Geek Culture – Page 3 – Shoshana Kessock

Strong? Weak? How About Women With Agency

August 22, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Random Aside

Let’s start off this article with a disclaimer: I’m a feminist. No big surprise there if you’ve been reading my blog, or if you speak to me for anything longer than five minutes. Yet recently being labeled a feminist has meant a great lot of discussion about just what a feminist wants out of their media. Specifically: how do we judge female characters in media and whether or not they should be considered ‘feminist’. Putting aside the difficulty of labeling any work feminist, let’s look at the question at hand without whatever stigma might come with the label feminist. That set? Good, let’s do this.

Articles have been popping up questioning the Bechdel Test as a standard for judging female interactions in a piece of media (be it a book or movie or whatnot). For those that are unfamiliar, the Bechdel Test is a test you can apply to any piece of fiction. To pass the Bedchel Test, a piece of fiction must have:

At least two female characters in it
Who talk to one another…
About something other than men.

Now if this sounds like the bare minimum for acceptable representation of women in fiction – you’re right! Yet so many pieces of fiction, especially blockbusters in film, fail the Bechdel test on a regular basis. Check out this list of 10 Famous Movies that fail spectacularly if you don’t believe me. However now, articles are discussing whether or not the Bechdel Test is honestly enough. One article in question on the Daily Dot counter-supposed that, instead of using the Bechdel Test, we should consider something that has been dubbed the Mako Mori Test, after the character from Pacific Rim. This test states that a film passes the Mako Mori test when:

The film has at least one female character
Who gets her own narrative arc
That is not about supporting a man’s story.

Now, while I like the idea of this test’s idea, I will counter-point that I believe the character of Mako has her own problems as a female character that are outside of the above test parameters. Fact is, Mako does have her own arc BUT the character is utterly gate-kept in the story by male characters. She plays out the typical patriarchal storyarch with her father figure Pentecost and then is allowed to advance only by the will of the male characters. That is a problem all its own, forgetting the failure of the Bechdel. Still, the above example of this new Mako Mori Test shows that people are looking desperately for a way to expand the discussion about what women have to do in films and how they’re represented.

Enter an article over at The New Statesmen entitled I Hate Strong Female Characters. In it, the author discusses the fact that while male characters are discussed as multi-faceted (using plenty of descriptive adjectives), women are only considered acceptable these days if they can be labeled with the term ‘strong’. Now while its a term I’ve used a lot of times in talking about female characters, I think this article points out a glaring problem: female character portrayals have gone from one kind of flat to another. They’ve gone from being flat damsels who are placed in fiction to perpetuate the male narrative to ‘strong’ women who are flat because they’re not allowed to be anything except strong. I think this argument has its own generalizations, of course – I think a lot of those self-same ‘strong’ characters referenced (Buffy for example, in the top of the article) had their own complexities which are often glossed over by the very audience that proclaims them as flat. However I think it points to the heart of an issue we’re having in feminist discourse: what makes a fictional female acceptable?

I’ve got one word as an answer: agency.

Or, to be more direct: CHOICE.

At the very core of discussions about empowerment for women, we speak about equality, sure. But we also speak about the right to choose. Women want the right to choose their own destinies, to make meaningful choices that are not qualified by the actions of men around them or by the expectations put upon them by society. But inherent to that argument is the notion that women have the right to choose to be whatever they want to be, whether that is classified as what modern society would consider a ‘strong woman’ or not.

This conversation is one I’ve heard echoed in the talks about whether a woman should go out and seek employment over being a full-time mother. Or whether or not women who wear provocative clothing are just perpetuating the stereotype of women as sexual objects for the male gaze. Yet at the heart of these discussions is the fact that women have been fighting for years for the right to make their own choices – so when did it become okay to say that other women could regulate those choices, even if they might be considered by some the ‘wrong’ ones?

It is that fundamental choice that is inherent to the feminist dialogue that is what sets apart a female character from both the two-dimensional ‘strong only’ modern heroines that the above article complains about and the damsels in distress of the past. A female character with choice is fundamentally the inheritor of her own narrative arc because she makes the choices (or is made to choose by her creator). She is empowered to make both good and bad choices and therefore carries her own story. Now whether that story is tied to a male character or not, at least the character is choosing to act towards the male’s interests, as opposed to being just an accessory. If that choice is explicit in the fiction, that is a woman given the opportunity to act and impact, and that sets her apart from the two-dimensionality of the previous examples. That is, in my opinion, a female character I can be proud of.

Can’t Swing A Con Badge Without Hitting A Nazi

August 21, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Geek Culture, Speaking Out

Welcome back from GenCon, fellow gamers! To all those who attended as part of the nearly 50,000 gamers who hit the Indianapolis area… are you as tired as I am? Good lord, it was a heck of a convention. I will talk more about it in my next post. First, however, I’m going to riff on a different problem. Let’s talk together, shall we, about Nazis.

Nazis are the bad guys in so many games its hard to make a list. They serve as the ultimate expression of evil given form. Nazis represent the boogeyman of human devastation, of dehumanizing monsters in uniform who have no consideration for their fellow man. They are the perfect example of a person divorced from their empathy for the ‘other’ in the world, willing to destroy lives based on their rhetoric. It’s hard not to see a Nazi in a piece of work and not say ‘that is purely evil.’ That is, in fact, what most game designers count on when they add Nazis into their work. Need a villain that everyone can rally around kicking around? Make it Nazis! Want people to feel comfortable with walloping the crap out of a person in a game with, say, a rocket launcher? Make the villain a Nazi and suddenly people don’t feel anything anymore because, well, it’s the personification of evil. That’s what Nazis have become in games – the shorthand for a villainy so vile there is no explanation needed. It is #evil with a capitol hashtag. And for some people, that’s all Nazis are.

For other people, they are the nightmare of our grandparents’ childhood. They are the stories we heard growing up about relatives we’ll never meet. They’re the reason our relatives never felt safe all the remaining days of their lives, and named their daughters and sons after children that were no longer alive. They were real boogeymen that crawled out of history and into our lives. And to some, they’ve become a media punchline.

I won’t go into how difficult that can be for me. After seeing my third product in the dealer’s hall at GenCon, I may have exclaimed loudly that I could use a moratorium on Nazis for a little while. I could go one year without seeing Nazis used haphazardly in a game. Then I considered that thought and moved beyond it. Nazis being used in games might bother me, but they’re contextualized in those games as the villains they are and ought to be in media. I even saw games that treated the material well, such as Ken Hite’s book Nazi Occult and realized that not all Nazi representations were created equal. The content might be difficult for me but that is me. I can avoid those games, or choose to appreciate them from afar.

Then, I encountered the Nazi cosplayer.

I wish I had a picture of this person, walking down the street past the noodle shop in downtown Indianapolis. I was sitting with a friend, talking about how wonderful the convention had been so far, but not five minutes before I had been discussing how tired I was of seeing Nazi EVERYTHING lately. Then, no sooner had we moved on to another topic but BAM. Here comes a Nazi down the street. I got a good look at the whole outfit and even as I tried to place what he might be cosplaying from (was it a video game? an anime? a film?) my brain came up with the only answer that counted: NOT OKAY.

Context is a very important consideration when looking at difficult content in media. If there is, say, racist content in a piece of media, is it contextualized to represent that racism as acceptable or unacceptable? Is it historically placed? What does the piece of work say about racism through the events going on around it? All of these things provide context. However, cosplay is one of those mediums that offers very little context. Unless someone is crystal clear what that person is costuming as, there is no context between a cosplayer in a Nazi outfit and, say, just someone wearing Nazi regalia and walking through a convention. And left without the context, I couldn’t tell what the hell this cosplayer was intending. Was he intending to just represent the villain of some piece of fiction, or was he glamorizing Nazis through his pristine costuming? I had no idea. All I saw was a Nazi walking down the street past where I was eating and I couldn’t drive that image out of my mind.

Say what you want about freedom of expression. Say what you please about being able to wear what you want. But when you put on a swastika or the whole regalia, death’s head and all, you are taking on the symbology around that and the context that comes with wearing the uniform of one of the most reviled groups in the 20th century. And you carry that around with you into other people’s lives. Is that what you want to bring to a convention of 50,000 people who are there to have fun? Is that what you want people to see?

Now let’s talk about retail. There’s been a lot of talk about what I like to call UnderwearGate 2013. A booth called Belle and Blade (adorable name) put up some underwear that was some of the most ridiculously offensive merch I’ve ever seen at a con. One of the undies actually said “I could use some Sexual Harassment.” Gareth Skarka pointed it out and I got a photo of it out on Twitter, which got folks talking, and there were complaints about it. It’s all chronicled here on Skarka’s blog. But here’s the other part: did you know this booth, which makes its bones selling military movies and gear, also has tons of Nazi stuff?

