At this most recent CONvergence Con (a sci-fi/fantasy-based convention in Minneapolis, Minn.), I was one of the panelists on two different panels that sought to speak about where and how women can exist in formerly male-dominated genres and spaces.
In The Smurfette Principle in Marketing panel, we tackled the idea that there isn’t often a lot of merchandise available for girls and women because there is often only one woman or girl in a group of men or boys in any given genre show, book, or movie. In the Genre Feminism panel, we spoke about why it was important to increase the visibility of women or girls in a genre show, book, or movie (along with other visible minorities as well) and how people as creators and consumers can promote these ideas.
Specifically to creators, I talked about Geena Davis (whose name I couldn’t remember at the time; apologies, Ms. Davis!) and how back in December 2013, she wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter about how easy it can be for screenwriters to increase the number of roles in film and on TV for women and girls:
Step 1: Go through the projects you’re already working on and change a bunch of the characters’ first names to women’s names. With one stroke you’ve created some colorful unstereotypical female characters that might turn out to be even more interesting now that they’ve had a gender switch. What if the plumber or pilot or construction foreman is a woman? What if the taxi driver or the scheming politician is a woman? What if both police officers that arrive on the scene are women — and it’s not a big deal?
Step 2: When describing a crowd scene, write in the script, “A crowd gathers, which is half female.” That may seem weird, but I promise you, somehow or other on the set that day the crowd will turn out to be 17 percent female otherwise. Maybe first ADs think women don’t gather, I don’t know.
It’s not often that I get to see the fruits of efforts like these so soon after I talk about them, and from a formerly problematic source as well.
Anyone who’s read this blog for any period of time knows I have a love/hate relationship with Penny Arcade creator Mike Krahulik. On one hand, he’s an intensely creative individual who helped pioneer innovations in cartooning, comics, and the marketing thereof. On the other hand, he’s a self-proclaimed asshole who has a lot to learn.
I’m quite pleased to be able to say that after the most recent iteration of the Dickwolves Debacle, the same Mike Krahulik who felt compelled to make a $20,000 donation to the Trevor Project after he made some uneducated remarks about transpeople seems to be also leveling up when it comes to how he depicts characters who aren’t like him in his art.
Recently, Penny Arcade debuted another one of their “one-page worlds.” This one is called Nightlight, and it’s about a first-time father who is told by an Ancient Keeper-type that now that he’s become a parent, he must definitely kill any monsters he finds under his child’s bed.
In his news post for the strip, Krahulik talked about the genesis for the world, but was quick to add: “We’re focusing on Dad’s specifically but honestly the role of a home’s monster hunter can fall to anyone really. I kinda want to meet that big sister.”
Child’s Play community manager Jamie Dillon followed up in the comments to the comic by saying: “We just had a long neat chat about it at lunch, and the world is so cool. Single moms, grandparents, siblings — whomever is the protector of the house is the one who can see the monsters and fight them. I’ll let the guys share other details as they want, but it’s not exclusive to dads.”
But perhaps even better is the news post from Monday, showing that not only are they going to do a longer-form story in this universe, but that Krahulik is taking the time to accurately depict the young girl who will be in this story:
I wanted Grace to feel authentic. I wanted her to be a real little girl and I have zero experience with little girls. I have two boys of my own and more often than not my house is packed with 10 year old boys. Tycho gave me a hard time when I told him about all my Google searching. “They just wear shoes” like everyone else he told me. I know that girls wear shoes…what I don’t know is what kind of shoes Grace wears. Does she wear flip flops? Boots with tights? I don’t know what kinds of outfits she wears. Is she a hoodie and jeans girl or does she like skirts and dresses? I don’t know how she likes to comb her hair or if she wears any jewelry.
The fact that he’s doing this research and thinking this deeply about this character is awesome. In addition to his own spouse as a resource for what young girls are like, he’s also got the experiences of Dillon and Child’s Play project manager Kristin Lindsay, as well as any of the other PA staffers who have female children or nieces or cousins or siblings. He’d be foolish not to tap their resources and experiences.
It’s a little thing, but it’s a start. At the end of this month, I can’t wait to see what kind of Home Protector Grace is for her little brother.
Each time I read another report, I thought to myself, “Well, that’s truly horrifying, but I don’t think things like that have happened in my anime fandom.”
That is, until now.
