Cranky. Old. Man?

Kind of crazy lately, but when I'm not working, I'm getting all sorts of things watched/read/played! In fact, part of me regrets starting to have a social life, as all the stuff I like to do tends to be more solitary. It's also nice to watch TV/Movies while sewing. So yeah.

( TV/Anime )

( reading )

( videogames )

And now some links, of the other kind of reading variety!

- Interactive Apollo 13 event

- Lying on the internet isn't the problem, it's creeps that invade your privacy: or the real story behind the movie Catfish

- The Lilypad controller opens up new ways to geek out. STILL WANT. SERIOUSLY.

- Hangover cures. Apparently craving eggs after a wild night is a natural thing!

- A welcoming place for all gamers... is not PAX East Possible rape/assault triggers.

- Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath: an unfortunate repeating tale

- The Social Network and the problem of retroactive history writing. Spoiler: if you're a chick, you obviously had nothing to do with anything awesome.

- A dystopian YA novel that sounds awesome.

- What does the Bechdel test really mean?

- The Fundementals of Game Design: an essay

- Study shoes that men are no better at math than women The differences start with social reactions, though.

So, much has been said about gaming and community and the like in publications and on blogs, but with all the stuff I'm reading for lit reviews for grants, and my general state of mind lately, I'm going to mind dump some of my experiences here with the Gamerness and mostly its positive influences. This may be long, so feel free to skip over it.

This is mostly the fault of reading through this book for work. I still can't believe I get paid to read stuff like this, some days.

( my somewhat sordid past in the gameworld )

I'm gonna link to character art that most of you have seen, because I have some people on the f-list who haven't, not because I think you are dumb.

So, my job at work often involves me doing grantwork, as in, typing shit up. I talk with production and work with them, yes, but I am primarily a "come up with ideas" and "omg does this even make sense with SCIENCE?" and "shit can you do the lit review for this?" type of person. And it's a lot of fun most days, but some days I am idling (like yesterday). But the good thing about working in EDUCATIONAL gaming is that not only are we supposed to looking at stereotypes, but we're supposed to avoid them. And it's not easy!

Being a female in engineering, I was in charge of most of the review for "how do we get girls to play this?" And while some of the research has me rolling my eyes, I try to keep an open mind and remember that I am about as close to normal girl as well, I'm not. XD And even I don't get how it just doesn't click for some girls. Outside of fandom, I hung in mostly dude circles! So I have to get the dudebro out of my brain sometimes.

But we still have mistakes! And thankfully the office is pretty even with men and women (we are, it's kind of shocking for a tech company, and one of our programmers is of the chick variety) so they don't happen for long. And we had a slight problem with the sexy.

( the sexy! )

So basically the point of all this is that even in the happy place where I am, where we try to think of equality and minorities and including everyone, we still have moments were we default back to Dudebro 101. And that's silly! Plus lots of other people talk about this way better than I do. The end!