked a while ago) appeared on my Mouse timeline...

and that circles back to me being a bit schocked, I'll be honest I didn't really understand what they were going on about, it's a fucking mouse in a bowite and a hat with a madeup name. they have given so many people i know drama and grief i blocked them

the rest is documented in twitter's history. I'm not going to regail every tweet but to summarise I've now had people be incredibly rude to me, I've been told things about my characters that aren't true and I've seen people argue about two mice in a CTF game designed to teach ppl

so that's why we are here. My DM's are flooded with people showing support and a few people asking me to consider changing the name of a mouse because it has offended some people. I'm totally not here to offend people and I've been told far more about then origins of name's

than i ever wanted to or want to know (my name is hebrew in orgin - it means follower of god.. which is weird given my scientific view on life). but alas we are here. so to the people who have been offended, truly I'm sorry you feel that way. My little mice were created with love

But alas a minority of people seem to want to turn them into a weapon of hate. So this leaves me with a major fucking problem.... what do i do now..... a question I've been discussing with people here on public and DM's

so lets look at the options. option 1) is that I burn all my content and take the games offline. I stop making community contributions and I just get in my little v8 a have a cup of tea. I'm not gonna lie this one seems quite attractive to me as I write it

but that doesn't seem very in the spirit of things. I've spent along time making free games for people, I write blogs, i tweet fuck loads and i try and share stuff to help people. All of this comes at signficant cost in time away from my family and Tara. I've invested alot

I also have people message me all the time saying thanks and I kind of think that me saying fuck you to it all (however tempting that is from a British go fuck urselves joke) I don't think that's the right thing to do.... i think i need to do something else

so what are my options.... well one is to make up a new name.. the problem i have here is that most names offend someone. Hell some people have been offended because it's a MOUSE and has it's name. so fuck.. do i make it a cat?

what if the kitteh people get offended? I mean jesus this is annoying. So it's a mouse... but a few people think it's a jewish mouse (it's not.. it's not an anything mouse) so like ok fuck what name can i use...

I've been sent some suggestions.. some of them have been cool, some of them have their own religios, race or political/cultural issues. some of these were from people who were raising the original one.. so like remember I'm fucking dyslexic and a nerd who doesn't care much for ..

drama, and I don't really like alot of the bad shit i see in the world. so I'm sitting here thinking... what the fuck do i call this mouse? why does it fucking matter? How many people really fucking care? If i keep it will people cry? if i change it will people care?

so lets find out... since I don't really think my opinion needs to matter nor is this something worth getting worked up over (again I am sorry if my pixels + story offended anyone) let's let the internet decide....

so the first (there will and were always going to be multiple bad actors (just like real life) antagonist is Dr Mousekechwitz. Do you want him renamed? if yes then a poll will be created with new name options. x