Dear Joss:

(I hope I can call you Joss, instead of Mr. Whedon.  You promote a jocular familiarity with your fans that has become the standard of nerd-core, and I'd like to think that you wouldn't mind.  I don't know if you'll ever read this, but I'm hoping if you do that it's okay.)

I have a question for you.  It's probably not a question you get very often, but it's one that's very important to me.  When did you give up on strong women characters?  When did you decide that behind the hand, hipster-ironic sexism was okay with you?  (Okay, I admit, that's two questions.)

You started off great.  Ellen Ripley was a woman I could get behind.  Maybe she was a product of her time, but she represented a great many things that I, as a woman, wanted to see in my stories.  She helped me address the body horror of pregnancy (and, FWIW, I am not ever having children because part of my dealing with it was deciding I wasn't strong enough to go there). 

You gave me Original Buffy.  She was bad-ass and yet vulnerable, confused and yet purposeful.  She was growing up, without knowing what that was going to mean, but instead of getting lost in some sort of diet fad, teen craziness, she explored the confusion of being a highschooler by learning what it meant to slay vampires.  And she looked good doing it, even if Kristy Swanson's hair choices are now...shall we say...regrettable.

Then...TV Buffy happened, and things started falling apart.  I don't blame you for this, at least not entirely.  I don't think sex positivism without consequences would ever have gotten through Hollywood in a teen show in the 90s, so I get why Angel had to lose his soul, and Faith had to be an amoral crazy girl, ripped right from Girl, Interrupted and updated to the millenials.  I don't love it, but I can forgive it.  After all, we had Willow, and she was totally awesome...

Until being a lesbian drove her crazy.  Ahem.  Maybe we'll skip over that.

I'm going to take a pass on Angel, because I never watched it, and skip right to Firefly.  We got Kaylee, who really just dreamed of being a pretty pretty princess.  Well, fair enough, so do I, and her problems with Simon look a lot like some of my relationships.  And we had Inara, the magical sex worker who heals you with her ladybits.  You don't see something problematic there?  Because I'm seeing a real "let's turn the whore into a madonna" thing, without addressing that yes, she is a sex worker, and yes, there are emotional and social complications from that.

It's a sci-fi utopia you say?  Where China became the dominant power?  Then where were all the Asians in the casting?  (Note: I'm a white girl, or at least I pass for one, so I'm not sure I can really address all your messed up colonialism in that show.  I'm aware of it, but probably not the best one to speak on it.)

Then we get Dollhouse.  Where the women have literally become props for other people's projections and fantasies.  Even the one character I wanted to identify with broke my heart, in the end, because Mellie, too, was a Doll.  Can you understand how hurtful it is to think you see your truths reflected in a story and then find out that, no, in the end you are created to appeal to a man?  That show was full of little jabs, and tiny cuts, and by episode six I couldn't watch any more because I didn't want to see a show that Joss "Strong Women" Whedon had made about his own id, and the manic pixie dream girls he wanted to rescue from themselves.

In Dr. Horrible two men (who are both conventionally good looking) play a literal tug-of-war out over a woman.  Did I laugh at "This is the hammer?"  Sure.  But part of me wondered what Capt. Hammer's genitals had to do with the moral of the bad guy really being emotional and having a complex inner life.  It was, ultimately, a boy's story with no place for me in it.  (And that's fine.  I've been carving out my own place in boys' stories for a while, I'm pretty used to it now and I have a finely honed chisel.)

...all of this brings me to The Avengers.  It was, I thought, a pretty entertaining movie.  The dialogue was snappy, and I enjoyed the plot by and large.  But where were the women?  Jane Foster gets sent away so she won't be in harm's way (even though she probably would have known how to shut that gateway down long before all those things destroyed midtown), Pepper is relegated to a plane and 12% of the credit...and Natasha.  Oh Natasha.

See.  I'm a feisty redhead.  I love Natasha, and I thought the interrogation scene was rather splendid!  Women have, in the past, used men's underestimation of them for all kinds of things.  And it was clear that Coulson took her seriously.  So why, why was the only person she had any kind of emotional moment with Barton?  But that wasn't even the worst.