Two days ago, I woke up to see mentions of a Facebook post where someone whose name wasn’t immediately familiar to me accused someone else I knew of rape. The post from Amber Marie Frazier read in part:
I was raped last year at Anime Boston by Tom Wayland. I trusted him, as a friend, colleague, and a guest [whose] needs I was charged with taking care of. That is why you have not seen me around, and when you have I have been so different. That is why I am not doing anime shows or anything that involved crowds.
Frazier continued:
I wanted to tell all of you for two reasons. First, because you all know and love me, and you are not fools, and have noticed there is something wrong. I need your love and support if I am ever going to be anything like the woman you knew before. Secondly, so you can TELL EVERYONE. If you don’t tell everyone, he can do it again to someone else who trusts him. I have reason to believe that I am not the first, but I will be the last if I have anything to do about it.
According to Frazier, Anime Boston was made aware of her accusation and they’re not allowed to publicly comment. She also confirmed that they removed him from their list of invited guests. Interestingly, she also stated that she would share the information which she had told to Anime Boston and the police, but cautioned people against wanting to know that amount of detail. The last statement was the most interesting of all:
Don’t worry about slander or libel, I checked with my lawyer, and it is only that if it is not true.
My first reaction was, “Oh my God.”
My second reaction was, “Well… under certain circumstances, I think I can see how that could happen.”
[Editor’s Note: This article has been partially revised from its original form at the request of the SFWA to remove material which may have infringed on a copyright.]
Considering that I’m not a member of the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America), anyone reading this article can take it with so much salt that they go into a self-induced hypertensive shock. But rather than add my name to the list of voices condemning writer-members Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg for their ill-written rebuttal to critiques of their anti-feminism in the organization’s most recent quarterly newsletter, I’m going to instead talk about how the entire mess could have been avoided in the first place. And to do that, I have to throw Bulletin writer/editor Jean Rabe under a bus.
Problem #1: It all began when issues #199 and #200 of the Bulletin came out in Fall 2012 and Winter 2013 wherein as part of their ongoing dialogues about the industry, Resnick and Malzberg spoke about a certain selection of other writers and editors. Since the Bulletin is a print-only publication that’s only available to SFWA members, I only have E. Catherine Tobler’s recollection of the dialogue to go by, for now:
How fantastic, I thought, because I, being a writer and an editor and female, had a keen interest in [learning about other female writers and editors]. I love reading anthologies such as Women of Wonder (and its sequel) and seeing how women impacted and contributed to this forward-looking and -thinking genre I love. I hoped they might include the women who inspired me and introduce me to many I hadn’t yet discovered.
That’s not what I found. I found a dialogue that seemed more focused on how these “lady editors” and “lady writers” looked in bathing suits, and that they were “beauty pageant beautiful” or a “knock out.” I am certain no condescension was intended with the use of “lady,” but as the dialogues went on, I felt the word carried a certain tone—perhaps that was a fiction of my own making. As I listened to these two men talk about lady editors and writers they had known, I grew uneasy. Something wasn’t right.
Almost synchronous with her [Catherine Tarrant’s] entrance was that of Beatrice Mahaffey as Raymond Palmer’s assistant editor when Palmer left Amazing to originate a series of his own magazines (beginning with Other Worlds) and I will leave it to you to introduce her; you knew her from the SF community of your early years and were, with so many, an admirer. She was competent, unpretentious, and beauty pageant gorgeous … as photographs make quite clear. Tell succeeding generations all about her, please.
Mike
Ah, Bea Mahaffey…
She was the only pro I knew in Cincinnati when we moved here from the Chicago area more than a third of a century ago. She was incredibly generous with her time and reminiscences, and I spent a lot of time with her, on the phone and in person, duting the first few months when I was learning my way around town.
Anyone who’s seen photos of Bea from the 1950s knows she was a knockout as a young woman.
and
[Mike Resnick:] Another story is from nonagenarian Margaret Keiffer, who lives just a couple of miles from us. She’s the widow of super-fan Don Ford, who ran the 1949 Worldcon, and founded both Midwestcon and First Fandom. Don also created CFG (the Cincinnati Fantasy Group), the venerable local club to which Carol and I belong. According to Margaret, during its first few years of existence CFG was populated exclusively by men. Then Bea joined. Then the members’ wives got a look at Bea in her swimsuit at the 1950 Midwestcon. Then the club’s makeup changed to the 50% men and 50% women that has existed ever since.
