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People News Chris Avellone grows a pair and fights back against being cancelled

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,343
Tags: Chris Avellone; MCA; Men who make awkward passes at women and regret it when they get cancelled; That moment when your testicles drop

One year ago today, beloved RPG writer Chris Avellone got cancelled. Allegations were made that he's a horrible drunk who uses his "industry star power" (lol, like anyone knows who he is apart from us) to hit on innocent young women.

While others jumped to his defense, Chris himself - known for spilling the beans - remained oddly silent.

Until today, when Chris' balls finally dropped and he's published not one, but two responses.

He first titled, "It's come to this" goes over what happened, him making out with a girl (spoilers), and what he believes has ultimately led to the allegations.

His second, is a shorter summary piece, and is as follows:

Last year, a woman named Karissa made accusations against me, and so did her close friend, Kelly. The accusations were surprising. They concerned our first meeting almost 9 years ago and they were untrue.

I spent the last year trying to persuade myself these acts were done out of a misguided sense of self-righteousness. I have tried to correct the record, allow voices to be heard, but in keeping silent, I was wrong.

The motivation for these attacks seemed simple, Karissa and Kelly were angry about a bad break up I had had with their friend Jackie nearly 7 years ago.
Jackie was a woman Karissa had encouraged me to hit on at a bar at the same convention a year after Karissa and I first met. It is an unusual thing for someone to do to a friend with someone they believe to be a ‘sexual predator.’
Jackie and I saw each other for a year. We were not dating, we were not boyfriend/girlfriend. We stopped seeing each other 7 years ago. I had to break it off, in no small part to Karissa continually, angrily inserting herself into our relationship — which Jackie encouraged.

I do not know why Karissa waited so long with these accusations. She seemed to be triggered by the posting of an IGN video interview involving me.
To be clear, I did not want to do this video interview. I was told by the PR Evolve liaison at the time IGN ‘insisted.’ IGN’s handling of the interview (cutting out my female lead at the time) seemed to confirm it. This was their decision, I had no involvement in it, and their handling of it disgusted me.

But it was not the content Karissa seemed angered by, it was my presence. Whether it was that I still had a job in the industry or believed I did not deserve the ‘attention,’ I do not know. I certainly didn’t want the attention.

Shortly after, Karissa made her accusations. Her close friend Kelly then supported her with brand new claims purposely worded to be hard (but not impossible) to disprove.

As I said at the time, I believed the breakup with their friend Jackie motivated their attacks. Karissa and Kelly even said as much.

For those of you that asked questions about these accusations — thank you.

For those who offered support — thank you.

For those of you willing to listen before rushing to judgment — thank you.

A long list of digital evidence and witness testimony has been compiled over the past year. With that in hand, I filed a formal response last week, not to silence Karissa and Kelly, but to encourage them to speak more.

Other women came forward, but addressing them is easier done by first challenging Karissa’s statements. This is because Karissa’s claims were, unfortunately, echoed by others as truth, which allowed these falsehoods to spread and seem to be true via repetition. Whether this was done out of malice or ignorance doesn’t matter. They are untrue.

When Karissa’s claims are addressed in court, they will put these other claims in a much different light. Other parts of these stories that weren’t parroted by others are easy to prove false with a little research… if even a little research had been done.

None of the press did any such research I’m aware of, even for the easiest confirmations. For example, a woman, Christy Dena, claimed we shared a night together in 2013 when I wasn’t even on the same continent.

For now, my focus is Karissa and her statements. Making a case on Twitter is pointless. Karissa has told me she owes me “nothing” concerning her accusations. Like her accusations, this is also not true.

When you accuse someone of a crime, when you present falsehoods as facts to harm another, you must provide proof of your claims and address the evidence that shows your words to be false. It’s called accountability.

As I said before, I spent the last year trying to persuade myself these acts were done out of misguided self-righteousness. I tried to correct the record, allow voices to be heard, but I was wrong; these attacks were malicious, and they must be challenged.​

He ends with a link to the longer piece and the statement, "More to follow".

Is this the start of a potential court battle? Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter!

Update: A lawsuit has apparently been filed. Thanks to ERYFKRAD here for the update.
 

The Jester

Cipher
Joined
Mar 1, 2020
Messages
1,414
IMG_9347.jpg

Finally its about fucking time.
 

Jaedar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
9,838
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Good on chris for not following the "believe all women" agenda into an early grave. Unfortunate for him that it took a year to gather the will to dispute the allegations, but I guess that might happen if you lose your job, become unemployable and probably have more than a few friends drop all contact.

I wish him the best of luck in the ongoing struggle.
 

Larianshill

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 16, 2021
Messages
1,719
I wonder if at that point he has any career in game development ahead of him.
Mike Mearls still works at WotC (perhaps even with Larian), and he actually mailed a list of accusers to an accused sex pervert.
 

Alpan

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 4, 2018
Messages
1,340
Grab the Codex by the pussy Pathfinder: Wrath
MCA said:
A year later, 2013, we met up at the same bar at the same convention where Karissa and I had first met, drinking again. Her friend Jackie was there. Karissa encouraged me to get together with Jackie, whispering to me, “you should hit on Jackie.” I did.

Now this is the kind of Avellone writing I like to see.
 

Snorkack

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 8, 2015
Messages
2,975
Location
Lower Bavaria
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
This is the first time I’ve spoken about it in-depth. Part of the motivation for this is because it was brought to my attention that, later in 2020, Karissa started deleting a large section of her past Twitter postings, almost 60,000+ tweets.
What the fuck. That's around 20 tweets on average per day for 8 years?! Surely I'm misunderstanding something, or is she the rusty shackleford of #MeToo?
 

Nutria

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 12, 2017
Messages
2,252
Location
한양
Strap Yourselves In
I recommend the Top Gun soundtrack to accompany this thread. It's like that moment when we decide that we aren't gonna let the goddamn Libyans get away with this shit anymore!
 

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