Is a fanfiction depicting the murder of Randy Pitchford ok?

[Callate]

There's this thing called satire... And I'm pretty sure it's generally considered protected speech, for good reason, even if you dislike the content. Even if you think it's inflammatory.

For safety's sake and a degree of responsibility, if said satire were to contain something that others consider particularly on-the-edge, like killing a real-life person, one might be wise to include an element that makes it abundantly clear that the contents are entirely fictional and not intended to suggest real-life events to be emulated. An element like, say, including a well-established fictional superhero, who does not and could not exist, within the story.

I don't love Anita Sarkeesian. She seems to have some good points, and some badly slanted ones. She has some spot-on research, and some rather lazy, cherry-picked research. Quite like any of a number of other pundits.

And if she ever decides to beat wardrums about someone writing a fan-fiction of her being torn to pieces by the Incredible Hulk, I'm perfectly willing to grant that that would be hypocrisy.

This, however, is I suspect making a mountain out of a molehill. She didn't even write the work herself.

 

[thehorror2]

Making fanfiction about killing a real person implies some twist of the psyche that isn't exactly healthy. But just enjoying fiction someone else wrote, especially if it's obviously parodic the way this example seems to be, is just a bit icky. She's got a weird fanbase.

When a big chunk of the internet goes against you the way it did with Sarkeesian, there are two types of fans who will stay with you: the rational, level-headed fans who appreciate your work and want to defend it in arguments or just decide what other people do or do not like has no bearing on their liking someone, and the batshit-insane ones who would kiss your ass or marry you if they met you in person. Sounds like this was written by one of the latter, and she thought it was funny. That's it. There's probably no larger meaning to this and it's getting overanalyzed because she's famous.

 

[spoonybard.hahs]

Making fanfiction about killing a real person implies some twist of the psyche that isn't exactly healthy. But just enjoying fiction someone else wrote, especially if it's obviously parodic the way this example seems to be, is just a bit icky. She's got a weird fanbase.

When a big chunk of the internet goes against you the way it did with Sarkeesian, there are two types of fans who will stay with you: the rational, level-headed fans who appreciate your work and want to defend it in arguments or just decide what other people do or do not like has no bearing on their liking someone, and the batshit-insane ones who would kiss your ass or marry you if they met you in person. Sounds like this was written by one of the latter, and she thought it was funny. That's it. There's probably no larger meaning to this and it's getting overanalyzed because she's famous.

It's getting over-analyzed because she is a famous person who has a dissenting opinion on something people like, presenting ideas that are counter to theirs. If Sarkeesian was a run of the mill games journalist, the OP wouldn't be here flipping his shit.

I don't like Sarkeesian, either. But I'm not gonna try to crucify her for every little, inconsequential thing she says or does.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

It is after all just fanfiction and I haven't read up much on this woman to make an informed opinion but I will ask something (and this may sound entirely stupid) but I'm really confused, she's against how women are portrayed in video games but what about men? Has she said anything about how men are portrayed? I think it's a little sexist in of itself, how so many games have a big hulking brute (male) as the main character. (I told you that would sound stupid)

 

[EternallyBored]

Making fanfiction about killing a real person implies some twist of the psyche that isn't exactly healthy. But just enjoying fiction someone else wrote, especially if it's obviously parodic the way this example seems to be, is just a bit icky. She's got a weird fanbase.

When a big chunk of the internet goes against you the way it did with Sarkeesian, there are two types of fans who will stay with you: the rational, level-headed fans who appreciate your work and want to defend it in arguments or just decide what other people do or do not like has no bearing on their liking someone, and the batshit-insane ones who would kiss your ass or marry you if they met you in person. Sounds like this was written by one of the latter, and she thought it was funny. That's it. There's probably no larger meaning to this and it's getting overanalyzed because she's famous.

Except. and I state this for the third time in this thread, the story wasn't written by a fan, it was written by a blog that takes random story concepts pitched by its readers and throws them into short 1000 word fanfictions in order to give the blog author writing practice. It was a fanfiction version of madlibs and it's pretty easy to spot from actually reading the story. Someone probably suggested a story involving Anita, Gearbox and Spiderman, and the author threw together the first thing that entered his mind, and it shows. Anita and Randy have basically no characterization beyond beyond the jokes of the story, Anita kills Randy for Aliens:Colonial Marines rather than for some feminist cause, which would be the case if this was some actual diatribe against Randy Pitchford and Gearbox. Given Anita's characterization I wouldn't be surprised if the blog author only barely knew who she was beyond a basic google search.