Where Jean Rabe Went Wrong, #1: Having just learned through incoming president Steven Gould that Rabe was appointed to be editor of the Bulletin by outgoing president John Scalzi then-president Russell Davis when previous issues were months late, I can understand that there’s a chance that Rabe may not have gotten a good chance to read and review that particular Resnick/Malzberg dialogue too carefully before it went to press. Which is minor fault number one. But the even bigger fault is not recognizing that publishing such an article without a balancing viewpoint was a disservice to the membership.
I believe that as the editor of a professional trade organization’s newsletter, it’s Rabe’s job to ensure that not only does the magazine come out on time, but that it addresses the membership as a whole, from the old veterans who can remember casual conversations with Robert Heinlein to the new writers who have just become eligible for membership by selling their third piece of prose, from the “old white guys” who pioneered the genre conventions to the new non-white, non-male members who are finding new ways to address those conventions.
Many of these new writers are women, and many of them are vocal about expressing their displeasure about misogyny in the fandom. Many of them are men who have been just as vocal in decrying sexism in the industry. Rabe should have known about both of these factors and should have had a response from the SFWA addressing those issues as an article from one of the women mentioned regarding her experiences in the industry or a current female writer/editor talking about how things have changed since Resnick and Malzberg’s time. If there wasn’t enough time to solicit either of those articles, then possibly this lack of representation could have been mentioned in a “Letter from the Editor” asking for an alternate commentary on those times. And those members would have been mollified or at least pleased to know that their voices were as important as Resnick and Malzberg’s, that their SFWA membership money wasn’t going to an organization that didn’t acknowledge views that were important to them.
The worst part of all is that this isn’t the first time the SFWA has had problems with some of its older members doing or saying things that are misogynistic and offensive in the 21st century, as the the reaction surrounding the Harlan Ellison boob grab from the 2006 Hugo Award ceremony shows. (A copy of Ellison’s “apology” can be found here; proof that Ellison didn’t really apologize can be read in this comment on an unrelated entry on Scalzi’s blog.) Having “survived” that issue, an editor with a little bit of foresight would have been aware that this could be an issue with its membership again, and any steps to curtail it would have been seen as a public relations coup.
Problem #2: On the cover of Issue #200 was a barbarian standing over a downed giant, sword liberally coated in blood. But it wasn’t just any old barbarian.
Rabe—who certainly would have been aware of Hines’ win in 2012 and what he wrote about which made him worthy of the nomination—should have thought twice about making the cover of the 200th issue an image of a woman in improbable armor. Or, if as Tobler sympathetically suggests the cover was meant to evoke a sense of nostalgia towards what fantasy covers used to look like, perhaps this should have been mentioned in that same “Letter from the Editor.” Again, any comment from Rabe would have been welcome and defused the tension surrounding the second half of the Resnick/Malzberg dialogues, but to my knowledge that didn’t happen.
Where Jean Rabe Went Right, #1: If there’s something that Rabe did correctly, it was to include an essay by Jim Hines called “Cover Art and the Radical Notion that Women Are People” in a subsequent issue, #202. But as you’ll read, by then it was “too little, too late.”
Problem #3: Issue #201 was the Spring 2013 issue, and it included an article by writer C.J. Henderson. According to writer Betsy Dornbusch, Henderson wrote about “staying power and reinventing oneself for career longevity.” And yet, he used an interesting example to illustrate his point:
The reason for Barbie’s unbelievable staying power, when every contemporary and wanna-be has fallen by the way-side is, she’s a nice girl. Let the Bratz girls dress like tramps and whores. Barbie never had any of that. Sure, there was a quick buck to be made going that route but it wasn’t for her. Barbie got her college degree, but she never acted as if it was something owed to her, or that Ken ever tried to deny her.
She has always been a role model for young girls, and has remained popular with millions of them throughout their entire lives, because she maintained her quiet dignity the way a woman should. [emphasis by Dornbusch]
Where Jean Rabe Went Wrong, #3: Dornbusch laid out very well exactly what’s wrong with Henderson’s premise and why it’s faulty to hold up Barbie as a positive role model of longevity, so I’m not going to repeat it. However, it’s an editor’s job to review every piece prior to publication to see if the writer is making claims that the organization can’t defend, especially the opinion pieces.
