Awesome Con Diversity Track

The second  annual Awesome Con, DC's pop culture and comics convention, is this weekend! The first year was kind of a mixed bag for me. As some of you know, I yelled at a panel moderator for being blatantly sexist (while I myself was cosplaying as Lt. Uhura from Star Trek TOS). Mimosas may have been involved. 

ANYWAY. That's all the in past. This year's programming has a healthy dose of panels discussing representations of women and people of color. Here they are complied in one handy place - I call this the "diversity track," since they're basically all filed under different tracks on the Awesome Con website. 

Saturday

11AM - Saturday Morning Gets Funky: "this panel take audiences back to the 70's when black characters became popular in main stream cartoons."

1PM - Yes, There Are Girl Gamers: "discussing the silly behavior of men online." [Promising title, but the summary is a bit flippant for my taste. Let's see how this plays out... pun intended because my puns are always intended.]

2:30 - Representation Is Important: "Come and learn what comics creators are doing to help the diversity of the world change comics and hopefully help those comics change the world." 

Sunday

11:30 - Sexism, Violence, and Geekdom: "discuss depictions of masculinity, femininity, and gender-based violence in the geek community." 

12:45 - Women In Comics: "discuss women in cartoon-land: characters and creators, the changing world of comics, and how they make their livings with pen, paper, and a mouse or two." 

Hope to see you there! 

Check out Gigargun!

Is there a nerd in the world that hasn't dreamed of donning a robotic suit to go toe-to-toe with a gigantic monster? A friend of mine, Duffy, is involved in creating a new tabletop RPG called Gigargun that allows players to do just that. Here's an excerpt from his latest blog post:

[The world of Gigargun] has dealt with the existence of giant monsters for over half a century and has almost become jaded to its own wonder. We are populating it with corporations, cults, militias, and criminal organizations that trade in giant monsters. We are devising scenarios where you will be challenged in new and creative ways that take advantage of the world.

Now, I haven't had a chance to play test Gigargun yet. Luckily, my Best Frenemy Mac was able to play it at Tabletop Game Day at our FLGS. And he shared with me one of my favorite gaming stories to date. Apparently a father brought in his two sons for Tabletop Game Day, and the younger one was painfully shy. Already I'm like, "I know that feel, little bro." But then this:

We would all ask him what he wanted to do and he would sit there quietly staring down at the table for a few seconds until his father said, "Would you like to _____?" and he'd nod, someone would put the die in his hand and he'd roll it.

Then the undead whale surfaced (which is apparently a real thing in Japanese mythology, who knew). The kid was on top of our ship, riding his giant lion-looking pet monster, and this time when Duffy asked him, "What would you like to do?" He looked up for maybe the first time, and calmly said, "I would like to jump onto it's back, dig my way down inside of it, and rip it's heart into pieces until it dies."

The table fell silent, then Duffy leaned forward and patted him on the head, and said, "Yes. Yes, that is going to happen now." And we proceeded to make it happen, step by step, over the next few combat rounds. Thanks to a few very good rolls, including a critical hit on the heart itself, we won a few rounds later.

DON'T YOU JUST LOVE IT?!? As much as I love D&D, I have a hard time envisioning something like this happening in that system. This gives me the impression that Gigargun's mechanics are flexible enough to handle just about anything. Even more importantly, it shows that the stories you can tell with Gigargun are evocative enough to bring all our shy inner eight-year olds out of their shells.

Duffy, when do I get to play?

This totally counts as a post.

Turtle Power!

A side benefit of hanging out at your Friendly Local Game Shop is that you make friends with some of the cool people who work there. My friends Esther and Judy from Labyrinth are awesome! Last weekend, the three of us went out with a meetup.com group to a new "barcade" (bar + arcade) that just opened up, Atlas Arcade. It was rumored that they had the old-school Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, so we honored everyone's favorite heroes on the half-shell by meeting up for pizza first.

I had the Farmer's Daughter at H & Pizza...
if you know what I mean!

I love the idea of Atlas Arcade, since it combines two of my favorite things - booze and nostalgia. Unfortunately, everyone else on the planet likes these things too. When we got there around 9:30 on a Saturday, the place was busy. There was still some room to move around, but the people playing pool kept having to ask people to move out of the way of their cues. Little by little, however, people started filing in and soon there wasn't enough elbow room to play half of the games (which were all crammed together along one wall). By the time we left around 11pm, the place was PACKED - we had to basically nudge and shove our way out the door. 

Eventually, I just broke out my nun-chucks. Kidding!

I can see Atlas Arcade as a cool place to go on a weeknight after dinner, when it's not so crowded, to have a few drinks and a few laughs playing awesome (or awesomely bad) old-school arcade games. Still, the meetup was fun and I think we all had a good time. I'm already looking forward to the next one!

Legend of Zelda Concert

I have a confession to make... I have never played any of the multiple Legend of Zelda games. Shocking, I know! Here's the funny part - I still consider myself a fan. I may not be fluent in Hylian, but I know that Hylian exists. I get the jokes in LoZ spoofs like Legend of Neil, I can correctly identify a Tri-force tattoo, I've picked out a couple tunes on an ocarina, and I own 3D Dot Game Heroes (LoZ-like game that's basically 8-bit in 3D).


Not as weird as it sounds... much, much weirder.

So when my BFF Maggie suggested we go out to the National Symphony Orchestra's Legend of Zelda Concert, I jumped at the chance. The music in LoZ isn't just there for ambience/background noise - one of Link's most important tools is his musical instrument. A concert, IMHO, was the perfect way to honor the game's 25th anniversary (technically last year - whatever!).

We got there early for crowd-watching purposes. I saw several Links (about half of them female!), a cute Saria, a bird-person, two guys in top hats - Hurdy Gurdy men? - and a very creditable Zelda. Adorbs!

Does consent to pose imply assent to post?
Cosplayers, help me out here.

The music was phenomenal, and clips of gameplay and cut-scenes from various Legend of Zelda games were shown on the big screen. It was awesome to see all the different styles - from the original 8-bit to Pixar-level CGI - all telling the same story. Maggie and me being who we are, we did take a moment to wonder why Zelda hasn't had a more proactive role in any of these games.

And we get it, LoZ represents the archetypical Hero's Journey to Save the Damsel in Distress. The one exception of this I can find is her incarnation as Tetra, the female pirate, but even then she's a supporting character. She's not a playable character anywhere in the main series (I'm sorry, becoming a spirit and possessing a Phantom Knight does not count).

Here's the thing, Nintendo. You've told this story sixteen times now. Maybe, just maybe, it's time for a change? And if you could've seen what I've seen - specifically, a crowd of fans essentially split 50/50 by gender - the direction of that change should be obvious.

In conclusion, this: Zelda and Peach Catch Up. What, you thought they keep getting captured by accident?