Comments on: April Round Table: Brokering Peace with the Fear

By: Aurelius

Aurelius — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:07:08 +0000

Upon reflection, it might also illustrate how one exists as a second class citizen in any society. As a slave, a minority race, or otherwise disadvantaged group.

By: Aurelius

Aurelius — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:02:40 +0000

The “game” you describe illustrates many things I’d not previously thought of. Brilliant!

By: Deirdra Kiai Productions » Blog Archive » Hasty Genderalisations and Pet Dogmas

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:59:59 +0000

[...] and misadventures of specific women, rather than, say, tackling heavy generalised topics such as rape culture. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t write games about the latter — quite the [...]

By: eleniel

eleniel — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:58:38 +0000

Thank you so much, that really means a lot to me!

By: oliemoon

oliemoon — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:20:26 +0000

Wow. Just wow. I could feel my heart racing while I read this. I’m going to echo Kateri here: I think you did a real good job just capturing the visceral fear and discomfort that exists just under the surface so much of the time for me, and how vulnerable it feels most of the time just existing while female.

At first the guns == phallus metaphor, and blue suit/yellow suit divide seems a bit over the top, but really they were both so fitting and perfect for this piece. It is amazing how you took these really simple game design ideas and made something so powerful with them.

Thank you for this.

By: eleniel

eleniel — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:01:24 +0000

Thanks, kateri. I know what you mean about it being a little overblown. I think I thought about it more like how the gun represents the (social and often physical) power men have over women, from a woman’s perspective, rather than being a direct analogue to penises. Almost all men /technically/ have the power to rape, though of course not all (or even most?) of them would ever do that; but from our perspective, we have no idea who would and who wouldn’t until, god forbid, it happens, or we get to know them very well (and sometimes not even then).

Also, what you said

By: eleniel

eleniel — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:44:56 +0000

Thanks for commenting, Deirdra! I really enjoy your Round Table posts. I’m not sure I’ve done it justice myself, but I think focusing on one aspect–the oppressive fear rape culture creates, and how women have to “broker some peace” with it, as that Jezebel post puts it–helped.

That’s a good question. I struggled with whether to even make the characters human; but I decided to do so in order for the player to more easily relate and care about the characters and the player’s avatar. I think if I made them gender neutral they wouldn’t be human. There’s also the danger of “gender-neutral” being read as “male”, which I definitely did not want.

I think it could have been a lot clearer if the characters were alien creatures like in Corvus’s slavery game from a while ago. But the sympathetic element was really important to me, even though it seems like most people don’t really care about game characters even when they are human.

By: Kateri

Kateri — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:35:56 +0000

I read it, and want to thank you for writing it, and posting it. Reading it, I thought I could ‘feel’ it being very stressful and draining for you to write, if that makes any sense.

The gun analogy made me think about the extent to which I feel threatened by men. Initially, I thought it didn’t ring true for me, that I didn’t see men just in terms of being malevolent phalluses walking around (I’m not saying you said that, that was just my first random thought!).

Then, later, I went through my usual routine of locking up at work, late evening, on my nearly-empty floor of the building that still had various people hanging around in corners, and thought about the times I *had* felt threatened just by being around men, times when while I knew, rationally, that they were probably perfectly decent people, I was in a situation where I was alone, and there would be nothing I could do. And how sometimes it feels like being female really is like wearing a big sign, saying “VULNERABLE”, and I might as well be wearing a different coloured jumpsuit to mark me out as a target.

Oh, and thank you for that tasteslikephoenix.com link, that was such a great article!

By: Deirdra

Deirdra — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:00:27 +0000

Just wanted to say I’m glad someone attempted to tackle the topic of rape. Though it’s something I see as a huge problem, and something I personally fear, I’m afraid of not being able to do it proper justice, for similar reasons to what I outlined in my own BoRT post for this month.

A question: is there a particular reason why you wanted to give the characters a gender? Why not make them gender-neutral, since there’s already a metaphor for gender in place with the guns?

By: April ‘09 Round Table - UPDATED 04-21 : Man Bytes Blog

April ‘09 Round Table - UPDATED 04-21 : Man Bytes Blog — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:53:39 +0000

[...] 20 – While !Finished: Brokering Peace with the Fear. Alex addresses rape [...]