And if indeed a writer does make claims that aren’t easily defensible, it’s an editor’s job to note that while the publication stands by the writer’s right to his/her opinion, that it’s not the opinion of the organization as a whole. Again, such a statement—either behind the scenes in the private forums for SFWA members or a public notice on the website—would have gone a long way towards defusing the issue; as far as I researched, nothing to this effect was done by Rabe or the board of directors. If Locus editor-in-chief Liza Groen Trombi can admit to her editorial mistakes regarding an ill-written April Fools’ joke, why are Jean Rabe and the Bulletin above reproach regarding misogyny?
Problem #4: Recently published in Summer 2013, issue #202 contained a “rebuttal” by Resnick and Malzberg to the criticisms of their dialogue from issue #200; in the real world, Rabe probably would have been fired for letting the situation come to this point. As noted earlier, the issue contains a piece written by Hines which was probably prompted by the debate on the cover art from #200, but it was overbalanced by the somewhat incomprehensible back-and-forth between Resnick and Malzberg. Special thanks go to Natalie at Radish Reviews who had been able to obtain low-res images of the article so that both SFWA members and non-members could read and discuss the outrageous statements like this one from Barry Malzberg regarding the detractors:
What makes this statement outrageous is Malzberg’s partial assumption that because there are some people who wished that the article had not been published in the Bulletin, then the injured parties may have wanted to suppress his and Resnick’s words. Of course, he retreats from committing himself to that false agenda (“to my knowledge that is not at the time part of the complainers’ agenda”), but by throwing in the word “suppression” he deliberately and mistakenly calls into mind an image of a specter of Senator Joe McCarthy or something Orwellian.
There’s also this statement by Mike Resnick, referring to the cover of issue #200, which I’ll return to later:
Both Natalie and Jason Sanford do an excellent job in explaining exactly why the latest Resnick/Malzberg dialogue is offensive, so I’m not going to go into it here. At this stage, however, I think that once writers start throwing around claims that they’re being “censored” in an opinion piece and calling their critics “liberal fascists,” it’s time to review with those writers what censorship actually means from a legal standpoint and how to properly respond to critiques written on the Internet.
I point to attorney and blogger Ken White at Popehat who in 2009 had to create a special tag for articles on the site about “thin skinned weenies” who were claiming that their First Amendment rights were being violated. White’s first paragraph explaining the new tag is as follows:
Let’s be clear—the right to free speech is the right to express oneself without state retaliation. It is not a right to speak without social retaliation. Speech has consequences. Among those consequences are condemnation, vituperation, scorn, ridicule, and pariah status. Those consequences represent other people exercising their free speech rights. That’s a feature of the marketplace of ideas, not a bug.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [emphasis mine]
As no one from either of the gentlemen’s home states has introduced a bill into either the House or Senate asking that Mike Resnick and/or Barry Malzberg be prohibited for writing in the Bulletin about “lady writers” and “lady editors,” neither of them can credibly claim that they’re being censored. The fact that Rabe even gave them an opportunity to revisit the subject in issue #202 is proof that the editorial board of the Bulletin is encouraging their right to speak freely about their previous comments.
But instead of letting Resnick and Malzberg’s purple pens get away from them, Rabe should have done the following:
Ensure that they understood exactly what it was that they wrote which some people found offensive.
Explain the rationale of why it was offensive to them in a way that they would understand.
Read their ensuing article to make damn well sure that they weren’t sticking their feet in their mouths again.
Fact-check every claim made by Resnick and Malzberg to ensure that it wasn’t fallacious or damaging to the organization.
That way, Resnick could not have gotten away with his above statement regarding romance novel covers. And while it may probably have a grain of truth within it, that doesn’t mean that readers and fans aren’t as critical of romance novel covers and their sociological implications as Hines was in his essay and blog posts on science fiction and fantasy covers. In fact, a quick Google search brought up this article written in 1999, which can also incidentally be taken as proof that when it comes to decrying sexism in book covers, the romance readers were ahead of the curve. And let’s not forget this entire category of posts by the women behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. There’s even an entire doctoral dissertation on romance novel covers (link goes to a PDF), written by Dr. Jayashree Kamble in 2008.
If I could find those articles and/or have those references at my fingertips within the six hours it has taken me thus far to write this article, surely Rabe or one of her associate editors could have done the same amount of research—or more—and found better examples to show to Resnick and let him know that his rationale was faulty and how he could make his piece stronger.
Because that’s the other job of an editor: to point out where things don’t make any sense and most importantly, help make a writer’s work much stronger. And I think this is the most egregious error that Rabe committed: she left her writers out to hang themselves with their own words.
