Geek Culture – Page 2 – Shoshana Kessock

Nazi Redux, Year Two: Or, It’s Still Not Okay To Cosplay As A Nazi

August 23, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Cosplay, Geek Culture, Speaking Out, Uncategorized

My GenCon wrap-up post has been delayed once more to bring you this late breaking bulletin:

It’s still not okay to cosplay as a Nazi.

In case you forgot. Just checking in.

You’d think a girl wouldn’t have to put this up a second year. I had a post up last year about how it was impossible to miss the presence of Nazi memorabilia being sold at GenCon. How there were cosplayers who thought it was cool to walk down the street wearing their Nazi gear. Over the year that issue remained relevant as such instances of Nazi cosplay and memorabilia being sold were reported at other conventions, such as NYCC. Apparently, it wasn’t just a GenCon thing.

"Selling Nazi gear right across from Cap hoodies? Not cool!" — “Selling Nazi gear right across from Cap hoodies? Not cool!”

Last year’s article then got reposted in A.A. George’s post about race issues at GenCon and so the issue has come up with a huge number of people talking about it. And y’know what I’m hearing a lot of? Apologizing. I’m hearing apologizing and excuses made FOR THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO WEAR NAZI GEAR. And not in the context of, y’know, historical reenactment where they’re going to get punched in the face by the Allies, like Captain America did to Hitler.

Some of these apologies are in two posts that have gone up in response to A.A. George’s article, found here and here. I’ll save you reading through the entire things because, frankly, they’re not all that impressive to begin with. They rely on Fisking their way thru George’s piece, going line by line to dissect terms rather than actually addressing the issue with courtesy and respect. So I’ll hone in on the salient points to THIS conversation, namely where they talk about my article.

The first article lies here and here’s a screenshot. The quoted part is the original article by A.A. George while the second half is the opinion of the article’s author:

No, but pinup girls in Nazi uniforms are. And last year there was Nazi military stuff. This year at the same booth there was vintage anti-Japanese propaganda posters. Are these really necessary to make games about bad guys at cons? Are these somehow necessary to display Nazis as the villain of some pieces? Or are they a contextless representation of racist crap, being sold to people right across from where folks are buying cool t-shirts? It’s someone using the GenCon space to financially profit from selling hateful memorabilia with ZERO context to a game. The same would be cosplayers who are walking around the con. There being zero context for their costumes in some cases, we’re looking at folks doing their shopping or playing their Pathfinder games, and looking up to see a dude sporting the old ‘fetishized militaria’ costumes.

That’s my response to THAT article. A conversation then came up on Google+ where someone defended the very fact that making Nazis a taboo subject would… create Nazis. Hang on for a ride here, folks, this is what we’re up to: (Names filed off this quote for anonymity of the poster)

Anytime you make it taboo, you plump it up, invigorate it, make it more virile. Anytime you make it off-limits, you make it off-limits to mock, you make it off-limits to parody, you make it off-limits to deconstruct, to integrate, to drain the power from it into a wider form of expression. Every time you say “no Nazi imagery is acceptable,” you reinforce the idea that just the appearance of a thing, just the visual stimulation of a thing, is so powerful that rational people must reject it for fear that they become tainted merely by association.

Congratulations, you’ve just built your own enemy and fêted on your own blood. You’re kind of an idiot.

There are very few more dangerous statements, ideas, or strings of expressions than, “that part of history is too close to home for freedom of expression.” Freedom of expression is how you contextualize history. Freedom of expression is how you get beyond history. Freedom of expression is how you make new history. So long as Austria and Germany have strict and constant vigilance against the threat presented by Nazis, they will always have Nazis. They build Nazis. They make Nazis. They have least themselves to the very idea that the Nazi has power over them, so much so that the very whiff of National Socialism is outside the purview of what can be discussed or represented.

You want Nazis? Because that’s how you get Nazis.”

First, whoa there tiger. You create Nazis by not allowing people to be Nazis? No, last I checked, people become Nazis because they choose to personally associate with the symbols, beliefs, and ideas of a hate-based party. Countries that have strict laws against the presence of Nazis, neo-Nazis, and fascists of the like are, last I checked, trying to check the creation of hate groups within their country. Which in my eyes is not a bad thing.

“But wait! What about freedom of expression! If we’re not careful, soon we’ll be treating Nazis like You-Know-Who in Harry Potter! We’ll be censored! Oh no!” Oh we could do a dance about what freedom of expression really means, and the fact that freedom of expression is in fact NOT universal no matter what we think (cannot shout fire in a crowded room, ect.) and also does not take away from the fact that when you express, you must be responsible and accountable for the repercussions of said expression. Which includes people saying you’re offensive and even potentially harmful at an event when wearing and exhibiting Nazi paraphernalia.

What’s so sad is I agree on one point: freedom of expression allows people to address difficult subject matter. It’s what makes us able to explore it. But there is such a thing as exploring it in a manner that is respectful for the nightmare that it caused. It’s all about context, as is so many things. And where, for example, games like Achtung! Cthulhu or Weird World War engage with Nazi material, as does many games that touch upon WWII, it’s the context of “UR MER GERD, NAZIS ER COOL!” that is blatantly problematic. This isn’t a question of white-washing them out of history, of a chance of us forgetting that Nazis are one of the worst evils around. I don’t feel that by saying that you can’t cosplay as a character that we’re risking future generations not knowing about the evils of Nazi Europe. It’s about creating a space in which people don’t walk into a convention hall, or past a booth, and overhear some dudes going “wow, look at this cool Nazi gear! It’ll look great in my collection!”

Which is exactly the context by which I ran into that booth the year before. I went into that booth to buy patches for my zombie-fighting LARP armor and ran smack into Nazi imagery, paraphernalia, and a couple of guys talking about adding some of it to ‘their collection.’ I fled that booth as fast as my legs would go. I wanted to be nowhere near it. Too bad it was right across from the booth of a friend of mine. I had to pass it every damn time I came to visit them. This year? It was right across from a booth I normally visit to buy t-shirts. I didn’t go anywhere near that t-shirt booth or any of those around it. That’s my business gone, my dollars not spent at any of the booths in the vicinity of the nazi gear. And maybe that’s just me. But that’s a financial repercussion: I voted with my wheelchair wheels and got the hell away from that booth for the second uncomfortable year.

This conversation, having been brought up by the Tor.com article, has highlighted some nasty, uncomfortable parts of the gaming world that seemingly think it’s benign to wear these things, to display them. That some sort of freedom of expression will be indelibly damaged by a rule against Nazi cosplay and the selling of Nazi paraphernalia at conventions. Sure, you have the right to wear these things thru freedom of expression. But there’s a big difference between you CAN wear something and you SHOULD.

Once again, I reiterate a previous stance I have: gaming spaces are shared spaces. And the impact displaying hate-associated imagery in that larger convention space, especially without the context of ‘Nazis-as-despicable-villains’ is harmful to those for whom historical Nazis are a personal nightmare. The display of such callous disregard for the feelings of others on the matter in the face of “BUT I WANNA COSPLAY!” is crude and tasteless at best and harmful and cruel at worst.

And you know what’s the worst part? I said all of this last year! Most of this post is almost verbatim what I said in last year’s post after engaging with the booth and first their sexist stuff and then their Nazi gear. This comes up again, and again. And again. And what worries me is that it isn’t going to be addressed. People who are afraid of their precious ‘freedom of expression’ being violated by so-called ‘social justice warriors’ are going to scream at the heavens when I mention that contextless Nazi cosplay and paraphernalia for sale is uncomfortable. They’ll slap that old “Oh this is just those crazy Social Justice Warriors” again on it and ignore.

Y’know what? You can’t say that you’re all about engaging with arguments when you ignore their content for the sake of saying that it’s just something brought up by social justice warriors. I loathe that term so much. It is the most reductive, diversionary tactic by those who are too lazy to actually engage with issues and want to hand wave away the credibility of anyone bringing these topics up. But for those who want to avoid talking about issues, who just want to have things their way and not consider the comfort of others, then the answer will always be “Get a thicker skin.”

Well my skin’s pretty thick. That’s how I got into this fight in the first place. To speak up for something that I find repugnant against a cacophony of apologists and excusers. And I’ll bring it up again, next year, if the topic comes up again. Which, considering our luck so far, it almost assuredly will.

A Context On Equality: GenCon, Ferguson And One Week In August

August 21, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

This past week in August, I had a lot going on. I returned from a fantastic academic conference called DiGRA in Snowbird, Utah only to take a few days off and then headed to GenCon in Indianapolis. My friends and I drove the twelve hours over two days to Indy and spent “The Best Four Days In Gaming” running Dresden Lives, being on panels, spending time with friends and (of course) gaming. I’m going to post a Top 10 Highlights from GenCon in my next post, but first I had to look at something else going on at the same time as GenCon, a moment in history occurring just a few hundred miles away that echoed a narrative going on in the gaming community with much more serious results. I’m speaking of course about the events going on in Ferguson, MO and the death of Mike Brown at the hands of police officer Darren Wilson.

If you have not heard of the shooting of Mike Brown and the protests going on in Ferguson even as I write this, you must be living under a rock. Yet for the first few days of these events, unless you were keyed into social media, you wouldn’t have heard much about the tragedy. A young man is shot dead by a police officer and immediately questions arise as to the validity of the shooting. Protests break out around Ferguson as it becomes clear the police are blatantly mishandling the investigation. And then the cops decide it’s a great idea to roll in with riot gear, armored assault vehicles, and semi-automatic weapons into the neighborhood. They tear gas whole streets of people of all ages, including young children. People march in the streets of Ferguson with their hands up, crying “Don’t shoot!” The media reports mass violence, a neighborhood out of control. Audio and video on the ground tell a whole other story, spread through social media like wildfire. The whole world is watching.

I was watching too, from GenCon. I caught news every chance I got at my hotel room, and checked Twitter constantly. I could not forget that while I was having my fun at GenCon, there was a moment in history going on, memorializing this fallen young man who was the victim of ongoing institutional racism. This kind of systematic oppression by the police has existed, apparently, in Ferguson for a very long time. Yet the stories that came out of this tragedy, spread across social media, tell the tale of an America in which people of color are treated deplorably. To many, this was no surprise. You only have to talk to folks who hear stories about PoC victimized by police, suffering aggressions of every kind. This is the world we still live in. We still have to have dialogues about race.

