For every dollar I spend going to see Ender’s Game, I vow to spend twice as much in a donation to a gay rights group. Won’t you join me?
Trisha’s Take: When feminism and male webcomics artists collide
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:
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:
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!
— Trisha Lynn (@trishalynn) April 24, 2013
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.
Back in 2004, Holkins and I had the following exchange regarding the expectations placed upon them as “pioneers” of the webcomics medium:
Jerry Holkins: Do you think that we should actively be courting the [female audience]?
Me, writing for Sequential Tart: Not at all.
JH: ‘Cause I’m curious about that.
ST: I like you just the way you are.
JH: Awww. That’s sweet.
I think I’m starting to change my mind.
This is how a celebrity should interact with his/her fans
[There] is one meeting [with fans at the recent Megacon] that stands out, that moved me so much, I’ve been struggling to find the right words to recount it. On Saturday, a young woman walked up to my table with her husband and her two children. She handed me a typed letter and told me that she knew she wouldn’t be able to get through what she wanted to say to me, and would I please read it.
I unfolded it, and read her story. When she was a young girl, she had a serious complication due to her Lupus, and her doctors told her that she would never walk again. She had a photo of me, though, that she took with her to physical therapy every day, and the therapists would hold it up for her and encourage her to walk toward it—toward me—while she recovered. She made a promise to herself, she said, that she would walk again some day, and if I was ever in her town, she would walk up to meet me. At the end of her letter, she thanked me for being there, so she could walk to meet me.
I looked up at her through tears, and she looked back at me through her own. I stood up, walked around my table, and put about fifteen feet between us. I held my arms open, and asked her to walk over to me. She began to cry, and slowly, confidently closed the distance between us. I embraced her, and we stood there for a minute, surrounded by thousands of people who had no idea what was going on, and cried together.
“I’m so proud of you,” I said, quietly, “and I am so honored.”
We wiped the tears away, and I sat back down to sign a photo for her. I looked at her young children. “Your mom is remarkable,” I said, “and I know you don’t get it, because she’s, like your mom? But you have to trust me: she is.”
The kids nodded, and I could tell that they were a little freaked out by the emotion of the thing, even if they didn’t understand it. They looked at their father, who said, “Mommy’s okay. Mommy’s okay.” That made me tear up again. Mommy was okay, and she is a remarkable woman who defied the odds and her doctors, and walked up to meet me. I’m still overwhelmed when I think about what that means, and how I was part of it.
Geeks Helping Geeks: Help this man find a job!
ETA: All is mostly well! Update at the end.
On a night when an old white guy and a younger white guy are debating over which of their respective political ideals purport to help create more jobs in the U.S., it’s very easy to be caught up in their rhetoric and ignore the reality that faces the people who have found themselves out of work and desperately trying to keep things going another day.
An example that hits very close to home for me is that of Kevin Lillard, one of the first to document North American cosplay enthusiasts and anime conventions at his now-defunct website “A Fan’s View.” His website was most active in the late 1990s and early 2000s where he would criss-cross the United States to take photographs of cosplayers, panelists, events, and many more of the activities that surround an average anime convention.
However, after a round of layoffs at the Indianapolis Star where he had been a reporter for over 18 years, Lillard became homeless, and was forced to live out of his car. This Facebook message, written in the middle of the day on October 12 details how poor his situation currently is:
Out of work and out of money, I’ve been living in my car for the last month, spending days at a nearby library, sending out mostly ignored online job applications. Already there’s no money to buy food and the last things to eat were some peanuts from a vending machine at the Anderson newspaper where I had my last job interview. I spent my last change to make a 50-cent call at a pay phone hoping to speak to a recruiter and reached only voice mail. The car where I’ve been living started running out of fuel on the way to the library and I barely got there. With no money there will be no fuel and no way to go from place to place. Even if there is another job offer there will be no way to get there,with no money and no fuel. Unless there’s some sort of miracle,this is the end of any hopes I had. All of the prayers have been answered with messages of failure. This is where we have learned what God really wants.
But it didn’t used to be that way.
Armed with an amateur’s love for photography and a fan’s love for the medium of Japanese animation, it wasn’t unusual to look at Kevin Lillard’s homegrown website on a Friday to see coverage from a convention in one part of the country and on Sunday to see coverage from a complete different convention several hundred—sometimes even thousands—of miles away. That, along with Lillard’s recurring “convention personality of the week” feature kept thousands of people coming back to his site time and time again. (Disclaimer: Kevin once named me a Cosplay Personality of the Week despite the fact that I never actually did any cosplay. I can’t help it if I ran with the “It” crowd back in the day, can I?)