Previous to seeing what kind of awfulness was available, I went to buy a ‘zombie killer’ patch from this booth for some LARP costuming. It was only after I paid that I turned around in my half-exhausted state and saw boxes with Nazi symbols on it, Nazi signs, and even Nazi pin-up posters on the inside of the booth. That is ALONG with the underwear. So in one shot, Belle and Blade became one of the most egregious examples of what not to represent at a convention by repping sexual harassment AND Nazis in one cash grab.

“But Shoshana,” you might ask, “isn’t it freedom of expression? Isn’t that his right?”

Actually, not entirely. See, the sexual harassment stuff is straight up against the terms of GenCon’s policies on convention harassment and reports were made. But the Nazi paraphernalia is more of a grey area, just like Nazi cosplay. The policies say something about not being able to costume anything that resembles a uniform from the 20th century, but that certainly didn’t stop Nazi cosplayers that I saw. That didn’t stop the stuff from being sold in a booth.

Freedom of expression is the backbone of so many conversations about offensive content. However just as it might be someone’s right to go out and walk the streets of a convention wearing Nazi gear (barring any rules at that event that says you can’t), it’s my right to feel that is unacceptable. It’s my right to question what that person is trying to represent or express. And it’s my right to say that maybe you ought to consider the time and energy you’re putting into so meticulously glamorizing such a symbol of human evil.

Note: In my consideration of the situation, I want to make clear that I don’t blame GenCon for the situation. GenCon is a wonderful convention that I enjoy very much and that puts on a hell of a show every year. Take that as a disclaimer.

Video Game Ads: When Sexy Is Just Plain Ridiculous

August 7, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Speaking Out

Sexism in video games. The conversation has echoed through the internet and the halls of game development companies for months now, as it has seemingly become the topic whose time has come. With women like Anita Sarkeesian doing her best to get the message out there (despite heinous threats against her person), there finally seems to be some serious critical attention being paid to the choices designers make in creating their female characters. If you aren’t familiar with Sarkeesian’s work, I would point to Feminist Frequency and her video series Tropes Vs Women to get some background.

Part and parcel with the discussion of character design has been questions of how female characters are depicted in game advertising. However even in a time when companies are examining how to reach their audiences, there are still some stellar examples out there of blatantly sexual advertisement that is ignoring the conversation altogether. They just seem to be skipping the discourse completely in return for one thing: boobs.

This article is brought to you by some late night reading I was doing that was interrupted when this advertisement caught my eye:

"IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW WHO THIS WAS FOR, WE KINDLY LABELED IT FOR YOU! YOU'RE WELCOME!" — “IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW WHO THIS WAS FOR, WE KINDLY LABELED IT FOR YOU! YOU’RE WELCOME!”

Well, if that isn’t a way to interrupt what you were doing. Ironically I was actually looking up an article on sexism in games when this little jewel popped up. After I finished staring, I then went from laughing my butt off to horror back to laughing. Because – really guys? REALLY?! In the face of such ridiculousness its hard to not laugh because such ads just jump the shark from sexism into plain preposterous.

Once I’d recovered from my laughing fit, I got down to looking this gem up to find out what the heck it’s all about. Wartune labels itself as an “Epic Strategy MMORPG” that secretly seems to wish it was World of Warcraft. But since it isn’t, I suppose its advertisers wanted to find some way to lure in players. So they decided to just forget about, you know, TACT and went for the obvious advertisement choice. With a pop up ad so tacky that it might make some porn execs roll their eyes, Wartune is just another example of the silliness that goes on.

Now, you might think that this is an isolated case of the silliness of internet game advertisements. But it’s not.

"Come play, my Lord." Yeesh, I've seen better dialogue in porn. — “Come play, my Lord.” Yeesh, I’ve seen better dialogue in porn.

Remember these, folks? For a while, you couldn’t log into a website without tripping over the awful advertisements for Evony. It was a city builder that promised it would be “FREE FOREVER!” and decided to use heaving breasts as their primary way to draw people to their game. The amusing part was the game was clearly aimed at a fantasy audience, but as their advertisements went on they just plain through out the premise of sexy elves and went right to modern-looking women on display. The thing became such a huge internet joke that Plants Versus Zombies made a great parody of it for their own game, with a boob-showing zombie asking you to “Save Your Lover!” It was so ludicrous as to become a joke. The game still exists, though now the woman shown smiling at you from their front page is in a Renn Faire style gown and far more covered. As you can see, the precedent was always there for Wartune to build on.

But surely these are just internet games, right? Nothing so egregious could exist in mainstream-

Sorry, nope. Couldn’t even get through the sentence. It isn’t just the tiny online games that do it, folks. The nigh ludicrous objectification lives and breaths in AAA games and has for years. There are so many examples I could give, but let’s just put out a couple here to give some context to the conversation:

958232_121065_back — Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior – 1987 – Palace Software

Here’s just an example of the historical context. This is a Commodore 64 game called Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior. This is in fact the back cover of the game. The front shows a giant muscle-bound male Barbarian standing over the above woman as she reclines in his shadow. At least on the back they let her stand up and hold a sword. Remember, this is a Commodore 64 game. All the characters are on wee little pixels so basic they make your Super Nintendo look like Star Trek technology.

Want to get more mainstream? Let’s have a conversation about some ads for Soul Calibur. Now I’m a huge fan of this fighting game series but the advertisements for Soul Calibur 5 made me wonder if they forgot they were marketing a game and not skin care products or butt floss. Meet two characters from Soul Calibur 5. Who are they? I can’t tell because no distinguishing features of theirs are actually showing!

Y’know, I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine.

Hi there Sorceress. Nice to meet you. It must be really hard to concentrate on magic with the massive back pain you must have.

Now look, I get it. Sex sells. But there are lines sometimes that just seem so ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh. And then maybe get mad. Mostly at such blatantly over the top examples, however, I have to wonder how worried the designers must be about the weakness of their product that their answer is: “We just have to have boobs! More butt! Whatever you do, don’t put a face on it! Just maximize the sexy factor and they’ll come and play!”

And the sad part is that it kind of works.

Take Dragon’s Crown. This game created a whopping controversy by first creating characters with such gravity-defying proportions that they made people across the industry cringe.

Then it made even more headlines when the designer tried to explain away the ridic proportions of his women by pointing out the guys are just as bad, and then turned the whole thing into a bad gay joke. It was kind of a nightmare all the way around PR-wise but the game came out. And all the gravity defying boobs did their job – they got the game the PR it needed to garner more attention. Am I saying that is why they designed it that way? Maybe not. But maybe it sure didn’t hurt either. The game’s out there. It’s part of the discussion now. And no amount explanation can justify the chiropractic nightmare that is that character design.

Not all examples of bad representations of women in game ads are so blatant of course. These just stand as the eye rolling, knee slapping, I have to laugh so I don’t get furious examples of the egregious sexist representations in games. They exist, I believe, so that when people come out to say that there isn’t a problem with sexism in the industry and that women should just calm down, I can pull these beauties out of the drawer. I keep them around so as to provide juxtaposition to other examples of sexist ads to ask ‘how very different are they?’

Case in point the comparisons being made between how the female characters are portrayed in two of 2013’s biggest AAA titles, Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us.

Now I’m a huge fan of Bioshock Infinite but when the cover to the game came out, there was an uproar over the design. Elizabeth, our female companion to the hero Booker DeWitt, is relegated to the back cover of the game box. Sure, she’s clothed as heck (thank heavens for small favors) but she’s on back. Heck, even the Barbarian bikini woman got to be on the front too! Kenneth Lavine, lead designer of Infinite explained his choice as meant to appeal to the “uninformed” consumer. He described actually visiting frat houses to find men who hadn’t heard of Bioshock and then designed the cover based on their suggestions. Dude on front? Check. Gun? Double check. Woman relegated to somewhere less important? Done!

By comparison, The Last of Us placed lead character Ellie front and center in the advertisements for the game despite pressure not to do so. In fact, designer Neil Druckman reported in the above linked article that their company Naughty Dogs was under lots of pressure to take Ellie out of the ads altogether. Still they stood their ground and right now, you can’t throw a stone in the game industry without hitting praise for The Last of Us and its brilliant Ellie. This was a conscious choice that Naughty Dogs made about how they were going to present their female lead and it paid off big time.