It’s no surprise then to me that when A.A. George wrote a strong piece about race still being an issue at GenCon, he received a hell of a lot of flack. This article came out three days before the convention and drew a lot of attention to the question of how people of color, women, the disabled, the queer community and pretty much anyone outside of the dominant narrative of the gaming community have been treated. A.A. George joined me at GenCon on a panel called “Why Is Inclusivity Such A Scary Word?” alongside Elsa S. Henry, Jessica Banks, Strix Beltran, and Tracy Barnett to talk about our experiences facing down the battle for inclusivity in the community. The comments section on A.A. George’s post on Tor grew, and got filled with some strongly worded opposition to his opinions about the lack of racial diversity in the gaming community. (If you’d like to waste some of your time you can even check out an exhausting response from someone named Louis Correia who’s willing to tell you all about how these issues don’t exist). People stood up and said that they don’t see color, that we don’t have to talk about race, that if people of other groups wanted into the community they can just come and have fun because there is no issue. And two hundred miles away from Indianapolis, the events in Ferguson were unfolding, fed directly into our Twitter stream and the slow-reacting mainstream media, all for the world to see.

Please understand me because I am going to be VERY clear here. These two situations are, by no means, equal. The death of Mike Brown and the systematic abuse of the people of Ferguson by law enforcement officials cannot in a million years be put alongside the dialogue about race and representation in the gaming world. I want to say that before someone stands up and in outrage shouts about ‘how dare I’ blah and blah and so on. Yet the fact that so many responses to A.A. George’s article claimed that issues of representation and inequality are non-issues shows a staggering lack of awareness to the national conversation of inequality. And having those kinds of responses when people are being tear gassed and arrested, their civil rights violated, only a few hundred miles away from our safe hotels and gaming tables staggered me.

There are folks who are far more qualified than I to speak about racial inequity. I toss in my hat when talking about women in the gaming world, about religious representation of Jewish culture at large, of the issues of being bisexual and seeing representation of one’s self and being treated fairly with disabilities. I stand with ears open and mouth shut and support those who are so much more articulate than I about the issue of combating racism. But with those ears open, I hear a lot of talk about a color-blind gaming world, where people are treated equally and it’s all about the fun. That’s what we came here for, after all, the fun. And there’s no need to get our stupid ‘social justice warrior’ stuff into the gaming.

How utterly, utterly absurd and totally absent of any world context.

Just because we step up to the gaming table, grab our dice, and sit down for some Pathfinder, or for a good game of King of Tokyo, doesn’t mean we’ve suddenly divorced ourself from issues of inequality. It doesn’t mean that the people who have faced racism or any other -ism suddenly forget that the world can be a hostile place if you aren’t normative. And it’s not as though gaming culture isn’t rife with the same problems of inequality as the rest of the world. We all want it to be a magical, fantastic, utopian world where we play out our fantasies and don’t have to worry about real world concerns.

Guess what? The world doesn’t work like that, and neither does the gaming world. You can’t just shuck the concerns that exist out there and pretend they don’t exist. And the folks who usually try tend to be the ones for whom those problems won’t really BE a problem. They’re the ones who are willing to ignore issues for the sake of the status quo being perpetuated.

The gaming world is a normative one, built on a history of a pretty single-group kind of community. And now, in a time when that normativity is being questioned, the backlash is staggering. It mirrors a conversation that has been rumbling up across the country about equality on a larger scale. Equality in gay marriage, in classist economic issues, in the fight for feminism against a torrent of hate, and especially in the issue of race. And just when people want to shut their ears, ignore the problem, or abuse those who would stand against such inequality, they would also turn a blind eye to the tragedy that took a young man’s life for the fact that he’s black in America. Worse, they’d scream their heads off to the sky about how we’re making an issue out of nothing. That we should just calm down. Get a thicker skin. Get over it.

Or in the context of the games world, stop trying to ruin their fun.

Once more I will say, these two situations cannot be considered equal. By comparison to what happened in Ferguson and what is STILL happening in St. Louis, the problems of the gaming world are miniscule. Nobody is losing their lives over inequality in the art in a game master’s guide, or dying for being excluded from a gaming session based on their identity. I’d be a damn fool to put the two on the same level. But there are those suffering from professional backlash, harassment, trolling, doxxing, death and rape threats, and other such tactics because of the inequality in our industry. And that provides examples that we are, despite all our claims to be colorblind and welcoming, NOT over issues of bigotry.

The events in Ferguson brought me to a place of humbled, terrified certainty that we have all missed the point. While we’ve worked hard to create fictional worlds and fun experiences, the world outside has been experiencing upheavals. Some of us have been interacting with it, but the trolls and hatred of internet tough guys and self-appointed social justice warrior bashers have distracted from issues far larger than issues in the gaming world. It gave me the context to say that while we must continue to stand up for representation within the gaming world, for inclusivity in all spheres, the attacks of the haters is almost laughable in the face of the repercussions of such hate elsewhere. True, harassment hurts a hell of a lot and no one should ever have to put up with the trolls – I stand by my previous statements regarding a zero tolerance policy on trolling, bullying and harassment. Those who choose these roads must still be confronted and rebuffed. Yet the actions of those who WOULD harass seems so small now, so petty.

Issues of inequality everywhere are serious topics, meant for serious people. They are not the place for internet tough guys who use their online anonymity to discount the experiences of others in favor of narrow thinking. And placing their behavior side by side with the events going on in the outside world put their relevance to the bigger picture in context.

I am tonight in solidarity with Ferguson and my hopes for justice for Mike Brown and his family. My solidarity also goes to those like A.A. George, who are getting hate from the outraged haters out there, and to anyone trying to bring up issues of inequality in whatever their community is and in whatever capacity. There are serious issues going on and they require serious discourse to work them out to build the communities and the overall world we’ll want to leave as a legacy. Haters and unethical harassers need not apply.

PS: Included below are links to places that you can donate to help the cause of Mike Brown’s justice fund or even to help the protesters down in Ferguson. Consider donating if you can.

GoFundMe – Justice for Michael Brown

Campaigns for #MikeBrown #Ferguson

Ferguson Support – Ways To Support The Fight

Cosplay Update: Or, Plans of Mice and Men and Unemployment

June 14, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Cosplay, Geek Culture

There’s not a day that goes by that my blog doesn’t get a ping for my article on being fat and cosplaying. I am so grateful that people have responded to that article, as it is probably one of the essays I’m the most proud of on this blog. The issue of body shaming in the geek community is very near and dear to my heart, and something I want to see spoken about more. So to that effect, I wanted to update where I’m at in my cosplay odyssey.

The answer, unfortunately, is nowhere. My cosplay adventure got stalled out pretty quickly because of two serious issues: time and finances! First, my graduate school life took over pretty much everything except my freelance writing during the past year, and along with health issues kept me from doing anything else as a hobby. Still, I was busy preparing by picking up little costume pieces that I’d find along the way. I managed to collect a few costume pieces for outfits I wanted to do, and then promptly lost income. Those pieces are sitting and waiting for me to complete them, but they’re just bits along the way. What costumes? Well, let’s take a look at the things I was interested in doing.

Ellie from Borderlands 2

Would you believe the hardest part of this costume has been finding the dang overalls? I have a friend I am going to commission to make the giant wrench (and make it boffer safe too so it can be used in LARP combat too!), and I found a great toolbelt I wanted. But the thing that stopped me cold was finding overalls that would work. Apparently, overalls for someone my body type is very difficult. And finding them in New York is even harder. I really want this to be my first major cosplay, but it’s taking a little bit of time. In the meantime, I actually have more pieces for…

Generic Agent of SHIELD

I’m styling my costume off of Agent May’s and some of Skye’s outfits from Season 1, but I’m not trying to be either of those characters (one because Agent May is too awesome and second cuz I loathe Skye’s outfits). I’ve got this amazing black jacket that reminded me of this black and blue leather one from Agent May, plus a pair of black, well-fitting slacks. I even got an old bluetooth headset that I’m mocking up to look a little like a SHIELD earpiece. I’ve got the authentic replica badge. I’ve got the SHIELD patches and collar pins. I’ve got a pair of kickass boots to go with it. And now, the last piece: I want to make a Night-Night Gun.

Or at least find someone who can help me make one. I know crafty people! I’m still wondering however what’s the intelligence of trying to go out and cosplay with something that looks like, well, a pistol. In today’s day and age, in New York especially, that’ll get me some serious trouble. I’m debating. Point is, add some aviator shades and this might be my serious cosplay debut. I want to have it by NYCC of this year.

Peggy Carter

Speaking of the original Agent of SHIELD herself, when I heard that Peggy Carter was getting her own TV show, I got the idea in my head that she’d make a great cosplay. So sue me, I’m a stickler for that military uniform thing. I love the WW2 hair and how singularly badass she is. I’m sure that I’ll pull a great deal of BS for being heavy and trying to cosplay the rather svelte Carter, but it’s something I’m considering. The uniform would be the hardest part, because I have not seen a single one in a larger size. It’d have to be custom made, and that would be pretty difficult considering my novice skills as a seamstress. (Bless my departed grandmother for teaching me to use a sewing machine!) Still, it’s something I think could be a lot of fun to put together and I could pull off the Carter attitude well.

Those are the only three I have active pieces for just yet. However. HOWEVER. Here are a couple of costumes I desperately want to make in the order of importance to me.

Grey Warden and Female Qunari: Dragon Age Origins and Inquisition

Oh. OH Qunari. Why are you my favorite fantasy race ever? Could it be because you brought an inexplicable sense of gravity, presence and depth to a dude in a cage in the first Dragon Age game, and never stopped impressing after that? From the moment you meet Sten in Dragon Age: Origins, I felt as though the qunari were one of the best fleshed out, well-built fantasy civilizations and races ever. They are utterly foreign to the Fereldens and ‘monstrous’, yet when you start to learn more about their culture you start to understand that they aren’t just two-dimensional creatures. There is an entire civilization going on that the humans have no idea how to understand, and unlike elves they aren’t easily understood by tropes from other fantasy literature. It’s that mystery that brings me to want to cosplay a qunari. That’s why when it was announced that qunari would be playable in Dragon Age: Inquisition, I kinda went out and pre-ordered the premiere edition (with the pretty ‘dragonscale box’ and everything). Because this, right here, is one of my fandoms.