Lillard was a tireless photographer who tried to attend every major event at a convention, which is why it came as a major shock when in 2006 he suffered from a heart attack while covering Ohayocon. This, coupled with an incident at Ikkicon in Austin, Texas in 2009 (scroll down to Saturday) lead to Lillard pulling a decade’s worth of coverage from the web and returning to another love of his, photographing (and announcing) at car races at the Indianapolis Speedrome.
However, according to his LinkedIn profile, Lillard left that job at the same time as the layoff from the Star and as a freelancer, it’s highly doubtful that he had any significant amount of savings. The folks at American Cosplay Paradise have put up a PayPal donation button here where the funds will go directly to Lillard; others are helping by helping gather a list of resources for him to help him get back on his feet.
But I think what would help Kevin Lillard the most would be a job. I mean, look at these photos, taken over several years, at races, during events like basketball games, air shows, and craft shows. Any blog media group worth their page views should be storming down his door to hire him to be their “man on the scene.” If I had the money, I’d fly him out to cover the upcoming New York Comic Con for me; that’s how much I trust in his skills at going in, shooting the story, and uploading the material to a website.
Here’s hoping.
Update: 10/12/2012 Less than 24 hours after the first wave of messages started whizzing around Facebook and the anime convention sphere, Kevin Lillard had this to report:
The old saying of how things are darkest just before the dawn has been proven true with my amazing experiences of the last day. It’s humbling to have to beg and even more humbling to see the outpouring of support in my case. The donations through PayPal have been far beyond anything I could have expected. There’s far more than enough to get me back on my feet and housed for a long time, so I won’t need anything else. If you want to make a donation now, find a local charity that offers real help to the homeless, because there are countless people on the streets who have nothing close to the network of friends that I learned that I have. Fortunately the size of the generosity that you have shown will make it possible for me to send some of the donations to an umbrella agency in this area that works to help the homeless, so they’ll be better prepared to assist those who seem to be in a hopeless predicament. Again, many many thanks.
Honestly, anyone would want to have this guy as an employee, right?
Wil Wheaton: 1, Stinking Paparazzi: 0, Internet: A HOJILLION
ETA: More pics added below mine!
After a busy year which involved Debbie Gibson serenading him on his 40th birthday, playing board games with Colin Ferguson and chatting about aliens with Noah Wyle, raising over $10,000 to aid homeless doggies and kitties in need, re-launching his blog on his own website, and being able to tell his shipmates how much he really loves them for the first time since he was 18, Wil Wheaton and his wonderful wife Anne decided to go to Hawaii for a private vacation.
And despite his re-emergence into the mainstream public eye courtesy of recurring guest appearances on shows like “The Big Bang Theory,” “Leverage,” and “Eureka,” where he gets to relish in playing “evil”, I still find it hard to believe that the Wil Wheaton we know as that guy who loves brewing beer, telling stories through words and film, and being generally geeky is a celebrity.
It’s something that Wheaton’s gotten used to over the years, and he’s certainly had his share of “crazy” and “scary” fan moments—but I don’t think that even Wil Wheaton ever thought that he’d be stalked by the paparazzi while on vacation. I’ll let him explain:
We’ve had an absolutely amazing trip, relaxing and reading and swimming and having beers and mostly just enjoying that, after a year spent mostly apart due to my work, we finally get ten days together.
Well, today, a shitbag decided to intrude on our private vacation. He set himself up on the beach where we’re staying, pulled out a telephoto lens, and decided to take pictures of us for hours this morning.
I saw this guy around 10 this morning, and I thought to myself, “No, that guy isn’t taking my picture; I’m just being paranoid. Nobody cares about me enough to camp out on a beach and take that kind of paparazzi picture.”
Around 3, Anne and I got up from the beach, and walked back to our condo to make lunch. I saw the same guy, in the same place, with the same camera. I sort of glared at him, and he said something to me that I couldn’t hear.
“What?” I said.
“I said, ‘thank you, Wil.’” He said.
“Dude, I’m on vacation, and taking pictures like that of me and my wife isn’t cool. Would you please delete them?” I said.
“Sorry, brah,” he said, “I gotta make a living.”
“Are you serious?” I said. “I’m just trying to be on vacation with my wife, man.”
“Sorry, brah,” he said.
I absorbed the reality of what this parasite had done, and I said, “Go fuck yourself, you piece of shit.”
“Hey, if you don’t like it, go home, brah,” he said.
I was enraged. I was shaking and sick to my stomach. I walked back to my condo, and ate a sandwich (delicious PB&J with Guava Jam!) while I processed the invasion of my privacy I’d just experienced.