The worst was your hipster-ironic, laugh behind your hand because you put it in the mouth of the bad guy seixst dialogue.  You used the words "mewling quim" so your audience wouldn't catch on that what Loki was really calling Natasha was a "pathetic c**t."  And that, Joss...that hurt a lot.  It felt like every time a nerd guy has told me "girls suck, but not you, you're special."  It hurt like every time a geek guy has told me, "you're really smart, but most girls wouldn't understand what I'm talking about."  It hurt like every single time I was told there was a place at the table for me, and then there wasn't, because the boys put up a big no girls allowed sign, and told me that it wasn't personal but if they let me in they'd have to let those other girls in too.

That was a sexist piece of dialogue, on top of a recent history of sexism, and I don't really know what to say to you anymore.  I want the old days back, women like Ripley and original Buffy.  And I'm tired of giving you a pass because your women are strong on the surface.  A pretty veneer isn't enough any more.  I need substance.  I need women who have emotions and kick ass.  I need women who reflect me.  I need women who tell stories about more than what boys project on them.

So.  I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to keep writing stories for boys I won't begrudge you, but I will start looking elsewhere for stuff that says I have a place at the table.  I hear Chuck Wendig has a couple of awesome strong ladies, like Miriam Black and Atlanta Burns.  If, however, you want to get back to doing real feminist work, give me a call.  I'd love to be able to love you again.

- Sweet Pavement

[Editor's Note: I am writing this both because food is a big topic on the Gaming As Women blog this month, and because food and body image tend to be big things for women.  If you want to talk about this, feel free to leave a comment or come over to my G+ where there's some discussion going on.]

To start with, if you're not familiar with the concept of intuitive eating, go check out http://www.fatnutritionist.com/index.php/what-is-normal-eating/. ; I'll be here when you get back.

...Back?  Okay.  So.  How this works for me.

When I get hungry, a lot of times I'm on auto-pilot.  I want to go to the fridge/local food place and eat something and be done with it.  Because of this I have a range of foods I eat fairly often, and if I just get a hunger signal with no accompanying information, I will pick one of those items or meals.  They are foods I know I find non-triggering with regards to my eating disorders (ED-NOS and Orthorexia), easy to digest, and fuelling.  That's sort of stage 1 of intuitive eating.

Stage two is when I get a cue along with the hunger cue that I would like $thing.  The first thing I do is sit with it (this isn't like a huge meditation or anything, just a few seconds of quiet thought) to ask myself if $thing is actually the thing I want.  If it is, and my body is convinced it is, then that's what I eat and I'm done figuring it out.  (This is often the answer to mouth hunger, and occasionally I will get two bites into $thing and be satisfied.  That is totally okay.  It's also okay if I want a whole snack or meal of $thing.)

If $thing is not what I want, the next thing I do is ask myself what about $thing brought it to mind.  I am trying at this point to separate emotional cues from body cues.  If what brought it to mind was that I'm having an emotional need for something filled by a food, I need to separate those things and deal with the emotions independent of what I eat.  Often, to reset to neutral, I will eat something to take the hunger edge off like a cracker or two because they have no emotional value to me, and then I'll try to get at the emotion.

If $thing is not what I want, and the cue is not emotional but body hunger, I will try to figure out what part of $thing I am hungry for.  I will start by thinking of a food or two that is similar, and work on narrowing it down.  One of these that tends to be common in my life is sour cream and onion potato chips.  There is something about that combination of salts and fats that brings them up as a craving any time my body wants salt or fat for any reason, even if I don't actually want the chips.  (I've learned by trial and error of eating it and being dissatisfied when the hunger for chips actually isn't a hunger for chips.)  Usually what that craving means is that my body wants some kind of dairy like a cheese or a yoghurt or a sour cream, and something salty. 