It should be no surprise then that I want to make me some Dragon Age cosplay. My first inclination was going to be to do a Grey Warden from Origins, but I have yet to graduate to making armor for cosplay. That is some ‘I have no idea how to do that yet’ next level stuff. So instead (because this is going to be so much easier) I’m going to try a female qunari.

This is the character I’m basing it off of from one of the Dragon Age comics that I adored. Now, I’m not entirely okay with the whole ‘bandages over my breasts as a shirt’ thing so that’s going to get adjusted. But I’m not trying to be THAT qunari exactly, just a female qunari of my own. That said, its’ going to be an ambitious project. The horns alone, getting a good wig, figuring out a good way to keep them both from being a problem. Then the makeup. Oh the makeup. And the various pieces. This is going to be a complicated cosplay, but if done correctly would be very worth it.

This cosplay, should I get it down, would I believe prepare me for the bigger challenge of taking on armor characters. I really want to try out making a Grey Warden. But my real dream? Is this:

Brienne of Tarth. Probably one of my favorite characters of all time in books or television. Now this costume not only has a million little details, it would require some serious custom armor pieces. I’d need to consult with some folks I know who are more familiar with armor before I took this on, but… it’s a hell of a cosplay. This is sort of my white whale, my dream should I ever be able to figure it out and get the cash and time. Those are the main stopping points keeping me from cosplaying right now.

Well no. One more thing. I’d also have to figure out: where the hell do I PUT all of this…?

For now, we’re sticking to Ellie and the SHIELD agent, and we’ll go from there.

So that’s my cosplay update. As soon as the cash flow gets better, we’re going to tackle these head on. One way or the other, I’m going to have something to cosplay when I get to NYCC this year. Because, to paraphrase a movie I like: Cosplaying and Body Proud.

Slut Hulk: David Goyer and Craig Mazin Set A New Low For Discussing Comics

May 21, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Film, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think I’d be writing a post on my blog defending She-Hulk. Or the right for comic book characters to not be called sluts and sex objects by Hollywood screenwriters. But hey, it’s a Wednesday, the sun is shining, and The Mary Sue put out an article about David Goyer and his comments on a podcast called Scriptnotes. And that changed what I did with my afternoon.

The short version is that David Goyer, a writer for DC Comics who is going to be working on the upcoming Superman / Batman movie, went on a podcast called Scriptnotes hosted by a John August and Craig Mazin. He and other panelists talked about other characters in comics that would be translated into film and how, and things went straight to pretty awful sexism the moment Goyer was asked to talk about She-Hulk. Here’s the transcript (thanks to The Mary Sue):

Craig Mazin: The real name for She-Hulk was Slut-Hulk. That was the whole point. Let’s just make this green chick with enormous boobs. And she’s Hulk strong but not Hulk massive, right? … She’s real lean, stringy…

David S. Goyer: She’s still pretty chunky. She was like Chyna from the WWE.

Mazin: The whole point of She-Hulk was just to appeal sexistly to ten-year-old boys. Worked on me.

Goyer: I have a theory about She-Hulk. Which was created by a man, right? And at the time in particular I think 95% of comic book readers were men and certainly almost all of the comic book writers were men. So the Hulk was this classic male power fantasy. It’s like, most of the people reading comic books were these people like me who were just these little kids getting the shit kicked out of them every day… And so then they created She-Huk, right? Who was still smart… I think She-Hulk is the chick that you could fuck if you were Hulk, you know what I’m saying? … She-Hulk was the extension of the male power fantasy. So it’s like if I’m going to be this geek who becomes the Hulk then let’s create a giant green porn star that only the Hulk could fuck.

I really have no idea where to start.

First off. David Goyer. I could go into explaining how She-Hulk was created as cousin to the Hulk in the comics. So them sleeping together would only work if this was Marvel’s Game of Thrones. But I’m going to sidestep that. I’m going to instead look at the logic behind your statement and the disturbing context that you’re applying to women comic book characters. And hang on, Craig Mazin, because you’re not escaping culpability for this sexist bro-fest. We’ll get to you in a second.

2051136-she_hulk — Because having big boobs and being in comics makes She-Hulk a slut, according to Goyer and Mazin.

If David Goyer is to be believed here, then since most comic book writers were men, the characters they were creating were to fulfill a need in male readership. Since, you know, men were the only people reading those comics. (Never the case, since I owned a She-Hulk #1 as a little girl). The writers therefore were trying to build a character that men, who use the Hulk as a power fantasy, could then focus on as a sex fantasy when they emote into the Hulk. They couldn’t possibly be trying to create a full-rich character with her own story that might appeal to men in other ways besides her sexuality. Because, as we know, the only way for a character in comics to be received by comic book fans is through their need for escapist narratives about giant muscles or through sex fantasies about ‘overly sexualized women’.

Heck, Craig Mazin seems to agree with him as he said: “The whole point of She-Hulk was just to appeal sexistly to ten-year-old boys. Worked on me.”

If that’s to be believed, than the comic book industry spends all it’s time aiming their writing not at their audience’s minds and hearts, but at their insecurities and need for escapism or at their testicles. And if you’re a woman, then not at all.

From here, I’ll separate my comments regarding Goyer and Mazin. Because Mazin spent a good deal of today trying to backtrack away from his comments on Twitter, claiming not only that he can’t be sexist because he has a daughter and wife, but that his comments were about the sexist aims of comic book writers at the time. But in his attempt to point out sexist tropes, apparently, he had no problem calling a character in the comics a slut because of her representation in the art as having large breasts. You know, like every other female character in comics ever. So is it then that every woman in comics was written as appealing to the male libido only and therefore that they’re ‘sluts’?

That’s a loaded word, Mr. Mazin. It means sexually promiscuous and is generally aimed to cast a female character in a negative light, generally to create shame about the character’s sexual conquests or activities. That’s why it’s called ‘slut shaming’. It is a derogatory term. There were a million ways you could have said ‘I believe that She Hulk as a character was created in an overly sexualized way.’ Instead, you went straight to calling her a slut. What’s slutty about her character? Her work as a lawyer, or being an Avenger? Maybe it’s the fact that by comparison she actually usually wears more clothing than the Hulk? I’m curious why that was the name you chose, Mr. Mazin, if you did not mean to be derogatory about the character’s sexuality. If slut your go-to word on the subject, that says something about the way you think about the character. And about women being portrayed as sexual in general. Backtrack all you want, but the word choice is telling and repugnant.

Now we can move on to David Goyer. Because on the day when DC unveiled the new title of their Superman/Batman movie, David Goyer decided to go ahead and show just how little he thinks of not only comic book fans but of the female characters in comic books in general. He started with his view of female characters as sexual fantasies, created only to entice male libido, but he also then went on to insult comic book fans in general. Quoted from the Mary Sue article:

Goyer was asked how he would translate the J’onn J’onzz aka Martian Manhunter to film. As Goyer is one of the people in charge of bringing the DC Universe to live action, this was definitely a topic where his ideas carried weight. In response to being asked about the hero, Goyer asked, “How many people in the audience have heard of Martian Manhunter?” After hearing some light applause and cheers, he added, “How many people that raised their hands have ever been laid?”

First, a powerful female character like She Hulk is just there for sexual titilation. Then, Goyer falls back on the stereotype of comic book fans as unable to get laid.

David Goyer, can I ask you a question: why do you work in comics?

By the way you spoke in this interview about not only the material you work with (example: comments on how ‘goofy’ Martian Manhunter is) and then your clear insults at comic book fans, I don’t understand why you’d work in comics. Your clear disdain for the subject material and the fans comes through in the whole interview. On top of that, it’s obvious how incredibly out of touch you are with the industry in general. And with these comments, you’ve made it abundantly clear that one of the people entrusted with bringing the next big DC movie to the world has little regard for female characters in comics or the audience of your film. Is this the person who should be working on the first big screen introduction of Wonder Woman?

Oh yes, and Mr. Goyer? I didn’t miss the bit of body shaming you put out there too. She Hulk in the comics is exceptionally fit and athletic, a muscular match for her cousin the Hulk. (COUSIN, Mr. Goyer. Not someone for the Hulk to sleep with. COUSIN.) But do I hear you referencing Hulk as anything but a male power fantasy? Nope. For She Hulk however you went ahead and called her ‘chunky’.

(Though I did notice you mentioned Chyna there in reference. Maybe because she played She Hulk in the porno? Could that be your ONLY point of reference for the character, Mr. Goyer?)

Let’s recap: Body shaming, slut shaming, fan shaming.

This is what commentary on comics and comic book films comes down to these days? Two guys bringing their sexist (‘But I’m not REALLY sexist!’) ideas to the table? We’ve heard these voices for years now, perpetuating the same garbage and framing the view of female characters through the lens of male lasciviousness. Heaven forbid that we could divorce ourselves of the male assumption that everything in comics is for them long enough to consider female characters as entities unto themselves. Goyer and Mazin are just echoes of the same old song and dance, just caught out in the open being blatant about it. Slut Hulk. Just something to bang. It’s all been said before. Now it’s just caught on podcast.

What amazes me is in his comments, there’s indications that Goyer felt like one of those stereotyped nerds growing up. He says ‘those people like me’ who were getting beaten up. So now, as a screenwriter and someone in the driver’s seat of providing creative content to the comic book world, seems Goyer might be suffering from a little self hating nerd syndrome.

DC Comics, do yourself a favor. Hire someone to work on your movies and your comics that doesn’t clearly hate on your own fan base quite so much.

Knights of Badassdom: Why We Deserve Better LARP Movies

February 10, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Film, Geek Culture, LARP, Uncategorized

Warning: The following article involves spoilers for Knights of Badassdom.

