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anddiamssemicolon ([personal profile] anddiamssemicolon) wrote in [community profile] ffawiki_backup2016-08-15 10:09 am
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Riley

(Riley has used many sets of pronouns in their Internet history. This page uses "they" to refer to Riley as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. Quotes were left intact, and generally reflect the pronouns Riley used when they were originally posted.)

 

Riley's best-known handle was probably Gisei Nashi Ni (on LiveJournal), but they have used a number of handles:

 

Riley made a name for themselves as a rabid SJ warrior until it was discovered that they are quite a piece of work: Misogynist, transphobic, racist, the whole nine yards. (They also have their own tag at Bad Roleplayers Suck.) In April 2013, a Gentlefailer claimed to have been the one (in another anonymous forum) to have revealed Riley's unsavory background to the world.)

 

This DTWPS post is discussed in f_fa here...

...the "white-identifying" to Indian to black - while posting against Asian Americans - seems a bit... weird. And I'll leave it at that. GNN had an Indian fetish before her weeaboo phase. She called herself Kali and had this whole Indian-ish RP thing going on. There is an Asian dating site with her photo and race, where she explicitely identifies as African American, but I don't know if it's kosher to link to that here.

 

and here:

Just recently on their tumblr they reblogged a post that pitted asian americas vs poc americans when it comes to racism (strongly on the side of american poc). So it seems highly unlikely that she was a black person from India.

 

Riley believes 12 is a reasonable age of consent.

 

One of Riley's friends is GirlJanitor.

 

For a while, a Tumblr blogger who used the handle omgstopbeingashittyperson wrote a lot about Riley and other SJWs who doxx and harass people who disagree with them. As of August 2014, they made their blog inactive after said SJWs "had to harass and stalk someone, threaten them and their family, until that person broke down and gave me up as being the mod on this blog. That alone should show you how much they don’t care about anyone."

 

 

The Arkh Project

 

Riley is the brains behind The Arkh Project, which will supposedly create a 3D RPG for queer fans of color. Ardeb on Tumblrexpressed their reservations: "They do not even have a design document yet, and they are already asking for money....The only thing The Arkh Project has to show is concept art. That is it... They are taking advantage of people, if they realize it or not, plain and simple."

 

Ardeb's follow-up post lays out the technical problems with the Arkh Project: No concept document, no design document, no art, no tech docs, and no experience with game creation on the development team. Gentlefailers discuss this here. Ardeb's second post was also linked in this thread, which also included links to two other posts on Tumblr about GNN's history as SmallBlackAngel.

 

GNN is quoted at f_fa as writing off Ardeb's reaction as racist. Noted SJ Warrior Neo_Prodigy expressed the same opinion, with bonus accusations of homophobia and cissexism, at foc_u (discussion here) and Ars Marginal. Similar sentiments came from Clitt-Tastic, DeliciousKaek, and Poems of the Dead (note the tags used on their two posts about Arkh).

 

AlexandraErin's post on the subject didn't seem to be answering any of the hard questions, and in Hradzka's critical post about Arkh she also ducked those questions and implied he just didn't want to donate money.

 

On the other hand, RoboLuvsUnicorn explained more about why the execution of this project is iffy, Caterina_Sforza noted that the Arkh people are outsourcing everything, and Josh Macedo (quoted here by Quoms) fired back at DeliciousKaek: "I have a suggestion! Stop asking for fucking money when all you have is an idea! Stop doing that!"

 

As detailed by the sf_drama post about the Arkh Project, it also fails from a social-justice standpoint:

  • GNN claims that mental illness will be represented in the game by a superpower that enables the person to see monsters... but look crazy to other people because they're fighting things that nobody else can see.
  • GNN puts a Japanese character in a qipao and claims it was at the request of a friend. Good to know that East Asian cultures are interchangeable if their friend says so.
  • Applecup reports that one picture of Romero, a male character who is a hot mess of Magical Native stereotypes, wastraced from various Shakira photos. "Also IIRC Haruka is actually male identified/presenting, when not running around in culturally inappropriate clothing. So this ~oh so inclusive~ queer RPG? Is both heteronormative and binary!"
  • The Privilege-Denying Dude blog notes that every relationship in the game pairs "someone masculine with someone feminine" and that all non-binary characters are "either masculine-presenting MAAB or feminine-presenting FAAB. I mean, people like that exist IRL but it’d be nice to have some variety in a supposedly ~inclusive~ game, know what I mean?"
  • Singing Stories in the Void comments more about how the characters' gender identities seem "shoehorned."

 

There is also an Unfunny Fandom post about this, and there is a blog called Stop the Arkh Project.

 

Second Game

 

Despite the total failure of The Arkh Project, which vanished without a trace after consuming thousands of dollars of donated funds, Riley decided to crowdfund a second game. This time, though, Riley admitted upfront that even if they met their goal they would not use that money to produce a game; rather, they would fund the 'prototype' and also pay about half the artist's costs, then run a second crowdfunding campaign for the rest of the money. They also published a post onMedium insisting that they were only called a scammer because haters couldn't deal with them being black, queer, and/or autistic, and insisting that The Arkh Project wasn't a scam, just a failed project.

 

Meme discussed their new project a couple of times. Gentlenonnies noted that, even if their games aren't scams in that they do actually intend to create something, they have shown themselves to be completely lacking the knowledge and resources to deliver on their promises. They also discussed their transparently manipulative attempts to get people to donate money, such as saying on their funding page: "I want to make a prototype [...] so people like myself will continue to want to live."

 

Various Riley Threads