I was furious that this piece of shit would spend hours sitting on a beach, taking I don’t even know how many pictures of us, and then have the audacity to tell me that I should just go home if I didn’t like it. Like I was in the wrong for expecting to enjoy some time on the beach without some fucking creep using a telephoto lens to take pictures of me.
But of course, rather than continue to let his vacation be ruined by this breach in privacy and courtesy, he and his wife decided to ruin the chance that the creepy stalker photos will ever be purchased by publishing their own photos of themselves in their bathing suits.
And then… the Internet got creative in that way that only a geek-defending, Photoshop and GIMP-happy, meme-creating Internet can:
And, of course, I had to get my kicks in as well:
I can’t wait to see what other ‘shops come out of this. ETA: I hit “Publish” too soon…
Geekly Speaking About… “What to Expect When You’re Attending New York City Comic Con”
With the dog days of summer disappearing and the sound of little footsteps running away from school buses, fall is upon us—which means it’s time for another New York City Comic Con.
This year, the event will be held at the Javitz Center from October 11 to October 14 and there are less than 48 hours remaining for you to pre-register and be able to get your pass in the mail. But what if you’re unsure about whether or not you want to go? Luckily, I was able to rescue this podcast from the unknown to bring you a roundtable discussion about what myself, co-editor Jill Pullara, and writers Jonathan Cherlin and Lowell Greenblatt liked and disliked about last year’s event. Show notes, as usual, are after the jump.
- As a tiny little note, you’re going to hear some loud knocking every now and then when people are speaking. That’s just us banging on the table for emphasis… right next to where I just happened to place my recorder.
- Definitely not a new thing, resources for people who’d like to add more games and video games to their public and/or school libraries can check out the archives of the Games in Libraries podcast or read up on International Games Day @ Your Library, sponsored by the American Library Association, which will be on Saturday, November 3.
- For your amusement (and with the formatting broken), here’s the last con report I ever did of San Diego Comic Con, from 10 years ago, back when I was writing for Sequential Tart.com. Also, belated apologies for attending the con with strep throat. I know better than to do that now. My favorite memory from the con was immortalized by Lea Hernandez in a “Near Life Experience” strip, of which I bought the original when she rediscovered it after her terrible house fire in 2006.
- When I asked her to clarify her remarks about cosplayers, Jill wrote, “My annoyance at NYCC was that cosplayers take up so much space and, honestly, a lot were half assed and done by attention seekers (well the ones I saw. The ones who looked a bit sad until someone wanted to take a picture with them). They would take pictures in the middle of a crowded walkway, walk side by side slowly like tourists down 14th Street! I didn’t experience that at PAX East. I’m sure there was more cosplay than I’m remembering, and I often speak in hyperbole, but I didn’t experience anywhere near the amount of annoyance and frustration from simply trying to walk down an aisle as I did at NYCC.”
- No, you’re not going crazy. At one point, we did have a podcast where Jonathan talked about the changes in the voice cast for the Silent Hill 2 high-definition remake which was released in March 2012; however, that podcast is still lounging around on my hard drive. One more thing to add to the list…
- Incidentally, if you did purchase the HD Remake for your Xbox 360, experienced glitches, and still have your receipt, Konami is offering exchanges for what they’re calling “other Konami titles or versions of titles.” And this despite the fact that the glitched PS3 version was patched and they can’t do the same for the Xbox 360 version.
- Eventually, Lowell was successful, and you can read his interview with both of the guys from Kirby Krackle here. No rock stars were harmed in the obtaining of this interview.
- Also, Lowell’s interview with “Angel & Faith” creators Christos Gage and Rebekah Isaacs is here.
- Karl Custer, aka Uncle Yo, has been doing the rounds of the anime con circut as a “comedian for geeks” since 2008. I personally love his stuff, but geeks who are casual about their anime love might not get some of his material. You know what I would love to see? Uncle Yo opening for the Nerdist himself, Chris Hardwick someday.
- While the first part of my “Voices from New York Comic Con” series was posted not long after the show, I’ll be posting the first half hopefully not too long after this podcast goes up to whet your appetite for the 2012 show in October.
- Originally debuting at the 2011 PAX Prime convention, here’s a look at the development and design of Siege of Gardmore Abbey with its author, Steve Townshend.
- If you don’t know what Jill means by the adjective phrase “Chris Perkins-awesome,” you have to watch this collection of videos I’ve saved onto my YouTube account; thus, will you know the fullest extent of its meaning and become an adherent for life.
- An old system, elements of The Burning Wheel are present in creator Luke Crane’s new RPG system, Mouse Guard, based on the comics by David Petersen from Archaia Entertainment.