The minute I heard about Knights of Badassdom, I was excited. Forget for a moment that this was going to be a movie about LARP. This movie had Peter Dinklege in it, in armor, fighting at a LARP! It had Ryan Kwanden of True Blood fame, one of the only reasons I still WATCH that show, as our hero. And Summer Glau, fresh off of being badass in fandoms everywhere, was going to play the female lead. Plus there was going to be LARP! (Okay, now we’re back to that point) This was going to be a movie that not only spoke to my interests but had a great cast! How could things go wrong?

Easily. Oh so very easily.

It’s no secret that Knights of Badassdom, directed by Joe Lynch, went through production hell. The film was shot and then disappeared for a long while. The creator lost control of it to someone else, a producer who supposedly recut the entire thing before it was finally released into the wild through limited engagement showings across the country. The movie cashed in on a new system of ‘sponsored’ movie screenings, hosted locally in communities to drum up attendance. KoB was marketed to LARP communities to come out and support, to make showings available so that this movie could come to their area with it’s awesomeness. I was one of those people who applied to host a showing. As someone who loves seeing LARPers come together at events, I thought this would be a perfect community event – we’d all get together and watch some big stars pretend to do what we do! But before I would do it, I went to see an earlier screening, just to see what I was getting.

I’m so very glad I did. The moment the movie was over, I walked out and emailed Tugg, the service that was hosting the events. I told my liaison at Tugg that, “Frankly, I attended this film this week just to see what I would be hosting, and it is so bad that I don’t think I want my name associated. Kindly cancel my application.”

Knights of Badassdom is everything that bothers me about LARP films.

The Review

Let’s not start with talking about Knights of Badassdom as a LARP film. Instead, how does it rank as a film? Well, in the land of comedies, it ranks just above Sharkanedo in making sense plot-wise. There is no coherence in the flow of the movie after the characters GET to the LARP, when it devolves into a messy pastiche of horror film tropes banged together to create some kind of narrative. Once you’re halfway into the movie, you wonder why the director bothered to get such impressive actors as Dinklage, Jimmi Simpson and Kevin Zahn when they’re going to underuse them or, in Dinklage’s case, murder them off before they can do anything cool. The dialogue is some of the worst I’d ever heard in a movie, and as the film went on, more jokes fell flat than actually landed. By the time the movie went into ‘save the day’ mode, I was scratching my head at he mess of silly horror movie references tossed in, the ridiculously out of place hill-billy cops plot line that was jammed onto the rest of the film, and the plan the heroes supposedly put together to rescue the game from the horrible demon.

And once you get to the ending and the climactic showdown, I was so busy shaking my head at the lack of cohesion of ideas and the obvious plot holes that I’d forgotten I was watching a movie set at a LARP. It seemed more like a badly staged theater production entitled “How Not To Save The Day By Make Ryan Kwanten Pretend To Sing Fake Metal At A Bad CG Demon.” By the time the credits rolled, I was looking for as many synonyms for ‘disappointing’ as I could come up with.

Not Just Disappointing…

I sat after the film and thought about what I’d heard about the film. About how it had been hacked up in editing by the producer that got their hands on the film. Surely that was what made this film so bad? Anyone watching could have seen however that the movie would probably have sucked no matter the editing (there is only so much editing can do to awful dialogue). Still, I realized something about this movie was making me aggravated, and it wasn’t just being poorly done.

And that’s when I finally got it- expectation. This movie had not been what I expected. The movie in its treatment of the characters was saying something about LARP that wasn’t what was advertised. This wasn’t a movie about a LARP where horrible supernatural things happened. This was a movie about a normal guy getting shanghaied to a land of weird folks who bring down something terrible on themselves and pay the price. In this case, they get killed for the transgression of being LARPers.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Horror movie villains from the big budget murder spree films always have underlying themes they feed into in society. The movie Scream went through them in great detail: don’t drink, don’t have sex, don’t do drugs, don’t go off on your own and be different. Those things will get you killed in a horror movie faster than you can say ‘I’ll be right back.’ And why? Because they reenforce the stereotypes of society. Teens having sex is bad, and bad things happen to kids who go off and get high and drink and wander outside of the safe zones. That’s Horror Movie 101, the basics of the social messages behind all those massacres in the Freddy or Jason movies. Horror movies are all about the dangers of the unknown, and how it’s safer to be normal.

All of those tropes exist within Knights of Badassdom. Except they slapped the label on that ‘it’s just a joke’ that comedy gets away with as an excuse. The fact is, real comedy also uses its power to reflect a message back at the audience. Even Sharkanedo was saying ‘guys, your fear of sharks is so ridiculous because YOU ARE ON LAND MOST OF THE TIME SO CHILL.’ It makes a person look at their own assumptions and fears and laugh because they see a reflection of the absurd in themselves. Real comedy, like horror, tells you a lot about the community and people it’s talking to with the movie.

Who Is The Audience Of This Film?

So who is Knights of Badassdom talking to? It promised to be a movie for LARPers in it’s promotion. But after watching it, my conclusion is that it really isn’t. This movie wasn’t for LARPers, the way that Big Bang Theory isn’t for nerds. Knights of Badassdom is written for folks on the outside of a community looking in to point their finger and laugh.

They made a serious Lightning Bolt reference. Seriously, guys? Really?

You can tell who the audience is aimed at by looking at how the movie is set up. KoB is full of same tired tropes about LARPers trotted out to represent LARP as a strange hobby full of maladjusted people. The main character is the Everyday Joe (that’s literally his name, Joe), an under-employed metal musician with girlfriend problems, who regards what his friends do as weird and usual. He only attends the LARP because he is kidnapped by his roommates, who represent the stereotypes of LARPers: the rich kid with too much time on his hands and a need to escape reality, and the druggy who is otherwise kind of cool but way into the nerdy stuff. (The second being Peter Dinklege’s character, who might have had a chance to shine if he hadn’t been wasted on bad writing). Then let’s not forget about the game master, the horribly overdramatic and snotty guy who abuses his power and treats everyone like something you scrape off your shoe. That is, when he’s not hitting on the hottest girl there to ‘be his assistant storyteller.’

"I don't even want to be here!" — “I don’t even want to be here!”

Ah yes, Summer Glau’s character, Gwen. Gwen is beautiful, sweet, and a good fighter, a character we should be able to root for. When described by other characters, who get descriptions like ‘wily’ and ‘great fighter’, she is described as possessing a “+3 ass of awesome” or some such nonsense. She’s presented as the beautiful object of everyone’s attention (cue the closeup on her fishnet covered legs), including the game organizer, who skeeves on her in her very first scene. But fear not! She’s protected by her hulking cousin, who never breaks character – even in real life! Gwen is designated as her cousin’s babysitter at the LARP because he’s a danger to others due to his inability to separate fantasy from reality (ahem, LARPer trope ahoy!) Ah, now it all becomes clear! The beautiful female lead doesn’t even really want to be there, but she’s got to be there for family. Because why would a beautiful girl want to come to a LARP without an excuse? Heaven forbid she should actually want to participate in the game herself. In the LARP community I came up in, there was a derogatory term for girls who were brought by relatives/significant others who didn’t want to be there but just ‘played along’: a backpack. The movie backpacked Summer Glau and did it without so much as a cringe at their gender stereotyping.

"We kidnapped our friend to a game - yay!" — “We kidnapped our friend to a game – yay!”

But why should it cringe? Because that’s all this movie is – a load of stereotypes dumped on top of some not very funny jokes. LARPers watching might look at the absurdity of the over-the-top performance and say ‘Look, they’re making jokes with us about the silliness of parts of our community.’ But if that was the case, the framing of the film is all wrong. The movie isn’t about a LARPer poking fun at his own community – it’s about a man on the outside coming in, judging everything he sees as absurd, and then saving the day before wandering off to go be cool again away from all the weirdoes.

It was that ending that got me, the epilogue, that convinced me that the film wasn’t really for LARPers at all. The ‘this is what happened to the characters post-massacre’ that is the tried and true show of an amateur filmmaker who doesn’t know how to end their film. Ryan Kwanten’s character Joe and his new main squeeze Gwen ride off into the sunset together to form a metal band. And they never LARP again. Why would they? After all, they survived the night of terror in a place they never wanted to go to in the first place! They were the ‘normal ones’ who would go off to jam on guitars and be cool and happy together. And all those LARPers and hillbillies died in that field, weird and odd and killed off by a demon, paid for the transgression of being different, while the cool lead characters survive because, well, they just weren’t into the weirdness to begin with.

We Need Better LARP Movies

"I signed on to be drugged out and then dead. What is this crap?" — “I signed on to be drugged out and then dead. What is this crap?”

It’s then that I realized why this movie not only was awful, but it was insidious in its offering. It wasn’t presenting the movie as a collection of in-jokes told from a place of fun. It was holding up a mirror as comedy often does and saying, through Ryan Kwanten’s Normal Everyday Joe, “See what your weirdness brings? You and those hillbillies who died are just the same – backwards and weird and disconnected from reality.” He as much as says so in dialogue when they discover Peter Dinklage’s body. At the screening I attended, there was a notable hiss from the audience when Ryan Kwanten’s character goes off on a mini-tirade about how the murders must have been committed by someone who had taken LARP authenticity too far and used a real weapon in game. Because, of course, that is what LARPers are from the outside- people too wrapped up in their fantasy NOT to commit actual homicide. This is an idea carried in the earnest horror film The Wild Hunt too and perpetuates the same tropes – LARPers are escapists with a potentially unhinged connection to reality – that has dogged every media representation of LARP from big screen to small.

It’s that perception of LARP that has been a self-perpetuating cycle for years. The more LARP has been presented to those who don’t participate as an odd and weird hobby, the more the stereotype is called up again for movies like these. That then perpetuates the stereotypes further and the cycle goes on. Where Knights of Badassdom had a chance to break that trend, it doesn’t break so much as take that trend underground in a sly, backhanded, unsaid way. And for that, it seems like just ‘good ol’ fun.’

After seeing the movie, I pulled my support from the showing I was going to host for a number of reasons. One, I just didn’t want to have to sit through that mess one more time, nor was I going to work to bring a piece of bad filmmaking to other folks who would pay their money to see it. More than that however, I have this dream that there might be movies that represent LARPing in a positive light and not in that snide, backhanded, finger-pointing kind of way. Maybe that’s asking for a lot from Hollywood, a place that survives off the stereotyping shortcuts that populate many scripts. But it’s my choice not to support something that I feel represents a hobby I love poorly, especially a hobby that is much maligned already.

