/dev/grrl's development..., Because we don't want to thread-steal from a publication announcem Options

[Pepsi Jedi]

Maybe I'm the odd one out, but the women I've Roleplayed with were not the shy types, and if some guy was creeping them out, they'd tell him to get lost. Again maybe I'm the odd one here too, but if I see guys disrespecting women, I DO tell them to stop. I've made a few stop. Not in game stores, but in the world. I worked as a bouncer for a club for a few years in college. It's not like game stores are populated by strange sexual deviants more so than any other place. Are there some skeezy guys in some game stores? Sure, but in 35 years I've never had any of the ladies I play with be so creeped out that they've left stores or even been afraid to go into one. At the most they might give jerks a long stare or ask what they're looking at. Where in the creeps scurry away frightened. The worst of this sort of thing I've experienced (of this nature) role playing is a guy that was a bit young for our group in the 90s, and liked to tell alot of sexual jokes. We broke him of it real fast. Not that the jokes killed us, just that it was skeezy and, we didn't want to hang around with, or be known as skeezy. Lets be honest, gamers usually aren't the apex of the social ladder, and most popular kids in the world. We didn't need any help on the negative traits. lol

Maybe I've been lucky and the game stores in NC where I was, and in MI now, just wouldn't stand for any sort of sexual deviant behavior. Yes they had guys that would walk up and try and tell you the life story of their favorite vampire or warrior, or mage, or what have you, but it wasn't a sexual dominant sort of thing, nor was it gender specific. ( it was exhausting though. They cast some sort of spell that requires extra willpower rolls to escape their droning. ugg.))

You mention Gen Con, and talk about the women. I'm going to assume you're talking about cosplay girls or 'booth babes'. Well.... not for nothing.. google 'Playboy photos' or 'swimsuit model photos'.... *Gasp* Girls there too!! It's not like the guys require the women dress up like that for the convention. heck, it usually takes alot of money to make those costumes. The women are doing that themselves. They're not at gunpoint. The ladies that dress up like that for Gen con.... do so.... because they want to be looked at... or they like dressing up like that.. and Gen con ( and other "Geek" style conventions) is a socially acceptable place to do so. Just like it's socially acceptable to be naked in a Playboy shoot, or wearing a thong in a swimsuit issue of a magazine. The difference being, that other than the booth ladies, the women are paying money themselves to go to those conventions and putting extra money into their costumes to do so. So that's not really a fair comparison. If women HAD to dress up like that to role play, that'd be bad. They don't. They choose to dress up like that for conventions because they want to, and put money into doing so. I.E. those ladies -want- to be looked at. If you didn't, you wouldn't spend the money to do so. This is not a free pass to act like a skeeze, and if people do, they should be shut down fast. Again, women that spend the time and effort to go out of the way for cosplay and the like, seldom are afraid to tell skeezeballs to get lost and get a life. Porn is free on the internet afterall.

The booth people, are hired there just like the ones at a car show, or gun show, or a fashion show or cooking shows or any sort of shows. "Pretty people" are used in advertising all over the world in most every field. Does this 'objectify' the pretty booth women? Yeah. In a way it does, but it's not gaming specific. It's across every industry. Have you seen a Hardees/Carl's Jr Commercial in the past few years? They've taken it to satire like levels. If you can sell a sloppy burger with sex (Female --and-- male)) a sports car, an AR15 assault rifle, and every bit of fashion/clothing in the world, seeing it in Gaming setting isn't strange. I'm not saying it's 'good' but I am saying it's not strange or more so than any other industry. Targeting gaming industry or gamers for liking beautiful men or women is sort of ignoring the rest of the planet, also using that exact same tactic.

[hermit]

@ShadowJackal

Another fact is that the majority of the writers of SR have and are male and that there are things distinctly female that seem to be lacking from *MY* perspective.

As with your initial statement on /dev/, I do agree there. Actually, right now, I think all current SR writers are male (and American, with two Canadians and the rest US American), and yes, it does show. Things were better when there actually were female (and non-American) writers among CGL's core group of freelancers, and I'd like to see both these things addressed and changed (I don't believe that'll happen though).