- You, too, can show your love for partying with a cleric on your chest, designed by Jen Brazas (Mystic Revolution). (And now, I think I have a new comic to do an archive binge on.)
- I was glad not to miss the Womanthology panel, as I was able to record nearly all of it for you. As for the anthology itself, it’s currently available from Amazon (some reviews here) or you might want to brave your local comics shop and see if they’ll order it for you. (If they don’t, then they’re a terrible shop, and you should find one that will!)
- And as for the Womanthology brand itself, IDW Publishing announced at WonderCon in March that it will be releasing a five-issue miniseries called “Womanthology: Space,” featuring creators such as Fiona Staples, Blair Butler, Jessica Hickman, Bonnie Burton, Ming Doyle, and Stacie Ponder.
Trisha’s Music Video of the Day: “Gangnam Style” by PSY
Yes, I know I’m a little late to this, but my recreational browsing has taken some hits recently and I haven’t been able to goof off on the Internet as much as I’d like to. I did finally get a chance to see one of the latest viral music videos to sweep my Facebook page; now, I’m wondering why the hell it took me so long:
In addition to containing the kind of infectious booty-shaking bass beat that I’ve craved since Justin Timberlake brought “Sexyback,” the number one reason why I love this music video is the pure combined sense of machismo, dance-like-no-one’s-watching, and “This is why I’m legendary,” all in one package. Korean rapper Park Jae Sung exudes a joie de vivre in this video that I haven’t see in a long while. At the same time, it helps to promote the idea that you don’t have to be super fit or a dancer all your life in order to move your body well on a dance floor—something that might be soothing or helpful to those of you out there who are afraid of looking like an idiot when you’re dancing.
In short, I wish that more people would just get up and dance and have fun like this, and I hope to be able to add more tracks from PSY to my iPod.
Geekly Speaking About… “The Resonance of Commander Shepard”
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.
- With regards to Heavy Rain and its fatherhood theme, I leave it to Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade who wrote two years ago:
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.
- Here’s Kotaku on the footage in question from next year’s Tomb Raider, which was largely seen in the “Crossroads” trailer which was shown at E3 this year. First, the commentary from executive producer Ron Rosenberg regarding the trope of character growth for female characters coming about as a result of sexual assault, and later studio head Darrell Gallagher’s retraction of that statement two days later. Personally speaking, when the bad guy pulls a bound Croft towards him and the camera angle moves overhead to reveal his head turning towards her neck? Looks like attempted sexual assault to me. (Unless it’s revealed later in the game that the dude’s a vampire and is hungry.)
- Incidentally speaking, I wanted to link to the TV Tropes page regarding said trope and found out that because the site uses Google Adsense and Google doesn’t allow discussions about rape on sites using that service, the site’s admin Fast Eddie has decided that all rape tropes don’t exist on his site. Luckily, the good people at the Geek Feminism Wiki were able to copy over all the entries; sadly, they need lots of fixing up. Won’t you lend a hand?
- 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.
- I mostly agree with everything that’s said in this Cracked.com article on what video games get “right” about gaming in general, and most definitely #5 which relates to musical cues.
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
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.
Resonance was released on June 19 via the game’s official website, GOG.com, and on Steam after August 1 as well as in traditional retail stores.
Trisha’s Quote of the Day: From your mouth to starlets’ ears
Any words of wisdom for Kaitlyn Leeb, the actress who inherited your role, who already seems to be struggling with the same sort of fan interest?
Be nice to your fans and keep your legs crossed. Blouse open. But legs crossed.
—Lycia Naff, who played the original three-breasted prostitute in 1990’s Total Recall, gives advice to her successor in this year’s Total Recall remake. (With additional props to The Awl’s Tom Blunt for quickly scoring that interview.)
Trisha’s Take: “Not the Messiah” review
Not the Messiah: He’s a Very Naughty Boy
Directed by Aubrey Powell
Written by Eric Idle, John Du Prez
Starring William Ferguson, Rosalind Plowright, Shannon Mercer, Christopher Purves, Eric Idle and featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Special Guests (in order of first appearance): Michael Palin, Carol Cleveland, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, Neil Innes
When I first heard that they were going to be turning Monty Python and the Holy Grail into a Broadway musical, my immediate reaction was to scoff and wonder which idiot it was who thought it up. Imagine my chagrin when I learned that the “idiot” was original Monty Python cast member Eric Idle, he who was responsible for writing and performing many of their more popular songs, including “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” and (my favorite)“Penis Song (Not the Noel Coward Song).”
I never got to see Spamalot in its original run, but considering that it was nominated for 14 Tony Awards, won the Best Musical Award in 2005, and got some very good reviews, you can imagine why I didn’t hesitate to press play when I learned that the performance of an oratorio written by Idle and John Du Prez, his Spamalot collaborator, was streaming on Netflix.