Comparing the over-the-top T&A show of the above ads to the more subtle question of representation in Infinite versus Last of Us does nothing if not to point out how insidious the problem really is. While critics can discuss the problems of the big name titles, though, and the more subtle choices designers are making, sometimes it bears pointing out the blatant ones too. Otherwise stuff like this might slip us by:

And really, we can always use a good facepalm in our day once in a while.

Internet Toxic Shock Syndrome: How Don’t Read The Comments Doesn’t Work

July 30, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Speaking Out

(Warning: This will not be language safe. Because frankly, this whole argument demands a little bit of four-letter wording).

In one moment, I’m going to show you a video that I saw in a recent Penny Arcade article about the recent Phil Fish / Fez II meltdown that occurred this past week. If you’re not familiar with the situation, let me give a breakdown so you understand what set off this post in the first place. Here’s a little context:

Phil Fish is an indie video game designer who created a game called Fez. He was in development of a sequel to Fez called Fez II when Marcus Beer of the GameTrailers podcast went on his show and verbally ripped Fish fellow indie creator Jonathan Blow a new face. For what reason? I can honestly not pretend to care. It was mostly about the fact that Fish and Blow (who Beer decided to nickname BlowFish) decided not to answer questions about the upcoming indie games offerings on X-Box Live. So Beer decided to target his self-confessed “bitch and moan session” at these creators for not answering questions.

That’s when things went mayhem. Because Fish shot back over Twitter and the two got into a heinous fight over the internet – which as everyone knows, always ends well. And in the end, Phil Fish quit making his game Fez II and who knows what will happen from there. Now, forgetting the fact that this turned into an internet slap fight of epic proportions, let’s step back for second. A guy who is out there making a thing completely lost his shit because, effectively, he was getting slammed by folks in the media. The response from a lot of people have been, “Big deal. The media hits folks all the time. The internet is an unforgiving place. Don’t read the comments, suck it up, walk it off, get back to work.”

Then I saw this video and read this article from Penny Arcade. The video is Dave Chapelle of course being the bastion of goddamn wisdom that he can be:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OniNubupbQ4&feature=player_embedded]

Then I sat back and I thought about all the things I’ve been seeing on my own Twitter feed recently. A woman helms a project in England to get Jane Austin, arguably one of England’s greatest female authors, on some currency and receives rape threats on Twitter. She stands up to try to get the people prosecuted for threatening her and sparks a controversy. All this over work she’s done, and it comes in over YouTube. Feminist Frequency’s own Anita Sarkeesian, on the same day, tweets about the fact that she had to report two particularly heinous rape threats and she was curious if Twitter would do anything about it. I watched a YouTube recording of Reza Aslan, a twenty-year religion scholar and author of a new controversial book on Jesus, school the HELL out of a Fox reporter because she couldn’t get over him being Muslim long enough to engage him as a human being over his work and made the mistake of looking at the heinous comments section below. It was enough to make me slightly ill to the stomach.

All of it together has got me wondering: what the hell is wrong with people?

Folks, I am a critic. I am. Part of my job is writing reviews of things. I have reviewed books, television, movies. I’m not as famous perhaps as this Marcus Beer (I have no idea, I had never heard of him until this BS exploded) but I have people who have read my stuff. I’ve even written reviews that were heated and sometimes I’ve gone back and questioned whether or not I was entirely too unfair towards a personality involved. Still. I do not remember where in my undergraduate classes on film and media criticism my professors told me it was okay to blast the shit out of someone in a bitch session. I don’t remember where in my raising since childhood someone told me it was okay to take someone to the woodshed for their creative choices by attacking them personally. I don’t remember that being part of the job.

Now I might not be a big deal reviewer but I know some things. Let’s start with this:

One: Calling people ‘toss-pots’ and ‘fucking hipsters’ for doing their jobs in the indie world is not professional. Its shock jock provocateur behavior at its worst. Its third rate Howard Stern armchair quarterbacking. Its two steps above being that guy on Reddit yelling ‘yur mom’. Because you’re not critiquing the actual work these guys are doing anymore, you’re just taking shots at who they are. You’re that guy chasing the Kardashians for a picture of their belly fat and making up new ways to talk about celebrity nip-slips, only you’re doing it about the gaming industry. I don’t care how hurt your feelings are about not getting the quote or not getting the story you want. Learn to live with disappointments.

Two, here’s my question: where’s your game? Where’s your work? What movie did you make? What have you put out there? And how would you like it if someone went all over the place and called you names? If that sounds a little too touchy-feely and kindergarden teacher to you, that’s because that’s the place where people learn those lessons about how to talk to their fellow human beings – in PRE-SCHOOL. If you’re going out and being a critic, you better do one of two things: be prepared to be a human being about how you critique other people’s work or else you better be able to say ‘I’m a creator too’ when people ask you where your work is, and then you better be ready to take the same slings and arrows. Because if you want to sling, you best put your own hard work out there to be slung at too. And if you don’t care, if you can take that kind of muck-raking and don’t see that it is hurtful, then I don’t understand you. I don’t get where your empathy lies.

Phil Fish put this up on Twitter and it resounded so deeply in me, along with what Dave Chapelle said in that video:

So here’s a guy. He made a thing. He put it out into the world and he gets comments all the time. He gets garbage. And finally, he gets one last straw dumped on him and says he’s done. He’s out. And people are saying that he’s crazy or lost it. Think about what Chapelle said there. Think about how it feels when you get criticized and then imagine what kind of magnification a thousand fold this guy is getting. I’m not looking at what kind of a guy he is or whatnot. I’m looking at the stimulus he has to deal with constantly in his face for the simple sin of trying to be a creator in an industry he likes. He’s the ant under the magnifying glass. Eventually he’s going to burn up. Who wouldn’t?

Now I’m not going to lie. I’ve had shitty interactions with people who are creators when I’m press. Hell, I had a shirty interaction with a comic book writer who is SUPER well known that made me so grouchy that I basically still think he’s a douchebag ages later. But I realized something recently that made me think that maybe, just maybe, I owe that guy an apology: he is not my bitch. Neil Gaiman said that of George RR Martin recently to some folks and it bears repeating. These guys ain’t our bitches, reviewers and interviewers and fans. And treating them that way makes us the bitches. Does it suck when someone is shirty with you? SURE. But get over yourself. They don’t owe you shit, even if you’re media. They don’t.

The internet can give you some serious toxic shock if you step out there and try to create, or say a thing, or do a thing. I’ve seen it myself. I’ve had people put up videos calling me names. I’ve had rape threats sent to my inbox because I spoke up against that BS Grope Crew stuff happening on Twitter. I’ve been called names. I’ve had friends called names I wouldn’t call my worst enemy. I’ve seen reporters chase Anne Hathaway through a protest she was attending like a regular person (not a celebrity) shouting at her that she owes him and she’s a bitch for not giving him a quote. I read Wil Wheaton’s recent experience at ComicCon and I start to really think that some folks have lost their ever-loving, self-entitled little minds.

Every time people speak up about this kind of behavior going on, the answers are the same: don’t pay any mind, just let it roll off your back, don’t read the comments. Don’t read the comments? It’s not just in the comments anymore! It’s in the self-entitled disrespectful way people are treating one another on the airwaves, across the internet and in person. The only way to get the hell away from it seems to be to just shut down and get out now or just stop doing anything that gets other people’s attention. At all.

I had to go thru recently to see if I could track down how things got this bad. I think I got it. This is the process:

The internet gives us anonymity to say whatever the hell we want. Then folks step out who aren’t hiding but put themselves out as creators, voices, whatever, and they become targets. They become that way for a billion reasons – either someone has an opinion that differs, or someone is just having a bad day, or someone has some angst they want to vent at another target. They hide it behind things like freedom of speech and ‘this is my opinion’ and ‘you put yourself out there so you want the attention so here it is!’ And then they spew. And the good voices, the people who just come to have decent conversations on the internet or speak their opinions and criticism with respect and humor and community in mind get drowned out by waves of absolutely rancid garbage. Or worse, they get drowned out by voices of critics who use their own self-created voices to spew the same trash, except under the guise of journalism.

The Newsroom this week had a quote come out of the main character Will’s mouth. “I’m against censorship but I’m a big fan of self-censorship.” That means that just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean it SHOULD be said. And when you say it, you have a responsibility to consider what kind of impact it has on another human being. Just because you CAN say something a certain way doesn’t mean you should. It’s a matter of respect and empathy and we as an internet society seem to be fighting an uphill battle against a landslide of poisonous garbage that cuts a path through good people who are just trying to do what they love.

