How Not to Fail at Writing Inclusive Games and Game Settings [Part 1]

[ETA: This is a three part post! Part 2, offensive gender and sexuality stereotypes, is here. Part 3, offensive race stereotypes, is here.]

So let’s say that you’re a writer looking to do some game writing. Maybe you’ve got a game you’re looking to design, or a setting or piece of game fiction to write, or an adventure to create and you’ve decided that you want your next project to not fail at being inclusive. (Hooray!) But how exactly do you go about doing that?

Inclusive game writing is something that takes practice, and sadly you’ll probably never get it one hundred percent right (almost everyone has some sort of privilege). But it’s a habit that can be developed over time and mostly boils down to simply checking your privilege while you create.

Oh god. There it is! I said it!

A lot of people freak out when they hear that phrase, but do try not to get your knickers in a twist about this. When I say “check your privilege”, I simply mean that you need to be aware of the ways in which you benefit from the unconscious assumptions that come packaged with living in our society. All of us have privilege of some sort. All that I am saying is a moderate level of self-awareness is beneficial when you’re trying to avoid creating work that is shitty toward your fellow human beings.

With that said, here are some basic ground rules:

1) Cultural Appropriation is bad

There can be a tendency in game design to look to real world cultures for inspiration. That’s all well and good! But if you’re going to use a real world culture as the basis of a game or game setting, what have you, it’s important to do your homework; half an hour on Wikipedia cherry-picking the stuff you think is “awesome” isn’t going to cut it. And it’s especially important that your use of a particular culture doesn’t bring with it any unfortunate implications when paired with the other game elements.

Not too long ago there was a game that successfully funded on Kickstarter called “Going Native: Warpath”. [FOOTNOTE: Really, even just the title should be a giant red flag] Going Native: Warpath is a minis war game in which players have armies that are based on real-life native and aboriginal cultures which has been written and developed by (of course) a white dude.

Because nothing says “sorry for that one time we committed genocide against your people and then forced the survivors into institutionalized poverty” like casual cultural appropriation. Bonus points for managing to convey the added baggage of “well killing your people wasn’t as bad as it could have been since you were already doing it to yourselves”.

Now does that mean you shouldn’t attempt to portray cultures aren’t white and European for fear of getting something wrong? Absolutely not! Gaming is full of white crypto-European settings, which not only erases the importance of non-white cultures but is also hella boring to boot. (Seriously. I am just so. Damn. Tired. Of white crypto-Europe.) Just don’t do things like setting out to write a game and then making it about Natives (or Japan, or any other culture that’s not yours) simply because it’s “cool” without ever stepping back to critically examine the implications of your creative decisions. You’re not going to catch everything, but even a modicum of critical thinking will weed out the really awful stuff.

 2) Don’t erase marginalized groups

One of the problems with the culture we live in is that it conditions us to want to tell the stories of white het cis men at the expense of… pretty much anybody else. Even when this imbalance is remarked upon, it’s often explained away by saying that white het cis men are more “relateable” and “universal” than other groups.

…yeah.

This is bad from a creative standpoint because it can cost you a potential audience; those of us who are not white het cis men (ie, most of us) get pretty sick of not seeing ourselves well represented. Honestly, if I encounter a piece of media in a genre that I enjoy that is well reviewed and features a not-fail-worthy female protagonist, I’m probably going to throw at least a few bucks at the creator because it doesn’t happen all that often. It’s also bad from a ‘shitty human being’ standpoint because you’re helping to reinforce the cultural narrative of the supremacy of the white het cismale, which sucks.

Include members of marginalized groups in your settings. Include women, and LGBT, and people of color, and the disabled because their stories also have value. And absolutely don’t write about a real period from history and erase a group of traditionally marginalized people. This kind of revisionist history is especially damaging.

That’s how you wind up with games like Into the Far West – a game that mashes up Wild West and Wuxia tropes and which doesn’t include Native people at all. Which is awful, because our culture has been erasing the history of Native peoples for centuries. And we’re not just talking about stupid bullshit like casting a white woman to play Tiger Lily here. (Although that is indeed stupid and bullshit.)

We’re talking about killing people, taking their land, forbidding them to practice their culture or speak their language, taking children away from their families, abusing and murdering those children, segregating the survivors of that abuse, and perpetuating systems of government that allow for unfettered violence – physical, sexual, economic, you name it – against their modern descendents.

2a) Don’t combine #1 and #2

This is depressingly common.

Simply the most recent example of this I’ve seen was Scarlet Heroes. I came across it when it was linked by someone on my Google+ as a project with “cool Asian flair”, a phrase which never fails to set off alarm bells. Sure enough, when I check out the KickStarter, there are no characters in the preview artwork that I would peg as definitely Asian and only two non-focal figures that I would peg as maaaaaaaybe Asian. But there are a whole lot of white people in traditional Asian outfits!

And then of course there’s the boobs. So many boobs. So very many boobs. Because, you know, boobs sell games, doncha know. (/HEADDESK)

Most egregious, however, is the image of a white-seeming (at least to me) daimyo-type guy in a Throne of Asianness +1 (seriously, it’s like the illustrator kept looking at the chair and was like NEEDS MOAR ASIAN) who is watching WHITE WOMEN BELLY DANCE in clearly Middle-Eastern belly dance costumes. Because, you know, belly dance has become popular in China in the last decade, so good enough, you know?

Jesus. When are publishers going to stop throwing together stupid pastiches of awful Asian stereotypes for a quick buck and marketing as “cool Asian flair”? This is fucking awful.

Of course, the cherry on top of this fail-cake is that this is the same publisher behind Spears of the Dawn – which was actually something that looked like it was done pretty well. Spears of the Dawn is an African-themed game, and the preview art features people who don’t look gratuitously sexualized and who actually look African. So it’s a little hard to understand what the hell happened with this one.

3) Don’t reinforce stereotypes of marginalized groups

When representing members of marginalized groups, don’t let yourself be drawn into portraying them as nothing more than a flat stereotype. Make sure to portray them in ways that contravene existing stereotypes.

This one is HUGE. So huge, in fact, that I’m going to come back to this point in a bit.

4) Don’t include -isms in historical settings “because history”

When you’re writing a historical setting, don’t fall into using -isms and using history as a justification. A lot of what you might know as the “established facts” of history are, in fact, heavily biased. History is written by the victor, and as demonstrated by the white-centric patriarchal nature of our Western society, white men are the clear victors. A lot of what we think of as history is the recorded experience of white men, whereas the experiences and stories of women, non-whites, LGBT, etc were either not recorded or actively removed from history books.

Most people tend to think of medieval Europe in terms of the “Dark Ages”. But the narrative of the Dark Ages belies the fact that there was a thriving Muslim empire on the Iberian Peninsula (modern day Spain). Muslim Iberia was a highly cosmopolitan society full of art, beauty, and scholarship. Scholars from the Middle East, Africa, and China came to be part of the cultural flowering that happened there. But despite that Islamic rule in Iberia persisted several centuries, their story is ignored and erased. And that’s just one example!

The truth of the matter is that history was far more diverse than most history books would have you believe. Fantasy settings based in medieval Europe are almost always depicted as being overwhelmingly white, but medieval Europe was actually much more racially diverse. Similarly, despite what history books would have you believe, women did have important roles to play in society, and not everyone was heterosexual. (Seriously, gay people didn’t just pop out of a hole in the ground fifty years ago, people.)

History is not an excuse to make your setting revolve around the stories of white het cismen. Ditto for crypto-historical fantasy settings. Calling it “fantasy” doesn’t absolve you either.

5) Write fantasy settings that aren’t based in crypto-Europe

It has always baffled me that with the wealth of time periods and cultures available to use as inspiration for fantasy settings, fantasy as a genre seems stuck in medieval crypto-Europe. Yes, admittedly, it’s a time period that we’re all familiar with. But fantasy based in medieval Europe is so omnipresent that it’s pretty much impossible to do anything with such a setting that would make it stand out from the crowd.

Instead, do some reading about non-European history. You’re bound to find something that would make an interesting jumping-off point for a setting. (Remembering, of course, to keep #1-3 in mind.)

6) Over-represent if you feel comfortable with that (optional)

To use an example from my gaming life: there are several writers I enjoy who make a point of including LGBT characters in everything that they write. Sometimes you hear the counter-argument that such authors inevitably wind up over-representing LGBT people when compared to their percentage of the total population. But that’s really not such a bad thing when you consider just how invisible LGBT people are in gaming and in the media in general.

This isn’t a commandment to write only characters that represent marginalized groups. But certainly, don’t get bogged down in worrying that you’re including “too many” minority characters.

7) Write a first draft, then look for where you failed (Hint: you did.)

You’ve finished your first draft! Hooray! Now set it aside for a day or so so that you can come back to it with fresh eyes and look for the places where you failed. Because the odds are pretty damn good that you did. And that’s okay! Everybody fails. What’s important is where you go after that initial failure.

For instance, despite the fact that I blog about feminist issues in game design on a regular basis, I still catch myself unintentionally writing sexism into my settings. When I was writing the Ruined Empire campaign setting for Tenra Bansho Zero, I did a first pass of writing NPCs, assigning gender mostly at random. When I came back to look at what I had written, I realized that I had written all the passive, diplomatic characters as female and all of the powerful warriors as male.

Whoops.

Or how about the time when I was proposing a setting based around a village that was being harassed by bandits, and my initial draft contained the note that the bandits were demanding a tribute of the village’s young women? …Yeah. That’s why it’s important to keep a critical eye on your work, because no matter how “aware” and “enlightened” you may be, you will still make mistakes.

