The Sea Witch's Art of the Deal

Andersen's mermaid was afraid of dying.

That's it. The love story was secondary. She made a deal with the sea witch because she didn't want to die forever. 

And she was a mermaid, so she didn't get to go to heaven or hell or wherever after she died - poof, you're gone, only some sea foam is left.When you're a mermaid, you get to live longer than a human, but when you're gone, you're gone. 

And she didn't want that.

In a way you can view this story as an analogy of a person who doesn't want to accept the gender role that the society gives them. 

I don't want to be a kitchen/kids/kafedral person, I don't want to always hide my passions and desires, I don't want to look in the mirror all my life and see someone that's not who I feel I am. 

I don't want to die as a mermaid. 

So that's where the sea witch comes in. 

Unlike the Disney version, there is no real villain in Andersen's story. The sea witch offers a deal, and she sticks to it. What she offers you is a chance. 

You want to change the way things are, or change what you are - she shows you a way. She gives you the tools. She turns your tail into a pair of legs, or she gives you a knife that can take one life and save another. 

And she takes away something important from you. The best thing that you possess - your hair, or your tongue. A part of what makes you what you are. 

And she gives away some part of herself, as well. To stop being a mermaid, you have to drink her blood. 

The sea witch is a meaningful, painful catalyst of change. Once you go to her, things cannot be the same. 

And it makes for a good story.

 

What RPG subreddit showed us

 Hi there. 

Still in Ukraine, still alive. 

An interesting story is going on in the subreddit dedicated to tabletop roleplaying games. The moderators' team decided to introduce a rule forbidding to talk about the content by Zak S. 

Zak is my favourite RPG author. 

Zak's blog is a source of cool facts about art, history, and fantasy, written in his unique style. 

Also, Zak is the victim of a harassment campaign - been one for over a decade. 

So when you speak about the victim of harassment, the harassers activate and come in to harass you, as well - because that's how they operate. 

Which is not pleasant for the moderators who have to deal with this shit. It's part of their job, but I get it - cutting up dead bodies used to be part of my job, and I didn't enjoy it. 

So they published this new rule. 

And the harassers came in to celebrate. 

Their comments included things like "finally you did something to deal with the fascistic users", "fuck the fucking supporters of the fucking rapist", and, directed personally at me, "you're victimizing yourself but you live in a country that is run by neonazi who organize pogroms against russophones and communists".Which is pretty much word by word quote from russian propaganda, and pretty much equals "hey guys, I support genocide!"

The comments about "you organize pogroms" got deleted by reddit moderators. The part about "fascistic users" stayed, and was massively upvoted. 

Comments like "Why do you ban the content and not the people who act badly?", "I think it's important to study the facts", and "Who is Zak S?" got downvoted just as massively. 

What does it mean? Let me mention one more thing - another massively upvoted comment was a repost of a Twitter story about "if you let some nazi guys in your bar, they bring their friends, and before you know it, it's a nazi bar". 

This is pretty much what happened. 

The harassers are the majority in the subreddit. 

The moderators still do their job, they support the rules and remove some offending comments, but effectively the harassers are running the subreddit. 

Moving against the harassers with something more than just removing the most offending stuff means moving against the majority of users. 

The moderators aren't going to do this. 

And if you're the bartender in a nazi bar, and every time a Jew (Zak is Jewish, by the way) comes into the bar, a fight happens, sooner or later you either close the bar, grab your biggest stick and chase the nazi out, or ask the Jew not to come anymore because he causes trouble. 

Got to hand it to the moderators - they took a long, long time before finally asking the Jew to stay away from the bar. 

And if someone thinks that the bar's problems end with the hanging of "No Jews Allowed" sign, I suggest them to read some history books. 

Spoiler: the problems are only just starting. 

EDIT:

I was too optimistic. The comment with russian genocide-justifying propaganda is still there. 

https://www.reddit.com/comments/vqn43u/_/ietvx1u/

UPDATE:

After I bluntly asked to explain why doesn't anyone do something about this, this comment was finally removed. So was my comment asking why don't people address it. 

ANOTHER UPDATE: this post had been reported to Blogger and suspended "because it breaks the rules on harassment". Upon review, the post had been reinstated without any changes. Because, how do I put it?.. - ah, yes - because it does not break any rules on harassment. 

But apparently the crowd in the bar doesn't like the comparison.


 

Still Alive

 As some of you might have heard, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and kept invading since then, and on 24th of February Russian military attacked major Ukrainian cities. So we've been at war for 8 years, but now we're at WAR war. 

Meanwhile, I've been interviewed by Zak Smith who's Playing D&D With Porn Stars. Previously Zak had interviewed the founder of Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the creators of Marvel Super Heroes and another Marvel game that I never played but it's a thing, and now there's me, because I happened to live in Ukraine and now it's an interesting place. So we talked about war, about tabletop games, and about current president of Ukraine and what issues people here have with him. 

Stay strong guys, this is going to have repercussions all over the world, but we'll get over it. I think.