I don’t know Phil Fish. I don’t know a thing about him personally, about his behavior, and I have no opinion one way or another about him as a person. I don’t know Anita Sarkeesian. I don’t know Reza Aslan. But I know folks who have gotten this treatment. I have burst into tears over things said to me in hurtful, hateful internet crap. I’ve had people discount all the writing I might do or anything I’ve said on a panel to slam into me for being ‘a loudmouth bitch’ or ‘fat disgusting slag’. I have looked at my computer with open-mouthed disgust and thought, “Who the hell told you it was okay to say such things?”

And I decided it wasn’t okay. And I decided to try to do better, to be more careful about how I addressed others in my criticisms and treatment. I decided to work on examining people’s actions and output in my criticism rather than who they are as people because glass houses world, glass frickin houses. But I also decided not to keep quiet about the phenomenon. If the trolls and the nasty critics and the hopped-up internet bullies get a voice, so do to the folks who say that this isn’t okay. So I’m going to use that voice and say it loud AGAIN. Because, you know, it seems to need a reminder every five minutes.

This shit is not okay. Not anywhere. I don’t care who the hell you are. Learn to talk respectfully to one another again or put down the microphone because your attitude is not welcome in a community of creators, whomever they may be. I’m not prepared to stand as a creator in a community I’m brand new to and say its okay when creators are bullied and heckled and hurt. Or if that is the way the gaming community works, it best come to realize that not all of us signed up for that – I certainly didn’t – and I won’t stand for it in my interactions. I’m holding others to a higher standard now.

So seriously, come to argue, come to be critical of work, come to discuss. But for the love of everything holy, learn to keep a respectful, civil tongue in your head or count yourself as part of the sea of toxic crap that floats along the media stream. Be quality or be part of the problem.

There’s Something About Mako

July 23, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Film, Geek Culture

Everyone’s still talking about Pacific Rim. The movie has been out for a couple of weeks and the geek world is still buzzing about the kaiju-versus-mech nerdfest that has everyone going stomp-happy into theaters. Sure the movie might not have made as much money as people had hoped, but all together the summer blockbuster fulfilled every geeky childhood whim to see Godzilla-style giant monsters kick around giant action figures. But another conversation that’s come out around the film centers around the film’s not-so-secret protagonist, Mako Mori. Specifically, fans have been questioning Mako as a ‘feminist’ hero. In a time when geek culture is being super critical about its women icons, the debate has been fast and furious about Mako’s feminist cred.

(Warning: There are spoilers herein.)

Mako is at first glance a typical movie heroine. She’s pretty, she can kick the male lead’s butt and still be emotional and vulnerable when needed. She’s top of her class, the adopted daughter of the heroic general. She even has the most tragic of backstories you can imagine, right down to getting her very own flashback as a crying little girl with a tiny red shoe. She hits all the right notes to be an inoffensive movie heroine too. She’s demure when she needs to be, tough when called upon, brilliant otherwise, and self-doubting in a way that makes her seem humanized and reachable. She is written to be pitch perfect in nearly all directions. This is the movie heroine at its finest, right?

Well actually, yes. She is.

PACIFIC-RIM-Rinko-Kikuchi-As-Mako-Mori

Mako embodies a lot of the factors that would point to her being a strong female character in a film. First, she isn’t simply in the film to be the emotional crutch for the main character. If anything, her co-pilot Raleigh is the emotional pivotal point as he guides her forward on her heroic journey. And Mako does have a hero’s journey straight out of Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces, following the arch of the reluctant initiate who seeks out adventure and triumphs in the face of adversity to return home the victor. That role of the young adventure seeker in films is usually reserved for the male protagonist, like Luke Skywalker, and we could almost have imagined Raleigh being written that way. But no, Pacific Rim gave us Mako. And as opposed to transforming that female heroine into a sexualized male fantasy trope, a tight-costumed bit of camera bait to be oggled, Mako is treated as a person as opposed to a sexual fantasy on screen, a woman with brains and will and actual clothing. Considering what we’ve seen for a lot of heroines in movies, these are big steps forward.

Yet and still, some fans are not pleased with Mako’s characterization. Lets unpack why.

The fact that the film flunks the Bedchel test is no question. There would have to be another woman in the film for Mako to have a conversation with for it to actually be possible to pass the Bedchel test. Oh wait, there’s the female Russian pilot of Cherno Alpha, but to have her and Mako have a conversation that isn’t about men or relationships they would have had to give the Russian pilot LINES FIRST. (Ahem, a pet peeve – I loved Cherno Alpha and the Russians, for all we saw of them). That said, this is a legitimate problem with the movie in that its single female character has no other women to talk to. That is a problem with the movie in general and not with Mako’s character, so we can move on. (Pro tip on this one: next time one of the scientists could have been a woman? Or the staff? Or something?) But on to the issues with Mako.

pacific-rim-10 — Kaiju ate your family! You’d cry too!

First there’s the charge that Mako is too emotional. She does spend a great deal of the film appealing to folks with wide eyes brimming with tears, caught up in the memories of her vengeance or frustration over being kept back because of her inexperience. This accusation of too much emotion in a female character is a double-edged sword because it implies that to be a strong female protagonist, one has to be emotionless. Worse yet, it equates that emotion with weakness, a fact that has been perpetuated by patriarchal society and media tropes forever. By leveling the idea that emotions are a sign of a weak character at Mako, we are supporting the notion that having feelings and showing them in a movie are bad. Why, because the male characters don’t do it?

The second issue is that Mako feeds into typical female movie tropes by being demure and self-effacing about her capabilities to the men around her. She seems almost intent on filling the humble woman role perfectly, stumbling at times to keep her head down. But is that because she’s a woman or because her character is written as a naive recruit, kept in an overprotective relationship by her mentor/father figure Stacker Pentecost? This self-consciousness in the face of her own success is an uncomfortable line to walk with a female character, as it can seem apologetic. Is Mako portrayed this way because she is showing a character flaw she can overcome throughout the movie in her character evolution, or feeding into the trope of the ‘don’t make waves’ woman? The portrayal straddles the line at times in ways that make it difficult to know the intent. Still, that kind of self-doubt in a young hero (ala Luke Skywalker) would not, I believe, be questioned as intently in a male protagonist. It is expected that a young hero would be unsure, but because she’s a woman we doubt the motivation behind the narrative choice.

If anything I believe its that relationship between Pentecost and Mako that leads to the most criticism leveled at the character. Scenes between the two, while touching, can rankle as the relationship seems less at times like a loving mentor/child and more like a stern father figure, limiting Mako’s growth from shy girl into capable woman. That patriarchal hand can feel a little dated for a strong female protagonist and can lead to the idea that Mako is passive for a great deal of the film, only allowed out to have her adventures when the men in her life help her get there. In fact, it isn’t until Raleigh steps up to vouch for her with Pentecost that her mentor even allows her to step into the pilot program. It isn’t her prowess that sets her apart, but Raleigh’s determination to give her a chance to save the world. And therein lies the problem – Mako can’t make a difference in the film unless Raleigh and Stacker allow her to do so. There is her lack of agency and the hand of male authority all over the character.

But does that take away from Mako as an interesting character? Does that remove the fact that she has a great heroic journey throughout the film? No. But it makes the way in which her journey happens a little uncomfortable. It makes one wonder if the overprotective father story would have landed on a father/son relationship if Mako had been written as a boy. In Hollywood, the more traditional struggle story for a woman’s heroic journey is to escape the house of her father. The fact that she doesn’t end up in the arms of a man to replace that father figure is where the traditional narrative deviates and helps set Mako apart. Still, there are all these classic tropes in place that bind Mako to a traditional Hollywood heroine’s narrative. If one looks at all of Pacific Rim, however, you can get an answer as to why that might be the case.

Pacific Rim as a film is cliche as HELL.

These are the main characters, folks! Not the people!

The movie is a ball of cliche wrapped in cliche with a bit of typical blockbuster summer film tossed in. Its a monster movie with giant robots and kaiju/lovecraftian horrors beating each other up in the ocean! There is little by way of expectation of depth in the plot, which is held together by the flimsiest of pseudo-science (though adequately explained) and flashy one-liners. The dialogue is so hammy it rings of old 1950’s sci-fi films like Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, but that’s entirely the point. The movie isn’t in the business of taking itself seriously and relies on typical Hollywood tropes to hold it together so the audience can enjoy some kaiju fun. It’s no surprise then that the characters are all regurgitations of two-dimensional archetypes. There is the reluctant male hero returning for his one last hurrah, the dying mentor who has to see the last battle through, the brash cocky asshole ala Han Solo out to prove his worth to his distant father figure. Let’s not even take apart the sidekicks because its just too damn easy. Each of these characters is textbook simple Hollywood trope o’clock, so why are we surprised that Mako is the same? Why are we picking her apart so much?