Fear not. A lot of the time, the awful things that slip through will be minor and easily fixable without “ruining” the core of your idea. That’s the thing about using -isms in your work. So often, falling back on stereotypes is actually lazy writing. A lot of the time, eliminating stereotyped representations from your work will actually make your work stronger.

8) GET A SECOND OPINION

This is probably the scariest part of the process, but it’s also the most important. If you’re going to write about a group of people that you don’t belong to, it is imperative to speak to members of that group. This can be nerve-wracking for those who have privilege, because so often people in positions of privilege are fearful of examining that privilege. But it’s important because without this step, you’re just engaging in more thoughtless cultural appropriation.

So get a second opinion. And more importantly, listen to that opinion. They might tell you something that you don’t want to hear. You need to hear it anyway. Or they might give you the thumbs up. You don’t know until you ask!

9) If someone from the group you’re writing about says you screwed up, LISTEN

Back to Into the Far West for a second. Back when the KickStarter was still running, blogger Bankuei wrote about how messed up it was to write a game about the Old West that completely erased native peoples. So what did Gareth Skarka, the game’s author do? Say – hey, you’re right, maybe I need to consider re-working my idea? Or double down on the douchery and try to start a public witch hunt against Bankuei?

If you guessed B, you’re (sadly) correct. Gareth really went for the gold, too, saying things like CHARACTER ASSASSINATION and LIBEL and complaining about his FEEEEEEEEELINGS. Because, shit. He wrote something that had genocidal implications, but criticizing it made him FEEL BAD so clearly Bankuei was the villain in this scenario!

Next time: Offensive stereotypes to avoid

A conversation with Ron Edwards about Circle of Hands and rape [LONG]

[Trigger warnings: talk of rape and sexual abuse]

Circle of Hands is a game by Ron Edwards that is currently being crowdfunded on KickStarter. Ron describes it as a “stark, mud-and-dung Iron Age fantasy role-playing game”. On it’s face, when I first read about it it looked like another OSR-style (Old School Revival) game, which isn’t my thing. But then other people in my gaming circles on Google+ started talking quietly about their concerns regarding Circle of Hands and the matter-of-fact way that the setting document (linked from the Kickstarter) presented brutality towards women.

I knew this was something that I wanted to blog about, because the lazy reliance of game writers and developers on rape as a device in games is something that I really, really, really hate. (The link is a VERY LONG piece that I wrote providing a non-exhaustive catalog of gross examples of rape in games and other geek media. Be warned, it doesn’t make for pleasant reading.)

But instead of firing off a quick angry post, I wanted to at least try to have a conversation with Ron first. I’ve had occasion to talk with Ron in meatspace a fair bit at GenCon the past <mumble> years – we’ve shared dinner and played games together. And after the recent awfulness here, I really didn’t want to have another conversation about something important devolve into internet poo-flinging.

Thankfully, Ron was game and we had what felt like (to me) a pretty good conversation. He consented to me posting it publicly, so here it is, lightly trimmed and formatted for ease of reading.

---

 

My first email to Ron

1) The lack of warning about rape on the KickStarter page itself

It really, REALLY bothers me that rape is a serious thing that seriously happens in this world and that there is NO mention of it on the KickStarter page. Like, when I first saw the KSer page I was like, oh, an OSR-style game. Okay. And you know, OSR isn’t my bag but I can see why people like it, so I moved on with my life. So I’m really concerned that there are going to be people who back this expecting some good old-fashioned OSR-style murder-hoboing and wind up getting completely blind-sided by the rape.

Whatever your stance on rape as setting, I think it’s our responsibility as artists to make art that doesn’t harm our audience. And the way that rape is discussed in your setting, very unapologetic, very matter-of-fact, is potentially incredibly triggering. I know that it was minorly triggering for me – I didn’t have a panic attack the way I used to, but it did get my heart racing and make me very twitchy in that “fight or flight” way for a few minutes. So I really hope that you would revise your KSer to say that this is a part of the setting, and that you’d tell your backers as well.

Honestly, the types of people who are attracted to this sort of game? I really don’t think it would hurt you in the least. But again, I come back to my firm belief that artists should not harm their audience. That DOESN’T mean you can’t create difficult work! I am totally not saying no artist should write about rape ever! It DOES means that you have to give people who would be harmed by our work the ability to know that and to self-select themselves OUT of your audience.

2) The meta-optics of the reactions to your game

The people I know who have backed it have all been white or white-passing cismen. The people I know who have (quietly) been talking about having a visceral aversion-reaction have been almost entirely women (with one guy), covering a range of gender identities, expressions, and sexualities. And that’s where I really start to have problems, because the people who have a problem with it are too afraid to speak up because they don’t to waste energy on a conversation where white cis dudes are defending rape as setting, because it’s just too close to our lived reality where white cis dudes defend and excuse rape in real life.

But I can’t help asking myself. WHY is it primarily white cis dudes who are attracted to this material? And why has it ONLY been white (or white-passing) cis dudes in my circles, which are pretty diverse!, who have been willing to publicly say “hey you should support this KickStarter”?

And to complicate the issue even further, Circle of Hands is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of a larger phenomenon of geek media properties that are nostalgic for a time when men were men and women were raped. It started, arguably, with things like Game of Thrones, and has only grown from there. And of course, the problem with a meta-pattern like this is that there’s no ONE person you can point out as being misogynist. But the pattern still exists and we shouldn’t ignore that. We can’t just pat ourselves on the back and say “well sexism is over”, because as the last three days have proved, it’s really, REALLY not.

3) The defense of rape

The other thing that is deeply emotional for me is this – why are so many game writers who are white cismen SO COMMITTED to defending rape? Take, for example, James “Grim” Desborough who is so committed to rape as setting that he wrote an article called “In Defense of Rape” and actually advocates against convention harassment policies. Or the writer of Cthulutech, who when he was asked why Cthulutech had so much rape said that it “only” had 6 pages about rape. SIX PAGES?? That is a WEIRD and CREEPY level of thought to put into rape, for reals.

This isn’t to say that you are a weird and creepy misogynist like James Desborough!! But again, it’s hard to ignore the meta-pattern. Why is it that the creators who want to write this into their games and who are defensive about rape as setting all happen to be people with the most privilege in our society? And if it were just one or two media properties, it would be like, okay whatever. But when you see it again, and again, and again. It’s like – why are there so many white male creators who want to tell stories where women get raped? Why do so many creators want THAT to be the story that gets told?

This isn’t just true of games, either. This is true of pretty much every medium ever, but ESPECIALLY geek media. (Seriously. I wrote a seriously long post about it here on GaW.

3a) Women need stories in which they don’t get raped

To paraphrase Jessica Hammer, our society believes that the only stories that we can tell about women revolve around their vaginas. And thus, any tragedies that happen to women are vagina tragedies. We need to change the cultural narrative surrounding women, that female characters exist to serve as sexual rewards for proper (read: male) heroes and to get raped.

Again, it’s a matter of meta-patterns. Can I point to Circle of Hands and say that THIS. THIS GAME. THIS GAME IS WHY RAPE CULTURE EXISTS. No, of course not. That would be ludicrous. But can I say that it fits into a pattern of media properties in which many stories about women can feature rape, or the threat of rape? Yes.

4) A false version of history

So much of the defense of these types of fantasy settings revolve around history, but that is a false version of history. The history that we have learned is a history that has actively erased the stories, accomplishments, and contributions of women and people of color. (That’s what Thou Art But A Warrior is about! The tragedy of a great society that will not only be destroyed but ERASED because they are not white.) This idea that women in history existed only to have babies, make textiles, and get raped and that they only started doing important things in the last century or so is completely false. And yet when people try to highlight this fact, they get told that they are ignorant and uneducated.

5) This other section on gender and sexuality

It doesn’t do anything to alleviate my discomfort, I’m afraid. The fact that women can be Circle knights only serves to reinforce the inferiority of all those other women, because the Circle knights are exceptional. Their ability to transcend gender oppression only serves to reinforce that all those other women get raped and stuff because they’re just not awesome enough, which is discomforting and problematic for me.

Especially given that there seems to be a lot of hedging. Well women can think they’re in control of their sexuality, but it’s really controlled by the men in their lives. And some women can be powerful, but only by exerting power through men. Even though women nominally have freedoms, their freedom depends entirely on men and isn’t something intrinsic that they own.

And as for the expectation of revenge for rape? Do I feel better knowing that rape is a thing that happens to women, but then the menfolk will get really mad and go shiv the guy? Well, no. Because now you’ve got a woman who got raped and a guy who got stabbed, which just makes things worse for everybody. The answer to sexual violence is not MORE VIOLENCE, and despite all of the negative feelings I have about my personal experience with sexual assault, I wouldn’t want someone to go stab or otherwise beat up the guy who assaulted me.

This has gotten kind of rambly, so here’s where I’ll stop.

---

 

Ron’s initial response

*1)* *The lack of warning about rape on the KickStarter page itself*

In line with my above comment about the artist guy, my response is “YES.” You are right and I will get on this, today or ASAP.

Minor idea:

… It DOES means that you have to give people who would be harmed by our work the ability to know that and to self-select themselves OUT of your audience.

True! And as well, I hope, to see it as a reaching-out with/for trust and to go there with me on that basis, on a self-selected basis just as you say. The rest of my responses are pretty much all about this.

