Random Aside – Shoshana Kessock

Brain Surgery Over, #LarryEvicted, And My Experience in Memes

June 12, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside

The modern world in a lot of ways is a screwed up place. There’s levels of war, disease, famine, pestilence, inequity and terror that go on today that are fueled by the innovations of modern technology that make me crazy sad for our future. And then there are miracles of modern science that make me amazed at how far we’ve come from wee huts and caves.

Take, for example, brain surgery. Mine, for example.

I will be explaining a little bit about my brain surgery without getting too graphic. To do so, I will be using one of my favorite outlets: memes. Why? Because it’s fun and I’m not allowed to get out of bed yet too much, so I’m going to enjoy a little bit of meme related fun here.

Sunday evening, I was having a bit of a panic. I was scheduled to go into surgery to have my brain tumor, which had been nicknamed Larry after the annoying neighbor from Three’s Company, removed. As you can imagine, this very idea was making me quite panicked.

I posted about my tumor and how I was optimistic about getting the dang thing taken out, but the closer one gets to a surgery, the more panic can set in. So I went from ‘chin up, everything’s going to be fine’, to something like this:

One doesn’t have an option with this kind of thing, however. When the doctors say it’s time to take out the jelly bean sized thing inside your head that isn’t supposed to be there? You go for it. But before I did that, I sat back and had a good, nice long think about life. Why? You don’t go into something like this without thinking about what you’ve been doing with your time, and what you want to do going forward. Morbid, sure, but health issues really give you a priority-straightening whether you want one or not.

So I started to think about life. And fear. And what fear can do to you.

I stayed up most of the night before the surgery thinking about how fear can shape our lives. How it can drive away our greatest impulses and make us reach for safer ground. I remember when I was growing up, I wanted to be something or someone who would help people. I wanted to be a good person. I modeled myself after the super heroes I read in comic books, and the novels I read about heroines who were kind and gentle and still fierce and powerful. I wanted to be all these things. I wanted to be so much. Now, looking back, I wondered how I measured up against all those old standards and whether I was happy with that standard. I thought about fear, and how it can drive you away from those ideals to make compromises. I thought about all the things I’d done in my life and wondered if perhaps in too many ways I had compromised. If I’d let the fear win. How many days of my life were spent like this?

Worse, I thought about all the times that I had taken a risk and it had bitten me badly. You know what’s the worst part about taking risks? Sometimes they do go bad. And then, cynicism can set in. Bitterness too. And worst of all, you can turtle up like mad. So looking back, I realized a good deal of my time in the last few years had been spent doing this:

And was I happy with that, going into this potentially scary brain surgery? Nope. Not at all.

So let’s just say I made a few promises to myself. And then I headed into the hospital.

The actual surgery went really well. I went to sleep, I woke up, and Larry the tumor was Evicted. I Tweeted #LarryEvicted about my recovery, slept a lot, and met a young woman who ended up my roommate who had been through this surgery not once, but three times! After I heard her story, I promptly stopped complaining, drank my water, dealt with the pain in my head, and learned to be thankful. I am grateful that I had one of the best surgeons around, a specialist in Cushing’s disease, who operated on me. From the indications from the doctor’s findings, they’re pretty sure the tumor is benign, it is Cushing’s disease, and it might be at the root of a lot of my medical issues.

That said, I want to address one thing: remember what I was saying about technology? I want to sing it’s praises for one second. A doctor figured out that I had this disease by shooting radiation into my brain through an MRI machine. They took a picture, then looked at the picture. Then another doctor went into my brain through my nose and pulled out said tumor. And did so without me getting cut up or badly ill. I effectively feel, two days later, like I have a flu with a serious migraine attached. That, these days, is what happens when you take out a tiny tumor. From a brain.

Technology and the universe looking after you, right? Holycow.

So here I am now, recovering. This isn’t the best blog post Iv’e ever written, I’m sure, because I’m still a little out of it. Hence the memes. Because right now, I feel like this:

But secretly, down deep? I’m still in that ‘OMGWHATTHEHECK?!’ stage. It’s hard to process the idea that I just went through finding out I had a tumor, graduating grad school, going to Los Angeles, and having the tumor removed in a two week period. Now, on the other side of it, I’m still processing how scary all of this has been and how this has given me perspective on what I want my life to look like going forward. I’ve got a lot of changes I want to see in my life, and thanks to this doctor and the support of amazing folk, I have that chance. Oh yes, and thanks to Obamacare. Anyone wants to say nasty things about ObamaCare around me will be in the verbal battle of a lifetime, because without it I would never have been able to have a brain tumor removed. Controversial topic? Sure. But when I don’t stroke out or die over comorbidity issues associated with the side effects of Larry the tumor, I’ll be thanking ObamaCare.

So what now? I don’t know. For the next week I have to avoid coughing, sneezing, blowing my nose, standing up too fast, lifting things, and generally doing much of anything. I have books to read, episodes of Night Vale to listen to, television to watch (Orange is the New Black is out after all) and after that I have writing to do when I feel better. But for now, I’m going to settle for processing my inner freak out over having a doctor cut into my brain. And once that processes through and I’m feeling better, I’m going to go right into this:

May the rest of the summer be all about the party. And may I remember the lessons I’ve picked up from this prioritization session. Much love to everyone who supported me in this, and to Doctor Post and Doctor Geer, who are amazing.