I won’t embrace a movie just because it shows SOME representation of LARP, even if it’s bad. I won’t forgive badly done movies about the hobby just because hey look, that looks like something I love on screen! I won’t default support a movie for having LARP in it if it just feeds the stereotype machine. Because folks, we in the LARP community deserve a better class of representation. And this movie just doesn’t do it.

The Wandering Designer’s Convention Update!

October 28, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Game Design, Geek Culture

It’s been a while since I was able to give an update here about what I’ve been working on. That’s probably because I’ve been busy working and traveling! Here are some of the highlights:

I was a guest down at Escapist Expo in Durham, North Carolina, and had the pleasure of being on the ‘You Game Like A Girl’ panel there with my compatriots in feminist discourse, Anja Keister, Iris Explosion and Stella Chuu. (The panel video is up online here to check out!) Along with the fantastic ZP Keister, they did their amazing D20 Burlesque show for the Escapist crowd, and I got the opportunity to hang with the gentlemen of Evil Hat Productions, Rob Donoghue and Fred Hicks, as well as Daniel Solis. We played games, we had fun, and it was an honest to goodness blast. I really recommend Escapist if you are a fan of their site, if you’re a fan of a nicely sized convention with great people, and if you’re a fan of a friendly city for a visit.
I attended New York Comic Con and did some reporting on it for Tor.com – you can see my coverage of the Marvel Television panel, the Dracula Screening and the Cosplay over at Tor. I also got a chance to see the Defiance panel and ask the cast my question, plus got a great chance to see the Welcome to Night Vale panel. Had a fantastic blast, with much thanks to my friend Justin Reyes for helping me with my camera gear. I also was a convert to the Pokemon nation that weekend – Pokemon X for me! It’s my new relaxation helper. Highlights were getting a chance to shake hands with Kelly Sue DeConnick, the Marvel writer of Captain Marvel and the Avengers. I’m a huge fan of her work and her constant contribution to the discourse about women in the geek world.
Not long after I was on the road again to head to GeekGirlCon out in Seattle. It was an absolute pleasure to meet up with folks out there. I had the pleasure of being on panels about creating safe spaces at conventions with brilliant folks like Jennifer Stuller, burlesque performer and organizer Jo Jo Stilletto, fiction writer and safe space advocate K.T. Bradford, pop culture scholar Rob Salkowitz. The second panel was about Female Characters in Video Game Design and was sat by some fantastic folks like Kimberly Voll, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry and Anita Sarkeesian. It was my honest pleasure to be a part of both, as they gave me a chance to talk about my two favorite things – how to create convention space for all and how women are represented in video games. Later I got the chance to do a panel/workshop on LARP 101 and then presented the Nordic game LIMBO to a crew of players. (I’ll have a full write-up of that shortly). It seemed the game really touched everyone very deeply. I was floored by how well people did with the material and how deeply they threw themselves into the roleplay. Overall it was an incredible weekend – I found the entire community to be welcoming and fantastic, and I was loathe to miss the whole Sunday program to fly home. But family vacation in Orlando called!
Shortly thereafter I was out at Dystopia Rising‘s big season ender for New Jersey known as DeathCon! Every October we throw a big four-day zombie apocalypse adventure and this year all the stops were pulled out, folks. My shift with fellow storyteller Liam Neery created a cacophony of in-game screams as we unleashed terrifying raiders on the fictional town of Hayven, and madness and fun was had by all. As a player I enjoyed myself a great deal, but it was my pleasure getting a chance to once again rain storyteller heck down on the player base. Special shout out to the Unholy Sideshow and D20 Burlesque for performing at the game- it was overall a hell of a weekend.

So now I’m back in the workflow of things, my traveling having been completed for the season. Well, almost. Because next week is… Metatopia! I’m very excited to say that I’ll not only be attending Metatopia but I’ll be sitting on a couple of panels, as well as running a few playtests. I’m planning on doing a playtest for my RPG Wanderlust plus doing a run of my freeform game Service as well. It did well being tested on my NYU Game Center friends, now let’s see how it holds up against other gamers. This Metatopia has so much on the schedule that I’m excited to just get a chance to sit in on panels and talk to people. It’s going to be pretty packed. So check me out at the following:

Friday 11AM – Translating Tabletop to LARP
Friday 2PM – How to Manage Adult Content
Friday 3PM-5PM WANDERLUST RPG Discussion
Saturday 4PM – Inclusivity: Inviting Women to the Table

And after that… well, it’s just work time. The con season will officially be over until February, when Dreamation 2014 has me plotting LARP fun. Until then, I’ve got some projects to do – including all the stuff to prepare for my thesis at the Game Center. There’s going to be a full article on here about that very shortly, so stay tuned!

So the travel season is over, and I’m glad to be home. In truth, traveling is fantastic but it does take away from work time. I have lots of projects coming up in the near future and I’m excited to buckle down and get to work. Meanwhile, my bleary-eyed self is getting to bed so I can get up for class tomorrow. And so it continues!

Too Fat To Join The Fun: Body Shaming and Cosplay

October 17, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Geek Social Fallacies, Speaking Out

Update (10/4/2014): I was recently contacted to clear up a misattribution in the article below. Please note that the quoted transcript of the Heroes of Cosplay episode 2 conversation previously stated that Jessica Merizan was one of those speaking. It has since been corrected after I was contacted by Ms. Merizan and the proper speaker was attributed. My apologies to Ms. Merizan for the confusion and any trouble it may have caused.

As it is the week after New York Comic Con, I am spending my time recovering from my heady infusion of nerd culture. Yet instead of happily recounting various wonderful experiences I had at NYCC this year, I am writing this article. And it starts with an apology.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know, guys! You can’t hold it against me. I’m simply a busy woman who doesn’t have the time to keep up on all the tiny bits of minutia and unwritten rules that make up parts of the geek world. It just isn’t my fault that folks didn’t tell me right off the bat that there are rules about who can and cannot cosplay. I wasn’t informed that, if you are fat or ugly, then cosplay is just not for you.

I’m glad I found out! I mean, what would have happened if I’d started my upcoming cosplay plans only to discover all that money had been spent for nothing and…

Wait. Wait, what was that? Hang on. Let me get this straight: there aren’t any such unwritten rules? Cosplay is open to anyone who might want to be involved, regardless of who they are or what they look like? That it’s a culture based upon geek celebration and creative displays of fabrication and not the perpetuation of horrible beauty stereotypes that we encounter in every part of our society? You mean there’s a place in cosplay for someone that looks like me?

Really? Because to listen to some people, you could have fooled me.

Case in point: Syfy channel recently showcased a new reality series called Heroes of Cosplay. This show followed the antics of several well known cosplayers as they went from convention to convention with their costumes, entering competitions and generally getting into the dramatic hijinks one expects from a reality TV show. I was excited to sit down and watch this show despite my nearly allergic level aversion to reality TV because I was excited to see how these supposed ‘heroes of cosplay’ went about picking their projects and making their costumes. And while there was a great deal of that going on, I was also treated to a good look at some 100% home grown USDA brand body shaming. The first episode showed a young woman struggling with her confidence over how she looked in her Merida costume. That was excusable. Here is a young woman feeling self-conscious, something anyone can identify with. The fact that later on in the episode she made it clear she believed she lost the competition because of her weight started to be a little uncomfortable.

By episode two, we had spiraled directly into body shaming. During a meet-up between all the contestants, several of the women agreed that if you are bigger you shouldn’t cosplay. In the uncomfortable silence, only Chloe Dykstra spoke up to defend the right of anyone to cosplay. If the editing on the show is to be believed, she was largely disagreed with or either the subject was ignored. The transcript of what was said goes as follows: Yaya Han started the conversation “Cosplay pet peeves.”

Riki LeCotey: People are obviously, like, ‘well, I’m really big, what can I do?’ And it’s like, if you’re a big muscular dude, go be Superman.

Chloe Dykstra: I think anybody should be whatever they want to be, whatever.

Riki LeCotey: But the thing is, if a three-hundred pound person wears Superman, and they put themselves out there, and then it gets on the net, how is that gonna help?

Chloe Dykstra: I mean, I guess, but do you think because of that they shouldn’t dress up as Superman?

Monika Lee: I think a lot of people can’t handle that criticism.

Yaya Han: I feel like as a cosplayer you have the responsibility to know what you look like. You have to really look at yourself in the mirror and know, you know, if my boobs are out I’m going to get **** comments.

Must be so hard, thinking you're the top of the game and dumping on other people. — Must be so hard, thinking you’re the top of the game and dumping on other people.

It is important to note that the conversation was heavily edited by the production staff. It seems clear that the conversation was lead so that these women would give statements that could be edited out of context. However, it is important to note that these women signed on to put their names to whatever came out of the production to represent them in the public eye. Moreover, they signed on to become known as a ‘hero’ of the cosplay community, a representative on camera of the ideas that make up cosplay. Whether these statements were manufactured by the production company after the fact or not, these reality TV stars were willing to be associated with the sentiment. This, coupled with ongoing commentary during episodes by ‘celebrity’ judge Yaya Han regarding overall body shaming (slut-shaming another big-name cosplayer Jessica Nigri over what she thought was showing too much skin) makes Heroes of Cosplay a train wreck of an example of the cosplay community. ‘Heroes’ indeed. I’m not impressed.

The outcry from the cosplayers I have spoken to and seen online has been heated about the show. Many have pointed out that these so-called ‘heroes’ don’t speak for the cosplay community and that it is largely a place where people can come to just have a good time. Yet despite that outcry, there is still the lurking specter of fat shaming. There are blog posts around the internet about situations in which overweight cosplayers are called out, publicly embarrassed or harassed online.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, there are the websites dedicated to fat-shaming folks for just trying. Because I feel like this is bad enough to warrant some public attention, I’m going to simply point to the worst of them out there in their troll-laiden glory. I’m calling out that putrid little website Cosplay Train Wrecks under their ‘fattie’ category. Then there’s this gem, called “Americans Fail At Cosplay, So Stop!” That’s right, America, just stop cosplaying. We’re all doing it wrong. There’s Your Cosplay Sucks that decides to pick on… well, just about everybody.