These are some pretty advanced intuitive eating practices, IMHO.  One of the important things for me about this deductive process is that I am consciously giving myself permission to mess it up.  If I get it wrong, that's okay.  No one is going to die, no one is a bad person, I'm not going to Hades.  I was wrong about what I wanted to eat, and next time the feeling comes up, I'll do the process again.  If I keep getting it wrong over and over, then what that flags for me is not that I'm a bad person, but that I probably have some baggage over a food item or an emotional cue that I need to deal with before I can deal with the part of the process I'm messing up.

(Next time I'll talk about the "how much" part of eating, and how I took a long time to get there.)

[So.  I have to preface this with a couple of things.  1) I was an MtG player first in the days of Revised.  Ah, how I miss those cards with the white borders and the strangely washed out art...  2) I get WAY into the story of things.  That's why I have the sparkly flying deck.  3) I have a strange affection for weird looking creatures, little guys, and other people you're supposed to cheer for.]

So.  Last night I was looking through the binder of Magic cards that J is currently busy sorting.  In the Artifacts section I found "Darksteel Relic" and I looked at him and said "What's this for?"

He read for a while on the internet and said to me: "It's a story card.  It's the last piece of Darksteel on Mirrodin."

And I sniffled.  See, I was already mad that the Phyrexians took over Mirrodin (they're evil at best, except the red ones, who are letting Mirrans hide out in the core), and that they'd taken Karn (the planeswalker that created Mirrodin) prisoner.  The whole thing made me pretty sad, and let's just admit, any of the Myr are pretty cute.  (They're little metal guys with neat heads!)

So I was looking at the Darksteel Relic (and the little Darksteel Myr) and I got a sniffle.  Because I feel really bad that Mirrodin is all corrupted.  Poor Karn deserves a nice place to live, and friends to share it with, and they keep getting yanked away from him.  Not to have just one little shard be the only thing left.

So...here goes.  I'm pullin' for Karn and Mirrodin.  I want to beat back the Phyrexians, and clean up the world.  Because it's a great place full of little guys who deserve a chance.  And I'm going to campaign, and make theme decks, for a better Mirrodin.  A Mirrodin with no Phyrexians.  (Karn, Elspeth, and Koth?  You guys are my A-Team.)

...and in the mean time I'm going to revel in my dorkitude that lets me get so into the story that I cried a little, just like I do at a good book or movie.

Here ya go.  I am an honest to Maud Geek Girl.  (I even identify myself as a "girl" like 98% of the time when asked my preference, even though prefer no one make assumptions.)

You know what I'm tired of?  I'm tired of people assuming I'm going to hop on board with them condemning other women because they're "fake" or "not geek enough."

I had a conversation with a friend once about who was a real derby girl (because I was a skater before I broke my ankle, and someday I'm hoping to get back there) and she said "Any girl who identifies herself as a derby girl is a derby girl.  Not just hot shot jammers or bad ass blockers.  A girl who cares enough about the game the know the rules.  The girl who makes a coffee run on set up night.  Any girl who is passionate about derby is entitled to be a derby girl."

So.  Any woman who is passionate about something is welcome to come sit over here in the Geek Women and Girls corner.  Even if the thing she's passionate about is knitting, but she's "famous" on the internet for sticking video game controllers in her mouth and taking sultry pictures. 

I'm done questioning other women's self-identification.  I have dragons to kill and treasure to steal.

This post by Renee...read it.

One of the things a lot of people don't know about me any more (although it used to be much closer to the surface) is that I am highly competitive and when I compete I am status oriented.  The reason I don't play FPSes is that I hate losing and I'm not good enough at them to hold my own (and it's a skill I haven't put any time into learning for a variety of reasons).  I am not confrontational...but get me into game space and give me a game I am comfortable with, and I am out to not just play, but own the whole damn table.

I'm not trans* so I can't speak to the specifics of gender dysphoria through a trans* lens, but I can speak to the fact that there are times where my competitive nature has allowed me to step outside the perception of me as "nerd queen" and be just as cutthroat and aggro as the guys, and that when it does I occasionally feel like something of myself is lost.