So The Summer Starts, And I Have A Brain Tumor

May 31, 2014 by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside

It’s summer. The windows in my room are open so I can smell the delicious aroma of Brooklyn in the warm sun. Outside, the neighbor’s dog is snarling his little hell beast head off at what I can only assume is some kind of wildlife. I sit in my room and realize that one week ago, I graduated from the NYU Game Center with my MFA in game design. Same day I flew out to WyrdCon and ran a very successful Dresden Lives game with my cohort Josh. I came home to prep more game material for the upcoming DexCon convention in July, and I’ve got a full schedule of freelancing ahead. I’m also waiting to hear about an application to a PhD program I’m very excited about. Plus, I’ve been writing blog posts that apparently have been hitting some serious notes with people, which I’m proud of.

But I haven’t been able to think about any of that. I’ve been distracted.

Ten days ago, I found out I’ve got a brain tumor. And it’s freaking me the hell out.

For the last year or so, I’ve been chasing down what is at the heart of all these medical problems I’ve been having. Most docs I saw simply said that my symptoms were related to my weight and told me to ‘go lose weight and things will be better.’ And while that is undoubtedly the case, as my weight has caused a strain on my system, there were some puzzling medical issues coming up for me. So instead of listening to those docs who decided that my only problem was weight, I went to see an endocrinologist. She took a look at my symptoms and ordered a battery of tests. I was poked, prodded, MRIed, CAT scanned, and gave more vials of blood than I could count – all the while going to class and trying to graduate school. I was racing the clock, trying to get results before I graduated and lost access to the student medical center and the wonderful doctor who was helping me there.

In the last week of school, just before graduation, the doctor sat me down and gave me the news. I’ve got something called Cushings disease. What that means is I have a small tumor in my pituitary gland. That tumor produces a hormone, ACTH, which tells my body to produce too much cortisol aka “the stress hormone.” Wonder why I’m always such a stress ball? Hey now, look, an answer! This diagnosis is also linked to a number of other major issues I’ve been facing, including my weight gain. That’s right, Cushings has a lot to do with the body building up fat. My guess is this has been going on for about two years, getting worse as time goes on, but we have no way of knowing. All I know is, there’s a tumor in my brain and the doctor says it’s got to come out.

When the doctor told me this news, I think I missed the next ten or so minutes of my life. I got out of the appointment, sat down in the waiting room, and couldn’t think straight. I realized I was going to have to talk to someone quick or I was going to panic. A brain tumor? I remember the doctor said that Cushings tumors are usually benign, so that was good. But this was a brain tumor. She had referred me to a neurosurgeon. That meant brain surgery. Some doctor was going to go into my head after they knocked me out with anesthetic.

I panicked just a little. I wanted to scream.

Then I went on social media and I Tweeted and Facebooked about it.

My folks don’t understand how I’ve been so open about having a health issue like this. When they talk about what’s coming up and the surgery I will be having, they whisper. My dad wouldn’t say the word ‘brain tumor’ but drops his voice and mouths the words instead. I asked him point blank: “What are you so afraid of? It’s a brain tumor. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He couldn’t understand how I was going to be open about the situation. “It’s nobody else’s business,” he said.

I don’t get that. People are always telling me that in life, you should reach out and talk about what you need. And in that moment, sitting in the waiting room outside the doctor’s office, I needed to talk about what was happening. I needed to feel less alone in my skin facing this terrifying prospect. I went on social media and I said the words: “I found out I’ve got a brain tumor.” And in doing so, I discovered the beauty of the internet again.

We spend a lot of time awash in the crap that can come out of the internet. We (especially women) get hit with the trolls, the threats, the inane crap and the unintelligent garbage. We wander through a mass of online noise, looking for the beauty. At least that’s how I feel a great deal of the time. Yet in between cat videos and Upworthy click bait headlines, Pinterest boards and Amazon shopping, the internet is a place where community exists. And with a few words, I found that people respond in the most amazing ways. I reached out to folks and said, “I’ve got a brain tumor and I’ll need surgery to get it out” and the internet responded with well wishes. I received phone calls, texts, ect. I got immediate support from my professional colleagues and from friends I hadn’t heard from in a long time.

It’s the worst kept secret among people I know that I often find it difficult to ask for help. Yet in this moment, when I reached out, people were there. I feel like I could have survived all right on my own, dealing with my feelings. But instead of doing that, I put out a hand and the amazing people I know reached back. And I was not alone. In one day, I rediscovered some trust in the human race that cynical New Yorker me had set aside a long time ago. Heart two sizes bigger and all that, in one day.

So what happens now? What does this all mean? I’m going in for brain surgery, for one. That’s mighty scary to me. I went to see my neurosurgeon the other day and I’m confident in him and his team. They’re experts on this particular disease. The good thing is, this tumor is not cancer, that’s almost for sure. And should the surgery go well, there’s a quick recovery time. AND it means a good chance that a lot of my other medical issues will see an improvement should everything go the way the doctor said. There is a danger to consider in anesthesia for someone my weight, and that’s the scary part. And there’s the danger that comes from any brain surgery. But the doctor’s done over 3000 of these procedures already, so I have high hopes.

In the meantime, I admit to being in kind of a fog. I’ve tried to go on with my day, work as usual, do my writing. I came home from the convention and recovered from that and said ‘back to work.’ But there’s a gong inside my head over and over, saying quietly: in less than two weeks, you are going into the hospital. And I’ll admit it: I’m pretty scared.

So why talk about this? Because emotional honesty is important to me. And why talk about it in public? Because moments like these are something of a jarring juxtaposition to me to the talk about issues I do online a lot. This isn’t an issue that is a social justice worry, or a pop culture critique. This is personal and strange and I’m trying to be honest about it online so that my brain doesn’t just repress how crazy nervous I am. Instead of saying “I’m fine” I’m working to admit: I’m not fine. I will be. But right now, I’m dealing with it slowly. It doesn’t make me fragile, or in need of coddling, and I don’t need to be handled with care. But talking about this here is helping me to admit to myself the impact this event is having on my life.