The task force also aims to “solicit further, detailed opinions from the membership as a whole about the Bulletin as part of an upcoming stage of the project.” I know that I’m not a SFWA member, but in sending a link to this article to vice president Rachel Swirsky and Scalzi as part of their work on this task force, I hope that what I’ve written can help them make the Bulletin a newsletter that the present and future membership can be proud of.
When it comes to reading webcomics, I have a set list of nine “dailies” I read and a few that I read which update less frequently. And while I’ve definitely settled on these few, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t read other webcomics or aren’t familiar with their work. Also, my love of comics and comics strips isn’t exactly a casual one; hell, my high school Extended Essay was about the role of women in comic books from the 1940s to the 1990s.
So when I saw a friend’s Facebook update decrying how Sinfest has become a den of “ludicrous feminist mediocrity,” I had to check out today’s strip:
Click to embiggen! (c) Tatusya Ishida
I flipped through the previous two or three weeks of strips to see if there was any context for the strip, any lead-up, and I noticed that there were a few new characters I’d not seen before as well as a few large colored wordless strips which seemed to be part of a larger story. No “feminist mediocrity,” but perhaps some exaggerated examples of extreme feminist thought and behavior. And then I learned that Ishida has been drawing strips like those for over a year and a half, with very little explanation as to why, leading my friend to make that comment.
Another recent strip which got me thinking about feminism and webcomics was this April 24, 2013 strip for Penny Arcade:
Click to embiggen, though do you really need to do that? (c) 2013 Mike Krahulik & Jerry Holkins
Without context, it seemed to me that the comic was pointing out that emphasizing sexual characteristics is ludicrous for characters in video games and that there’s a double-standard when it comes to what is an acceptable amount of sexualization. Through the dialogue, it’s emphasizing that the female sorceress is more attractive to the Gabriel character to play because her secondary sexual characteristics are emphasized in proportion to her body whereas the male barbarian’s secondary sexual characteristics—and quite possibly his primary as well; I have no idea if that sling is containing nothing but an enormous scrotum or if it’s an enormous scrotum and penis—are not. Finally on the first read-through, the comic pointed out to me that there’s an inequality in what video game character designers find attractive versus who their audience will be, because I know that both women and men read Penny Arcade.
I gave my approval to the strip when I saw it first-thing that morning, and noted that I would have to return to the site later on in the day to get the context and a bit of commentary. As I wrote on Twitter, what I had hoped to read from writer Jerry Holkins was that they were starting to understand why some female gamers have a tough time being a part of the fandom and that they “gained some levels” in Feminist Theory.
Oh boy, I cannot wait to see the blog entry that will go along with this comic penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/04/… // Feminism, level up!
Clearly, that was too much to hope for from the crew who mishandled the “dickwolves” saga, as seen by the news post that went out later that day. After first stating that the art being used to illustrate even the title image for Dragon’s Crown is so ornate as to render it incomprehensible, and that it just seems to be part of what developer Vanillaware does on a regular basis, Holkins goes on to write:
The only characters here who aren’t fucking mutants are the Elf and the Wizard, who are there to calibrate the player; everybody else is some fun-house exponent of strength or beauty stretched into some haunted sigil. Iconic isn’t even the word—they don’t evoke icons, they are icons. They’re humans as primal symbols.
It’s very weird to pull up a story about a game with frankly visionary art and hear why it shouldn’t exist, or to hear what I supposedly fantasize about, or what kind of power I supposedly revere, and any attempt to defend oneself from these psychotic projections or to assert that creators may create is evidence of a dark seed sprouting in the heart. It’s an incredible state of affairs. They’re not censors, though—oh, no no. You’ll understand it eventually; what you need to do is censor yourself. [emphasis mine]
I understand that the more extreme reactions (“Oh, you must be a sexist chauvinistic pig in order to like this sort of thing!”) and the initial assertion by Kotaku writer Jason Schreier were more than a little bit knee-jerk; thus, Holkins’ implying that those kinds of people are “psychotic” is perfectly valid.
However, Schreier’s follow-up posted just the day before—and probably before Holkins started writing his post—was dead-on and I was disappointed that a chunk of Mike Krahulik’s responses on Twitter were centered around whether or not it was right to “censor” artist George Kamitani’s work instead. That in itself is a fascinating discussion, but not the main crux of this issue.