One particular heinous example got my attention this week. It’s the reason I’m writing this article in the first place. It’s called Fat Cosplayers and it’s a Facebook group. The photos put up are taken from other cosplay sites and tagged with comments including calling people ‘whale’ and equally offensive things. (I urge folks to take a second and report the site to Facebook if you can). The creator decided to mark it as ‘a joke’ as if that makes it better. Because that’s what trolls do to make everything okay again after they say offensive things. They remark that ‘it’s just a joke.’

Let’s get one thing straight: this is not funny.

Body shaming was something I was made aware of the instant I became aware of cosplay. I was told it’s part of ‘what to expect’. It’s one of the reasons I balked at the very idea of putting on a costume at conventions. I’ve personally witnessed fat shaming as well as ‘ugly’ cosplayer shaming from folks at conventions of all kinds, from snickering behind hands to flat-out snarky, nasty comments aimed at people while they were in earshot. It was upon examination of a lot of these situations that I hit upon the heart of the matter. While there may be those within the cosplay community who are critical of other people’s work and their representation of characters, the predominant amount of body shaming and ridicule doesn’t seem to be coming from other cosplayers. It’s the cosplay spectators doing the shaming. It’s everybody else. The rudeness out of people’s mouths are from photographers, media of all kinds, lookie-loos and fellow con attendees who come to gawk or take photos with cosplayers, as though they were some kind of wildlife attraction, and then often trash the people they don’t find appropriate.

Excuse me, cosplay audience, but let me ask the question: who the hell are you to judge other people’s fun?

It takes a lot for someone to stand on the sidelines and point at someone and laugh. It’s high school bullshit, immature childish behavior at its worst. And it honestly has to end. This kind of bullshit body shaming is something I have zero patience or tolerance for in the rest of the world, and I certainly wouldn’t want to see it in a geek community. Thankfully there seem to be plenty of cosplayers, including and especially plus sized cosplayers, who are standing up and speaking out against all the negativity. And right now, I’m saying this: I’m going to be one of them.

And this is going to be my first costume. Yeah. That’s right. Ellie from Borderlands 2.

For a long time, I was afraid to cosplay because I didn’t want to deal with whatever negative attention might fly my way for being heavy. I was afraid of the comments and I let it stop me. That’s not going to happen anymore. I’m going to cosplay. I’m going to cosplay stuff that isn’t just Ursula from the Little Mermaid (though I plan on doing a kickass 80’s punk Ursula because screw you, that’s why, haters, I’m going to make her more badass than before). And with every step of doing it, I’m going to say the same thing: I’m not here for the haters, but the haters gonna hate. And if they hate in my general direction, they’re going to hear back from me.

To quote Chloe Dykstra on Heroes of Cosplay:

I don’t know who made up these rules. There’s like some grand cosplay lord who’s like, “You shall not cosplay something if you are overweight!” That’s ridiculous. Cosplay is about having fun and being who you are and who you want to be.

Call that naive all you want, Yaya Han, but that seems to be the real spirit of the cosplay community, not the elitist crap being tossed around. And I for one want to be part of THAT community, with that spirit of inclusion. That’s where I’ll be with my cosplay, my support, and my war face for anyone who wants to step. Until then, I’m going to make my costumes and have a good time. Haters, slink back off to the anonymous internet holes you crawled out of – that’s where you belong.

Hey Agents of SHIELD, Whatcha Doing There Buddy?

October 9, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture

So it had to happen. You knew I had to say something about it, being the little Marvel-head that I am. Yet I have waited on making comment about Agents of SHIELD for a couple of weeks now. There’s been plenty of internet column inches being devoted to discussions about the show since it went on the air three weeks ago. I tuned in with lots of other Marvel fans to get a look at the Agent Coulson-fueled goodness. And yet, like some, I came away feeling a little let down. The first episode was fun but left me looking for a little something more. “But wait,” I told myself, “it’s the first episode! Pilots always suffer from some problems. Let’s give it a couple of weeks and see how it goes.”

Third episode in, and I’m ready to make a few comments. This is going to be a bit of a breakdown, so here’s the short version in case you suffer from tl;dr syndrome:

Agents of SHIELD isn’t bad. It’s just bland as hell.

The Breakdown: Agents of SHIELD is trying to do something that few TV shows can do properly, which is capture film lightning in a television bottle. The creators were hoping to cash in on the success and excitement of The Avengers by giving fans a weekly tiny dose of what the blockbuster did in two hours. The problem with that expectation is just that: it sets up expectations that fans automatically brought into their viewing of the pilot. So right off the bat, the creators had this huge hurdle to jump in providing a quality, well-placed action-adventure superhero themed weekly television series.

You see where this is a big boatload of problems waiting to happen? Expectations, folks. It’s what kills what could be good projects dead in the water.

You can almost feel the producers straining against those expectations with the choices they’ve made for the show. Agents of SHIELD feels less like a Joss Whedon run at a super-spy in superhero-land adventure than a corporate slick-job on the Marvel franchise, a hand-held airbrushing of the nuances that made The Avengers and the Marvel films interesting. Gone are the engaging characters that come together to tell epic stories. Instead, we’re given a host of brand new characters that we are asked to root for, and then provided with very little reason to do so. The cast smacks of demographic-influenced creation, aimed at drawing in every age group and audience they can. And sadly, the main casting choices for that reason fall hopelessly and awfully short.

I’m talking about our two new main characters, Agent Ward and Skye.

"Hi, I'm Agent Brooding Guy. I'm here to power through my dialogue with the force of my chiseled jaw." — “Hi, I’m Agent Brooding Guy. I’m here to power through my dialogue with the force of my chiseled jaw.”

Agent Ward: This cross between 007 and Captain America is meant to be the square-jawed eye candy that keeps the girls interested. Ward is supposed to evoke the brooding, slightly damaged almost anti-hero that has women swoon over James Bond or Wolverine, while stuffing him into a ‘serve the greater good’ SHIELD package. He’s the man who does the wrong things for the right reasons, the loner forced onto a team, finally given a chance to find a place he belongs… The cliches line up all in a row. Brett Dalton’s portrayal does just fine, honestly – I think he’s a halfway decent actor. The problem is he has nothing to grab onto. Agent Ward is a cut-out, a stand-in for all the tag-lines he’s meant to represent, and sadly brings little else to what should be a power-house action hero character. Jason Bourne or Hawkeye, this guy is not. Still, Ward isn’t the worst offender since, as a physical presence, he at least delivers the requisite butt-kicking action.

"Hi! I'm hip and trendy 2013 Eliza Duchku without being emotional in the least! Won't you love my leet hacker skillz?" — “Hi! I’m hip and trendy 2013 Eliza Duchku without being emotional in the least! Won’t you love my leet hacker skillz?”

Skye: Probably the most disappointing of all the choices on the show is the character of Skye, played by Chloe Bennett. This brand new character is a mix of so many bad stereotypes that she barely seems coherent. She’s a homeless high school drop-out who lives in her van, yet dresses like she comes out of an Abercrombie and Fitch ad. She’s a self-taught computer genius who runs a conspiracy theory website from her van, yet she is instantly respected by people like secret government agents and Fortune 500 moguls when she appears out of nowhere after cracking their security systems. She speaks the slick ‘isn’t that what kids sound like these days?’ lingo expected of a hip twenty-something as written by Hollywood writers, all hopped up on caffeine and full of buzz words, turning her into the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope in action. Except this is worse: she’s the Action Barbie version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. See Action Manic Pixie hack computers to find anything, anywhere, all the time! See her try and help on any mission, then fling herself into situations she’s completely overmatched in and survive by batting her eyes and whining some classic, chirpy dialogue before being rescued by Agent Ward!

The obvious story arch here is that the show wants us to get deeper into the plot with Skye, but it is hard to feel anything for a character that gives us so little reason to care about her. Bennett breezes through her lines (as flat and badly written as they are) with zero passion and offers little to no emotional depth in any of her scenes. I’ve seen more reaction from people who get the wrong order at Starbucks than Skye shows when she’s being held at gunpoint. At the end of every episode so far, I have yet to feel at all impacted by Skye’s participation in the storyline and find her performance, and her character as written, unbelievable and completely shallow. And if she’s supposed to be what anchors me into the show as the ‘new girl’ entry character, then we’re in trouble.

But what about the show’s real anchor? What about the reason a lot of us showed up to this shindig to begin with?

"Please let me be cooler. I can save this show. I can." — “Please let me be cooler. I can save this show. I can.”

Agent Coulson: Oh Agent Coulson. You went from working with the Avengers to effectively picking up SHIELD’s dry cleaning. I adore Clark Gregg and the character of Agent Coulson more than I ever thought I would. It was because of him that I was excited to pick up this show. And it is because of him that I stick through Skye’s awful performances and the hammy dialogue. Gregg brings his usual clippy, cheerful, nuanced performance to a show that desperately needs it and keeps me wanting more. Yet watching him play Coulson next to Ward and Skye feels like watching the character from a beloved franchise running lines with a couple of badly prepared cosplayers. (And that’s no knock at cosplayers, by the way, I know some who would blow Ward and Skye clear out of the WATER). The show gives Coulson so little room to BE Coulson and then tries to keep him only in the realm of the pithy commentary guy. When the producers decided to spin off a side character like Coulson, they had to understand that would require them to provide him with more depth. And yet the first few episodes have seemed as though they were rushing him out of scenes to give time to the new characters, or else missing key opportunities to let Gregg’s awesome performances shine. Plus the places where they tried to include more about his backstory (ahem, forcing a south american ex-love interest) feel awkward and strange. Instead of letting his character feel real, the show seems intent on turning Coulson into a marionette version of himself, yanked on the strings of plot necessity and uneven writing.

So is there anything good to the cast? How about the good possibility space that exists in three of the new characters put on the show: Melinda May, Fitz and Simmons.

"Give me more lines. I can do so much better than that Skye girl." — “Give me more lines. I can do so much better than that Skye girl.”