I’m having brain surgery that could change my life. We have a date scheduled. And provided my insurance doesn’t crap out, I will come back with a chance to relieve a lot of health risks. And maybe, give me a whole new lease on life to feel better.

One can only hope. For now, I’m just going to spend the time prepping for the surgery. I have writing to do before the hospital stay, emails to answer, convention prep to handle. Life and work doesn’t stop because you found a kidney-bean sized thing inside your head that’s not supposed to be there. And I’m going to continue being honest about my feelings up until that point. But if I seem a little off the next few weeks, this is why.

John Adamus, my friend and editor, named the tumor Larry after the annoying neighbor from Three’s Company. So in ten days, Larry is getting evicted. Larry is going extinct. (And no, John, they won’t let me keep Larry afterwards in a jar, I already asked for you).

Until then, life goes on. And Larry and me gotta keep company, if only for a little while longer.

Meanwhile, to everyone who has supported me in this: thank you. When I reached out, you heard me. And that means more than I can ever say.

I Have A Mouth, So Why Aren’t I Screaming? (Or Where I’ve Been)

November 24, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside, Speaking Out

Been a few weeks, hasn’t it? Don’t worry, I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet. Indeed I’ve instead been all over the place doing lord knows what in graduate school. I’ve been working hard at my thesis (which will have a website face shortly). I’ve been spending time at great game design opportunities like Practice at NYU (which I’ll have a breakdown of too). I’ve been working hard. But one thing I haven’t been doing lately is blogging. And there’s a reason why. So here’s the story I’d like to tell about how criticism can steal your voice.

I wake up in the morning. I have a long schedule ahead of me. I write things down, you see, because if I don’t I forget half the things I need to do. So I have a list. And on that list is things like ‘pay this bill’ or ‘do this homework’. I go ahead and take out the trash, do laundry, all the things one needs to do. I answer emails. I do what is needed. And on that list is inevitably the reminder: blogging. Every day, my eyes would slide past it. Every day, I’d say ‘that can wait.’

And it waited. And waited. For weeks.

After a little while, I wondered just what was going on. I, like anyone else, can be avoidant of things I didn’t want to do. But the real question is: why didn’t I want to blog? I had so many things I wanted to talk about! Yet something was stopping me, something that was making me balk at the notion of putting my ideas down on the internet for all to see. So as I am want to do, I posed the question to my friends online, almost rhetorically: why was I suddenly nervous about posting up blog posts?

A friend and brilliant young woman came back at me with an answer in the form of a question: did this problem start after you started receiving those threats about the content of your talks and posts?

Ahem. I believe the word I’m looking for is duh.

I’ve been pretty vocal about things on my blog, on other blogs, for the last few years. I believe that standing up and speaking out is an imperative if you see something that needs discussing. “If you see something, say something” is used by the cops, but it isn’t just a slogan for the NYPD. It’s an idea that the world is only improved when people use their powers of communication to make changes to situations they encounter. Yet a lot of people who have spoken out recently have received backlash of the most toxic variety. I got only a little bit of it. But what I did get startled me. And frankly, it shocked me more than I originally understood.

I’ll share a little secret here: I’m a fairly squishy-centered person. Down deep beneath the ‘raaar!’ that often comes out of my mouth beats the heart of someone who honestly wants us all to have what we need in life, with people who care about us, so we can make awesome things that we can share and that make us happy. Idealistic? Sure, and why not? There’s nothing wrong with idealism except that perhaps these days it’s considered naive and nay-sayed by those who are bitter and cynical. But when that ‘can’t we work towards a better tomorrow?’ me is met with rampant douchebaggery (yes, that’s a technical term), it tends to wall up for protection. And it gets tired.

I got tired of getting yelled at for a little while.

I got tired of people asking me why it’s necessary to talk about women in the gaming community. I got tired of having to explain that just because you speak out about women’s rights doesn’t mean you’re blaming all men for the inequality in the world, or that you’re demonizing the men who are trying to help too. I got tired of being accused of being a fence-sitting feminist for not embracing more radical ideas. I got tired of being told ‘I’m tired of hearing about this’ from people who, for them, the issues we’re talking about seem so large and so all-encompassing that they don’t know what to do with them. Or else they’re tired of hearing about it because, to them, it isn’t an ongoing reality that needs to be addressed over and over.

I got tired of speaking up when I would get comments like ‘fat pig’ sent my way.

A person only has so much bandwidth and for a while a little bit of it behind the scenes was negative. Most of it was overwhelmingly positive. But that little toxic bit got to that little squishy center and, well, I got tired. A part of me wants to apologize for that, but I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to say this: turtle-time is over. I’m back.

We don’t create things in a void. Getting used to the voices out there that will fling awful at your feet is part of creating things. It seems like a skill needed more and more every day. I’m cultivating it. But in the meantime, I can’t let myself be afraid of putting words to paper (or blog) for fear of what might fly my way. The awful, insulting crap being slung around the internet is NOT okay. Trolling is not okay. But if I’m going to exist as a creator then I will need to remember just what it means to have the courage of my convictions and stand by what I say.

I’m also going to be trying a radical new approach: I’m planning on creating a lot more than commenting these days. I realize a lot of my time had focused on commentary about other work out there – be it comic books, television, movies, ect. And that’s great, commenting and criticism is awesome – having opinions is what we do, provided we put it out in the world in a respectful fashion. But I’m a writer and a designer. I want to be making things of my own to be the creation I want to see in the world. And if I’m so busy commenting, I don’t have as much time to do what I want. So there’s going to be a little less of my usual ranting criticism goodness for a bit. Why?