Passing off half of the six available player character designs as “fun-house” or “primal” symbols and calling it “frankly visionary” doesn’t address the fact that it’s done in a way which could turn off some of its potential audience. In fact, I’d argue that even while Kamitani is trying to change how the modern person envisions fantasy characters, he falls into the trap of contorting his “non-mutant” Elf character into the same spine-breaking action shot for which so many others have been lambasted.
Instead of being a part of promoting equality to their audiences, Ishida has chosen to confuse his and Krahulik and Holkins have chosen to ignore or to troll the vocal members of theirs. And while I don’t claim to even know what Ishida’s thinking, I know from previous news posts and an interview in their own reality series that Krahulik and Holkins have been grateful for the chance to educate and illuminate their audience about things that are important to them.
Thanks to a confluence of events, I finally finished playing the original Mass Effect as both a male and female Commander Shepard in July… which means it’s podcast time! After a bit of juggling and some technical difficulties, I sat down to check in with co-editor Jill Pullara, and writers Jonathan Cherlin and Lowell Greenblatt on how their summer has been going, to do a review of an indie game called Resonance, and to answer a very important question which we asked previously: Does the gender of your Commander Shepard really have an influence on how you play the game? Show notes after the jump.
My modus operandi regarding gigantic geek blockbuster movies is to maybe see a trailer or two and then completely attempt to avoid any sneak peeks, exclusives, or interviews. This is a technique that has mostly served me well ever since I was pleasantly overjoyed by the awesome that was the 2000 X-Men movie. So, it came as a complete surprise to me that indeed, a lot of the scenes in both Iron Man and Iron Man 2 were improvised. As for Don Cheadle being uncomfortable with it, you couldn’t tell from the interview he gave to MTV News (third video down). Then again, he’s an actor; he could have just been polite for the cameras.
Just in case you missed it, Lowell’s review of The Amazing Spider-Man can be found here.
For those of you who might not remember, Sliding Doors was a movie which came out in 1998 starring Gwyneth Paltrow where a single event in her life (whether or not she catches a train in London) has two different effects on the rest of her life. Both of these universes are shown on the screen happening at the same time. In contrast, the Buffy episode in question is called “Normal Again.”
As for “Awake,” you can indeed catch all 13 episodes on Hulu. Originally broadcast on NBC, the star of the show is Jason Isaacs (aka Lucius Malfoy of the Harry Potter films and the voice of Admiral Zhao from “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”) Sadly, the show was doomed with declining ratings after a promising start, despite its being nominated for a “Best Writing in a Drama Series” for the pilot episode.
If you’re a parent, (especially a Dad) this game can be pretty difficult to play at times. In fact I’m curious if people who don’t have kids will end up getting as much out of it. I don’t know if it’s an 89.85%, or a 9.7 out of 10. What I do know is that after a late night playing it, I sneak into my son’s room and hug him before I go to bed.
Of course, your own mileage—especially your own relationship with your father and/or your kids—may vary.
As the rest of this segment referencing “The Commander Shepard Challenge” contains some spoilers for the entire Mass Effect video game series, I humbly leave this video as a reminder of common spoiler etiquette:
Note: This means that under these terms of etiquette, it’s okay to spoil the story behind the first two installments but not the third. However, since I’m still playing ME2, I humbly ask that you not spoil that one for me.
Shortly after we recorded this podcast, the idea of allowing a female character choice in modern first-person shooter games was discussed on The Escapist in a brilliant video called “Let’s End the FPS Sausage-fest” by Jim Sterling. I am so very, very glad that more people are continuing to have this discussion; here’s hoping we can come to a good and sane consensus.
Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency is the intrepid lady whose Kickstarter campaign to raise money to do a video series deconstructing tropes about women in the video game culture resulted in her being unfairly attacked by some of the same gamers she wished to reach with her series. I remember being very disgusted when I first read about this—and sad because I was too poor to contribute to her campaign—and just skimming through the comments on the news posts on other sites about the story makes me livid all over again.
Possibly a humble-brag, but in the Facebook comments to the Jimquisition video linked above, I did continue to have this discussion; I will also say that it’s not an easy conversation for me to have because of how strongly I feel about it. But I must forge on.
We try not to spoil any of the puzzles in Resonance, but just to warn you, there is definitely a spoiler for one or two things.