*2) The meta-optics of the reactions to your game*

I see what you are saying. I’d like for the work eventually to be understood as NOT defending and excusing rape in real life, and I think that an initial fear that it is, is unavoidable. I neither laud nor lament my situation as a white cis-male – that doesn’t mean I am sneakily pro-rape like  the guys you describe. But I do understand that genuine suspicion would fall on me about that, and that trust will not be automatic.

On the plus side, you’ve reached out to me with some hope for it, and so have a couple of other people. With any luck, and with an eye on the manuscript as it develops from anyone who wants to, the game might earn a place as “that thing by the white cisguy which goes there, which is scary, but it actually goes where it should.”

Having just published Shahida without being Arab or Jewish, and having received surprised joy about it from Lebanese readers and radical rabbis, among others, I think I’ve managed some pretty tough stuff to date, in terms of triggers and emotional risk.

But I can’t help asking myself. WHY is it primarily white cis dudes who are attracted to this material? And why has it ONLY been white (or white-passing) cis dudes in my circles, which are pretty diverse!, who have been willing to publicly say “hey you should support this KickStarter”?

I think you’ve answered this, and I agree with you: the reasons for suspicion and fear are real, and no one is going to put themselves out there as a target for hordes of abuse from privileged fuckheads. I accept that. If the game is to overcome this barrier, then I think an initial period of such suspicion is unavoidable. I am willing for whatever success it achieves (the above-mentioned “it goes where it should”) to be a long-term goal. After all, the available manuscript is the rawest possible, completely initial rough draft. It’s freely available, not just to backers, for a reason beyond mere system playtesting – because I want exactly these issues to be dealt with transparently. Or transparently on my part, it’s OK for people to stay private.

And to complicate the issue even further, Circle of Hands is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of a larger phenomenon of geek media properties that are nostalgic for a time when men were men and women were raped. It started, arguably, with things like Game of Thrones, and has only grown from there. …

Ooooh, OK, deep breath. No, Circle of Hands is not part of that phenomenon. It is the anti-Game of Thrones RPG, just like Sorcerer was the anti-White Wolf RPG. Sorcerer went through two minutes of initial reactions of “Oh, a Mage knock-off,” and then such talk instantly evaporated as soon as anyone read past the first page. I expect that to
happen here, because it will be utterly, frighteningly apparent. I think it already is in the playtest draft, and will become even more so.

I fucking hate Game of Thrones, for several reasons, not least of which corresponds exactly what you said about that guy’s lame-ass picture. And the rape stuff, just as you say.

All that said, I accept that fear of Circle of Hands being part of that phenomenon is a legitimate fear. I intend to accept that fear as a part of a process of contact, to whomever is willing, with sensitivity to their histories, and without resentment of those who are not.

We can’t just pat ourselves on the back and say “well sexism is over”, because as the last three days have proved, it’s really, REALLY not.

Not in that camp even a little bit.

*3) The defense of rape*

I’m in complete agreement with everything you’ve written in this part.

This isn’t to say that you are a weird and creepy misogynist like James Desborough!! But again, it’s hard to ignore the meta-pattern.

Agreed. And which I intend to break, most harshly, in my small corner of publishing and in my small corner of the library of gaming. Can I? I don’t know. With help, perhaps.

You don’t have to convince me it’s a problem. I’m there.

*3a) Women need stories in which they don’t get raped*
*4) A false version of history*

My response to these isn’t called for without some feedback about my statements made above. I will only say that Circle of Hands is not the “game where player-characters get raped because realism.” Fear that it might be? Sure. Verdict that it is? I ask for a look at it past the fear, and help with its final form. That’s exactly what you’re providing
already, which I appreciate and am not asking for anything more.

*5) This other section on gender and sexuality*

Your comments here let me know the writing needs to be sterner and more explicit. Just as you asked me not to read your post defensively, I ask the same here. I’m not arguing against your feelings.

… The fact that women can be Circle knights only serves to reinforce the inferiority of all those other women, because the Circle knights are *exceptional*. Their ability to transcend gender oppression only serves to reinforce that all those other women get raped and stuff because they’re just not awesome enough, which is discomforting and problematic for me.

It says the opposite: that exceptionalism is the mistaken perception of the society around them, and not the reality at all. I understand that you didn’t see this there, and I will make sure it REALLY REALLY says this.

Especially given that there seems to be a lot of hedging. Well women can *think* they’re in control of their sexuality, but it’s really controlled by the men in their lives. And some women can be powerful, but only by exerting power through men. Even though women nominally have freedoms, their freedom depends entirely on men and isn’t something intrinsic that they own.

Again, it says the opposite: that men *think* they’re in control of women’s sexuality, but they’re not. I understand that you didn’t see this there either, and I will make sure it REALLY REALLY says this too.

And as for the expectation of revenge for rape? Do I feel better knowing that rape is a thing that happens to women, but then the menfolk will get really mad and go shiv the guy? Well, no. Because now you’ve got a woman who got raped *and* a guy who got stabbed, which just makes things worse for everybody. The answer to sexual violence is not MORE VIOLENCE, and despite all of the negative feelings I have about my personal experience with sexual assault, I wouldn’t want someone to go stab or otherwise beat up the guy who assaulted me.

I think this one might wait for further dialogue. Briefly, the setting is not offering the “way I think it ought to be.” This is an illustration of the problem: that social justice does not exist and that the setting doesn’t feature solutions. Frankly, I think modern life isn’t much better, and my fantasy setting calls that shit out. Or it should, in its final
form.

Thanks again!

---

 

Back to me! I say more stuff

*2) The meta-optics of the reactions to your game*

I see what you are saying. I’d like for the work eventually to be understood as NOT defending and excusing rape in real life, and I think that an initial fear that it is, is unavoidable. I neither laud nor lament my situation as a white cis-male – that doesn’t mean I am sneakily pro-rape like  the guys you describe. But I do understand that genuine suspicion would fall on me about that, and that trust will not be automatic.

It’s always tricky pointing out this sort of thing, so I appreciate that you follow the distinction I’m trying to make. Shit like this was why I stopped posting on Story-Games, because every time I tried to say something like “notice how the only people who are talking in this thread about sexism in games are white dudes? Again?”, I got shouted down by a hoard of dudes – each of whom was offended that I was calling THEM PERSONALLY sexist. Which. Augh. No.

Meta-patterns are useful things that shouldn’t be ignored, especially when they mirror the dominant power structure of our society. Sure it’s almost always hard to zoom in and get an accurate picture of things, but that doesn’t obviate their usefulness.

Anyway. I’ll say to you what I always say. Get pre-readers who aren’t white cishet dudes, as many of them as you can. Especially with the nature of the material your game is supposed to handle. Get people who belong to groups who live with the daily reality of sexual and physical violence to read this over so that you can make sure what people here is what you actually want to say and not something else entirely. Because if you want to do a thing that handles this kind of material, you have to try REALLY REALLY HARD to make sure your work differentiates itself from the toxic background radiation of rape culture that pervades geek culture.

But I can’t help asking myself. WHY is it primarily white cis dudes who are attracted to this material? And why has it ONLY been white (or white-passing) cis dudes in my circles, which are pretty diverse!, who have been willing to publicly say “hey you should support this KickStarter”?

I think you’ve answered this, and I agree with you: the reasons for suspicion and fear are real, and no one is going to put themselves out there as a target for hordes of abuse from privileged fuckheads. I accept that. If the game is to overcome this barrier, then I think an initial period of such suspicion is unavoidable. I am willing for whatever success it achieves (the above-mentioned “it goes where it should”) to be a long-term goal. After all, the available manuscript is the rawest possible, completely initial rough draft. It’s freely available, not just to backers, for a reason beyond mere system playtesting – because I want exactly these issues to be dealt with transparently. Or transparently on my part, it’s OK for people to stay private.

Another thing that’s come to my attention (please don’t ask me to name names) is that there are fans of yours who are aggressively attacking people who express trepidation over Circle of Hands with all the usual attacks. STFU, rape because history, ignorant bitch, blah blah blah. And you know what, I recognize that you personally are not saying this stuff. But I hope you’d consider saying something specially pointed at your fans/supporters?

Because this is a thing that I see kind of often with popular white male creators (or at least this is the group I have observed it most prominently with) – they attract a certain sort of overly zealous (usually male) fan as part of their overall audience that personally identifies with their work, and who interprets any criticism of this thing that they love as an attack against them. There are different ways you can respond to that as a creator.

The worst are people like James Desborough and J Scott Campbell who link their fanbase to the criticism and get them all riled up so that their fanbase will go harass the person that is criticizing them and they get to keep their hands clean, so to speak. That’s pretty fucking awful. Then you’ve got a middle ground of creators like Joss Whedon who are mostly oblivious to this effect and don’t do anything to perpetuate this kind of fan-perpetuated-awful, but don’t do anything to prevent it either. The last are creators like Scalzi, who are aware of this sort of bullshit and tell people to cut it out.

As, arguably, one of the founders of the indie-design movement and a very large name in indie design, I hope that you would say something publicly about people using your name to attack people who feel threatened by this earliest draft of your work.

And to complicate the issue even further, Circle of Hands is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of a larger phenomenon of geek media properties that are nostalgic for a time when men were men and women were raped. It started, arguably, with things like Game of Thrones, and has only grown from there. …

Ooooh, OK, deep breath. No, Circle of Hands is not part of that phenomenon. It is the anti-Game of Thrones RPG, just like Sorcerer was the anti-White Wolf RPG. Sorcerer went through two minutes of initial reactions of “Oh, a Mage knock-off,” and then such talk instantly evaporated as soon as anyone read past the first page. I expect that to happen here, because it will be utterly, frighteningly apparent. I think it already is in the playtest draft, and will become even more so.