I think its because she’s the woman. And we’re looking for something to pick on. We want to find something exceptionally different in Mako and cannot be happy when there are sparks of independence in an otherwise two-dimensionally characterized film. We see the advancements – the lack of a love narrative to hamper the character for example- and we jump up to expect feminist wonders. Yet we’re holding the character to a standard that every other character in the film fails to meet – that of depth – and that is unfair to the character herself. Mako can’t be picked on for not standing as a paragon of feminist discourse, or else we need to pick apart every other aspect of the mindless action movie fun. If we do that, the entire film falls to pieces under the weight of its own cliche.

In the end, Pacific Rim isn’t out to make feminist statements. Its not even out to make statements about individual characters, or give us anything but Saturday Morning Cartoon versions of heroes to hold up its monster-battle narrative. So to expect more from the heroine of the film is almost unfair and certainly cherry-picking problems without considering context. To that end, I submit that perhaps we need to leave Mako alone on this one and celebrate what was done with her rather than pick her apart. Or else complain about all the characters as one whole because you can’t have it both ways.

((Note: this article was inspired by a conversation with the awesome Lillian Cohen-Moore and two articles online: “Mako and the Hero’s Journey” and “Is Pacific Rim’s Mako Mori a Feminist Hero?” I would suggest checking them both out!)

“Mistakes Were Made” Aka The Front Person Problem

June 23, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Speaking Out

This article is about being the Front Man. The Front Woman. The Front Person. Please don’t look at the gender-use in the term and say I’m forgetting folks? Just getting that part out of the way now. Plus, this is going to be kind of long. So, on with the show.

This is an article about the Front Man and How to Apologize. I was on my way to writing an article about being the Front Man in an organization when the very smart Chuck Wendig pointed out some comparisons on Twitter that I could not ignore. Much appreciation for the inspiration here to Chuck because he had a good point.

This week there have been lots of apologies, and not all of them have been good.

The world of media seems to be the week of scandals the last few days. Paula Deen throws around racist slurs and then apologizes about having to apologize (in between still being a racist). Kickstarter has to shut down a ‘seducer’s guide book’ (aka how to be a creepy creeper in three easy steps) and has to apologize when they don’t quite get to it in time. And then there’s Gabe of Penny Arcade, apologizing for blowing his stack on Twitter over being one of the least trans-sensitive human beings in the public geek eye that I’ve ever seen. It’s been a week for apologies, folks. Or rather, for attempted apologies.

So let me pose a question: did folks forget lately that people are listening?

In the age of the internet, the world isn’t just about sharing information, it’s about sharing opinion. With the touch of a few buttons or keys on a keyboard, people can share their opinions on whatever comes up in the media. More than that, media is now created on different platforms than every before. I am old enough (brace yourself, that’s right!) to remember a time without the internet, when you couldn’t just turn around and get an immediate response from thousands of people on what you’ve said. However those days are way behind us and now, one word in the wrong direction can get someone negative responses all over the internet. For some people, that’s only negative responses within your own friend circle or community. For others, your reach is a lot larger.

The Front Person for a company, or a company in itself, has a public image it cultivates. And if it’s run by anyone savvy at all in the ways of business, that public image is crafted around the brand someone wants others to perceive. Sound calculated? It is, but just as calculated as how an individual wants to be seen among their friends. A Front Person or a company just has a lot more people watching, and are held accountable for their words and actions by lots of folks either as fans or consumers (or both). To understand that is to navigate the waters of business with reputation intact.

And what reputation? Whatever one a person wants to cultivate. Some folks just want to be themselves and be out there in the public eye as themselves, barring little to no agenda outside “Hey, I want to do cool things and share them!” or “My company is making quality products to share with our consumers, take a look at the great stuff we’ve got!” I won’t get into the more negatively calculating (aka: manipulative in the bad way) folks or businesses, because we’d get off topic. The point here is, with the internet as a forum, the message people put out there reaches so many more folks. And if that message includes something hateful, or even ignorant, or badly spoken, you will get in a whole lot of trouble. Fast.

Unless that’s the image you want. Unless you want to be ‘the dick’. Or the provocateur. Or just ‘that guy’.

In an age when it takes a lot to cut through all the noise of a million voices all jumping for social media attention, inflammatory views will certainly rise to the top. Is that person being inflammatory on purpose? Who knows. Unless you’re privy to strategy, you can’t know for sure. But a good hint is to look at how the person or company handles their apologies after something ‘bad’ happens. If an apology happens at all.

Example 1: Paula Deen gets caught spewing racist garbage. She puts out a forty-five second video that isn’t about how what she said was wrong. Instead, it’s about how sorry she is about having to apologize. An article recently pointed out that she’s like the thief who isn’t sorry they stole, but rather sorry that they were caught. That is the perfect analogy for this kind of response, and gives a hint to how this person does business in the first place. They aren’t apologizing for their actions, but for the fact that their public image has taken a hit. PS: People don’t seem to be falling for it, and Deen was let go from her Food Network contract.

Example 2: Kickstarter had a project funded on it that was, essentially, a guide on how to seduce women. Among it’s creepier implications, along with it just being kind of ridiculous and desperate to begin with, its a book written by a person whose Reddit posts have been tracked back to include implications of forcing women into sexual contact against their will. I’ll say that in plainer terms: the guy has implied previously that it’s okay to aggress on women sexually to get what you want. The book was funded but Kickstarter backers raised red flags just before the money was about to get sent through at the end of the project. Kickstarter didn’t stop it and the money went through. However, they issued a very seriously worded apology to their audience, recognizing that the project itself was a problem. They not only amended their terms to keep such ‘seduction guides’ from being put up on Kickstarter in the future, they also donated money to an organization that helps those harmed by sexual assault. They didn’t mealy mouth. They said it simply: we were wrong.

A pro tip on knowing when folks don’t mean their apologies? Check for the passive language. “Mistakes Were Made” is my favorite. Nobody there is pointed to to take responsibility whatsoever. Mistakes were made? By whom? Who made them and how? What is being done to fix the problem for the future? Beuler? Anyone?

Example 3: And here’s where things get complicated. In the geek community, Penny Arcade is a serious powerhouse. It’s a web comic, a brand of it’s own, and also the power behind the Pax conventions around the world. It has clout, not only in financial sense, but in influencing thought among it’s fans by view of the mouthpiece of their web comic, con and blog. So when one of it’s frontmen, Gabe (aka Mike Krahulik), goes ahead and says things that are hurtful to the trans community – after having a history of opening his mouth and hurtful things falling out- people take notice. He has self-proclaimed himself ‘a dick’ in blog posts when talking about how he speaks, so in his choice to just say what he wants, he insulted a hell of a lot of folks. And probably cost his company a lot of business in the process. Many who were previously unimpressed by the Pax frontrunner’s handling of the unimpressive ‘dick wolf’ controversy (if you don’t know what that is, check this out for a breakdown, or don’t if you want to avoid face-palming at the impressive insanity) have said enough is enough over this, including the Fullbright Company (creators of the video game Gone Home) who has chosen not to attend Pax over this. They won’t be the only ones.

So Gabe came out and apologized. And that assuaged a lot of folks. Now for me? I sat back and read the apology and something bothered me. It was a single line at the bottom. Gabe says that he should have stepped away rather than continuing to engage when he was angry, because he was angry at being called names. That’s effectively what started this. He didn’t like being called a name, and got mad. In the wake of the reaction to his words, Gabe then says he’s worried about how this will affect other businesses attached to his name, saying:

I know personally I’m an incredibly damaged individual. I’m not really sure I’m the best foundation for all this other stuff. I don’t want to be the reason people don’t go to PAX or don’t support Child’s Play or don’t watch the shows on PATV. I hate the idea that because I can’t stop being an asshole I hurt all these other amazing things.

It was that line that made me take pause. Can’t stop being an asshole. Can’t. Not won’t. Can’t. As if the option has been taken out of his hands. That, sadly, is not the case. It is not the case for anyone. People choose what they say, even in the heat of anger. People choose how they act, even if they are damaged. People choose to be hurtful or to hold their tongues.

Mistakes were made. I can’t. Passive language.

