(no subject)

[pearwaldorf]

(content notes: sexual harassment, sexual assault/rape, abuse, gaslighting, #metoo, Alexis Kennedy)

 

It has not been a great couple days on video game Twitter. Three devs/industry people were accused of rape and/or sexual assault yesterday. In the wake of this, an anonymous account accused Kennedy of similar. That seems to have opened the floodgates, and multiple women in the UK game dev scene, including Meg Jayanth and Leigh Alexander, have corroborated that account. So many people have come out and said “Yeah, it’s been an open secret for years, he retaliates personally and professionally against his victims and people who try and advocate for them, we did our best to warn people.” 

 

Obviously public focus should be on the people he hurt, and how they can gain some sort of restitution and closure. However I feel about this whole fucking mess is absolutely subordinate to their feelings and wishes. 

 

But in my own space, which this is, I think I’m allowed (it’s not the right word, but it’s the closest I can come to it) to bitch and moan about how it affects me, as somebody who admired Kennedy’s work and as a human being who’s not a fucking piece of shit. 

 

Obviously there’s no fucking way I could have known, but it still feels uncomfortable to have supported the work of someone like this for such a long time. It keeps happening, and I feel like with enough practice I should be able to figure out how to deal with it gracefully. But you can’t just fucking excise the impact of art that affects you out from your heart, life, soul, whatever. It would be so much easier if you could. 

 

But since you can’t. It doesn’t mean that work still doesn’t have value. Would I be the same person if I hadn’t watched Buffy, read the Bas-Lag books, played Fallen London? I don’t think so. But it really fucking sucks that I can’t look back on these things without a giant asterisk hanging over them, wondering who was hurt to bring me that enjoyment.
 

[edit:] Failbetter Games, the publishers of Fallen London/Sunless Seas/Sunless Skies have clarified that Kennedy left the company three years ago and they have no ties to him.

Comments

[such_heights]

Oh god, I didn't realise he was the Fallen London guy, fuck that's awful.

[pearwaldorf]

Well, he's no longer associated with Failbetter (and hasn't been for a while), and thank god for that.

[thedeadparrot]

As someone who loves indie games, this whole thing has felt awful. All those people who have been hurt and who have kept hurting while their abusers got lauded in the industry.

I personally loved Night in the Woods, and that's definitely going to sting for a while.

[silveradept]

Why can't people be good at what they do and good humans as well? Ugh. It would be so much easier to enjoy media if we didn't have to wait and see whether the people behind them have skeletons on the closet.

[lovelythings]

Yeah. It sucks.