I fucking hate Game of Thrones, for several reasons, not least of which corresponds exactly what you said about that guy’s lame-ass picture. And the rape stuff, just as you say. All that said, I accept that fear of Circle of Hands being part of that phenomenon is a legitimate fear. I intend to accept that fear as a part of a process of contact, to whomever is willing, with sensitivity to their histories, and without resentment of those who are not.

Okay. Cool! I like to hear you say that, because Game of Thrones is seriously just the worst. But here’s the thing – I didn’t get that vibe at all. And neither did anyone else that I’ve talked to who shared my discomfort.

So this comes back to my “differentiating your work from toxic background radiation” point. It might be worth identifying what about the current draft makes it read that way and actively undermining that? Hell, even adding a section about “this isn’t a love letter to GoT and here’s why it’s the worst ugh seriously” or something to that effect would be helpful. (Although I’m sure you could word that more intelligently that I can while uncaffeinated on a busy Monday morning.)

GoT is kind of The Hotness when it comes to Fantasy right now, and anything that is a “harsher” and “realistic” take on Fantasy is automatically going to get compared to GoT, whether you like it or not.

…The fact that women can be Circle knights only serves to reinforce the inferiority of all those other women, because the Circle knights are *exceptional*. Their ability to transcend gender oppression only serves to reinforce that all those other women get raped and stuff because they’re just not awesome enough, which is discomforting and  problematic for me.

It says the opposite: that exceptionalism is the mistaken perception of the society around them, and not the reality at all. I understand that you didn’t see this there, and I will make sure it REALLY REALLY says this.

Great.

Again (coming back to a common theme), part of the baggage that can’t be escaped is the number of games I’ve played/read that SAY women are equals, but then proceed to treat them in ways where they are exclusively sexualized, deprotagonized, and fridged. So when I read that section, what read to me as equivocating came off as the usual equality lipservice that happens in most fantasy games. (IE, the original Baldur’s Gate where the gender selection screen at character creation proclaims that women are equal to men, only the programmers didn’t include a single romance option for women in the first game.)

Especially given that there seems to be a lot of hedging. Well women can *think* they’re in control of their sexuality, but it’s really  controlled by the men in their lives. And some women can be powerful, but only by exerting power through men. Even though women nominally have freedoms, their freedom depends entirely on men and isn’t something intrinsic that they own.

Again, it says the opposite: that men *think* they’re in control of women’s sexuality, but they’re not. I understand that you didn’t see this there either, and I will make sure it REALLY REALLY says this too.

And as for the expectation of revenge for rape? Do I feel better knowing that rape is a thing that happens to women, but then the menfolk will get really mad and go shiv the guy? Well, no. Because now you’ve got a woman who got raped *and* a guy who got stabbed, which just makes things worse for everybody. The answer to sexual violence is not MORE VIOLENCE, and despite all of the negative feelings I have about my personal experience with sexual assault, I wouldn’t want someone to go stab or otherwise beat up the guy who assaulted me.

I think this one might wait for further dialogue. Briefly, the setting is not offering the “way I think it ought to be.” This is an illustration of the problem: that social justice does not exist and that the setting doesn’t feature solutions. Frankly, I think modern life isn’t much better, and my fantasy setting calls that shit out. Or it should, in its final form.

This is the part that gives me the biggest heebie jeebies, I think. The “there is no social justice”. You’ve done a good job of explaining your intentions, which is great. But there’s a long, long, long history of white-dude creators who have come before you and profoundly fucked up the “social justice is dead” thing in Fantasy. Execution will be everything here.

---

Ron’s final (brief) response

Get pre-readers who aren’t white cishet dudes, as many of them as you can. … Because if you want to do a thing that handles this kind of material, you have to try REALLY REALLY HARD to make sure your work differentiates itself from the toxic background radiation of rape culture that pervades geek culture.

Agreed and already in progress.

… is that there are fans of yours who are aggressively attacking people who express trepidation over Circle of Hands with all the usual attacks. STFU, rape because history, ignorant bitch, blah blah blah. And you know what, I recognize that you personally are not saying this stuff. But I hope you’d consider saying something specially pointed at your

fans/supporters?

Gaahhhhh … argh, even if someone did want to stand up and fight about any aspect of this discussion, can’t people see that doing this is toxic to the game’s promotion? I’m not impaired or feeble or whatever, I can converse about this without cheerleaders, and the whole thing can stand or fall on the merits I and the decently-concerned people bring to it. Right? (that’s rhetorical) Can’t they see that there is NO BENEFIT to this behavior? Gah!

So yeah. I think I should post about this, although obviously I can’t make people do this-or-that thing, or not do it. But I can be pissed that they’re dumb enough!!

white male comics creators

I’ve been reading comics, close to comics pros, and been smirched in comics fandom for long enough to know exactly what you mean.

As, arguably, one of the founders of the indie-design movement and a very large name in indie design, I hope that you would say something publicly about people using your name to attack people who feel threatened by this earliest draft of your work.

Without doubt. Don’t even need the advice. Gah!

Okay. Cool! I like to hear you say that, because Game of Thrones is seriously just the worst.

Plus being as stupid as a mineral of low worth. Oh, look, NO plot whatsoever! Also unacceptable.

As I seem unable to avoid in my game texts, I’m already drafting a literature & cinema review that’s relevant to the game, and Game of Thrones will figure in it as the negative example – so, yes, already planned, and has been from the start.

I appreciate your kind words about how I’m trying to position the game relative to it (well, to all sorts of things).

This is the part that gives me the biggest heebie jeebies, I think. The “there is no social justice”. You’ve done a good job of explaining your intentions, which is great. But there’s a long, long, long history of white-dude creators who have come before you and profoundly fucked up the “social justice is dead” thing in Fantasy. Execution will be everything here.

It’s an interesting dynamic in play, because the characters don’t have much concept of social justice, but they’ve just seen some, and fought for it, and wouldn’t be in the Circle without it, so it’s as if the players’ more sophisticated sense of this can breathe the rougher, tougher air of fighting for it with raw conviction but no rhetoric. I’d appreciate a critical reading on a later draft, if you’re willing.

… Is it alright if I blog some or all of this conversation (including your response to my response, if you care to make one) publicly? I think there’s some good stuff here.

Absolutely. I’m good with any of the conversation or the whole thing being posted publicly. I’ll link to your discussion of it as well.

---

Concluding thoughts

I was trepidatious about how this would turn out. There have been times in the past when I’ve tried to reach out to male creators in the indie tabletop scene about something that bothers me and been rudely slapped down by defensive dudes with no intention to really consider that they might be doing or saying something problematic. And given Ron Edward’s status in the community, the idea of trying to start a conversation about “hey, this thing you’re making really bothers me” was definitely daunting. So the fact that a civil conversation was had is a relief.

Do I agree with everything that Ron is saying? No. And I’m still not likely to ever play Circle of Hands. But it’s nice to know that my concerns were heard and taken seriously, and I can be hopeful that the final version will be something that is ultimately not harmful. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

[Sidebar] My newest project!

So I’m going to take a moment to post a freebie about my KickStarter that just launched today. Those of you who follow me on other social media streams will know that I’ve been working these past few months on something I was jokingly referring to as the SEKKRIT PRINCESS PROJECT. Well, I’m pleased as punch to announce that the Princess Charming Kickstarter just launched today.

What is Princess Charming? Well, my co-creator – Josh Roby – and I are working to make a series of children’s books about awesome princesses. From the KickStarter:

The Princess Needs a Makeover

The goal of this project is to create princess stories with characters who are brave, capable, and, in a word, awesome.  Princesses who are more than a ball gown and a pair of lips waiting for True Love’s Kiss.

Princesses who don’t all look the same, who come in different shapes, sizes, and colors—just like our kids and the world they live in.

Princesses who go on their own adventures.  The boys might come along, too, but only if they can keep up!

Princesses who our kids can look up to and aspire to be like.

These are books for everyone who is tired of princesses that are thin, white, straight, and utterly utterly passive. We’re working hard to create stories that don’t fit gender stereotypes, and which have a diversity of representation.

These will be books that I will be excited to read to my daughter, because we’re aiming to create princesses that can subvert the toxic princess trope by actually being positive role models.

If you’d like to see some samples of what the art will be like, here are all the preview images that we posted leading up the launch:

 

If you have children in your life – of ANY gender – who like princesses, I hope you’ll consider supporting us – or at least helping us spread the word. I’m very passionate about this project and want to help make it as awesome as it deserves to be.

Getting back to business (a little bit of everything)

Okay, folks. So the last two days have been a diversion into unpleasantness that I would have rather avoided, but now it’s time to stop marinating in bile and get back to blogging about the things I want to be blogging about. I’ve got a few different things that need addressing, first, so here goes.

Patrons: Here’s how this thing is going to work

So I’m still new to the Patreon thing and have been figuring out how I want to do this. After flailing around for a little bit, here’s how it’s going to work. Patron rewards for new patrons and patrons who have changed their pledge levels will get processed the first week of the month, once the funds have cleared[1]. For existing patrons with outstanding rewards, I might send a reminder every few months or so? We’ll see. I don’t want to harass you folks, so please speak up in the comments if you have any suggestions or preferences.

As far as people who reduce their pledges (which I understand and support, really, any amount of support is valuable and warms my heart), if you were previously at $3+ and go below that, I’m inclined to leave your requested link in the sidebar. There’s not a whole lot of stuff there yet, so it’s not a huge deal. Down the line if things get crazy that might change? But I don’t anticipate needing to revisit that in the near future.