Being a Front Person is hard. You’re in the public eye, you’ve got folks watching your every move. You have the right to freedom of speech, just like any other person in a free country. Yet if you build something, build a brand, and use that as a place from which to launch your fortunes and then build a fan following from it, you are responsible for the words that come out of your mouth. You are responsible for what you put forward, for better or worse, as any human being is responsible for their words and actions. Except you have a wider audience you’re reaching and therefore, in my opinion, cannot afford to be passive in considering your choices. Mistakes were not made – you made them. And you can learn from them, as Kickstarter did in their respectful and graceful apology, or stand by what you’ve said and be held to account for it by people who disagree with you. There isn’t such a thing as I Can’t and that doesn’t stand as an apology.

Now you might ask: where do you get off saying these things? Well, it all comes back to one thing. I’m now a writer, and a blogger, and a person out there writing things that lots of people read. Sure, not like Penny Arcade, no way like that. But apparently, folks read this blog (hi out there!) and they’ve read my work. I have people I talk to at conventions, on Twitter, on Facebook and in my personal and professional life. And every day, I craft my own image as Shoshana – a writer, a game designer, and a person just trying to be a geek in this crazy geeky world. And I don’t believe in the word can’t as an excuse if I hurt someone with my words. I speak about a lot of topics: game design, larping and feminist thought especially. If in any of those conversations I hurt someone, I hope that I will have the where-with-all to stand up and not say mistakes were made in a defensive way or I couldn’t help myself, but instead say the words hardest but most important to say in this world sometimes:

I am sorry. I was wrong.

I can only expect the same from people whose voice rings louder than my own.

UPDATE: I’ll point out one update that came in while I was formulating this article. Gabe has added an addition to his apology. He’s also donated $20,000 to The Trevor Project in response to the people his words may have hurt. And that’s a start in the right direction, just as Kickstarter responded by recompense to a charity called RAINN. I’ll let that stand for what it is and not beat the dead horse. Let’s hope this kind of thing stops staining the Pax community again and again.

LARPing Like It’s… Cold? Knutepunkt 2013 (Part 1)

April 29, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Game Design, Geek Culture

How much can I get into one suitcase? Do I need a sleeping bag? And what does one wear to a Nordic LARP anyway? These were all questions that ran through my mind when I packed in preparation for my first jaunt overseas in a long while. I was going to attend Knutepunkt, the Nordic LARP conference held once a year in one of the four countries that make up the heart of the Nordic scene – Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway. I’d be spending four days in Oslo for the Week in Norway program and then would head up to the main conference up in Haraldvangen, a camp grounds on a beautiful lake. Looking back now back in Brooklyn, I realize I was in no way prepared for how much this trip would have such a profound change on my life.

This is Part 1 of my analysis of the whole Nordic LARP adventure. There’s so much to talk about I’m splitting it up. Pictures included are credited to their creators.

To Begin – What is Nordic LARP?

That question is a little harder to explain than one would imagine. People have been debating the actual definition for the movement for ages, so I don’t presume to have a good one just yet (if I ever will). For better and more concise explanations, I refer to Lizzie Stark’s blog. Or even better, check out Jaakko Stenros’s wonderful lecture in the Nordic LARP Talk series. But here we go anyway, let’s give it a shot, with a little context to the overall LARP community included too.

To those who are familiar with live action role-play games, or LARPs, a simple introduction would start by saying that there are lots of different traditions in the LARP community. Within the United States and abroad, the major traditions include:

Theater-style games: these are usually categorized as games that involve non-physical combat styles and simulation of events through description and symbolic representation. Famous theater-style LARP systems include the Mind’s Eye Theater system by White Wolf for it’s World of Darkness setting. It’s meant to be (mostly) no physical contact.
Boffer games: This is a broad term for games that involve actual physical contact in their combat systems. Players use latex or foam weapons to engage in simulated combat, while magic and other supernatural events are symbolically represented using things like ‘spell packets’ (tiny bean bags or birdseed filled sewn packets) or light sources. These games tend to aim for more physical immersion in environment design to help drag the players into a What You See Is What You Get atmosphere.

While these are two of the predominant systems of gameplay in LARP, each full of their own traditions and development history, there is a third tradition that has been gaining more international attention in the last few years. That tradition is known as Nordic LARP and though as the name suggests it began in the Nordic countries, its influence has been felt across Europe and in recent years in the US, Canada and South America.

So what is Nordic LARP? It’s a tradition of LARP heavily influenced by artistic and theatrical expression that focus on high immersion both in environment and emotional/psychological engagement. The games in this tradition tend to focus on serious material and frame their games with workshops before the game and debriefs afterwards to present a well-informed and emotionally safe environment to engage in serious subject matter. The games also utilize what are known as metatechniques within the game to structure the play, drawing heavily from theatrical and cinematic influences. The culture also involves putting aside stricter goal-driven, ‘winning’ mindsets by encouraging players to often ‘play to lose’ so as to experience a richer story in game, as well as encourages players to create characters that let them play close to home and tie themselves emotionally to their characters. This can cause a lot of bleed, emotional cross-over from your character to yourself, which is something that Nordic LARP encourages for richness of play.

What develops out of these and other complexities of the Nordic tradition is a body of games that are deeply touching, well-structured, and immersive to players. The Nordic community is also heavily interested in cultivating a body of work which documents LARPs, since by nature larps are ephemeral and cannot be repeated exactly. For that reason, one can read up on some of the major games over there, like Mad About the Boy (based on Y: the Last Man), Kapo (a prison-camp LARP about internment and the loss of humanity during incarceration), and Just A Little Lovin’ (about the AIDS crisis in the 80’s in NYC). There’s also an amazing textbook on the community called Nordic LARP by Jaako Stenros and Markus Montola which has received critical acclaim, including winning the Diana Jones Award at Gencon in 2012.

Knutepunkt developed as the convention center of this developing community, a conference where games could be showcased and discourse on the art of making larps could be held. As far as I can tell, Knutepunkt is THE place to discuss Nordic LARP and welcomes passionate designers and players from everywhere once a year. This was my first time in attendance.

The Trip Over and A Week in Norway

I caught a flight overnight and arrived in Norway Monday morning. I was traveling with Chris, a DC area gamer and larp organizer that I met earlier this year at InterCon. We stayed together at a local hotel in Oslo while participating in A Week in Norway, the four day extended programming provided by the Knutepunkt organizers for those who wanted to cram more Nordic LARP experience into their trip. From Monday on they had a community house open with games and food available all day, and events planned for the participants. We did a workshop on rituals in LARP, a particular favorite tradition of the Norwegian designers, that took place inside a mausoleum. We listened to talks about Nordic LARP hosted by Nordic Larp Talks, including presentations by Jaako Stenros (co-author of Pervasive Games and the Nordic LARP book), Annika Waern (Pervasive Game co-author) and Sarah Lynne Bowman (author of The Functions of Role-Playing Games). And one of my personal favorites, we played a game called Limbo, held on a tram as it rode around the city and experienced being trapped in Purgatory.

Part of the events scheduled also included larps written by participants in the Larp Exchange Academy, an extension of the summer LARP Exchange Academy run in Vilnus, Lithuania in June. These brave souls traveled from their home countries to be holed up in a house in the hills outside of Oslo to spend three days writing LARPs. The results were some brand new games which we play tested during that week we were there. I had the pleasure of playing a game called Stereo Hearts, in which the players explored inter-personal relationships using songs on your playlist and recited monologues. I was at first skeptical – I’d seen game jams done but a game jam on larps? And a game about playlists to share emotion?

I was never so happy to be wrong. Stereo Hearts proved to be a moving, extremely engaging game with some fantastic use of Nordic metatechniques. I don’t think I’d ever engaged so quickly or so deeply in emotional relationships in a LARP. Afterwards, I felt emotionally exhausted and yet happy, as I’d been deeply touched by the depth of internal struggles we’d experienced in a brief game.

That is a great way to describe most of my week in Oslo – emotionally exhausted and yet happy. I had never imagined that immersing myself in the Nordic LARP scene would require me to open up quite so much of myself, both in games and in inter-personal relationships. I spent a lot of the time meeting new people and discussing the differences between LARP cultures in different countries, and as a result met a lot of wonderful, friendly, intelligent folks from more countries than I could name. Personally, the games that I was introduced to also required me to dig deep into my own emotions to feed the role-play and I soon found myself exploring some deep-down emotionally intense places both during and after events.

I soon realized why the Nordic larp tradition focuses intently on what is known as debriefing or after-care, in which organizers go over the events of the game and how players felt about what went down. While this might sound very touchy-feely to gamers from America, this culture of after-care is instrumental in giving players an avenue to express what they felt in a game should they feel the need. I found myself being open and honest about how events in character felt and what I was thinking about after the game ended, a space that I often find lacking in American LARPs. I also found myself talking extensively with other designers and larp academics about the emotional implications of the idea of ‘bleeding’ in and out of ones character, whether that was ‘healthy’ and whether or not after-care was needed – all fodder for a blog post all it’s own shortly.