Based on Monty Python’s Life of Brian and called “Not the Messiah: He’s a Very Naughty Boy,” this particular production was filmed at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the creation of the TV series. For those of you who aren’t British or Anglophiles but are Doctor Who fans, you’ll know this place as the one where they held a two different concerts featuring music from the series and featured an original video in 2008 starring 10th Doctor David Tennant and hosted by Matt Smith (the 11th Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), and Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams) in 2010.
The show opened with the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing the Monty Python theme song, “The Liberty Bell March,” and I have to say that I absolutely loved the notion that this grand march was being played by a full orchestra in such a lovely and historic building to celebrate some of the greatest sketch comedians who ever lived.
All of the best highlights from Life of Brian were touched upon in the oratorio. The songs which stood out to me as being best adapted from the movie as well as being musically interesting were “What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?” lead masterfully by bass Christopher Purves; “The People’s Front of Judea” which introduced soprano Shannon Mercer as Judith, Brian’s love interest; and “Not the Messiah,” where the call and response nature of the song even more strongly emphasized the ridiculousness of the crowd’s blind faith in Brian as the Messiah.
However, my favorite songs and those which I think were the most clever were those which strayed away from slavishly following the plot. The argument at a meeting of the People’s Front of Judea where Eric Idle as Stan wants to be recognized as a woman (“I Want to Be a Girl”) turns into a very sweet song between tenor William Ferguson and Mercer as they declare their love for each other. Mezzo-soprano Rosalind Plowright as Mandy, Brian’s mother, gets her shots in during “When They Grow Up” as well, another song which makes much of a small moment in the movie.
But perhaps the best song (and the most cheeky) was “Amourdeus,” a short song without words which consisted solely of short notes sung in rapid staccato. In short, it’s a duet between Ferguson and Mercer where the facial expressions on each made it very, very clear that Brian and Judith are having sex. If you don’t believe me, take a gander:
Of course, you couldn’t have a 40th anniversary celebration without other members of the Monty Python cast showing up. Michael Palin was the most frequent guest vocalist who had the most costume changes in his dual roles as Mrs. Betty Palin, the female narrator, Julius Caesar, reprising his exaggerated speech impediment from the film, a random Roman centurion, and an encore performance as the lumberjack from “The Lumberjack Song.” Terry Jones turned in a great performance in “Take Us Home,” which itself was a parody of old labor union songs, complete with the BBC Symphony Chorus backing him up clad in yellow construction helmets. Fellow Pythons Terry Gilliam and Carol Cleveland also made appearances, mostly to round out costumed bits during “We Love Sheep” (Cleveland) and the mariachi-themed “Find Your Dream” (Cleveland, Gilliam, Jones and Idle).
Incidentally, it’s within “Find Your Dream” that one of my problems with this production comes out; for a group that was known for biting satire that had subtlety and wit, the parody and callbacks within the songs can sometimes be too overt. The themes in “Dream” are too damn similar to Spamalot’s “Find Your Grail” while “A Fair Day’s Work” owes way too much to “The Lumberjack’s Song” while rifling through Gilbert and Sullivan’s pockets for loose lyrics. But I suppose that Idle and Du Prez felt that if anyone was going to be ripping off their work, it might as well be them.
My other huge problem with the performances is mostly exemplified in “Mandy’s Lament,” where I had to turn on the subtitles just so I could figure out exactly what Rosalind Plowright was singing. This is a problem I’ve acknowledged before in other reviews, but I’m starting to think that it isn’t all just a problem on my end but rather that of the enunciation and diction of the performer.
Out of the four soloists, I have to say that I love the Julliard-trained William Ferguson as Brian the most because his lines were the most clear, his facial expressions the most animated, and his youthful appearance and vocalization was a great interpretation of the role which had been originated by Graham Chapman. His talent was on display the most during “The Market Square” and “You’re the One” where he poured every emotion into his face and voice. Even when the focus is on someone else, as in the show’s closing singalong of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” by Idle, you can still see Ferguson acting as Brian in the wide shots; dedication to character is what makes his performance the best.
As far as tribute shows and anniversary concerts go, there couldn’t have been a better choice of material, venue, or performers for “Not the Messiah.” It’s definitely one for Monty Python fans, but judging from the reaction of the early music aficionado I saw it with, this is a production that classical music fans will appreciate as well. There’s even a free 30 min. behind the scenes film up on Amazon.com for you to gander at, should you be that indecisive.