As for paid posts versus freebies, you’ll see freebies pop up from time-to-time when I want to make a quick-and-dirty post (like my previous post), or like when I post a link roundup – since those require a minimum of effort. I value your support and want to keep paid posts to things that take non-trivial amounts of time and/or energy and/or research to prepare.

What’s in the pipeline?

In the somewhat distant future, you’ll be seeing some patron-requested posts (or possibly series of posts? I’m really not sure yet) pop up. The two I’m working on currently are about the portrayal of sex work in games and the portrayal of disability in games. Neither of these are areas that I’m terribly knowledgeable at, but I’m looking forward to learning. I’m currently plugging away at research, but even once I’ve done that I imagine I’ll flail around a bit before figuring out how I want to come at these topics.

In the more near term, I’m having a conversation behind the scenes with a popular game designer that I hope I’ll be able to blog about once it’s done. And of course, things will pop up that I desperately want to blog about. They always do.

So that you don’t leave empty-handed, here are some links

First up – if I was more on the ball I would have linked to this sooner: Medusa’s Guide for Gamer Girls on IndieGoGo. The crowdfunding ends today – it ends at midnight. Here’s a very brief excerpt of the description of the project:

…But I do want to discuss the problems we face as women gamers and how to overcome them, and some of those problems involve dealing with guys who are not very open minded or who simply see women as objects. I also want to introduce readers to some positive women role models who are industry professionals, and I want to talk about how women can break into this industry–if that is their goal…

If that sounds interesting, or even if you just want to support women’s voices in gaming, consider throwing a few bucks her way.

Next, have you seen Bikini Armor Battle Damage? I keep forgetting to add this fantastic blog by OzzieScribbler to my sidebar when I’m on a computer that will properly run the WordPress.com interface (long story), but it’s really a fantastic blog.

Anyway, thanks to OzzieScribbler I got to see this post about how glorious Final Fantasy XIV is for being the first MMO where the men really are just as sexualized as the men. (No really!)

Lastly, I found this piece over on NPR’s Code Switch blog a really great look at the racist tropes that abound in Street Fighter II. (Don’t read the comments.)

That’s all for now

Expect posting to return to a more normal (ie a lot slower) pace.

—

[1] Assuming Patreon doesn’t get dicked over by PayPal, as was the case for February’s disbursement. Yet more reason for me to loathe PayPal.

Even more followup: in which the awful is doubled down

So here’s the story so far, for those of you who haven’t been playing along at home thus far. I did an anatomy correction of a piece of art by Jonboy Meyers. Apparently that made a lot of comics fans really, really mad. So since they found this link, I’ve been enjoying a nice little hate-a-palooza from my least favorite segment of the internet.

Because it’s the way I roll, I then posted a response to all the haterade highlighting the good, the bad, and the stupid. This has had mixed results. I got several new patrons from all this extra traffic (hello, you beautiful, wonderful people, you!) – which is pretty cool. So thanks for all the extra traffic, haters. You actually did me a favor there. But responding to haterade is like kicking a hornet’s nest. The results are eminently predictable and never pleasant.

Now, in my previous post I called out J Scott Campbell and Mark Brooks, who are themselves well-known professional comics artists, as being the instigators of a very large portion of the internet bile that has been rolling downhill in my direction. (I can’t know what portion because the trackback doesn’t break it down any further than “facebook.com”. Thanks for nothing, trackback.) Here, apparently, is what they have to say for themselves.

I’m including transcripts below each image since the screen grabs are hard to read. My comments are inserted bolded in brackets.

—-

Mark Brooks: Hey, look at us! We got picked out in her nonsensical rebuttal! [Because any time you don’t like something a woman says, you can just call her crazy and problem solved! True story.] And now we’re apparently bullies too! I guess when you get any modicum of notoriety you’re not allowed to have an opinion anymore. Go figure. [Come on. You draw comics for a living. “With great power comes great responsibility” ring a bell at all?]

J Scott Campbell: Wait a second… So Mark and I get shrapnel kickback, and [anonymized] get’s [sic] away untarnished…?! No fair!!

[anonymized]: I’m apparently not a big deal like you two, and that hurts.

Mark Brooks: It’s official, [anonymized], you’re a victim.

[Okay, so I know they’re joking here. I do get that. But it’s a little troublesome that they’re willing to brush aside their role in stirring up this flood of bile in the first place as, you know, no big deal. Hey! We’ll just call her crazy! No need to actually reflect on the implications of my actions. Nope! Not at all.]

J Scott Campbell: Again, I made my original post having absolutely no idea of her gender, only that her artistic working knowledge seemed extremely flawed, uninformed and incorrect to offer any legitimate lectures or critiques to working published artists. So if she’s blustering on about this being part of some anti-female bla-bla-bla, I think her argument in [sic] unsound.

[OH MY GOD. “Anti-female bla-bla-bla”?? I’m not making this stuff up for shits and giggles. Sexism in the comics industry is very well documented. READ A BOOK. Or, you know, talk to any woman who’s worked for DC for more than five minutes. Or just tell yourself that I’m just craaaaaazy. Whichever. That works too]

J Scott Campbell: I mostly feel sad for her. She appears to go through life seeing only the bad in other people and their work. Seems like it’d be a tortured existence. And immediately going after mine and Mark’s artwork the very next day only adds to the appearance of her biased and emotional filled knee-jerk thinking that has little to do with legitimate art critiquing, and more to do with attempting to save face. I hope for her sake that she can pull herself out of this self-destructive mindset and work on bettering her own artwork rather than grabbing at fleeting internet fame by tearing down others more successful than her. [Italicized emphasis mine]

—

Okay. We’re going to take a break from screen caps for a second to respond to that last one in particular.

So, first of all, claiming that I “went after [your] and Mark’s artwork” just proves how incredibly little effort you put into ACTUALLY READING WHAT I WROTE. Here’s what I actually said:

Which. You know what? In what universe is it okay to use your very large platform to encourage your followers to harass someone? Adria Richards and Anita Sarkeesian are only two of the most recent and prominent examples of the effects that online harassment can have. There is a long and sad history online of women being harassed for DARING to commit the CRIME of HAVING OPINIONS WHILE FEMALE.

And for people who’d say “well they didn’t actually tell their fans to harass you”? BULLSHIT. They made posts in which they called me things like “laughable”, “embarrassing”, and “smug”, then continued to encourage the anger in the thread that resulted. Nor did they make any attempts to dissuade potential harassers, or tell people who made threatening comments to back off. These are grown-ass-men who pointed their very large audiences at me and told them what a terrible person I was on the internet because they want me to shut the fuck up.

 Going through these threads is, of course, about as pleasant as drinking a tuna and brussel sprouts milkshake, so I’m not going to go through all of the comments that have been made so far. I have better things to do with my time than marinate in internet bile. But here are some highlights taken from J. Scott Campbell’s hate-fest before I got too tired of humanity to continue.

(SEVERAL of whom I should note are professional comics artists. I’m not going to name all the names here, because I don’t actually hate myself. But it is worth asking that HOW is any of this anything resembling professional behavior? But then, given that the mainstream comics industry is happy to regularly re-affirm how much it hates women, I guess none of this should come as a surprise.)

Got it? Okay, so let’s review. Did I say that they were knowingly using their audience to harass me? Yup! I sure did. Did I say that their behavior is unprofessional and imply strongly that it was also irresponsible? You betcha! Did I say ANYTHING ANYWHERE about artwork created by J Scott or Mark Brooks? NOPE. Go ahead. Re-read that. I’ll wait.

And of course, the “I feel so sorry for this poor bitter tortured sadsack” tactic is just a fancy variant of the “bitches be crazy” defense. Except, I’m sorry, how is it that I’m the nonsensical crazy one when I’m not the person who is saying straight-up NOT TRUE STUFF? Oh right. I’m a woman, and women who say things that people don’t work are crazy. Right. The ancient Greeks even invented a term for it – hysteria. Somehow that slipped my mind.

Also, you know who hasn’t (to my knowledge) participated in these threads? JB Meyers. You’d think the way J Scott Campbell is reacting that I went and personally kicked his puppy. But nowhere did I ever say anything about his art, or about Mark’s art. So I’m really not sure why J Scott and Mark are getting so wound up about this when JB himself seems to be restraining from participating in this disgusting vortex of internet hate.

Okay. Sidebar over.

—

J Scott Campbell: I also welcome counterpoints and as long as they’re civil and respectful (more or less) and I wouldn’t delete them just because the opinions differ from my own. That’s where we are different as well.

[Pretty classic form on the tone argument there, although the equivocating means he doesn’t stick the dismount. B+ effort.]

Okay, I’m not going to transcribe this, but this is basically Mark Brooks plugging all of his portfolio sites. Because when I get traffic from a storm of internet negativity, that’s bad. But when Mark uses a storm of internet negativity to advertise his professional services, thats’… um… good?

Anyway. That’s all I have for now. Since I don’t have anything more clever to end on, please enjoy these links to my favorite “male tears” GIFs. May they brighten your day. (I do apologize to my regular readers for the lack of actually important contact. But hey, you know how it is.)

Regarding entirely predictable backlash [LONG, LOTS OF IMAGES]

First order of business:

First of all, hello new readers! Welcome to my blog. I’ve gotten a huge spike of traffic in the last day, so let me just take the opportunity to say that if you actually appreciate what I’m doing here, consider checking out my Patreon and throwing $1 or 2 my way per month? It helps me prioritize the time and energy to blog about games and to also deal with the grade-A bullshit like the following.