I have projects. And they’re good ones. And that’s what you’re going to hear about for a while.

So that’s where I’ve been. That’s where I’m going. Let’s keep in touch more, shall we?

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.

How To Insult Your Readers: Geek-Hating In Reviews

August 7, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside, Speaking Out

It’s that time again. Time for me to make a little comment on commentary. Why? Because who watches the watchmen, really. Who critiques the critics? Well apparently I do, and this week I’m aiming my sights at those who critique nerdy things for the media. I’m specifically looking at you, Linda Stasi over at the New York Post. She recently wrote up a review of the upcoming SyFy television show, Heroes of Cosplay. And let me tell you, this review is a positive stinker.

Right off the bat, Stasi opens up her review admitting something: she doesn’t understand cosplay. She admits she doesn’t get it in the least. Then she spends the next few paragraphs trying to describe cosplay to the uninitiated viewer who might not be familiar with this subset of geek culture. Hopelessly floundering, Stasi falls back on sayings like “Renting is so last decade!” and “What the hell is that?” I’m sorry, Ms. Stasi, but this isn’t Sex in the City and you aren’t Carrie Bradshaw. What you are, however, is clearly attempting to cover up your ignorance with cute quips that don’t quite do the job. The reviewer here was clearly unfamiliar with the material and therefore went for the cheap joke. No surprise here, since reviewers have been falling back on the stereotypical ‘point and laugh at the nerdy folks’ trope for their commentary since geek chic began.

Newsflash: there are more television shows on about supernatural/fantasy elements than ever. Game of Thrones is winning Emmies. Lost was a thing for ages. The Avengers blasted down the doors at the box office. The Big Bang Theory (like it or hate it) is HUGE. NERDS ARE IN. So why are we still accepting nerd-hater reviewers throwing their ‘cool kid’ crap all over the place?

Folks, it is no secret that reviewers have to watch a lot of crap. They sit through television shows, books, movies and plays that they might think are great, but a lot of the time they’re going to get stuck with things they hate. At the end of these drawn out experiences they have to fill up column inches or blog posts or even on-air commentary about the pros and cons of said piece of work. Yet if the reviewer has any familiarity with the material, has done even the slightest bit of their homework on the piece they’re reviewing, and was approaching the material with the least bit of respect, it shows in the work. Those reviews at least give honest critique and commentary on a piece of material, citing points and facts about it rather than falling back into little snide jokes.

It’s not as if audiences aren’t noticing the difference. Just last year was the awful One Girlfriend’s Guide to The Avengers debacle, in which a Moviefone review (purportedly satirical, but only indicated as such after the fact) not only insulted women but anyone with an IQ about who would be interested in seeing The Avengers film. That movie went on to break records in the box office and prove that comic book movies can not only rock, they can kick the crap out of earnings reports. Reviews, screw with that at your peril.

What is even worse about this kind of review is that its once again laugh at the nerd day. Reviews like this come off as superior, smug high school cheerleader nonsense at its worse, and yet they are perpetuated. I’d like to remind folks of something: nerds spend money on these products and are a huge part of the commercial audience. Embrace the geek or risk alienating key portions of your audience. Media outlets that splash pictures of sexy cosplayers during New York Comic Con week and then publish reviews like this (I’m talking to you, New York Post, you had your NYCC coverage too) have very short memories indeed about how popular geek cultural items have become and how they draw readership both from geek communities and from everyone else. Instead of embracing that, some outlets have clung to treating geek media and culture like it is some kind of sideshow attraction rather than actual valid popular culture.

Worse yet, these outlets ignore an incredible resource they could be utilizing: the geek community themselves. There are vital, vibrant, passionate commentators within the geek community who know their business both as enthusiasts and as critics and would do a much better job presenting informed media review. It’s the outlets that have embraced the geek – like MTV and CNN to name two- that understand just how much cultural capitol geekdom has right now and find ways to welcome rather than alienate, to include rather than ridicule.

Meet the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi - instant media sensation. — Meet the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi – instant media sensation.

This week saw news outlets reporting on a major casting choice for the upcoming television season. No, it wasn’t who was going to be on the next Bachelorette, or the replacement of someone on CSI. This was an announcement as big as the fanfare over who will be the next Bond, and came from the same part of the world. It was the fantastically geeky Doctor Who announcement of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor and it rocked news outlets everywhere. If a single one of those outlets had a reviewer going “God, this is so nerdy!” they’d be laughed out of their britches by the number of Whovians across the world and the power of a single fandom. Media outlets instead recognized the cultural capitol at work here and offered it the respect that power is due. And you know what? That’s the way it should be.

The time of snarky, dismissive reviews of nerddom are over and those who don’t get geek culture better grab some internet time on Tumblr or Buzzfeed to catch up or risk finding themselves extinct. Because nerds can do their job better, folks, and we’ll do it without being insulting.

Side Effects (Not the Movie, the Experience)

July 22, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside

Personal post incoming. You have been warned!

There are currently four, count them FOUR, articles half finished in my drafts box.

Why, you ask? Why are they unfinished as opposed to gracing this blog with their presence?

I’ll tell you why: side effects.