It’s streaming on Netflix, it’s available on DVD and Blu-ray; I can’t think of any other method you’d need to be able to view this production, short of taking a TARDIS, a phone booth, or a DeLorean to the original performance date.
Trisha’s Video Series of the Day: Brotherhood 2.0
One of the things that is the source of the Internet’s greatest power is the rabbit hole effect, wherein when you’re looking at one thing, you click a link, see something else, maybe do a search, and then end up at a totally awesome thing that you’ve never seen before.
For me, the rabbit hole began while watching Part 6 in the “Let’s Play” of Cursed Crusade from Loading Ready Run and then heading over to the comments on the forum post, which lead to the “Crash Course” episode on The Crusades, and from there I started to wonder how and why John Green got to be so funny, which lead to finding out about the 2007 web project he conducted with his brother Hank called Brotherhood 2.0.
See, brothers John and Hank Green decided that they conversed entirely too much by text (emails, IMs, text messages, etc.) and for a whole year decided that they would only communicate in means which didn’t involve text and/or written words. This meant that for a year, one brother would upload a video to the shared YouTube channel vlogbrothers talking about his day and the next day, the other brother would reply. (There were also phone calls and possibly in-person meetings as well, but that’s not germane to the thesis of the project.) There were punishments involved for violating the rules/concepts for the project which would also be captured on video and uploaded to the channel. There are two playlists of videos on the channel for the initial project and several more concerning the side projects and what happened when the brothers decided to continue doing the vlog (Oh, God, I hate that word so much).
One of the reasons why I’m drawn to Brotherhood 2.0 is that it’s a glorious collaboration between two witty people, another is how quickly things scale all the way up to dangerously silly. So far, I’ve only seen 25 of the 200 videos from the first part of 2007, and my favorite moments so far include the improvised songs (because I do that to make my boyfriend laugh all the time) and seeing the brothers interact with the world around them in their intros. Also, the “In your pants” game is one that I’m definitely going to have to play with our current library.
I can’t recall when I started watching these, but I can definitely tell you that this is one series that I’m going to be watching for quite some time.
Trisha’s Quote of the Day: When movie critics stop being neutral and start having opinions
After I saw the movie, my 13-year-old daughter asked me if I was “team Peeta or team Gale,” referring to the District 12 boy who is Katniss’s “star-crossed” lover in the Hunger Games arena and her hunky best pal back home. The question also evokes Twilight,” of course, which has gotten a lot of fan-girl mileage out of the competitive objectification of Jacob and Edward.
For the record I always thought Bella should ditch the pouty, sparkly bloodsucker and run with the wolves, though as a grown-up film critic I know I’m supposed to remain neutral. But I have to say that it did not occur to me, watching The Hunger Games,” to think very much about who Katniss’s boyfriend should be. She seemed to have more important things to worry about — and also, to bring it back to Leatherstocking and his kind, to be a fundamentally solitary kind of heroine.
—New York Times film critic A.O. Scott on what makes The Hunger Games movie (and book) different from Twilight.
Live-blogging the Oscars 2012
It’s that time, again—time to honor the “best” or perhaps the “most well-marketed to Academy voters” movies from the previous year with the 84th annual Academy Awards ceremony. Once again, Lyssa Spero (@CinemaGoddess on Twitter) and I (@trishalynn) will be your hosts for this live blog, with perhaps a few more of the GeekingOutAbout writers will be chiming in.
And now, let’s get on with the show!
[liveblog]
Trisha’s Take: How to apologize on the Internet
I know it’s been a while since I’ve written in this blog, and quite a lot has happened since the last time I was able to work on it. A few more responsibilities were added to my day job and while having the increased responsibility is awesome because it means my new employers trust me, it also means that I don’t have a lot of time to geek out over anything.
Saturdays are one of my days to relax, recuperate, and psych myself up for the work week to come. After wiping my FemShep original Mass Effect character in order to start a DudeShep run for the Commander Shepherd challenge, I got to Feros after surveying all the surveyable planets (and leveling up again) and decided that I’d take a break and perhaps pick it up tomorrow.
I also wanted to check and see if my friend Harris “Dr. Nerdlove” O’Malley had posted the article to which I contributed a bit of writing, and knowing how way leads on to way on the Internet, a review of his very popular article on why Twilight is a horrible example to draw upon for pictures of healthy relationships lead me down the rabbit hole onto a commenter’s blog entries about how she lost her faith in God…
…and reminded me of the Victoria Bitter/Jordan Wood fiasco.
To recap, the year was 2001 and the first of the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy movies came out. Many Tolkein fans were pleased and elated with how good the movies were, and several new fans started becoming interested in the mythos thanks to the movies. These new fans were different from other Ringers fans who came before them in that they had access to the Internet and LiveJournals which which to connect to other fans and share their love of the work, and PayPal to send money to those fans in different parts of the world who professed that they were down on hard times.
