Via Jim Miller on Politics I learn that the Maine Republicans have been stirring up prejudice against a Democratic candidate for the state senate, Colleen Lachowicz, because she is an orc.
The Repubs have made a website called Colleen’s World in which they quote some of Ms Lachowicz’s more vigorous statements made while playing or talking about World of Warcraft. The intro to the website says,
In Colleen’s online fantasy world, she gets away with crude, vicious and violent comments like the ones below. Maine needs a State Senator that lives in the real world, not in Colleen’s fantasy world.
While whoever thought up this line of attack could justly be praised for seizing an opportunity, he or she could also justly have his or her head staved in by a +5 mace for scaremongering. There is a reason for the first word in the phrase “Fantasy roleplaying games.” That when playing or discussing the World of Warcraft game Ms Lachowicz a.k.a. Santiaga the Orc occasionally says things like “I can kill stuff without going to jail. There are some days when this is more necessary than others” tells you nothing about her character other than she has a neat turn of phrase.
I take this personally. I would not want anyone to malign my character for similar reasons. People often do malign my character, not so much because he finds a lot of job satisfaction in ripping up malefactors with a wall of bullets from his trusty Steyr AUG, that’s par for the course in the Urban Arcana D20 Modern campaign setting, more because (a) he has no sense of humour whatsoever about being called “Harold Potter”, and (b) he’s a tax inspector.
Mr Potter positively relishes eviscerating some poor hardworking zombie minion and then slapping what’s left of him with a £9,000 bill in back-taxes for violation of IR35.
You don’t think I would behave in such a foul manner in real life, do you?
I’ve nothing against zombies, either.
Brilliant. And correct. I don’t like it when people make fun of other people’s weird interests, even if they are Democrats. It cuts close to the bone, having plenty of weird interests myself.
Also, I’m going to choose to believe that you really do play a tax collector called Harold Potter in Urban Arcana.
(Also it’s unfortunate that your most quotable sentence has a typo. Should be “his *or her* head staved in”; or remove the “or”.)
Hand on heart, all true! 16, 12, 17, 12, 11, 10.
Typo now corrected (or “Ypo now corrected”, as I originally typed) – many thanks.
This line of attack from the Republicans is pure idiocy. On the other hand, I do find it funny that a politician chose the only class that is proficient in backstabbing and pick-pocketing.
Frankly, I am embarrassed by this line of attack. The Maine Republicans need to stick to the issues, an area conservatives do relatively well on. At the very least, they need to stop making the rest of us look like total idiots.
I wish I had spent more time here recently – I have had my time taken up in flame wars (I stupidly responded to an e.mail drawing my attention to a post on a “libertarian” site, and then I clicked being sent any post so …… well my inbox is always full of the stuff now).
This is the sort of stuff I like – not demented flame wars that are just going to take up what remains of my life (for no purpose).
So the Democrat candidate in Maine is a roleplayer…..
Well good for her!
No doubt she is a socialist type – but I would (if a Maine person) still be tempted to vote for her.
I don’t know about that, Paul. On the one hand I’d be concerned that anyone who spends that much time playing online fantasy games wouldn’t have time to do any actual work. On the other hand, I like it when politicians are too distracted by irrelevancies such as this to get into legislative mischief. A conundrum.
The comments of the candidate are gut horror level.
Not the Orc comments – her own comments.
A tax poilicy that funds the “brown” (a special subsidy for being a certain colour?) and “cities” (are not city governments supposed to fund themselves?) and on and on……
If only this freak social worker would stick to being an Orc in fantasy games.
The comment on the Urban Arcana got me laughing, and the general thread of using participation in an RPG as a political attack just made me shake my head.
It has been a long time since the RPG crowd was outed and then witch-hunted (“Mazes and Monsters”, a Tom Hanks film). It is nice to see this attempt backlash. To steal a line from cigerette advets: We’ve come a long way, baby!
On a more personal note, love the H. Potter – tax-collector character.
My reply: Harold Potterson. Built for an absurd D&D3.5 epic game. Everybody built appropiate, over the top characters. I just channeled the recent movies and made a 5th wizard (very, very low inpower by the standards of the game), then gave him a broken Paragon template. The look on the other’s faces was priceless, if you are a nerd of that sort.
“Fireball, 28 points of damge, save for half, DC of 54, spell penetration 49.” “54? Are you sh*tting me?”