Seriously, did nobody even bother to follow the link to the original blog that wrote this, it says on the damn front page that the author just takes random ideas thrown at them and tries to write a story around them.

 

[Lieju]

I love some of the assertions in this thread that it's okay for Anita to proclaim that she likes this fan-fiction with a graphical depiction of a game developer's death. Is it hypocritical? Well, not really, but that doesn't mean it's okay. For some reason people seem to only react to death "appropriately" when it comes in the form of these obviously not-going-to-be-acted-out "death threats" from people who are ball-less enough that they're hiding said threats behind the anonymity of the internet. But when things like this are put out there, hey, it's a-okay because it's just satire, right?

No. The death threats against Anita were not okay. But it's not really any better to depict Randy Pitchford being killed in a comic because of his work on a game you didn't like, satire or otherwise. Yes, it's a terrible game from just about any objective standpoint, but joking about his murder because of it? How is that ANY different at all from threatening a person for their beliefs or opinions?

Depicting real people dying might be tasteless, but is it threatening?

Not necessarily, unless you imply that that's what you'd like to see happen, or that you think that's what the victim deserves.

That story could just as well be interpreted to make fun of Anita and her 'crusade', and to imply that she would go around killing people for it. (And her posting it doesn't in any way imply she agrees with what she does in the story.)
Both Anita and Randy are depicted as superheroes/villains, Randy sends Green Goblin to fight SpiderMan, he reanimated Duke Nukem's corpse with dark magic and he has a cathedral made of guns.

If the writer implied s/he actually believed Randy was a dark sorcerer who should be killed for Aliens, then there might be a threat.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

I'm... I'm not seeing it, I'm afraid. It's not exactly hypocrisy; Anita Sarkeesian hasn't said anything about not depicting any deaths. It's not condoning murder, when it's done in such a clearly tongue-in-cheek fashion. I mean, "For Aliens: Colonial Marines"?


People get killed in video games, films, books, etc, all the time-- granted, it's not often just "for a joke" (though that happens in GTA and others frequently), but it's still hardly giving death the dignity and gravitas it has in real life. Why should Anita be subject to any other standards?

I think it's hypocritical because she's always complaining about the abuse she gets from morons online but when someone she doesn't like gets the same treatment it's apparently funny.

 

[Silvanus]

I think it's hypocritical because she's always complaining about the abuse she gets from morons online but when someone she doesn't like gets the same treatment it's apparently funny.

The thing is, it's not the same treatment. Only a fool would mistake this little Randy Pitchford skit for a legitimate death threat.

 

[Weaver]

I'm fine with it. It's not like she wrote the bloody thing either, she just liked it.

Also, escapist... the hell is this?

 

[Chemical Alia]

It's fanfiction. There is currently fanfiction about Gearbox going full orgy, then ending with a bloodbath by a craze fan who's upset that New-U isn't cannon anymore. But no really it's fanfiction. Not that much of a big deal.

Oh awesome, link please. I haven't been massively grossed out by anything in days.

 

[thepyrethatburns]

Crap. Suckered into an Anita thread.

To OP: Yeah, it's probably a little hypocritical but that really isn't surprising with her. The question should be "Do you really care?"

And, since people are talking about "Yeah but those are real people" I present you this:


Unless you were jumping up and down yelling "Randy Pitchford advocates suicide, beating women, and killing actual people", I think you're more concerned with "Anita said it" than any actual concern over fictional descriptions of Randy's death.

 

[Vegosiux]

Yaknow, if someone posted up a fanfic of me killing Anita, I'd not post it on my blog and say I like it, I'd say "Hey, really, don't use my likeness in murder fanfics, what the hell!?" I am also aware of the fact that there are people who would post such a fanfic on their blogs and say they like it.

So, this is all me in the end and my opinion - fanfic involving murder or violence against real people is poor taste, regardless who's involved. And that might sound a little hypocritical seeing as I sometimes have thoughts while riding a bus along the lines of "If that kid doesn't shut up this instant, I'm going to disembowel him". But those come and go, if I went on to write a piece about that kid getting disemboweled, I'd be rather worried about my mental health.