Melinda May starts off looking like your typical ‘strong woman’ character. She’s coded that way in her very outfits – precise hair, aviator shades, tight leather SHIELD gear. She’s the Black Widow/ Agent Romanov knock-off right? Yet there’s a nuance to Ming-Na Wen’s performance and to hints in the pilot that talk about what might make May an interesting character. (Too bad that most of that is blown to smithereens in the next two episodes due to mishandling of the dialogue, but I won’t spoil it all). May is meant to be the stoic with a haunted past, staying away from violence for perhaps a good reason. There’s so much possibility space there that is being hopelessly wasted from episode to episode leaving her as effectively the chauffeur of the team.

"We're down here! We're funny! Let us be funny!" — “We’re down here! We’re funny! Let us be funny!”

Equally wasted are Fitz and Simmons, the comedy tech duo of the team. Meant to round out the somber, often wooden cast, these two are the warm cuddly center of the show that are left to wallow in their little hole far too often. Their witty banter is far too insular and too reliant on one another and we hardly know anything about either of these bright faces after three episodes of their back and forth. These are two nerds who clearly have spent a lot of time together, but their interplay leaves little room for anyone else to get in on the jokes. Their dialogue often feels like listening to two best friends gab about stories nobody knows about, and while that can be charming for a while, it gets oblique and grating. Both are cheerful as two little fresh-faced chipmunks in a Kaylee and Simon from Firefly sort of way, but neither can reach the cardboard cut-outs of Ward or Skye and barely get air-time with Coulson or May. So in the end, their empathetic and empathic characters, meant to soften the others and give us comedy relief, are left languishing in the hold of the ship like forgotten little toys – all wound up with nowhere to go.

And what about the show itself? The adventures! The excitement! The missions to see superheroes from the perspective of the humans of the Marvel Universe?

I’ll just ask this: WHAT SUPER HEROES?

The show has shown us, in three weeks: a man made super by technology (and then quickly hurried off screen), a piece of ancient tech that everyone fights over, and then a science experiment gone horribly wrong. Each time the characters at the heart of the adventure are hopelessly wooden and the actual problems feel far removed from the actual Marvel universe. For a show that promised engagement into a super-hero setting, we sure seem to be short a few superheroes, now aren’t we? Sure, it’s only three episodes in, and the first episode delivered a man that saved lives. Yet immediately that character disappeared off the face of the planet and we’re back to a ‘problem of the week’ formula that feels hackneyed and sadly outdated. The threads that may tie the plots together (the laughable ‘Rising Tide’ website of Skye’s, the shadowy organization behind the science experiments) feels far too weak to hold together a Monster of the Week premise, and I’m left feeling a little like I’m getting hit with a bait and switch. I didn’t sign on to watch secret government agents run around the world effectively picking up the dry-cleaning. I came here to see action, adventure, and super powered craziness. I came here to see heroes and villains clash with the world at stake.

And there we go with expectations again. Because that’s the biggest problem.

I do feel like I got a little bait and switched, despite trying to keep my expectations down. Instead of a human face on the super-human world, I got white-washed twenty-something cardboard cut-out characters hitting me with campy dialogue. Instead of humans dealing with things far beyond their ken, I’ve got chirpy ads for toothpaste tossing buzz word dialogue before solving every problem neatly and without seemingly much emotion or danger.

Where is the immediate danger? Where is the tension of the threat? Where is the emotional payoff?

Where is the humbling feeling of being presented with power so much larger and grander than mankind?

I’m going to stick around and watch some more, if only for the sake of Agent Coulson and whatever little drop-ins they keep giving to keep my inner Marvel nerd heart alive. However you cannot keep audiences happy with pithy one-liners and guest-star nerd fan service. Eventually the writers will have to fish or cut bait to make these characters into actual people or they’re going to lose even more viewers than they already have. And I don’t want to see this show go down. I’m not nerd-raging or shouting from the rooftops like some beligerent Comic Book Guy. I want this show to succeed. But I’d like it if they tried a little less to be the shiny, Photoshopped, Disney version of Marvel that appeals to everyone and instead focused on telling a good story. This isn’t Once Upon A Time, ABC, this is a damn superhero show, and I want some action and adventure and tension and suspense and edge to that. Or else not even Agent Coulson can save you from yourself.

Quiet and MGS 5: The Phantom Pain In My Neck

September 9, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Game Design, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

Oh, Hideo Kojima, what are you up to with Metal Gear Solid 5?

Fans have been waiting for the latest installment of the Metal Gear series to catch up on what Solid Snake has been up to since we last saw him. So when Kojima got on his twitter earlier this week and started releasing information about the new character to be included in the series, I was excited. Her name was Quiet, she’s a sniper, and that alone made me happy. Until Kojima started talking about the art design.

I’m sorry, what was that now? More erotic? I thought maybe you meant exotic? But nope, it was erotic. But of course, as a thoughtful designer, there had to be a good reason why a video game designer would want to make the costume of a female character more erotic. Especially in the age of discussions about sexualization of women in video game design. A follow-up tweet gave us the real details:

…Oh. Because that just makes it a whole lot better. I can’t wait to see the tasteful little one piece Snake will be wearing for the game too. For all those cosplay guys out there who want to go to conventions in a speedo.

Kojima announced that the design for Quiet’s costume was going to be released this past Friday. And he sent ahead a little photo to give people a head’s up what it was going to look like. Or rather, a butt’s up. Because this is the pic, folks, of a part of Quiet’s outfit. The news about this announcement and the picture went viral just about everywhere, and folks started tweeting up a storm about the costume design. Or rather the lack of costume. And why wouldn’t it? In a time when the industry is positively a-buzz with discussions about sexism, misogyny, equal representation and sexualization, this was just additional fuel to the fire.

I particularly found it amusing in the face of a fantastic panel at PaxPrime, which spoke about the representation of female military officers in video games. The panel pointed out important issues about how women are usually presented as only romantic attachments for male characters or either cheesecake characters wearing utterly impractical outfits. This pointed towards an issue brought up by one of the panelists, namely that the misrepresentation of military women in such degrading light can port over into the real world and translate to a disrespect towards women in uniform (check out a great recap here on PlaywithPixels). Whether or not you believe that the view of oversexualized and two-dimensional female characters in games can lead to consideration of disrespectful treatment in reality (and I believe there is a correlation, though more evidence is needed), these women held a panel on the eve of this wackiness right here.

Friday came. And Kojima put out his photos. Ready folks, cuz they’re a kicker.

….where do I start?

You know what. I don’t have to. Because that photo does all the talking in the world. But I’ll just add this one to help out.

quiet-rendered-mgs5 — “I know. I’m not happy about this either. I’m going to catch my death in this thing.”

I’ve said a lot recently in a previous post about over-sexualization in game ads, and the same argument is about video game art in general. But this one REALLY takes the cake. They don’t even leave her stockings alone, those have to have holes too. I don’t know if I have to reiterate this, but I don’t have a problem with sexy. Sexy is different then blatant over-sexualization and impractical. And this, folks, is the height of both.

Where do I start with this? Where do I begin? With a long, heaving sigh, a roll of the eyes, and a slow clap at Kojima’s perfect plan.

Because folks, he got us. He trolled us so hard it’s not even funny. And we’re going right after it.

Check out some of Kojima’s tweets after the explosion happened online about QuietGate 2013:

You see, internet? You’re just wrong about MGS 5 – it’s all about proving how wrong we all are about differences in culture, custom and preference! If I’m reading this correctly, then the reason for a lot of the choices Kojima is making is to point out that there are differences in our perspectives based on all of the above (language, race, custom, culture and preference). And once he makes that point in a game about military folks shooting the heck out of each other, then we will understand the wisdom of why a woman is dressed like her dryer shredded all her clothing. Really, there’s a secret reason and we’ll all discover it when we play MGS 5.

Seriously. Just go buy the game and you’ll get the hidden meaning. You’ve got the sixty bucks to drop on the game to get let in that secret. That’s all you need to do.

Well done marketing strategy there. Well done. First, you point to the cosplay community and use them as a marketing tool (“I’m releasing this for you, you sexy girls, who are going to dress up for me in these outfits! You like doing that anyway, right? So I’ll just pander to you in the hopes you’ll help me sell this game!”) Then next, you stir up a little internet controversy with a sexy costume to get folks fighting about it. Next, you reveal on Twitter that there’s a hidden meaning about why these things exist, and state that you just have to play the game to understand. I see what you did there, and I’m slow-clapping at the sheer guts it takes to do something like this. Because if seen one way, Kojima is just hopelessly out of touch with or doesn’t care about the discourse going on about women’s representation in games. Or else he’s purposefully baiting the supporters of that cause, and cosplayers, and his own fans, to raise sales on Metal Gear Solid.

Now, Kojima has never been known for being subtle. I mean, this is from the designer who brought us THIS:

THEBOX — Adorable and hilarious, but not subtle.

So in a lot of ways, this whole thing isn’t surprising. What is surprising to me is how much this whole thing is doing to bring Metal Gear Solid 5 into the discussion about video games. It’s doing exactly what it was supposed to do. More people are talking about the game than before. Will this stunt boost sales? Probably. Will some of those sales be because Quiet is wearing what is effectively dental floss? Probably. Will there be a secret meaning in Metal Gear Solid 5 about tolerance and cultural understanding? Sure, maybe, who knows. But does it even matter? Kojima is blatantly using the conversation about women in video games and the cosplay community to garner attention for this game game, and that makes me all kinds of sick to my stomach.

Other industry folks have started responding to this, like Alex Kertz from the Battlefield 4 series (his tweets are kind of spectacular). But as a last parting thought, I’ll just walk away, shaking my head. While I appreciate this situation giving me something to write about this week, we could have saved all these words if the MGS 5 team had just trusted their product to attract fans without the reliance on sexism and marketing tricks. This just comes across the way it should – as a blatant cash grab that’s using the very market that they calls fans.

In a recent Q&A in which Kojima attempted to explain this situation further, Stephanie Joosten (who is the voice and motion-capture figure for Quiet) was quoted as saying this about her character:

“Of course, I was surprised to see Quiet’s outfit at first,” said Joosten. “But, you know, it fits in the Metal Gear universe, I think. I don’t think I’m allowed to say a lot about this, but, well, Mr. Kojima has his reasons for deciding why Quiet [is] wearing what she’s wearing. Players will just have to look forward to that.”