In a previous article on this blog I talked about being bi-polar. I mentioned how difficult it is to take steps to get healthy. But in the end, I did take the jump to medicating. I’ve been very open both here and on Twitter, because I believe transparency as a creator is important. It helps people understand, both personally and professionally, what is going on with me as I work in my current field. I do it not to fish for sympathy but to illuminate my creative process and how I go about doing what I do. I also do it so that anyone out there struggling with the same thing can hear another voice going: you’re not alone. I often feel like I am, so I want to offer that. So if this sounds familiar to anyone out there, raise a glass. Because we’re going to talk about side effects.

Drugs have side effects. And when you sign on to be medicated as someone who needs mood stabilizers, you realize that you might get these side effects. Sometimes they’re harder to track than others. The doctor will ask you ‘are you finding yourself fatigued?’ and my answer is usually, “I’m an insomniac grad student, when am I not fatigued?” But after a while, you look back at what’s been going on in your life and say, “Hey now. That’s not how things were before.” Then you look up the side effects and you say, “Oh.”

I’ve been having side effects from my medication. Boy howdy have I.

Let’s start with fatigue. I cannot help but sleep ten hours a day. If I want to stay awake and not be half asleep, I have to front load on coffee when I wake up in the morning. I cannot even think about spending time in a comfy chair or near my bed or else WHAM, its nap time. Not in the ‘let’s take a nap, it might be pleasant’ but in a ‘oh hey, I just lost four hours, how did that happen?’ way.

Weight gain. Now I don’t eat well. I don’t exercise well. But that’s been a constant. These days however? Cannot lose a pound to save my life. And worse yet, I feel sluggish. That’s the fatigue working WITH the weight gain. It’s been pretty awful. I’ve always been big but I can feel the difference since I started the medication.

Here’s the one that gets me: my brain feels some days like I’m trying to hold thoughts together as they try to fly apart. They’re polarized to fly apart. They just run from each other like toddlers in a tantrum and my job is to hold them together to put together work. My focus is nigh gone. Reading has become a chore of the highest order. Where I used to polish off a book a day sometimes, I can barely read thirty pages without having to stop. I reread whole pages when I lose focus. I can barely watch an episode of TV without needing to let my thoughts wander like lost sheep. And when that’s not happening, there’s a fog in my head so thick I can barely think through it. I’ve had that before but not this bad.

Why am I sharing all this, you ask? Because of one thing: all this is making it a bitch to write.

I’m getting work done but its at a snail’s pace by comparison to what I’m used to. Where I could churn out ten thousand words in a sitting, I’m now fighting for two. And if that isn’t the most frustrating thing to a writer like me, I don’t know what is.

The hardest part is that my instinct for creating new ideas hasn’t slowed down. There’s still a million ideas building up in my brain, rushing around and pushing into me. I have notes for a dozen things I want to do, but when I sit down for execution? The fog rolls in and I have to slog through where once I could fly.

But hey, I’m not manic anymore. So that’s a plus, right?

That last line was bitter. Its hard not to be frustrated. When I signed on to take medication over just dealing with my Type II bi-polar, I confided in my doctor that I was always concerned about losing touch with that ‘creative spark’ that made manic so appealing. Now, my life has to change to fit this whole new paradigm. And that paradigm includes the thing that I love doing more than anything else – writing – being not the joy that it was but a fight for every page. Its not just work now. Its brutal sometimes.

But I’m healthier than I was, at least in my head. And that’s what’s important, right?

My friend John Adamus says I have to adjust the way I work to adapt to this. And I am… slowly. But I guess this post is to say that though it is necessary, it is a slow process that is demanding a lot of my attention. And it is making me feel off my game. I have not been the ‘get up and go’ Shoshana lately that juggles multiple projects with my usual stubborn tenacity. I’m exhausted, hiding away from distractions to try and get work done. But I am taking the time to do this. Why? Because adjustment means I can be the professional I want to be. It means that in the grand scheme of things, I will find a way to make this work so I can be the best writer and the best person together that I can be. Accepting that things need to change is an adventure. But they did need to change when I went on the medication, they are better off now then they were before, and the work goes on. On all fronts.

I’m talking to my doctor about the side effects. I’m going to ask him if there’s anything I can do to mitigate them. Until then, however, I’m going to keep working. Even if it takes me twice as long as normal to write a thing, the writing will get done. And I’m going to try not to be cranky at myself about it.

Let’s Talk About Fear

June 23, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside, Speaking Out

This is a personal post. For that I make no apologies because this one ain’t going to be easy.

When I first read Dune, I thought I was going to get myself into a story about blue-eyed alien folks, spices and giant worms. I had no idea that when I picked up that book I would learn one of the most important lessons in my entire life.

Let’s talk about fear for a moment, shall we? And let’s get a little personal.

I know a lot about fear, as many of us do. Growing up, I wasn’t especially brave, even though I wanted to be. I read comic books and science fiction books and all kinds of adventures about children who did amazing, wonderful things against unbelievable odds because they could be brave. I wanted to be brave. But I wasn’t. I grew up in a place where fear was the watchword, where people believed that everyone out there was going to be bad to you. Either they would treat me badly because of my religion, or because I was a girl, or just because. Only behind protected walls could I be safe, with my family as the only people to trust. That’s what I learned growing up, and I learned it so well that I carried it with me all the days of my life. I spent a lot of years afraid: afraid of people’s judgement, of the dangerous world outside, of losing things and of not being accepted. I was scared for a long time of a lot of things. And that fear was a paralytic. It still is.

It isn’t easy unlearning fear. Fear itself can take on so many forms – self-consciousness, doubt, guilt, rage – that if you have to find it, it hides very well behind lots of masks. You have to spend time stripping back those masks to really get at the heart of things. Growing up, I didn’t know any of that. I just knew that things were terrifying in the world and I wished it wasn’t so. I wished I could be powerful, like my heroines in the books I read. But mostly, I wanted to be able to trust people.