Resonance (Actually, a 4.5)
Created by Vince Twelve
Designed by Vince Twelve
Published by Wadjet Eye Games
Starring Edward Bauer, Sarah Elmaleh, Logan Cunningham and Daryl Lathon
Rating: Appropriate for teens and older
From l to r: Ray, Anna, Ed, and Detective Bennet must race against time to save the world... and you can help!
Official Blurb:When a brilliant particle physicist dies unexpectedly, the race is on to secure his terrible new technology before it falls into the wrong hands. The lives of four playable characters become entangled as they fight against the clock to find the dead scientist’s secret vault. The suspicions they harbor, the memories they guard, the connections they share—all will converge as these four ordinary people work together to prevent a potentially cataclysmic disaster.
Pros: Great storytelling and narrative, plot twists, characterization, musical score, level of challenge to player, art design Cons: Puzzles can be unintuitive, differences in opinion on voice acting
Jonathan: Resonance has wonderful art design, music, and mostly solid game design. The game design is spotty in some places, in the sense that either you’re right on the dot of what you’re supposed to be doing, or you have no clue at all. It would have helped if there was something in place that told you that you were close. My favorite parts of the game, the survival-horror geek I am, were playing through Anna’s dreams. Truly disturbing game design, imagery, and sound design. Absolute brilliance, especially considering this is a low-budget game. Overall Resonance does what the title suggests…it resonates with you.
Jill: Resonance is a fantastic throwback to the great adventure games of gaming’s past, with beautiful art deign and retro graphics that are executed so perfectly you’d think it was made in the early ‘90s—which, in this case, is a good thing! Of course, with that comes the aches and pains that every good adventure game: the puzzles can be hard to solve, and hard to find, the solution often being the one thing you didn’t try, or the one person you didn’t think to click on. Some may call it unintuitive, but I call it old school. But the hard (and admittedly sometimes oblique) puzzles are worth it for the narrative presented, with compelling characters you come to care about, and a twist that you may not see coming. The most interesting aspect of the game, for me, is being able to switch between four different player characters, each with their own distinct voice. It would be remiss of me to not mention the music and sound design—beyond just adequate, the sound design and music do exactly what they’re supposed to do: draw you in, understand tone, and heighten the emotion of a scene. I hadn’t been as terrified of my character dying since Clock Tower’s Scissor Man was chasing me through a mansion as I desperately looked for a place to hide. Any fan of old school adventure games will enjoy this game, though gamers unfamiliar with the genre will have some issues with the interface and puzzle-solving. While it’s no King’s Quest VI or Day of the Tentacle, Resonance certainly belongs alongside I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
Rainbow Dash and Rarity could not be more different, and yet they are both girls. Rainbow Dash is not presented as wrong for being athletic and having no interest in fashion, nor is Rarity presented as wrong for being more stereotypically girly and interested in cats, clothes, and jewelry.
This was a revelation to me, as sad as that may be! Think of the variety of male presentations in those shows that have a Smurfette: little boys can watch them and learn to be a strong, silent leader, a brave hero, or a witty intellectual. Girls watch themselves be summarized down to a single word whose presentation might not fit. But in [My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic], there are a half-dozen main girls who are all distinct, all respected, and all work together after they move past the natural friction caused by their differences.
Behind the scenes, co-editor Jill Pullara and I have been recording podcasts while we work on something fun for our upcoming vidcast series, the first installment of which will be up in an hour. This particular one was recorded on May 7, 2011, and thanks to us finally getting some technical details worked out, it’s ready for public consumption. After the jump, I’ll give you the show notes:
If we went too fast for you, here’s the complete list of games on display and for play at the Smithsonian’s “The Art of Video Games” exhibit.
That trick that Jill was talking about with the Rhianna song? You can try it yourself:
If you’d like to download this show, you can go to the show’s home page at TalkShoe. I have to stitch the next podcast together, so expect that one to go up in maybe a week or so? Comments, questions, and kudos can be left here.
Shaun Deeb says: "I support women poker players. Poker is a gender-neutral game. I am here to promote abolishment of gender-specific or segregationist events at the WSOP."
Back when Secretary of Geek Affairs Wil Wheaton was writing a lot about poker in his blog, I took it upon myself to learn more about the modern game and why Wheaton liked it. My Internet meanderings eventually lead me to the Tiltboys, a group of friends and poker players in the California Bay Area who had been regaling the online poker community for years with their outrageous exploits, prop bets, and antics which surrounded their weekly home game.