The workshop before the LIMBO Larp (photo by me)a

The view from the LARP exchange Academy headquarters (photo by me)

Overall, the week in Norway provided me with insight into how the community worked and gave me a great taste of what’s to come. Because if I believed that four days in Oslo with Nordic LARP was intense, I was nowhere prepared for the awesomeness of Knutepunkt 2013.

To be continued…

Trains, Planes and Automobiles – My Upcoming Convention Schedule

April 29, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Geek Culture

Hey again, folks! It’s your exhausted, still jet lagged a week later friend, recovering from what can only be convention plague a week after coming back from Norway. I will shortly have up my recap of the amazing time I had at Knutepunkt 2013 in Norway and at the Different Games conference at NYU Poly this weekend, but first I have exciting news. My convention schedule for this upcoming con season has blossomed into a lot of travel and I’m excited to talk about some places where I’ll be attending, running events, and sitting on panels. Heck, between this and attending Dystopia Rising games in New Jersey, Massechussets and soon potentially in Pennsylvania, I doubt I’ll have a free weekend until the end of the year.

Regardless, here’s the schedule, and it’s robust to say the least!

Camp Nerdly – Ever want to go Nerd camping? Go out to summer camp with tabletop RPGs and more dice than you can shake a marshmallow on a stick at? Well, that’s Camp Nerdly folks. Outside of Washington DC the weekend of May 17th-19th, I’ll be attending just for the heck of playing some fun RPGs with some great people (my present to myself for surviving a tough semester). I’ll admit to coming into this event blind, but anything that looks like nerd camp sounds like fun!

KristaCon – If you’re not familiar, KristaCon is a tabletop extravaganza held by Krista White and Brennan Taylor (of Galileo Games fame). Organized originally as an intense weekend of tabletop at their home, it has now blossomed into a tradition of two days of intense RPG madness that’s expanding to be held in New York City weekend of May 24th-26th. I attending a KristaCon where I got to play two days of intense Marvel Heroic RPG as my favorite character, Jean Grey, and wouldn’t miss this one for the world.

DexCon – All right, no more fun and games… well, that sounds wrong when talking about a convention. But what I mean is, no more just going to a convention to have fun! I’ll be rolling into one of my favorite conventions, DexCon 2013 in Morristown New Jersey with my Phoenix Outlaw crew to run two amazing LARPs. The first is a brand new signature event based on the Battlestar Galactica universe called ‘Straight On ‘Til Morning: Tales of the Rising Star’ with Last Second Productions, headed by my old friend Michael Maleki. The second event we’ll be running is my favorite, the Dresden Files LARP. This will be the chronicle closer for our last four games and it’s entitled “Final Frost.” There might be some other Phoenix Outlaw surprises going on that weekend, so stay tuned…

GenCon– This is the big road trip, folks! I will be strapping into a vehicle for a nice long road trip out to Indianapolis, Indiana to play like a rockstar at GenCon 2013. Along with celebrating the good work done by folks in the industry, I’m waiting to hear back about possibly doing a couple of panels there, including one on representation of religion and religious ideas in game culture and another on mental health in game culture. More information will be coming up about these as they appear. Mostly I’m excited about the epic road trip that always precedes GenCon. This year I’ll be doing it with John Adamus, a writer and an editor trapped in a car for ten hours of driving. This should be fun!

PaxPrime– PaxEast a while back saw me, Iris Explosion, Stella Chu, Anja Keister and Susana Polo of the Mary Sue light up the stage with ‘You Game Like A Girl’ (which can now be seen in its entirety on YouTube sans the horrid trolling). It was such an intense experience but apparently a successful one, because we’re doing it again! This time we’re heading to Seattle for PaxPrime and I’m expecting it to be a heck of a trip. I’ve never been to Seattle so I’m looking forward to seeing the city, as well as kicking back at the convention to take in the atmosphere. Now I just have to figure out funding for this one too and we’re set.

WyrdCon – This is a huge one for me and team Phoenix Outlaw, folks. John Adamus and I will be flying out to Los Angeles for WyrdCon 2013 where we have bid to run a session of the Dresden Files LARP. I’m excited to be taking the Dresden LARP across the country for a whirl and look forward to seeing folks like Aaron Vanick of Seekers Unlimited, who I had the pleasure of meeting at InterCon this year in Massachusetts.

GeekGirlCon – It’s my pleasure to say that I’ve been invited to come out and participate in GeekGirlCon 2013. I’ve been a huge fan of this convention since I first heard of it and the great work they’re doing in creating a space for women to talk about women in geek culture. When they reached out to me after PaxEast, I was ecstatic and I’m working hard to gather up funding for a second trip to Seattle this year to make being at this convention a reality. Who knows what kind of women in game design shenanigans I can contribute? Stay tuned as to whether this will be happening!

Metatopia – You know that I wouldn’t miss this one for the world. For those that aren’t familiar with Metatopia, it’s a game designers convention held by the folks who do DexCon and Dreamation in Morristown NJ. I feel like every time I attend Metatopia, amazing things happen and I learn so much. I expect this year to be no exception! That’s way out in November, but generally Metatopia puts a cap on the convention season for me in the most positive way and I always look forward to it. I’m looking forward to potentially bidding the women in game design panel once more, and even a discussion on game scholarship and it’s relations to indie game design. This is another ‘stay tuned’.

But wouldn’t you know, that might not be the close of the con season for me. A document recently made the rounds by Klaus Raasted, a professional larper and designer from the Nordic LARP scene. It seems he wants to run a pro larp convention in November too, maybe the week after Metatopia. Heh, can we say another trip across the pond? Let’s see what happens, but I’d be down.

This schedule also doesn’t take into account conferences like Practice at NYU and other academic events. I’m also trying to put together the funds to attempt to get to Vancouver the first week in June for the Feminists in Games conference to present a paper on the evolution of the Tomb Raider franchise and theories on women’s discourse in game design. But wouldn’t you know, the West Coast is far away and I just need to learn to spontaneously teleport.

In all seriousness, I feel really blessed and happy that folks want me and mine to come out and do awesome events at their conferences and conventions. Being a part of the nerd community has been such a central part of my life for the last ten years or so, and being able to contribute to events has been fantastic. I’m looking forward to more such events (including a special one I’ll be announcing in it’s own post soon) in 2014 as well.

You Game Like A (Fat) Girl – Trolling and Haters Gonna Hate

April 12, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Geek Social Fallacies, Speaking Out

It took me a little while to write this. Why you ask? Because the topic tends to get my blood pressure up. So here goes.

PaxEast was by and large one of the best convention experiences of my life. I got a chance to get up in front of an audience of people and talk about one of my favorite topics of all time: gaming. I got a chance to look women in the eye and say “this is an industry for you and by you” and be supportive of others. I got a chance to talk about representation of women in games and voice my opinions.

It was also my opportunity to get trolled. Very hard.

The forms of trolling came as follows:

First, during the actual panel, we were being live streamed on Twitch.tv. The stream has a chat room associated with it that was live even before our panel’s cameras went hot. As we sat on stage, discussing what we would be saying, text messages began to fly to my phone. “Don’t open the chat!” they warned. “Don’t look at it.” Another told me that everything that is wrong about women’s treatment in geek culture was being spewed into that chat room. To this day, people have warned me not to look at that chat log. Why? Because we got nailed by every bit of filth spewing out of the internet. I’m going to spare everyone the trash because that’s what it was – trash. But there is one thing I’m going to comment on. And that’s how I got smacked around for my weight. So I’ll let folks who haven’t met me in on a little secret?

I’m fat. Heavy. Obese. Whatever you want to call it. I am a nearly six foot tall large woman.

Apparently that point, obvious to anyone with eyes and cognitive function, turned off the hearing receptors in some folks’ heads the minute I started talking at the panel. And suddenly the trolls thought it was amusing to find how many ways they could call me fat. Because engaging with the actual material of a discourse was too difficult perhaps? Who knows. Anyway, I got this told to me second hand because I was too busy, you know, being on a panel to pay attention. Later, I was told to shake it off.