Through a series of convoluted events, it came out that a person who called herself Victoria Bitter started to believe some very strange things about herself and felt that she was actually a man—not just any man, but actor Elijah Wood’s cousin. Billing herself now as the male Jordan Wood, he hooked up with another LotR fan in Oregon and in the guise of doing good, ended up defrauding a lot of people out of money and incurring the wrath of three actors from New Zealand and the state of Oregon.
You can read more about the entire saga here; if you do a Google search, it’s one of the most interesting rabbit holes you’ll find yourself falling into. The most tragic part is that Amy Player/Victoria Bitter/Jordan Wood/new identity Andrew Blake’s manipulative ways allegedly resulted in a May 2011 double-murder/suicide in which Blake escaped with only a shot to the foot. But that’s what I learned later while doing the research for this post.
When I first clicked through to Abbey Stone’s blog where she writes as KumquatWriter from a comment she left in Dr. Nerdlove’s blog, I found this very interesting series of posts about how she became an atheist. And it was while reading Part Four that I started to think, “Now, why does this sound familiar to me?” By Part Five, the whole thing comes out and it’s the comments to that blog post that I want to highlight.
Jeanine Renne, the author of When a Fan Hits the Shit and the most prominent of the muckrakers who uncovered the details behind the Bit of Earth charity scam, is the sixth person to comment on Stone’s entry and it’s evident that even a decade later, she was still angry about what happened:
I agree completely that Amy is a master manipulator. Little Sam also described the cultish atmosphere “Jordan” created just like you did. But nowhere in this blog, Abbey, do I see any acknowledgement of the things YOU did, to contribute to this situation. Do you accept any responsibility for the lies you told? Do you even admit to them? Because you delivered some whoppers, Abbey.
You attacked your former friends, sometimes at their place of work, calling them vicious names and telling them in no uncertain terms to go to hell. Maybe you were only doing it because “Jordan” brainwashed you… but YOU did it. Have you accepted any responsibility for hurting those people? Do you even admit to it? Because I’ve talked to at least 3 of them, and they were all shocked and deeply hurt.
About a half an hour later, Stone responded directly to Renne:
Yes. I lied. A whole lot. And of COURSE I’m willing to take responsibility for it; that’s what recovery fucking means. I own my stupid choices. I’ve apologized to people I am genuinely sorry for hurting,and many of them have forgiven me, and we’ve moved forward with our friendships.
I’m not replying to your entire comment tonight, because I am busy celebrating my son’s birthday, and I’ll be damned if I’m going back to the worst time in my life just because today is the day you happened to read my blog. Especially when you fucking called him my “spawn” on your own journal. I’ll give your “hot seat” a post of its very own in the next couple of days, when I have the time
I’m giving this much of a reply so you know I read it and am not hiding. Not anymore, not from you. You aren’t my dirty little secret, given that I talk VERY openly about what I did and went through, INCLUDING my guilt.
Oh, and just FYI. I’m the one who tipped you off to Andrew Blake. I knew you’d be the best revenge, and you were.
Renne loved that last line in Stone’s reply because to her it was a wonderful ironic twist. I love it because it shows that Stone truly repentant about what she did. Rather than turn a blind eye when she noticed that other people were possibly going to fall victim to Blake’s manipulations, Stone took steps towards making sure that other people knew about it and could either stop it or help get Blake’s potential victims.
A day later, both Stone and Renne reached a sort of detente, but Stone goes one step further after writing a partially apologetic post to detail exactly what happened the day she stopped believing in Jordan Wood’s lies; after that, Renne was able to finally let her anger at Stone go.
And that’s how you resolve a fight on the Internet: You apologize sincerely, prove that you’re repentant, and move on.
Is it really that hard to do?
Geekly Speaking About interviews Josh A. Cagan
There have been many great things to come out of the invention of Twitter, and one of those things is the fact that Joe and Jane Average Geek can have a closer relationship to the celebrities they admire. Of course, sometimes what happens as a result of those Twitter conversations occurs in a completely unpredictable way, and the result can be something rather spectacular.
Take screenwriter Josh A. Cagan (@joshacagan) for example. One minute, he’s noodling around on Twitter, the next he’s starting a friendship with Adam Savage from “Mythbusters,” after that comes an appearance at the inaugural w00tstock shows, and just recently, a script he sold last year was on the 2011 Hollywood Blacklist of the year’s “most liked” spec scripts.