Eventually, they gathered these writings into a book called Tales from the Tiltboys, the cover of which features former “Celebrity Poker Showdown” commentator Phil Gordon in drag. The reason why he was in drag was that back in 2006, he and and four of the other Tiltboys crashed a Bay101 ladies only tournament (please excuse the bright pink background); the reason written by Bruce “Bruscilla” Hayek is here:
If you’re not a ba-poker [Bay Area Poker] list regular, then you may have missed a recent debate about Bay101’s “Ladies Only” poker tournaments. A prolonged discussion ensued, with many complaints about reverse discrimination, and post after post enumerating the many reasons that women don’t need an exclusive poker tournament.
Very few dissenting opinions surfaced, with one notable exception: a post that lucidly and succinctly proposed that this was a “solution in search of a problem.” I was at a party on Sunday with several Tiltboys, discussing why Clifford Matthew’s posting was one of the more sensible ones we’d seen.
I then turned to Rafe [Furst] and mentioned that the current discussion kind of made pointless a previous discussion we’d had. (We had talked earlier about accepting a proposed challenge on the list to show up for the tournament in drag.) Rafe agreed with me, but we both regretted having to pass up on some good fun for reasons of principle, so we resolved the dilemma the way our religion dictates: a rock-scissors-paper match. We loaded the dice in fun’s favor by me taking the side of principle and Rafe taking the side of fun, and I somehow got skunked 3-0.
In short, “they did it for the lulz,” and according to Hayek’s account, only a few of the women there complained.
Fast-forward to the 2010 World Series of Poker where professional Shaun Deeb (that’s him in the picture above) and 11 other men who also wanted “lulz”—or legitimately wanted to bring attention to the fact that they feel that the inclusion of the “Ladies Event” is sexist—entered and played in the tournament which took place on Day 15 of the series. The poker blogosphere erupted with commentary about the proceedings, but I think the most interesting comment is from Linda Geenan, a former dealer and current grandmother, who was got her pocket aces cracked by American Pie starlet Shannon Elizabeth on the first day of the event:
My view on women in poker and Ladies only events are neither pro nor con. I have no huge push to segregate the poker field into categories but I also am not adverse to it. The Seniors Event and the Ladies Event, are categories that are not open to all players, it’s just the way it is, live with it kids. When you look at the realistic side of life and what it costs just to make a daily living, the $50K Poker Players Championship is in a category that very few of us will ever find ourselves standing at the cashier cage signing up for the event. It is what it is. If I had an extra 50K, I have too many other things going on in life to invest it in a grueling battle of wits, cards, poker skill, and physical exhaustion, to try to win the event or even finish in the money so I’m not bust.
As a former writer and editor for Sequential Tart.com, I’m very familiar with the arguments for and against single-gender only events, publications, and websites because ever since the Golden Age of comics began in the late 1930s, the world of both the comics themselves and the companies who published them have been the domain of mostly men. As a female geek, I know well what it’s like to be the only woman in a comics shop or one of the few women at an anime or comics convention.
And I will say to the people who run online poker sites and poker bloggers now what the women who write for Sequential Tart as well as female creators/editors like Johanna Draper Carlson, Lea Hernandez, and Gail Simone have been saying for years:
If you ask women what you can do to make them feel welcome at your table and then actually listen to what they say and follow up on that advice, your female audience will grow.
This means doing things like featuring women in your advertising as more than just armchair candy. It means refraining from calling women “spank-worthy” in the same blogpost where you provide links to other commentary about the 2010 Ladies Event. It means boosting the visibility of female pros who run good, giving us role models to follow and emulate.
It means continuing to dissuade men from entering into the Ladies’ Event until the amount of women who are playing in the donkaments and other lower entry fee games increases. It may mean creating a Newbie Event to parallel the Ladies’ Event or the Senior’s Event and restricting it to players who have never cashed in any major tourney in order to serve as that “free hit” that gets newer female players coming back for more.
It means doing these things to convert women like me, the casual home game player who runs well at her table into a casino-visiting player or an online player.
And that’s how I think the desegregation of the WSOP should start.
(Actually, a 4.5)
Rainbow Dash and Rarity could not be more different, and yet they are both girls. Rainbow Dash is not presented as wrong for being athletic and having no interest in fashion, nor is Rarity presented as wrong for being more stereotypically girly and interested in cats, clothes, and jewelry.