You hate me! You really hate me! *blush*

I’m pretty used to getting gamer hate, but it seems like Jonboy Meyers is a Pretty Big Deal in comics after all because I wound up closing comments after a sudden torrent of abuse started appearing on my recent anatomy correction. I’m not just getting gamer hate now, I’m getting comics hate! It’s an entirely new demographic of geek hate! Progress!

Unsure of original source, taken from fuckyeahreactions.tumblr.com. (Sorry, guys. Tumblr is awful at attribution. It sucks.)

Creature of the blog lagoon. Or: It came from the comments![1]

A well-meaning reader who was really trying to be nice kindly informed me that there was a lot of facebook hate going on (which I’ll get to in a minute), which I appreciated. However, he then said that I should go to these facebook threads and defend myself, otherwise my opinion “is worth nothing”.

WELL, gentle reader. If this were a reasoned and nuanced discussion of the merits of artistic style, sure! I’d be happy to have a spirited conversation. However, in the 40ish comments that I got before I closed the thread (MISANDRY! FASCISM!), there was an awful lot of abuse and name-calling. The most comment sentiments break down as follows: (There is overlap, obviously, as most comments managed to hit 2 or more of these in the same comment, and several hit 3+. Overachievers.)

• Your art is bad – 10
• You are not a professional artist – 7
• Your anatomy was wrong – 6
• It’s “stylized/exaggerated” because comics! – 6
• Your degree is worthless – 5
• You’re just jealous – 4
• Your pose is static and dull – 4
• You are a terrible person – 3
• You are stupid/uneducated – 3
• U DELETED MY COMMENT – 3
• FORESHORTENING! – 3
• You are nit-picking – 2
• You are just over-reacting – 2
• Nonsensical slurs 2
• You should be embarrassed 2
• You just need to get laid 1

So please, I beg of you, explain to my why I should be required to engage with people who are so eager to tell me that I am stupid, terrible, over-reacting, jealous, and crazy? No one is entitled to my time and attention, especially people who clearly have no intention of ever attempting to see me as an actual person.

Now, before I respond to the above point-by-point (mostly), there were some highlights worth noting. Like my favorite of the nonsensical slurs:

You [sic] review and correction is full of ASS like your FACE

As a friend said on my G+: “That is some C- trolling right there.” (Incidentally, this had me giggling all evening. I might actually make this my comment policy – that instead of just deleting troll comments that I might grade them as well. Or not. We’ll see.)

This was like watching an unpublished amateur telling Vonnegutt or Hemmingway or O’Neil that they don’t know what they’re doing.

Right. Because comics art is like HEMMINGWAY. Hell, why not go further? (Not to mention picking something vaguely in the same medium.) Picking on Jonboy Meyers is like picking on REMBRANDT! MICHAELANGELO! OR MONET!

I won’t justify any more of these comments with additional words, so Let’s get on with analyzing the hate behind these comments. (Hatenalysis?)

Your art is bad/you are not a professional artist: 

I find the contention that I’m not a professional artist a little baffling. How exactly does one define “professional”? I am an illustrator who has worked in the tabletop RPG industry. And while I don’t pay all of the bills with my art, I pay a good number of them. Sure I have a day job, but honestly – I know artists who have been in the business 10 years and still have day jobs. However, since this is most likely a case where “professional artist” is defined as artists receiving money for their work who aren’t me (moving the goal posts! yay!), I’m not going to bother going into the details of my freelancing life.

As for the attempt to dismiss my work by saying that my art is bad, I find it pretty hilarious that so many haters are tying themselves in mental knots in an attempt to not listen to what I have to say. MY art is bad because it’s anatomically incorrect, but JONBOY’s art is good because it’s “stylized” and “exaggerated”. Or, there’s no such thing as bad art, except for my art which is bad.

And on and on and on in that vein. Instead of actually engaging with any of the points being made, apparently it’s easier to just say NO U SUK. NO U. NO UUUUUUU. And since I’m not six years old, I have no intent to actually have this particular argument.

Lastly, the idea that my artistic skill has any bearing on my cred as a critic of art is, frankly, laughable. Do people demand that film critics make an Oscar-winning film before they are taken seriously? No, they don’t, because that would be ludicrous.

Your anatomy was wrong

Uh. Yeah. I kind of admitted that. But my anatomy mistakes were along the lines of “couldn’t find the right angle of the shoulder” and “might not have the correct angle on the ribcage”. The mistakes in the original were HOLY SHIT WHERE DID HER SHOULDER GO WHY IS HER ARM FLOATING IN SPACE. At least in my art, everyone’s limbs were properly attached.

It’s “stylized/exaggerated” because comics! / FOOOOORESHORTENING!

So, okay. There were a lot of people who jumped all over me to claim that I was wrong because FORESHORTENING and because comics are dynamic because of FORESHORTENING! And, guys. Come on. This is a classic case of “I do not think that word means what you think it means”.

I challenge you to do this pose in front of a mirror. (Not the spine-arch. Just the arms.) Her left arm won’t look like that, because the foreshortening is wrong – as drawn her upper arm is 2-3 times the length of her forearm. And dude, foreshortening is hard. I get it! Your brain lies to you, because it is an asshole. But don’t come to my blog and tell me that I’m wrong because FORESHORTENING when it is the foreshortening itself that is not correct.

As for “it’s stylized/exaggerated because comics!”, that’s taking a pretty restrictive view of what constitutes comics. Sure, the big comics publishers mostly publish art that objectifies and sexualizes women. But that’s ignoring the whole world of comics that is happening on the web by artists who are connecting directly with their audience. And a lot of those artists manage to find an audience without exaggerating anatomy in ways that objectify women.

Your degree is worthless

See, this is where I can never win. I mentioned my education because as a woman dares to criticize something online, people jump down her throat and DEMAND to know her credentials before taking her seriously. And here’s the lose-lose situation that follows. If she lists her credentials, they will be dismissed and she will probably be criticized for being arrogant and superior. But if she doesn’t, they’ll say that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. So in this instance, I erred on the side of uppity bitch. Hell, if I drop five figures on an art education, I’m sure as shit not going to hide the fact that I have it.

Your pose is static and dull

Thank you for ENTIRELY MISSING THE POINT. As blogs like Escher Girls and Comic Art Corrections have been blogging about for years, the problem with art like this is that it relies entirely on heavily distorted and sexualized anatomy to create the illusion of dynamism. When you remove the gratuitous sexualization, the pose itself is not actually dynamic or interesting. The fact that you think my drawover was dull only proves the point that I was trying to make – that objectifying women often becomes a crutch.

You’re just jealous/You are a terrible person/You are stupid/uneducated

What baffles me is that I didn’t do anything that hadn’t already been done elsewhere on some very popular blogs. Escher Girls and Comic Art Corrections are just two of my favorites – there are plenty more out there. And it’s not like I was any snarkier, because nope. There’s been a lot of snark from other bloggers (that I have enjoyed, to be honest) about the prevalence of snake women and centaur women and broken spines, etc, in comic art. So why is it that I come back to blogging after a hiatus of more than two years, do something that is, frankly, pretty common in the blogosphere, and yet I’m the one who gets the ridiculous outpouring of hate?

Also, if you think it’s okay to call someone fat, ugly, jealous, crazy, retarded, or a waste of space simply because they criticized an artist you like? I’d take a long hard look at yourself and the level of bile that you’re prepared to vent over something like that. And the people who made threatening comments or said things like I could “shampoo [their] crotch”? Seriously? You’re just fucking gross.

U DELETED MY COMMENT

Comments policy is clearly spelled out in the sidebar. I am not obligated to give you my platform so that you my abuse me however you like. That’s what the rest of the internet is for.

You just need to get laid

Thank you for being so eminently predictable. There’s always one, so I’m glad that you didn’t let me down.

Facebook haters

Alrighty. I said I would get back to facebook, so here goes. As of the instant of me writing this, I’ve gotten almost 29,000 views in just about 24 hours. The vast majority of this traffic is coming from facebook, where comic artists like J. Scott Campbell and Mark Brooks (and others, I’m sure) are riling up their THOUSANDS OF FANS about what a terrible human being I am.

From J. Scott Campbell’s facebook.

YOU try taking screen caps of a facebook hatefest while simultaneously attempting to get a toddler to eat breakfast. Go ahead.

Which. You know what? In what universe is it okay to use your very large platform to encourage your followers to harass someone? Adria Richards and Anita Sarkeesian are only two of the most recent and prominent examples of the effects that online harassment can have. There is a long and sad history online of women being harassed for DARING to commit the CRIME of HAVING OPINIONS WHILE FEMALE.

And for people who’d say “well they didn’t actually tell their fans to harass you”? BULLSHIT. They made posts in which they called me things like “laughable”, “embarrassing”, and “smug”, then continued to encourage the anger in the thread that resulted. Nor did they make any attempts to dissuade potential harassers, or tell people who made threatening comments to back off. These are grown-ass-men who pointed their very large audiences at me and told them what a terrible person I was on the internet because they want me to shut the fuck up.

 Going through these threads is, of course, about as pleasant as drinking a tuna and brussel sprouts milkshake, so I’m not going to go through all of the comments that have been made so far. I have better things to do with my time than marinate in internet bile. But here are some highlights taken from J. Scott Campbell’s hate-fest before I got too tired of humanity to continue.

(SEVERAL of whom I should note are professional comics artists. I’m not going to name all the names here, because I don’t actually hate myself. But it is worth asking that HOW is any of this anything resembling professional behavior? But then, given that the mainstream comics industry is happy to regularly re-affirm how much it hates women, I guess none of this should come as a surprise.)