I remember reading The Chronicles of Narnia and marveling at Lucy Pevency as a character. (I thought she had a funny last name but never mind that, says the girl whose last name sounds like kissing socks). She always stood in my mind beside the characters I wanted to model myself after because she was not only clever, but sweet, and caring, and gentle. And she trusted others. She wasn’t foolish in her trusting, though she would sometimes make mistakes, but she understood what it was to give others another chance. She believed inherently that no matter who you were, you could always be better.

I tried to learn that lesson. I tried to hold it in my heart. And for years and years, I failed.

Let’s talk about fear. Let’s talk about what happens when fear gets reinforced.

Live a sheltered life and then come out in the world, and you learn quickly that things aren’t what you were told. First, the whole world isn’t full of horrible people who are different from you. You learn that folks are just folks. But you also learn that along with the good folks, there are bad folks too. And even when you’re careful, folks can still hurt you. If you grew up in a place where you don’t believe in trust, when someone hurts you that little voice rises up and says: You see! You were right all along! You were right! You can’t trust them! And that’s where bitterness comes from, folks, and anger, and lots of resentment. Enough to choke you straight into the ground.

Let’s talk about fear. And what it has to do with business.

If you’re afraid, you can’t create well. If you’re afraid of what will happen, of what the future will hold, of what people will think about your work, how you’ll be received – then you’re focusing in the wrong place. You’re focusing on a future that might never be and things that might never be said. You worry so much about what people will think about what you do that you’re not concerned with what you’re doing. You’re not living in the present. You’re not creating something good, but tainting it instead with your fear. And you mire everything you do in it. And if you think people don’t notice, they can and often do.

That’s not a condemnation. Far from it. It’s a sympathetic nod, an ‘I know’ from someone who does know. I know what it’s like to keep one eye to the future and think I’m being wise, and instead turn to look back at where fear has passed through me to see what is left behind. And after some consideration recently, I don’t entirely like what I’ve seen. Fear takes on lots of faces, folks – and sometimes it takes on the mask of your own face, saying ‘You’re just being smart, you’re just being careful’ when what you’re really being is afraid and self-protective. And that self-protection can drive you into nasty behavior.

Let’s talk about fear and how it can sometimes make you into the ass you never wanted to be.

I’m excited by the work that I’m doing. I’m excited about the projects I am working on. More than that, I’m excited by the path that my life is on and the people I’m spending my time working with now. Underneath all of that, for the last couple of years, has been a nagging fear that I couldn’t outrun, outwork, or outpace no matter how hard I tried. It whispered in my head, “You just have to keep moving, or else-” Or else what? What was I afraid of? What would happen? Would people forget my name if I stopped producing for five minutes? Or if I did one thing ‘wrong’, would people turn up their noses and laugh? What was I afraid of?

Failure. Ridicule. Mistakes. Suffering. Ruin. Being nothing. All of these things.

What’s at the heart of all these things? Fear. Fear is at the heart of them all. I was afraid of fear. I was driven by it.

And it has meant that I haven’t always been the best person I should be.

This isn’t an apology to individual people. I think I owe that to a few folks on a one on one basis. There are folks who haven’t deserved my doubt that have gotten it, whose motivations I’ve questioned without thinking about why I was questioning them because in my heart I can’t stop thinking: be afraid of that person, you don’t know what they want. Be a big scary dog and they won’t think to mess with you, won’t hurt you. Forget that it makes you sound like an ass sometimes. Forget that it’s a wall a thousand miles high between you and others, a wall almost impossible to climb. You’re afraid, you need that wall.

I don’t need that wall. Not really, if ever. Not anymore.

This isn’t some kind of manifesto, a way to cure your problems or mine. This also isn’t some resignation to always be a smiling, happy, shiny ball of love and peace – I wasn’t made for that. I’m still the snarky, loud-mouthed, opinionated woman I always have been and probably always will be. This is something else, an identification and inspection of intent behind actions that have been tainted by fear for way too long. This is an identification of a problem, in the hopes that it helps to keep me honest going forward. I have a lot of great people in my life, and great work I want to do, and great stuff I want to share with people. There are a lot of folks who might read this blog, who might see me on Twitter or Facebook or at a con, and I want to share and talk to them and create with them some amazing, wonderful things. But I don’t want to do it from a place of fear. I don’t want to mistake caution for fear, or fear for supposed wisdom. I instead want to remember that fear is the mind-killer and let it pass through me so that I can be left behind and smile instead and say ‘whatever’ when my heart beats too fast out of anxiety for things that haven’t yet come to pass.

Let’s talk about fear, and how bravery isn’t its absence but the sum of what you do while it’s present. Let’s be ready to forgive myself for the days when I do fail and be prepared to apologize and course-correct when needed. More than anything, let’s see what I do from here.

Blogging Writer’s Block

June 21, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside, Writing Update

Wow, folks. Wow. It’s been a while. It’s been since the end of April that I posted anything on this blog.

So. Hi. I’m alive. And I’m sorry for being gone so long.

What kept me, you ask? Well, it’s simple. I had blogging writer’s block.

Blogging writer’s block is a horrid situation where you start to doubt your own voice and so everything inside your head gets congested into a ball of self-esteem woe and mess. You start to wonder if the voice you have to contribute to the industry, or the internet, or anything at all has meaning. So the idea of writing your opinions on things becomes a terrifying prospect. Hence, blogging writer’s block. I feel like there should be a shorter term for it. Bloggiblock? That’s me, hacking the English language since I discovered vocabulary.