Don't kill real people in your fanfics, people. Play pranks on them, leave them naked in the street, break into their safe deposit box and leave a pair of fresh mackerel in it (I'd actually love to do this to a certain few people), but don't murder them >.>

 

[Atmos Duality]

Just more evidence that Anita is a professional troll.

What she does with her fanfics is her business and has no relevant purpose that I can find outside of stirring the shit pot for the sake of drawing more attention to herself.

 

[Smeatza]

People need to stop and ask themselves "Am I getting outraged at an imagined reaction?"

Imagined is not the same as estimated, she does not get excused of hypocrisy just because nobody has ever written a fan fiction that involves her death.
Oh but wait a minute.
Didn't she condemn a flash game somebody made that allowed you to beat her up?
Didn't she refer to it as "the gamification of misogynism?"
So fictional works that depict her being assaulted are not okay, while fictional works depicting her murdering others, are okay?

I barely even care about Anita anymore, she's messed up so many times and lost so much credibility that she's in Sarah Palin, George W. Bush or Donald Trump territory at this point.
But just like those individuals, the amount of people that swallow her insanity with a straight face is worrying.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

...or someone makes a game in which you can kill them or beat them up**, that is another case...

I assume, you have the game with Anita in mind. Have you even looked at it? The link to it is even on the first page of this thread.

Well there is game one: Goal:hit the face until its mush, if you do it, you win. The face does nothing against t, no interaction, its like those warioware-minigames.*
game 2: 2 characters, beat em up, you player against an AI which tries to win. no one-sided action. if there were a beat em up like the "amazing"atheist against anita sarkeesian and botch characters would fight-then that won´t be a problem for me.

but this was not the case. this game was part of a one sided big bunch of aggression. (and the idea that there are no games where you can hit women? wtf? has this guy never played ANY beat em up, a game of the elder scrolls, fallout or gta? (and i bet there are far more games where you have female opponents. Most rpg for example))



*Combine that with a big old chunk of harrassment, death treads, rape threads, spamming, doxxing=problem because the "game" is only a symptom of hate against that person. If this person is a man or woman is not important, but i cant remember seing so much hate and vitriol against any other male person. did someone doxx randy, send him tons of death and rape threads, vandalized his wikipedia page&flooded it with pronographic images, threw derogatory racist stuff at him? I dont remember.

so, context is important.

and also, as i said-I think that art should be allowed to do almost everything (as long as it doenst hurt real people, like enslaving someone for an art action against this persons will) but that doenst mean that i have to approve that.

 

[Riobux]

I made a fan-fiction where me and Superman has non-consensual sex and murders Jim Stirling, Greg Tito and Matt from LoadingReadyRun. We use blood as lubrication, a mallet to force things in that wouldn't fit properly and explore a whole selection of different fetishes. It's like an Aristocrat joke.

Is this okay? I just ask because I have a very loose moral compass when it comes to this kind of thing, with the believe that Anita can enjoy what she wants, her fans can write whatever they wish and I have no reason to ever want to stop it. However, you seem to have a rigid back-bone of what is acceptable and what isn't, and considering there is 7 pages of discussion of an open-and-shut case so does a lot of others.

 

[maninahat]

This is basically the same old "why is it okay for a girl to hit a guy, but not a guy to hit a girl?" argument in a different dress. I don't know why it really needs explaining. As some commentator once put it on rockpapershotgun: "If it doesn?t start out equal, then turnabout is not fair play."

The problem I have with that saying is why is gender the most important part?

Isn't the crux of the issue someone strong shouldn't attack someone weaker than them?

What does it matter if it's a man hitting a woman or woman hitting man or man hitting man or woman hitting woman?

The strong attacking the weak is the problem, as you say. The thing is, a story in which a man hits a woman (or vice versa) doesn't exist in a vacuum. Much like how a depiction of a greedy Jew isn't, in isolation, automatically a bad thing; but there are things called stereotypes, and in the case of women (fictional and real), they are generally stereotyped as weak. A story that portrays a woman being hit by a man is consistent with this negative stereotype, whereas a woman hitting a man is a subversion of the stereotype. We tend to side with a weaker person beating the strong, and are quite happy to see someone "punching up". Take the following example:

Devoid of any context, it's two guys slapping each other. In the context of the movie, its a black man in the deep south in the 1960s, slapping back a racist, white plantation owner who has never before had to answer to a black person. People cheered at this scene in the movie theatres. My point is, the details does make a massive difference, and though I agree the gender shouldn't be relevant, it totally is.