Zak S. Statement Commentary

I just read Zak S' official response.  Here's the link.

Not sure why it wasn't on his blog, but I'm sure his lawyer is giving him all the appropriate advice.

It's actually pretty good and puts Mandy and company in a slightly awkward light.  Of course, he produces very few actual receipts, but maybe that's to be expected.  Now, it's mostly down to he said, she said, she said, she said, and she said (with at least one of those coming to Zak's defense).

Yeah, he's still in a lot of trouble, but that gives him a chance to make some sort of partial recovery.  However, waiting three days to respond to those allegations seems nuts.  I mean, one more week and the next news cycle would have hit, either another #metoo casualty or we find out that some big shot in the RPG community is acting shady behind the scenes.

My wife has her share of health problems (nothing like Mandy, though).  So, I know the added layers of stress, strain, frustration, and emotional trauma that goes into relationships when a partner isn't well.

It's valentine's day today... and maybe it's part hormones, part health concerns, and part v-day expectations, but my wife was really antagonistic towards me today. I couldn't take a picture right and it was the end of the world.  By the time she finally left this morning, she was (all her own words) furious, sad, broken, falling apart, having an emotional breakdown, sorry for the way she had treated me, and said that I was her rock and that she loved me just before leaving the house.  All that in about one hour.

Makes me think of that line from The Godfather, "There are things that have been going on between men and women for thousands of years..." (I'm paraphrasing because I couldn't find the exact quote on google).

Or that other one... "In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns."

In the end, we'll never really know exactly what happened, what the truth of Zak S. and all his many sexual relationships with women were about.  Dude, are you trying to set the record straight or just bragging?

But the one thing I keep coming back to is that Zak S. has been a fucking asshole to a lot of people over the years. That, in my opinion, is the original sin of this tragedy.  If he hadn't been a tremendous dick to literally hundreds of his colleagues, peers, partners, and would-be fans, the vast majority would have given him the benefit of the doubt - at least until he'd released some kind of statement.

As it is, there's six degrees of separation between any random gamer and someone he's seriously wronged in the past.

So, the next big question is - will anyone (I'm especially interested in OneBookShelf) walk-back their pronouncements?  Does Zak S. have a shot at continuing to make money in the RPG industry?  Is this what James Raggi IV of Lamentations of the Flame Princess fame was waiting for... where's his statement?

I don't know if this soap opera is going to keep going or not, but if there are major developments, I'll talk about them here.

VS