But anyway – I shouldn’t have left for a while yet here we are. And I’m back. What changed, you ask? Oh, a lot of soul searching. The semester at NYU ended and I finally slowed down enough to take a good hard think about priorities and the work I’m doing. I sat down and had a few conversations with people about confidence, about other people’s judgement, and feeling good about the work I was doing as a whole. I thought about what was important to me. And I discovered one hard and fast truth:

I just really like to write.

It doesn’t matter what I’m writing. If it’s articles or RPGs, academic papers or LARPs, I just enjoy creating pieces of writing.

I also have opinions on things. And I like to talk about them.

This is not because I feel I am smarter or better than others. It is not because I want to spend my time writing about creating rather than actually creating (a criticism laid at the feet of lots of academics, and specifically at me recently). It’s because discussing art and having critical opinions on things makes for a better informed designer, and putting out opinions creates and perpetuates conversation.

So enough about writing blog posts, let’s get on to actually doing that. And you’ll see more of me. Promise. Because I have things to talk about.

Tap Into Your Inner Wolf (Or Whatever You Roleplay)

February 15, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Random Aside, Uncategorized

I’m going to talk today about my hat. And stick with me folks, I’m going somewhere with this.

People have asked me why I wear the same black hat all the time. My fedora has a story. And I’m going to share it today. Stick with me, promise. It has a point.

For anyone who reads my work on here or is familiar with me in general? You know I’m an avid role-player. I’ve been gaming since I was in high school. I role-played Marvel Super Heroes online for ten years with the same community before I played D&D in college and then switched primarily to LARPing in White Wolf games in the NYU area. After that I picked up games like Dresden Files RPG and other FATE stuff as well as branching out into other RPG’s and haven’t looked back. I think I can conservatively say that one time in high school I was playing over forty characters. Sure, they were pretty crappy (I was a high school girl who learned everything from TV, books and comics – I was way way embarrassing) but they were creations of the inside of my head.

Some of them survived until today. Some have survived because they express great character ideas that I want to develop into things elsewhere perhaps (in writing for example). Some just survive in different incarnations because I enjoy playing them in different games. They give me a place to explore parts of my personality, to have a different persona to explore new environments and to stretch out parts of myself that I don’t get to touch very often. What I realized over the years is that those characters I’ve been playing have given me a voice into aspects of myself that I sometimes need to dig deep to find.

I’ll give you an example. There’s an old character of mine that I’ve reincarnated a bunch of times. And I swear this is going to become a ‘Let Me Tell You About My Character’ post – I ain’t that girl. But this character is every impulse-control problem, rough as hell, follow your heart and maybe not your head part of me. But what she also is is fearless. And when the anxiety creeps up on me and I’m having trouble finding my way out? I reach in and ask myself one question: WWTD (What Would Taj Do?). And then I filter out the murderous parts and find the fearless answer.

And y’know what? I get a big ol’ toothy grin and get to work.

In tough times it’s been a great boon to be able to reach into myself and say “I played a kickass female with no fear at all in the face of adversity” when faced with the fear of the every day life. As a technique, therapists are known to use roleplaying to allow a person a safe space to explore parts of themselves. I just had the mechanism to do that as a gift in my hobby and when I need it, I can unpack the tools I’ve learned from roleplaying to help me through the most difficult places.

Me playing Elizabeth Redstone Hall, Psionic Pureblood, in Dystopia Rising October 2011 - 24 hours before permanent character death. — Me playing Elizabeth Redstone Hall, Psionic Pureblood, in Dystopia Rising October 2011 – 24 hours before permanent character death.

And that’s where my hat comes in. I bought my hat as part of my costume for a character in the Dystopia Rising universe. My character was a rich little girl who ran away to start her life when I was just starting over with a new group of friends in the DR community. Her hat was bought when she just started feeling more… sure of herself in life. I wore it for one game and felt like a rock star in character that game. I came home then after the weekend to my weekly grind of retail work and it’s stress. I faced down going to work in the post-high of a great LARP weekend to face the regular world and it’s worries and I felt uninspired. How can you live in the skin of someone in the post-apocalypse for a weekend and then not find the daily grind a little duller, a little more grey?

On impulse, on my way out the door, I put on my hat that I wore as Elizabeth in game and wore it to work. And throughout the day, I found myself squaring my shoulders and realizing ‘if I could face down the physical challenges of the fake zombie apocalypse, then I could face this difficulty or anything else’. I found myself reminded of how lucky I was about my regular life with it’s conveniences and lack of murderous zombies. But more than that, I remembered that I have the power in me to channel the power I found in Elizabeth into my everyday.

That was two years back. I never stopped wearing the hat, even after the character permanently died in October of 2011. I’ve replaced the hat three times for destroying it repeatedly – and woe is me when the Hard Rock Cafe discontinues the damn thing. But I’ve found the power on days – like today – when I face fears of a great future that my hat has become almost a talisman for the ways in which I never imagined I could be stronger than I am.

Why am I sharing this? Just to say this really:

In your darkest places, may you find a talisman to show you the way to the strongest parts of yourself. No matter what it is.

Hope You Don’t Mind, Got A Little Misogyny On You There…

February 8, 2013 by Shoshana, posted in Geek Culture, Random Aside, Speaking Out

Note: I want to start this post by saying that this is by no means the only article out there, or the only opinion, about the culture of misogyny in the gaming/geek world. This is one post in hundreds of thousands, shouted from the rooftops and put out into the internet world for all to see. There are good people out there doing good work to counteract these horrible actions that have othered women in places across the internet and across the planet. And the talk about misogyny isn’t just one to be done within the gaming or geek world. But that’s the subculture in which I party, so that’s where I do my talking. With all that in mind, read on.