First up, I loved the number of people who misgendered me.

Thanks for reminding me why I don’t actually have my gender in my profile on this blog. Also, WTF is up with dude who wants to come to my house and beat me up? Seriously? Thanks for being a terrible human being.

There were also several women who were very eager to let people know that THEY weren’t offended, not like those AWFUL HYSTERICAL FEMINISTS. They’re not out to kill anyone’s sexy fun! Which. Ugh. But I grew up with more than my share of internalized misogyny, so whatever. I know where they’re coming from. I did, however, particularly like these comments from someone who is a female professional comics artist.

Seriously. Someone get on that. I will give you cash moneys to read about a fat, middle-aged, sword-wielding badass woman warrior. No lie.

The one thing that made me laugh, however, was this – in which the poster tries to claim that I don’t have a right to criticize Jonboy and cites my illustrations for SexyTime Adventures.

I guess this just reinforces the impossibility of satirizing this shit. But seriously, way to cherry-pick images without actually reading any of the actual words about how those drawings are fucking satire.

Now thankfully, there were at least a few people who were willing to stand up to this insanity, in varying degrees, for which I was grateful. Like this fellow.

I can’t say I liked the qualifier at the end, but you know what – I can’t blame the dude. Given the level of vitriol I imagine it took some courage to be the voice of reason and say “hey, maybe we shouldn’t harass this person”. So thanks not-crazy internet person.

And then there was this GLORIOUS schooling which I will never, ever get tired of:

And then someone who not only agreed with me, but actually called out the hypocrisy of these commenters:

YOU ARE MY HERO!

Speaking of which, Rob Liefeld agrees that I am terrible and my art is bad, which is the other thing that made me laugh.

But, you know, given that I don’t draw my women with broken spines, sameface, or LOTS OF AWESOME POUCHES!!!1!!11!eleventy!, I can see how Rob Liefeld would think that my work is bad and terrible.

Here is where I would normally write a clever conclusion. But I am tired of the universe, so instead here is a picture of a baby sloth.

[ETA: I’ve just added a followup to this followup here.]

—-

[1] I’m on a roll!

Anatomy: YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG (GenCon 2013 edition)

Recently, I had reason to take a good look at the GenCon 2013 poster that was drawn by Jonboy Meyers – a comic and game artist of some note[1]. The GenCon posters have long been a source of irritation for me, as each year the design centers around a scantily-clad female mascot. But until recently, I had thought of the 2013 poster as being “not as bad” as some of the others I’ve seen:

CLICK THROUGH FOR LARGER VERSION

And sure. There’s a lot wrong here. Her pose is weird and fanservice-y, the lens flare doesn’t completely obscure the fact that she’s wearing a miniskirt, and her “armor” seems to have individual boob compartments, not to mention that it’s rocking a severe case of sideboob. But bad as it is, she’s at least wearing more clothes than most of the other GenCon mascots I’ve seen? (Damned by faint praise, I know. I hope you realize just how low I’ve set the bar by now.) But then I took a really good look at it and realized, holy shit. There’s actually a lot seriously, seriously wrong with this picture.

So first, a drawover just to illustrate what’s going on underneath that overly-decorated-but-not-at-all-protective leather chestplate:

YIKES! Her breasts are weirdly enlarged, torpedo-shaped, and improperly placed and her ribcage is snapped in half just for starters. Neither of her arms are the correct length – her left upper arm is waaaaay longer than it should be at the expense of her forearm. I would say the situation is reversed with her right arm, except her right forearm is overly elongated but doesn’t actually connect to anything. There is no upper arm or even a right shoulder for it to attach to! Jonboy just lazily went “meh, boob” and counted on the fact that the viewer would be too busy admiring her chest to wonder about a small thing like WHERE THE HELL DID HER ARM GO?

What really kills me is the two different perspectives. The figure is drawn so that you are looking DOWN at the top of her head, but UP at her boobs. The effect is slight, but it’s there – which would only exaggerate the required spine arch of this pose to impossible levels. But of course, with torpedo collarboobs and floating arms it’s obvious that Jonboy was prioritizing SEXAY over, you know, anatomical plausibility.

(Which, can I just sidebar a second to say how gross that is? Look at this poor lady. She isn’t a person. She is literally a collection of disembodied parts, arranged for maximal titillation and shoved together in a mish-mash of lady-shaped sexy parts. Why do so many artists think that PARTS OF WOMEN are sexier than ACTUAL WOMEN?)

Ugh. Moving on.

Correcting the anatomy. Sort of.

So here’s the deal. I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to do anatomically correct draw-overs of this pose and I still didn’t get it quite right. Sometimes in art, you can get something so wrong that there’s just no point in trying to fix it. You’re better off to just nuke it from orbit and start over. However, as starting over would defeat the point of this particular exercise, I did my best to persevere.

You have no idea how much it pains me to post something this terrible and wrong.

So when I started doing my corrected drawover, I discovered YET ANOTHER problem with this pose – this time with her shoulder. (The one that actually exists, not the one floating invisibly in space.) In order to be anatomically correct, you can keep the angle of the ribcage or the angle of the shoulder, but not both. In order to keep the line of the shoulder as drawn, you’d actually be looking at the figure from the side.

This would significantly change the shape of the torso. Not to mention you’d only be able to see one breast, and it would be a full on side view. (That I couldn’t draw correctly. The original lines were just too distracting. Aaaaargh.)

However, since Jonboy seems like the kind of artist who would prioritize seeing both breasts over something as unsexy as a shoulder, I figured it was okay to give up and spend more time on the 3/4 view correction.

This isn’t correct either, but at least it’s closer.

Looking at it, there’s still some problems with my version. Her waist is too narrow, and her left shoulder actually needs to come out further – the edge should be about level with the side of her hip. (I got led astray by the original lines. They’re so hard to escape!)

However! I did manage to correct the most egregious faults. Her arms are now the correct length and properly attached! No more weirdly floating disembodied forearms. Her breasts are also now properly shaped (assuming she’s got a decent sports bra). I know I’m always bitching about basketball-shaped breasts, but torpedo-shaped breasts are just going too far in the other direction. Lastly, I  also gave her some bits of anatomy that she’d previously been missing. Like a collarbone.

Now what’s fun is if I actually combine the two re-draws. The result is… pretty interesting.

Phew! This wound up being one of my more challenging anatomy corrections, despite that I initially thought it would be easy. And of course, now that I’ve spent some time with it, I have to wonder how I could have failed to see how grossly distorted her anatomy is. I guess it just goes to show how omnipresent this sort of nonsense is in gaming culture. It just sort of becomes the background radiation that you have to put up with in order to be a gamer, which is saddening.

—

[1] As I avoid comics precisely BECAUSE of the type of art he makes, I have no idea if Jonboy Meyers is A Big Deal in the comics world, nor do I especially care.

Male Protagonist Bingo: A study in cliches [MANY IMAGES]

Over in the comments on my post about Joel from The Last of Us, I had occasion to write the following:

Secondly, I’m not saying that TLoU was badly written, or that Joel is a bad character. Far from it. But you know what? I’m so, so, so endlessly tired of the “gritty” white male action (anti)hero. With his angst! And his violence! And his moral ambiguity! And his managing-to-be-sympathetic-while-doing-terrible-things-because-he’s-doing-them-for-LOVE.

I’m just SO. FUCKING. TIRED.

and this:

I want to see stories with characters WHO LOOK LIKE ME. I’m tired of stories, even good ones, about white men being the only options I get. And sure, I can enjoy them in the moment. But ME. ME PERSONALLY. I am TIRED of not being represented. I’m not being “superficial”. I’m being FUCKING TIRED of not seeing myself in the games I play EVER EVER EVER.

and this:

We live in a patriarchal society where the dominant narrative is that men are protagonists and women are scenery. When an entire society has been constructed to tell your story, it’s easy to say “oh well I don’t mind other stories so why are you so hung up on gender/sexuality/race/whatever” – because you have the luxury of knowing that the overwhelming majority of stories that you want to consume will still be about you.

As a woman, I don’t have that luxury. Despite that I have been playing video games for well over 2 decades, there are exactly 4 female characters in games that I have played that I would say are universally awesome and positive protagonists whom I don’t feel critical of on some level. FOUR. (Yuna, Lightning, FemShep, and Ellie, if you’re counting.) And Jesus, I’m white, cis, and straight – so I’m sure there’s shit I’m missing.

So you know what? Fuck realism. I don’t care if a female character “feels” “truthful”. If we can believe in worlds with dragons and zombies and magic and future tech, WHAT IS SO HARD about believing in a world where women can be protagonists?

This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. Just last night I was bitching to my husband about how unbelievably DONE I am with stories about MANLY MEN PUNCHING THINGS AND BEING MANLY BECAUSE THEY’RE MEN.[1] So I decided to write a post about how unbelievably unoriginal most games protagonists are, but I didn’t know the best way to do it. I hacked away at it for a while and wound up with an outline that would have been 3000 words.

No one wants to read 3000 words. Hell, I don’t want to WRITE 3000 words.

And then I thought – bingo card! Let’s make an amusing feminist meme work for me! A picture is worth a thousand words and all that. …well, okay. Ten pictures is worth 3000 words. It’s the exchange rate.

So here is the bingo card itself. Please feel free to use it how you see fit – just please don’t crop out the credits. (Wheaton’s Law, guys. Removing attribution is a dick move.)

CLICK THROUGH FOR LARGER VERSION

Then I ran ten male protagonists from major video game series against the bingo card, because why not? Including Joel, since I’d spent so much time arguing about him recently.