Of course there’s a reason for what she is wearing. It’s called dollar signs. And it’s pretty blatantly obvious.

I’m done with this discussion on principle alone. But I’ll just leave this last one here, for the road.

800px-A1C_Gonzalez_377th_SFS_-_Kirtland_AFB1 — What actual military women look like.

And my personal favorite:

Mass-Effect-3-the-real-female-shepard — Didn’t need sexism to make a point. Or money.

Pax, You’ve Gone And Done It: An Open Letter

September 4, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

Dear Penny Arcade,

I don’t honestly know where to begin. You’ve really gone and done it now.

Let’s start from the top: Dickwolves. Dickwolves were a thing a while back. You remember dickwolves, right? It was the huge controversy about your sometimes funny comic strip offering up rape jokes as part of your attempts at humor. I won’t go into the madness that was the entire issue because, frankly, it is like one giant labyrinth of PR nightmare meets the worst insensitivity high school locker room humor can offer. (If you need the long description, this exhaustive timeline chronicles the Dickwolves madness). Suffice to say, the dickwolves controversy is just the tip of the iceberg of a serious problem I’ve come to recognize about Penny Arcade and its Pax conventions. Penny Arcade and it’s creators Mike and Jerry (aka Gabe and Tycho) have a serious problem:

They’ve become part of what’s wrong with geek culture.

And its not funny anymore. In fact, it’s goddamn insulting.

First it was “The Sixth Slave” comic that kicked off the dickwolves. Then it was the guest comic about the non-consensual breakfast cereal. Then came the ridiculous Twitter implosion of Mike Krahulik regarding using the term cis-gender and generally being an insensitive human regarding the trans community. Should we toss in the case of the Pax Enforcer that was involved in a sexual harassment case that was all-but covered up? Each time, creator Mike Krahulik has come out with new and wonderful ways to explain support of rape jokes or transphobic speech, or has sat by while those who spoke up against his particular brand of ‘humor’ have been threatened with rape and death just for speaking out. And each and every time this has happened, there has been a controversy and Penny Arcade has ended up back in the geek news sphere long enough for people to get riled up. Then an apology is issued and everything calms down for a little while. Still, folks sit back and wait quietly to see if Krahulik will say something else, do something else, that shows off just how tragically out of touch they are with the evolving geek community. And BAM, it happens again.

Switch over to my side of the tracks for two seconds. I am a game designer, a video game fan, a creator and a panelist. I get invited to go to Pax East to speak as a woman about everything from women in game design, women’s representation in video games, and of course female harassment in convention culture. People look at me sideways when I say I’m attending PaxEast. “But Shoshana, what about the dickwolves? Why go somewhere that supports this kind of rape culture? Why go to the middle of dickwolves central?”

Because, I responded, it can’t be all that bad. And besides, shouldn’t that be where the conversations about women in video games should be happening? Isn’t that where these battles should be fought?

Oh, Penny Arcade – look at me, trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. Look at me, trying to have a discourse.

Pax East was difficult. There was trolling I personally had to put up with in my life. But in the end, we had a good time there and were treated with respect for the most part. In fact, things go so well, you invited us out to PaxPrime. Then came the wonderful cis-gender conversation from Krahulik on Twitter. And people brought it up again. “Shoshana, you can’t possibly be going there! Look at what he said! Do you still think that you should be attending the convention?”

Yes, I said, because that’s where the conversation about these things should be happening. Take the conversation right to PA’s door and talk about how we are folks who use the word cis-gender without snickering, without being insulting. People were very receptive, the audience was great, this is where the conversation should go on.

Oh Pax – look at you, giving me hope that things wouldn’t devolve into something ridiculous FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE CON.

Do I sound frustrated to you? It’s because I am. Pax Prime gave me a little hope, you see. I counted the number of panels you had on diversity and inclusion, on women in gaming and on LGBT representation, and I rejoiced. See, here were the conversations I was hoping to see! There were tons of them, hosted by people from tabletop and video games, from cosplayers to the female employees of Bioware. Here were the inclusive community discussions I was hoping to see at a convention that has been plagued with a reputation for misogyny and sexual misconduct. This was the kind of community reform, from the inside, that I love to see. I got on a plane after spending the weekend meeting people and talking about these issues, happy to have attended. I got off the plane to this exchange in a Q&A panel where Mike and Jerry answered questions to Robert Khoo, their business manager. Here’s the video (with the exchange in question at 2 hours and 35 minutes) but enclosed is the offending transcript:

Robert Khoo: I mean, speaking of, I know the three of us have like, a really great working relationship, like, probably the best given the circumstances that we were thrown together in, given our personalities, it really is sort of a dream scenario, I couldn’t have written any better. But, is there anything you wish I would do better, or anything you resent me for doing or saying, or um… besides this panel. Outside of this panel.

Mike Krahulik (Gabe): This is honesty time?

Khoo: Honesty time, yeah. Absolutely.

Gabe: I… You know that I don’t hold grudges.

Khoo: Alright

Gabe: Like, I can be incredibly mad and then fine the next minute, so long as I get it out.

Khoo: Okay.

Gabe: And I feel like we got this out, so I’m not mad about it anymore.

Khoo: Alright.

Gabe: But…I think that pulling the Dickwolves merchandise was a mistake.

Khoo: Clearly, had I known the falling steps that would follow after that move, I would never have brought it up to you. Course I wouldn’t have, because I did not know… I mean, I don’t wanna say “Alright, well, because of this, this happened, people said this, I said this, you said that, clearly it would have just been better to just like, not say anything. That’s sort of our policy on all these types of things now where it’s like, it’s just better not to engage. And in fact, pulling it was, in a way, enga-

Gabe: – engaging –

Khoo: – A way of engaging. And then, then you actually engage. That was a direct result of pulling. And I totally agree. I totally agree.

Gabe: Okay.

Audience Member: Bring it back!

Khoo: No, that’s a terrible idea.

Do I have to go on, Penny Arcade? Do I have to say a damn thing else?

After the last piece of sludge that fell out of Krahulik’s mouth (the cis-gender issue), he issued an apology for what he said. I was pretty critical of that apology because of the language used there, namely where Krahulik made it seem as though he couldn’t stop himself from being, using his words, ‘a dick’. Well apparently that is the case! Because right here, in the above transcript, we have it: ‘Gabe’ saying it was a mistake to pull the dickwolf merchandise from their shelves.

Let me reiterate: he said it was a mistake to pull merchandise referencing a rape joke off of their website. It was a mistake to stop making money off of rape jokes that offended, hurt, and insulted members of the gamer community. This was the statement made by Mike Krahulik. And Robert Khoo agreed to it. And audience members cheered.

Three strikes. You’re out.

I have no more excuses for you, Penny Arcade. I have no more excuses for how you imagine you can, in one breath, invite people to your conventions with promises of a ‘safe space’ and in the next support rape jokes and rape culture. I cannot imagine how you presume to invite professionals from across the country to speak on your panels, broadcast across the internet on your Twitch stream, about the very issues you are helping to perpetuate and then have your leadership say things like the above transcript. Have you looked up the definition of hypocrisy lately? Because I believe with this last statement, Krahulik and Penny Arcade has used up their last piece of ‘oh well, you know, he didn’t mean it like that’ cred that might have ever existed for ‘Gabe’.

So what now? Now, I say this: Pax was fun. Both of them were fun. I have great memories of both. I won’t forget the faces of the people I spoke to at the panels, or how great it was to chat with the game devs and representatives and the wonderful fellow nerds. But fact is, what the hell am I supposed to do when faced with a statement like this? Do I go to a convention that is headed by people who regret engaging with the fans they hurt, who regret taking down merchandise that supports rape as something to be joked about? Who haven’t seemingly learned a damn thing about being respectful to all parts of their audience, but instead continue to cater to the lowest common denominator of juvenile, offensive humor in an attempt to stay relevant? Sorry. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a third time, and I gotta have my damn head examined.

In my eyes, as of this statement, Krahulik has proven finally how grossly out of touch he is with the evolving gamer world. This is a geek community that is socially conscious and responsible, that takes into account the feelings and considerations not only of the ‘mainstream’ demographic but of all its membership. This is a community of peers that is demanding, not just asking, that offensive content be reconsidered and shelved to be replaced by content that doesn’t make folks feel hurt. That asks creators to consider whether just because you can create something potentially harmful (not just offensive but downright harmful), does it still mean you should. This is the evolving geek community, and Penny Arcade’s frontman has once again proven he’s got eyes shut to those changes.

No, I’d say its worse. This latest garbage is a slap in the face to every Pax Enforcer or employee who has gone out of their way to try and make the environment at the conventions friendly and safe for all. It is an insult to anyone who attended the conventions to bring about talks about inclusivity and gender/sexual/racial equality in games and gaming culture. It is the comments of someone tragically unaware of the changing face of the gamer world, whose actions are supported by their business team (remember Khoo in the above transcript supports Krahulik’s statement) and therefore indelibly intertwined with the Penny Arcade brand and its subsidiary, Pax.

Do I sound pissed off, Penny Arcade? I am. Because I attended your convention in good faith. Good faith that the voices of people like me, who went to your convention to speak about these issues, were welcome. Instead, I feel as though whatever voice I bring was just used to give legitimacy to your convention. ‘Look,‘ you could say, ‘we have some women talking about these issues! Now maybe they’ll ignore our rape jokes and other nonsense.‘ Do I sound like I’m feeling a little used? Probably because I do. I feel used. Insulted. Frustrated at your misuse of your cultural clout in the geek community. And sad for all those who believed in your corner of the community more than I did.

You’re going to ask, of course, what does it matter if you feel betrayed? Sure, I’m just one tiny game designer, Penny Arcade. But funny thing: there’s a lot of folks out there right now who have read that transcript. Or saw the video. And a lot of companies and individuals who are questioning their consciences about whether or not to continue supporting you. I might just be one. But there’s plenty of ‘ones’ out there. So congratulations – you’ve proven today how tragically out of touch you are and because of that, I’m taking my time, money, attendance and support elsewhere. And I think a hell of a lot of others are going to do the same.

Hope that was worth the price of a few dickwolves.

Signed, Shoshana Kessock