This past week I had a phone call from a friend, John, who talked to me about misogyny in the geek world. He sounded startled about stories he’d heard, things that had happened, issues that had come up in the geek and game design community. He sounded surprised that stories that might be considered sensational were true and happened to people he knew. I was, sadly, not surprised. I was weary when I said, “No John. That’s true. That happened to someone I know. It’s not an urban legend. That happened to a girl I know.” The worst one I didn’t mention was, “That kind of thing happened to me.”

See, John had a stellar last Sunday in which he got confronted with some craziness in the gaming world that happens to womenfolk. And he blogged extremely eloquently about it here. And then he asked me to boost the signal. So I am. And on top of that, I’m not just boosting. I’m adding my piece too.

The gaming world for a long time had a culture of silence. Nay, I’ll say, the geek world. Lots of different fandoms and geek corners of the globe had a cone of weirdness up when it came to talking about the way women were sometimes being treated. About boundaries that were being crossed from the ‘hey, people might be socially awkward’ into the downright criminal. You’d bring up the issue of something that happened to you, or to a friend, and you’d get a shrug and a ‘what can you do?’ Why? Because gamers and geeks and their ‘subculture’ are seen as laden with folks who don’t know boundaries, who have social issues, and the community is seen as a place where these are just a part of life. What comes with that is a place where people can be themselves in a welcoming atmosphere. What also comes with that is those that push the limits of social awkwardness into impropriety and downright disturbing activity.

And for a long time, it was a ‘what can you do?’ response. Because I believe people were afraid that if the community started policing its own for bad behavior, then the beautiful utopia where geeks could come together away from persecution or whatever it is that we’re supposed to be fleeing would dissolve. I hate to say this, folks, but this issue was tackled by a critical list called the Five Geek Social Fallacies that I love to look back on. And what are these fallacies that geeks often fall back on, in short?

Ostracizers are Evil
Friends Accept Me As I Am
Friendship Before All
Friendship Is Transitive
Friends Do Everything Together

We’re going to focus on the first two as the dangerous ones in terms of bad behavior. Fandom theory (which I’m studying this semester, so bear with me) came in a few waves and the first age of fandom basically thought of “Fandom as Utopia”, where outcasts came together to gather and create utopias that their lives could not be like. This theory of fan culture creation and subculture creation was disproven after they were big in the 60’s and 70’s (think Star Trek era) because these societies created ARE NOT UTOPIAS. People within subcultures are still mean, or petty, or aggressive. They still break rules. They still harass. And this is where those fallacies come in and where the culture of silence, I believe, held reign for so long. And still kind of does. Because a lot of folks come to subcultures, and to gaming and geekdom, because of wanting to feel included, then they feel uncomfortable by the notion of ostracizing anyone. They believe that friends ought to accept them for whoever they are, however they are, unreservedly.

In a perfect world, that would be fine. In a world where people still harass, manipulate, bully, demean and molest? Nope. Utopia does not exist. Sad to say it, folks but true.

So when people threw up their hands in the past and said ‘what can you do?’ when stories would come up about girls harassed at conventions, about women who had to walk the ‘casting couch’ to get work as a game designer, or who put up with sexual harassment at work just for the sake of working on a project, or were gas-lighted by menfolk they worked with when they spoke up, it wasn’t a case of ‘what can you do’? It’s a case of what aren’t you doing.

The last few years have given me hope. The internet has exploded with posts by brave wonderful people, both men and women, who are standing up and shouting that ‘we can do something’. That the geek fallacies are FALSE and that people who break the rules about treatment of the opposite gender, who sexually harass and use the geek community to do it will be called out and will be prosecuted. I use that term: prosecuted, not persecuted. This isn’t about persecuting and making witch hunts but prosecuting actual criminal behavior, or enforcing guidelines against socially unacceptable behavior in public and communal atmospheres. And it does not just have to do with women, as has often been pointed out to me: there is plenty of bad behavior from women, enacted upon men in the community, that goes unspoken about and ignored. But there are people speaking out.

There are also people standing up. When they see bad behavior being done, they are working to correct where they can. If a company chooses not to employ women and the issue comes up, as it has, about the lack of women in the gaming industry (such as during the conversation of #1reasonwhy), companies who stand for equality have stood to offer more work for women. They make known their beliefs through their actions to correct the situation by bringing what equilibrium they can, and to them I always say thank you. And there are those who stand up to act to create new spaces, such as the Different Games conference that is being organized, to give people who have been marginalized a place to represent. There are those who act in small ways, by offering support and care to those who have been on the receiving end of bad treatment. These are the folks you probably never see. They deserve credit. They stand up.

John’s post this week was full of outrage, and mine would be too – if I wasn’t so intimately familiar with the problem. I’m a woman, I’m a geek, I’ve been at this for years. So long I think that sometimes I run out of rage and instead fall into cynicism. But I’ve had opportunities instead lately to take that cynicism and turn it into action and turn it into a voice for support. And I’m going to keep doing that because that’s the way we combat fallacy, and combat those who believe they can hide their horrid and even criminal behavior behind a community I love.

To them I say, sorry, buddy or lady. It’s no longer ‘what can you do?’ or ‘well, y’know, it’s just that…’ It’s now ‘this is our community too, and you’ve got no place to hide from eyes that are attached to people empowered to act, and speak, and enact change. Your sandbox was never just yours. It’s all of ours. And we don’t want it to be a place of harassment and inequality and shame.

And hate to say it, but the new way’s here to stay.