I wonder about that feeling.  Why do I feel that way?  Is it because there's such a strong social bias towards the idea that women can play games, but that they can't take that play seriously?  Is it because there's an emphasis on the idea that women want "story mode"?

Here's the thing.  I do want story mode.  I want story mode because sometimes I don't want to spend fifteen hours of my life negotiating shooting alien hoardes and stabbing guys for treasure, and whatever else it is that the play components are made of.  But sometimes...sometimes what I want to do is sit down with a nice hot game of Soul Calibur, and murderate the faces off things.  Sometimes, in the depths of personal drama provided by Apocalypse World or Monsterhearts or even D&D (because whoah, baby, is Eberron a great setting for a story game) all I want to do is roll some dice, hit some stuff, and talk about my crits.

I don't want to forever be seen as a "Woman Gamer" but I do want the word "Gamer" to get big enough to include women in its multitudes.

So last night my partner J was gaming online, and he was all disguised as a girl because his PC is a woman, and he went to the game (held over chat) already identified in his in character name so that no one would know it was him.

And the first thing he said to me this morning was "I finally get it when you complain!  I mean, every time I turned around, someone was hitting on me."

I laughed a little, because that's pretty common for me (although G+ has, thankfully, not had so many issues with that...) and because he sounded a little surprised when he said it.  And then I thought about it a little more, because I do that (wouldn't have much of a blog if I didn't).

We all "know" that guys who go online pretending to be girls (and women who go online identifying as female) get more attention, harrassment, etc.  But was his PC getting attention because he was "dressed like a girl?"  If he'd come in with his own name, and then put on his in character name (which is like a costume) would he have gotten flirted with less, even though he plays a PC that is (freakishly) beautiful?

I probably can't test this theory.

[Note:  This is a beginning of something that will probably become a manifesto eventually.]

One of the complaints I hear a lot in the "large LARP organization" I'm in is that people feel left behind because plot is going to the same small group of players.  I've also noticed that this seems to happen to a lesser extent in tabletop games and smaller group games.  I will admit that for a very short time I considered the possibility that it was true, that there was some sort of Old Boys Network to whom all good things flowed, and from whom must be beseeched fun times.

Of course, then I noticed that the people who were saying this the loudest were also the people most likely to complain that they didn't know anyone, and they didn't know how to get involved, and shouldn't the ST/GM/Whatever be trying to rope them in, and...the list really goes on.  And to these players I have something important to say.

Roleplaying is about making your own fun.

**

One of the things I've commented on in the past is that there seems to be this shift in people who are attracted to role playing who seem to think that the ST/GM/MC's job is to deliver the plot to them in appropriately sized chunks that are just challenging enough without being too challenging, that will always reward them with XP (and a convenient dopamine spike), and that they shouldn't have to work for it at all. 

Roleplaying is about working for it.

**

How do these two principles connect?

We,, you get from an RPG what you put into it.  If you approach it with the mindset that you're going to get involved, care about what's going on, and try to pick up on something to make fun with it, you'll have fun. Have a motivation for your character (even if that motivation is "I'm going to slay dragons and win gold).  Have a goal.  Have enough of a backstory that you know why your motivation exists.

This isn't to say that there aren't GM/ST/Whatever types who will completely ruin all this, but if you come to the table (or group) without being willing to put in work and look for the parts that make it fun for you, it's never going to be fun.

[Ed. note: This was not the post I intended to write today, that post is still coming, but I'm trying to bash the ideas into shape. :) ]

I want to play serious games.  And I take games seriously.

I'm looking for exploration of an idea, a concept, a feeling, or a theme.  When I sit down at the table, I expect everyone to be ready to explore these things through the frame of the game we've chosen.  If I sits down to a game of Dungeons & Dragons, I'm probably not looking to explore the theme of scarcity, or the concept of technology changing life.  If I go to play Shadowrun, I'm probably not expecting to explore the feeling of romance or a Monty Python-esque romp through the countryside.

When I select a game to play with people, and we all agree to that game, I feel like we've agreed to at least a baseline of tone, theme, and concepts.  It is then my responsibility to bring a gameface to the table that matches those choices, and I expect everyone else to assume that as their responsibility as well.