Yup. NO UNORIGINALITY HERE. Nope. No siree! Because this is proof that game devs are SO, SO ORIGINAL.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be crying over here in this corner.

—

[1] And he was like “Yup. Yup. Yes. I agree. Uh-huh.” Not to be patronizing, just because he’s heard the same rant approximately five million times. I guess I repeat myself when I get mad.

Bits and pieces: the tired Tuesday edition

Hi, folks! There’ve been a couple interesting things floating around my internet recently, but mostly they’re things I probably won’t write an entire post about any time soon. I promise I’m working on some more in-depth posts, including one anatomy correction and a possible post about sex workers in video games. But for now, here’s some interesting quickies.

—

The Mary Sue had a post recently that looked in depth at publisher QCF’s efforts to make female character icons for their game Desktop Dungeons that varied in gender presentation, age, and other factors. As someone who continually tries to increase the diversity of representation in my own work, it was great to read about other creators working through the same process:

Shorthands for the feminine kept crawling into our work when we weren’t paying attention – smooth skin, homogenized facial structures, evidence of makeup, you name it. Even characters who we thought would easily sidestep trouble (like the female wizard) simply looked like young, pretty women in grunge costume rather than hardboiled dungeoneers. Portraits for some species went through several drafts just to deprogram our subconscious idea of what felt normal and right.

This really rings true for me. Unfortunately, we’re all programmed with toxic stereotypes and biases. Making inclusive work requires really being conscious of those stereotypes and working hard to avoid them. It also means knowing that you’re going to screw up, and being prepared to revise as needed. Is it harder than just slapping a bunch of stereotypes together and calling it a day? You bet it is. But it’s a thing worth doing.

(Really, you should just go read the whole thing if you haven’t already.)

—

This is kind of perfect – Fake Nerd Guys. (NSFW!) Linking without further comment.

—

I started doing the first of my Patreon-related gender swaps yesterday. When finished, it will appear here with commentary, but if you’d like to see in-progress pics you can see them here on my art blog.

—

More Tumblr goodness. Have you seen Bikini Armor Battle Damage? Because it’s kind of amazing. Anyhow, it’s run by OzzieScribbler, who recently made these amazing female armor bingo cards:

Now I want to run a whole bunch of work by the game artists I pick on the most by this bingo card to see who would get the most bingos…

The Impossibility of Satirizing Game Art [NSFW!]

Those of you who follow my art blog over on Tumblr will already know that I’ve been working on publishing a new tabletop game, a satire hack of Dungeon World that I’m calling SexyTime Adventures – meant to parody all of the awful sexism that gets included in just about every fantasy dungeoneering game ever[1]. For instance, here is my description of the Cleric:

Others may be ambivalent in their faith, worshipping whichever god in the pantheon most serves their needs in the moment. Some have no faith at all, citing the existence of monsters, demons, and war as proof that there are no gods. But you, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a god, and that god has touched you deep in your soul. Your bosomy, voluptuous soul.

You have been called to bring faith to a faithless world, to smash down the unrighteous and stand triumphantly over them without any pants on. For pants are the work of the devil. So sayeth the lord.

(You can find plenty more previews of the game text here.)

Satire is always challenging. No matter how hard you work, how carefully you craft it, how blindingly obvious you think it is that no one would ever actually say or think this, someone (or multiple someones) will always think that you’re being serious. Always. It’s one of the sad, immutable truths of satire. But that’s not to say that satire isn’t worth doing. Shows like The Daily Show and the Colbert Report illustrate the continuing relevance of satire as an important form of social commentary.

And honestly? Satire can be so much fun. Everything that’s in SexyTime Adventures makes me giggle. I especially had a blast with names for character abilities – “The Male Gaze”, “I Said Lesbians”, and “Which Way to the Beach?” are just a few of my favorites.

But then there’s the problem of art.

Any decent tabletop product has to have art. It’s something that people expect to get when they pay for a new game or setting book or supplement. And to be fair, a weighty tome of dry rules with no art would be a pretty unappealing product. But the problem of SexyTime Adventures that plagued me was the art. The text has been finalized for months now, but I hadn’t made any headway on finishing it because the question of how to tackle illustrations had me completely stumped. How the hell do you satirize something that is already its own satire?

My first attempt: well-meaning, but a dismal failure

Eventually I made myself a checklist of terrible things that I wanted to hit in each illustration and went to work. As it turns out, given that I actually have an education in anatomy, I wound up referring to Escher Girls as a reference in how to “correctly” break anatomy. Because honestly, getting it as wrong as some professional game illustrators get it on a consistent basis is, um, HARD. Really, really hard.

The problem was that when I looked at the finished products, they made me… uncomfortable. Despite the skull-sized anti-gravity basketball breasts, the broken spines, the stick arms, and the anatomically impossible poses – the art that I’d made still looked too… believable.

These were meant to be illustrations for the Amazon and the Thief.

While I was doing the initial pencils, I was giggling to myself because it all seemed so ridiculous. Look at her waist! And the ridiculous breasts! No one could fire a bow like that! No one can possibly ever take this seriously! But the finished product wound up being completely indistinguishable from the real thing!

Illustrations taken from Dragon Magazine – an official D&D publication.

And therein lies the problem. The games industry is so tragically, deeply invested in its bullshit sexism that it is practically impossible to out-ridiculous anything that has already been published. How can I possibly make art more ridiculous than a magic-sword-wielding bikini luchador? I CAN’T. I JUST CAN’T.

Because the important thing to remember about satire is this: what makes something successful satire is how it is viewed by the audience, not what the author or creator’s intentions behind the creation were. When you create art, you don’t get to tell people how they will respond to it. They bring their own feelings and experiences to the table, and the best intentions in the world won’t make offensive art any less offensive. And of course, that’s the trap that so many artists and creators fall into. YOU CAN’T GET MAD BECAUSE I DIDN’T MEAN IT THAT WAY.

Unsure of original source, image found here (tumblr sucks at attribution, sorry)

Sorry, folks. Artistic intent just doesn’t work that way.

At the end of it, I had a set of illustrations that I’d worked rather hard on that I couldn’t use because they didn’t read as satire, which sucked because that was the point of the whole damn exercise. So I figured a second attempt was warranted.

Attempt number two: satire achieved!

When I started drawing a second set of illustrations, I recycled poses from the first set. But this time around I threw out any pretense of anatomy. These weren’t human women I was drawing, but plasticine statues, twisted nearly beyond recognition. More importantly, I also changed the style. Instead of making my style more realistic, I deliberately went as cartoon-y as possible.

So much of the worst RPG art also has some of the most nicely rendered anatomical shading out there. Because even though the vast majority of pornified game women are not even remotely anatomically possible, the illusion of “realism” is important. Because sexy.

This time around, I was much, much happier with the results:

New illustrations for the Thief, Amazon, and Druid.

I think the tipping point (for me anyhow) are the ridiculous expressions, especially paired with the cartoon-y style. But even then, I didn’t know that I’d feel comfortable publishing something with just these depictions of women and nothing more. I needed something that would be an equally ridiculous treatment of male stereotypes in gaming…

Illustration for The Dude. This is my fucking magnum opus.

The key to successful satire of awful stereotypes is context. And what could provide a better satirical context than a muscle-y Conan-type hero literally festooned in beautiful women? Especially women who don’t mind Conan stabbing them in the boob, or stepping on their head?

Lesson Learned: Satire takes work, it doesn’t just happen

So many times, game creators use offensive humor in their work, and then hide behind the defense of satire, because some people think “it was just a joke” gives you an automatic pass. All too often, people think that ironic sexism (I know that you know that I know I’m being sexist, therefore it’s funny!) is automatically satire because it’s ironic. But the problem that ironic sexism (or racism, or whatever) is still sexist because it does nothing to actually challenge sexism. In the end, ironic sexism and “actual” sexism have the same result, because both only serve to perpetuate a harmful cultural narrative.

By the same token, satire is only successful when deliberate thought and effort go into deconstructing the thing you are attempting to satirize. And even with thought and effort, it’s possible to fall short if you don’t find a way to make your work obviously distinct from the thing that you’re satirizing.

And now for something humorous

Just so I don’t end on a ponderous, pontificating note (I do hate doing that), here’s the first few paragraphs of the introduction to SexyTime Adventures. Enjoy!

The land of Sexonia is a dangerous place, a land of fantasy and adventure beyond your wildest imaginings. Maybe you got into adventuring because your village was destroyed by orcs, or to prevent fire elementals from taking over your kingdom, or maybe just because it was better than staying at home and settling down with that nice boy that your parents wanted you to marry. Whatever the reason, you can’t go home now. The kingdom needs you. And more importantly, that chain mail makes you look totally hot. Are you seeing anyone right now? Could I maybe buy you an ale some time?

…ahem.

Who can say what dangers you might face? What’s important is that you pick up your sword and set out to defend what’s important to you and yours while also looking sexy, because it’s important to always put your best foot forward, am I right? And because the world is a scary place, who better to go adventuring with than some of your closest (and hottest) friends? And if maybe some night you find yourself camped on a glacier with no fire wood and you have to cuddle together in one sleeping bag with no clothes on…

…I’m sorry, where was I?

Adventure! Danger! Sexy outfits! Come, fellow adventurers. It’s sexytime.

—

[1] I wrote this game entirely for my own amusement, but I admit it will be nice to have something to throw in dudebros’ faces when they get all angry and tell me to MAKE UR OWN GAME THEN. Make my own game, you say? Well! I already did!