This is quite related to other problems that grate me that I referenced in my review of Storm Front - the whole macho patriotism thing. It's been going on for some time now. It's, however, a rather American thing, too; it's nowhere near as prevalent in the German expansions to the books Pegasus chose to tanslate. It's also much more prevalent in the fandom than in the writing, especially in the people crossing over to Dumpshock from the official Forums. I'm not saying there are no issues either in German writeups, fandom, or forums, but they look quite pale compared to the official American forums (where I blame the leadership), more recent (CGL) writings (see below also), or fandom.

I am sorry if you felt like I was saying that there weren't issues there. I simply find her work to be more believable than many others. There are issues there but they are more visually believable. (...) I also find the confidence in her women to outweigh the T&A. They are empowered.

... tentacle sex with ice cream cones makes women seem empowered.

While Chernik is great with pin-ups and I really love her art deco style, it's really hard for me to see where her pin-ups are anything but pin-ups. Unless you take the mere fact a women drew them as somehow better than a man drawing the exact same thing. I agree with you on the 'breast fairy' and the emotional breakdown, but not on Chernik's art. It's not representative of what I'd expect of a female charater in a combat situation. Not nearly. I think we'll have to agree to disagree here. My reaction to the SR5 box cover has been the same eyeroll I did when I read the breast fairy thing in the first post (I can see where CanRay was going, but I'd rather he'd not have put it like that). I for myself hope for another cover in the German edition.

I'm standing up for the fact that things like forcing a character into an emotional breakdown and the phrase "Breast fairy" offend me and I don't think I'm the only female on the face of the earth that would find that offensive.

As said above, the 'breast fairy' was not his finest in writing. I see what he intended now, but it could easily be misunderstood.

Whether /dev/ has to kill someone or not will be seen in the future, but emotional breakdowns are a standard in 'corporate person takes to the shadows' stories ever since Secrets of Power 1 (where Sam Verner has these issues, though it's as badly written as the rest of the book). It's not exclusively reserved for female characters. There's also another female character (though decidedly lower class) who reacts differently to her first kill in early SR novels - Rani from Streets of Blood. I see the general idea, but you misappropriate it, in my opinion.

@Ravensmuse

When I can't even look at the "Images That Make You Think Shadowrun" thread on the official boards because every other picture is a half-naked or semi-naked girl straddling a gun that would make Cable (of the X-men) blush, there's a fskin' problem, okay?

Yes, you do, though not with official Shadowrun art, but with the crowd on the "official" forum. The CGL forums are one step above /tg/ in that regard. Or below, depending on who is doing most posting on a given day. They were, after all, founded as a place where the current breed of authors and the current line dev can have themselves praised. Official (printed) Shadowrun art is, while nowhere near perfect, far less sexualised than most gaming art.

We (...) - male, white, straight, thirty something year old dudes (...) We don't want people in. We want more people like us. Now be on the other side of that; be the person who doesn't fit into any of those categories.

Now, I have been keeping back with this for quite some time, but since you play white knight for a (perceived) minority here, I'll just stand up for another.

While what you wrote is a good summary of "traditional America", you should be aware that a lot of people on Dumpshock (unlike the official forums) are, in fact, not American. Do you want us, or more people like you? Your 'we' is indicating the latter.

I'm quite sick of this attitude, though. It has become really annoying, both with 'gaming culture' in general and with Shadowrun specifically, these days. This damned, America-centric, patriot thing (foregoing a stronger word) going both in fandom and in Shadowrun writing - where it's rather author specific. Unfortunatly, the authors looking to fix this problem and trying to be better are NOT the ones who caused it. This pretense that gun culture and whatever other issues America has these days are somehow universal, because you wrongly believe your navel-gazing is worldly somehow. It was a lot better when Shadowrun was produced by a non-American company with a much more international roster of writers. Now, I see more and more prejudice and lack of interest in foreign cultures while writing about them reflected in SR.

We may both be white, in the same age group, and approximately middle class. That is where our similarities end. We don't share the same values, in fact, on many very basic matters, I think we don't even share vaguely similar values. Don't claim to speak for me, or know me. Don't play white knight to me and accuse me of your culture's failures. I am not American. So, please take your American problems where they belong - to Americans. Thank you.