Everyone who purports to care about harassment in tabletop needs to buckle up, because as one of Zoldemort's favorite targets and the survivor of YEARS of online harassment...

I HAVE SOME FUCKING THOUGHTS about the trashfire of a hashtag that is #FireMikeMearls (THREAD)

1) If we suddenly care about kicking abusers out of tabletop, I've got a fucking list and it DOESN'T start with Mike Mearls.

Mearls is Not Great. He's too defensive, and has made some real bad mistakes - of which sharing private allegations of abuse with a known abuser is one.

But he's also at least attempted to make amends! He had lunch with @SarahDarkmagic and I twice, ensured that Zoldemort wouldn't get hired again, and then hired me to write policy for freelancers about improving writing for women characters in D&D products.

He's also done a lot to improve the art direction at WotC for the better.

That said, D&D still has Big Problems. See: anything to do with race. But while I'm not going to certify Mike Mearls as a Gold Star Ally, he's not even in my Top 20 of Most Problematic Tabletop Dudes

2) Have any of you #FireMikeMearls folks actually bothered to check with the victims of the harasser that you are up in arms about?

That's a loaded question. The answer is no. No you haven't.

And as one of the victims he targeted the most, I DON'T WANT THIS.

What I WANT is for the harasser Mike Mearls enabled to die in obscurity.

Failing that, what I WANT is closure. I WANT apologies from all of the people who broadcast his lies about me and others. MEANINGFUL apologies.

I WANT the designers and publishers who broadcast his lies to benefit their own work, through increased sales or awards return those awards, and to donate tainted profits to a good cause.

I WANT his stans to make amends for amplifying his hate by working to end harassment.

And OBVIOUSLY that's all a stupid, childish, unrealistic pipe dream. That's not how the world works and it never will be.

So mostly I keep my fucking mouth shut and I console myself by writing about healing communities from abuse and hoping that anyone will actually listen.

3) This #FireMikeMearls shit is nothing more than performative faux-allyship and emotionally masturbatory grandstanding.

Firing Mike Mearls won't do anything meaningful to end harassment in tabletop. You just want to spike the football and feel righteous about DOING SOMETHING

But DOING SOMETHING meaningful to end harassment in tabletop would require us all to sit with the messy and uncomfortable reality that the culture of silence that protects abusers means that ALL OF US have enabled and protected at least one abuser and WE ARE ALL COMPLICIT

DOING SOMETHING would mean talking about ending cycles of abuse within communities for longer than 5 minutes before getting distracted by jumping on the bandwagon of harassing trans creators.

DOING SOMETHING would mean not trying to end online violence with MORE online violence

Anyway, tl;dr on #FireMikeMearls is this

Don't commit online violence in the name of survivors of online violence and expect us to thank you for it.