But as Lowell Greenblatt and I found out during our interview with him, Cagan’s life and career has had its low points, too:
- Am I ever going to start one of these podcasts without some audio difficulties? Skype is great for doing long-distance conference calls, but for some reason we had to stop and start so many times. The best part is that after every time we stopped the call, Skype sent us a “So how are we doing?” feedback form. Also, if you hear clicking, that’s me attempting to log some of these notes during the interview. I promise to use a quiet pen and paper (or my boyfriend’s iPad) next time.
- Here’s the w00tstock performance by Josh Cagan which got me interested in stalking him following him on Twitter:
Josh A. Cagan performing in w00tstock at Largo Los Angeles, CA, 2009. from Kayla Cagan on Vimeo.
- I gotta say, I only ever listened to the audio and I still cracked up watching the video of Cagan’s performance.
- The items on the American Science & Surplus Clearance page alone makes this worthy of linkage. No wonder Mrs. Adam Savage took a fancy to the cut of Cagan’s jib.
- Homestar Runner was one of the best Internet things ever; I’m sad that it hasn’t been updated since December 2010.
- Yes, Virginia, there was an unreleased Fantastic Four movie from 1994; I don’t encourage people to bootleg media, but it’s the only way you can see the whole thing.
- Almost every geek knows about “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” but only a select few will recall The Golden Turkey Awards; an interesting side note is that one of its co-authors is now a conservative pundit.
- Just like Coke and New Coke, some people like the post-MST3K stuff from Cinematic Titanic, others like Riff Trax. You can like both, too! As Tim Gunn says, “It’s all a matter of taste.”
- Interestingly, this very thing happened again back in July 2009 when the co-heirs to the estates of Superman’s creators were able to get a few, but not all, of the rights to that character back. The result is that Man of Steel is now in production, and the U.K.’s Henry Cavill (“The Tudors”, Stardust) is stepping into the famous tights, sans red briefs.
- Still going strong, FilmThreat.com is still the awesome resource that Cagan remembers, minus original founder Chris Gore who is now does the film beat at G4’s “Attack of the Show,” amongst other things.
- Yeah, “Turkish Star Wars” is really a thing.
- “Undergrads” still maintains an official online presence with two clips from the show on it; I’m sure more stuff is on the fan sites that are linked as well.
- The Calgary Expo just announced that Cagan, Pete Williams, and Andy Rheingold from the crew of “Undergrads” will be attending their show, which runs from April 27 to April 29 this year. Other recently announced guests include Wil Wheaton, Richard Hatch (both versions of “Battlestar Galactica”), and Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy, from the Harry Potter movies). Get your tickets and/or your passports now!
- Is now a bad time to confess that I’ve never read Charlotte’s Web?
- I have to say that having worked with a celebrity’s management agency in my former profession as a luxury real estate broker’s executive assistant, I know from experience that they are the real deal and do a lot for the people they represent. Cagan’s lucky to have had the people at H2F Entertainment at his side for so many years.
- Just so you know, Gary Glitter is out of prison, and back in the U.K.
- The sad (or maybe awesome) thing is that Yaffa Blocks still exist at its original website.
- You can buy The Duff for your Kindle or your bookshelf; author Kody Keplinger’s site is here.
- According to Gawker.com, here are the “rules” behind the concept of director jail. As for Todd Graff, I’m not sure if he’ll be put behind bars for having directed Joyful Noise, a choir competition movie starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton. It made $11 million on a weekend where it went up against the Mark Walhberg vehicle Contraband, the re-release of Beauty and the Beast in 3D and the very awesome and still out in theaters Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol—but it has a 35% rotten rating from the critics. Sounds like Graff just can’t please everyone all at the same time.
- I remember Adam de la Peña as being a very cool guy to know in high school, and I also remember for our school’s French club and Spanish club fundraiser, he and his classmates translated the witch scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail into Spanish and performed it. Unfortunately, it bombed, because the audiences was all about the broad physical comedy, not the subtle foreign language wordplay comedy. (My original French skit about a writer and the characters in her private detective noir novel went over a little better.)
- Cagan’s fellow writers in “The Job Factory” are: Rob McKittrick (Waiting…), Matt Allen and Caleb Wilson (Four Christmases and Soul Surfer), and John Davis (The Dukes of Hazzard, the Eureka: Dormant Gene miniseries).
- Cagan’s comment about Wil Wheaton is referring to an interview I did with him for Sequential Tart.com in 2004 which was so long that it had to be split into two parts. A summer project I have is to convert those mini-tapes into something suitable for a podcast.
Our many thanks again to Josh Cagan for spending so much time with us. If you have suggestions for other people you’d like for us to interview who deserve a wider audience, please let us know in the comments below.