Then someone passed me a YouTube video commenting on the panel. It’s from a woman who decided to spend thirty-four minutes bashing the hell out of our panel for everything from the content to the audio quality (which by the way is not something we have control over?). Now I don’t mind a spirited debate about panel format or content – several blogs commented on the content of our arguments and I’m cool with that. But it was the introduction she gave to each of us that made me sit up and take notice. See, this YouTube responder decided to make little sketches of us and, as opposed to using the internet to look up our names (printed in the PaxEast schedule on their website, given at the end of the panel on a slide or clearly said aloud at the beginning of the panel), decided to give us little nicknames instead. Here’s mine:

Big. Yup, couldn’t even come up with a better one than a three letter word. No complicated grammar here. Just BIG.

What does one say to that?

Well, let’s start here with this:

YES. Congratulations. You have eyes. So, can we move on now?

The internet is known as a place where you need to have thick skin. The level to which people will put their hands on a keyboard and spew the most horrific, rude, ridiculous shit in the world amazes me. What also amazes me is the way people seem to believe that the instant a person who is fat goes out in front of a camera, or up on a stage, automatically the discourse is about their weight. As if there’s no way to restrain from spewing out the obvious as a way to shut them down. Like being fat invalidates who they are.

Hate to tell you, cats and kittens, being fat isn’t who I am. Nor is it what I stand for. It’s a part of my life and it’s my body. It’s a part of what I struggle with every day. But it’s not ALL of me. And it certainly doesn’t invalidate my work, my words, or my existence. And it certainly can’t be used as a way to shut me up or shut me down. Why? Because it doesn’t make me less of a person.

Say and feel what you will about obesity, but being fat does not mean I have an obligation to disappear. That’s the baggage of people pointing fingers and calling FAT the way someone would have called LEPER in a medieval town. That’s their insecurity, their easy way of spewing their angst at a target. Because hey, trolling is just something we accept, and how dare that fat person try to stand up and be something besides a fat person? How dare they have the confidence to be anything except embarrassed or ashamed of who they are? How dare they be a professional or a creative type or anything else besides miserable? How dare they be a person?

Well, hate to say it folks: I’m a person. I’m a fast talking, game designing, story writing, ass kicking female fat person. I write games and fiction, go to grad school, blog, love puppies, have friends and relationships and on weekends I go out and lead battles in which I kick the crap out of LARP zombies. I get up on stage and I speak my mind about the state of women in the game industry, female representation in games, live action games and their place in game discourse, and geek culture. And just because I’m fat does not mean I’ll sit back in a corner and hate myself because you want me to. Ain’t gonna happen. Just because you call me fat won’t ever make me stop. Because until you can bring up your discourse to something that includes disputing my points with an organized argument that can be respected above a fourth grade level? You got nothing on me or anyone else who has the courage to stand up and be counted as a creator, an innovator, a speaker, and a force for change. And that counts for calling someone any other pointless insult that you come up with, be it physical, racial, religious, gender based or sexual orientation bashing. You and your purposeless crap have no place in an actual conversation and until you realize that and step up your game to actual discussion levels? You’re just the sad representation of the worst the internet and this world has to offer.

Haters gonna hate. But they’re going to have to step up their hate to reach me. Or at least step to me with more than the word BIG.

Cuz really. There are thesauruses people.

In the weeks since PaxEast I debated whether or not to write about the trolling that occurred. I questioned whether or not the negative feedback I received deserved even an ounce of my recognition. After all, this is the internet and we are taught on a regular basis not to feed the trolls, not to read the comments, not to care about their responses. We’re taught to ignore, ignore, and keep on keeping on. This time, I won’t keep my mouth shut. Why do you ask? Because last night a friend of mine went on a YouTube interview and got trolled about his weight too. And I realized that this is just going to keep going on until people kick back and say “Hey, jerks? I get that you want a forum for your angst against the universe. But take it somewhere else. I’m busy with being a professional. Go be something besides a professional asshat.”

And since PaxEast, I’ve been busy being a professional – writing a book, organizing the company I run, planning large scale LARPs, interning, doing grad school classes, working on a video game, preparing for an awesome trip to Norway to Knutepunkt, talking about whether or not I want to do a PhD and spending time with loved ones. And that’s what I’ll keep on doing, despite the trolls. But I won’t be silent about them again. I won’t sit back and say ‘trolls will just be trolls’. Or ‘you just have to put up with them’. I’m forced to interact with them. But I don’t have to condone garbage behavior. And neither do you.

My First PaxEast and “You Game Like A Girl”

March 29, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Convention Report, Game Design, Geek Culture, Speaking Out, Uncategorized

This past weekend, the Boston area hosted thousands of gamers rolling into their fair convention center for PaxEast, a major east coast gaming convention. Triple A companies to Indies in video games and tabletop brought their best to show to consumers and panels were held on every subject imaginable. This might have been enough to bring a gamer like me to the Boston area for the con, but I was lucky enough to be involved in one of the panels this year. And let me tell you, it was a heck of a time.

First let me start with saying that as a convention, I found PaxEast to be really enjoyable. The Expo Hall is chock full of video games to try from every company imaginable. I particularly enjoyed discovering a few new independent video games that I am looking forward to, like Red Barrel’s terrifying Outlast and Compulsion Games’ Contrast, both of which I wrote up for Tor.com this week. I also got the chance to get a look at Transistor from the creators of Bastion and I’m going to love putting my hands on it. The Indie Megabooth section was a chance to straight nerd out on great independent companies that are doing stellar work that, I dare say, is competitive with the quality coming out of the Triple A’s.

That, however, wasn’t even the best PART about the convention. PaxEast fostered an open gaming section where you could turn in your ID and take out whatever board game you wanted to try out. This section was open from 10AM until nearly two in the morning, letting gamers just get together with their friends for a good time. I had the privilege of spending most of that time with Rob Donoghue and Fred Hicks from Evil Hat productions, and we got to try a few amazing games that I never would have checked out otherwise (Cockroach Poker, anyone?) I could wax on about the convention, but let’s talk about the major event for me that weekend: the panel.

I was privileged enough to be invited by Anja Keister of the D20 Burlesque troupe to come in and speak as a game designer on a panel called “You Game Like A Girl: Tales of Trolls and White Knights.” The idea of the panel was to tackle the fraught issue of women in the gaming and geek community, spanning from the treatment of cosplayers to the representation of women in video games. We had a one hour slot on Sunday morning and the panel featured Susanna Polo from the Mary Sue, Stella Chu (professional cosplayer and burlesque dancer), Iris Explosion (burlesque dancer and sex educator), Anja Keister (founder of D20 Burlesque) and myself. For those who missed the panel you can find it on Twitch.tv here (hint: our panel starts at 3:05:00 – that’s hour three folks!) and check us out talking about the issues facing the female community.

From my perspective it was a surreal day. I got to the theater to see a line of people in the room next door. I asked what they were waiting for, and the Enforcer at the door said: “That’s the line for your theater. It’s already out the door.” I was positively floored. We got into Naga theater and set ourselves up on the stage and they let our audience in. And this? This was our audience.

The audience at "You Game Like A Girl" — The audience at “You Game Like A Girl”

I cannot explain how honored I felt to be in the presence of EIGHT HUNDRED of my fellow gamers who came to hear us talk about the topic of women in gaming. It was an incredible experience as people came up to the microphone and asked us questions or lit up Twitter on #Paxlikeagirl to express their support. A tradition was started too when Iris Explosion got so mad at misogyny issues that she launched a plastic cup off the stage, inspiring others who came up to the microphone to throw cups too. Soon we had the ‘we hate this!’ cup launching going on, which was hilarious and light fun.

The panel went off beautifully with only a modicum of trolling (which I’ll address in another post coming up soon), and the experience was overall super powerful and empowering. After the panel people came up to us to share stories and ask questions. I personally got to meet some women who are going into game design and who had questions about how to engage with problematic team situations or content. I’ve never quite been so humbled to have women ask if I’d be willing to mentor them going forward.

People brought up their badges and had us autograph them and asked us to autograph cups that had been thrown! It was a strangely surreal experience for me in general and we stuck around to talk to people as long as we could before we ran off to head back to New York.

From a game designers perspective, the kind of things we spoke about were just the tip of the iceberg of issues I wanted to talk about. But you only have one hour sometimes! I was really glad to be able to bring up the way men have been spoken to in the ‘fake geek girl’ debate, about people raising children to be the next generation of gamer girls, and about pushing back in unhealthy/uncomfortable situations for women in game teams. There was only so much time and so much we each could have spoken about from our particular specialties, but I think it was a great start. And it will be just a start, because there’s plenty of other opportunities for conversation.

Meanwhile, back at home, there’s more game design though to be done. So I’m back into writing and doing work. PaxEast, was a pleasure, hope to see you next year.