Sometimes this provides difficulty because the game has not provided adquate signalling about what it wants to be about.  (World of Darkness games are still notoriously bad, in my opinion, at flagging their themes and concepts because they draw on too many things to make any one thing an over arching idea.)  Sometimes this provides difficulty because others do not read the themes and ideas the same as I do.  And sometimes this provides difficulty because there is no fundamental agreement about which ideas we're flagging to play with and explore with this game.

Because I take games seriously, I think this is another conversation that needs to happen more often at the gaming table.  I think we need to make sure that we're all in the same place when we sit down to game.  Not, necessarily, having the same perspective on the issues at the table...but that we know what the issues on the table are.

Start here, with Meguey Baker's post on No One Gets Hurt v. I Will Not Abandon You.

The social contract of your gaming is important.  I'm getting more and more to the point where I think I need to lay out my social contract expectations explicitly before getting into a game...

See...I realized recently that I went into a game first assuming it was going to be a No One Gets Hurt game.  And it may have been an NGH game, it may be that I did not communicate appropriately that something was a hard line for me.  But because the social contract wasn't up front, I ended up getting incredibly triggered by something that happened in the game to the point where my hands were shaking and I was arguing with my fiance because I needed to get control again.  (Note: It's not healthy that the fastest way I have to feel in control is to pick an inconsequential fight with someone.  I should probably take that up with my therapist, Dr. Google.)

Read the rest of this post »

Dear Alderaac Entertainment Group (henceforth AEG):

Having just received notification from DTRPG that Imperial Histories is finally available in PDF, I thought I would write this brief, and somewhat humorous letter.  This is a complaint letter.

When I purchase Imperial Histories in PDF I will have spent $65 (plus tax, which I will not count as this varies state to state) to own copies of your book in a format I can use as well as a format I can acquire on release day.  I understand your business model is predicated on people buying things, and I do not begrudge you the sale, truly.  In fact, I will even accept responsibility for having purchased a hard copy of the book which I will be allowing my fiance to use even though it was my hard earned money.

However, I would like to make the following modest proposal/humble suggestion, based on how well my transactions with other game systems available in both PDF and Hard Copy have gone.

Have you considered participation in the Bits and Mortar program?  Such luminaries as Evil Hat Productions (home of the Dresden Files RPG) participate in this program, which grants purchasers of the hard copy version of a book to recieve a PDF free of charge with proof of purchase (often via the very same store they bought the book at).

Or perhaps you would be willing to consider the option of offering a PDF/Book bundle, where one pays a nominal charge to recieve a PDF when purchasing a hard copy?  White Wolf does this through DTRPG, and one must assume that it is successful for them, as new books keep being issued that way.

Even if you found some alternate method of distribution through your own store, along with its fairly outrageous shipping fees for books (I should not be paying half-again the cost of a book for ground shipping...but that is a rant for another day) I would appreciate it more than the half-baked system you currently employ.

Why is that you might ask?  Because no one at AEG or DTRPG knew the date this book would be released in PDF, and each member of this vague alliance assured me that the other side should know the answer.  I am going to assume, because I am generous and kind of spirit, that what happened is that the customer service person at AEG did not know when the commercial PDF would be finished, due to the design team or some such withholding the date from him.

However, since the hard copy had a release date and that could be obtained, if nothing else, I have to ask why your calendar is so disorganized.  Perhaps the commercial PDF needed more work from the In-Design document it was generated from (I must assume this is the case even though my iPad reliably tells me that my L5R books are named such things as "first chapter.indd" which feels like much of an oversight for an additional month's worth of polishing between printing and PDF release...).  Perhaps you simply wished to push hard copy sales as they generate more revenue for your company (although one wonders, since a PDF has fewer over all production costs...). 

Nonetheless, if you will not offer concurrent released (which would be my greatest hope), will you at least consider getting on one page with regards to knowing when things come out?

Humbly yours,
A Girl Gamer who Likes Your System but Thinks She May Not Buy Anymore of Your Books