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Fannish linkspam.
Some of these links are old, some of them are new. I hope that all of them are interesting for you.
Uktena is a historically accurate (well, with the addition of a few supernatural elements) free PC roleplaying game created by Toye Heape and based on native cultures that lived in Tennessee about six hundred years ago. It needs some funding help to get off the ground. As to why this game is awesome and important, here's what Heape has to say:
Recently there's been a lot of discussion on Tumblr and Dreamwidth about fan-funded indie games that are intended to be inclusive of people and cultures not normally represented in your typical mainstream RPGs. Unfortunately a lot of that discussion is fueled by a Certain Project doing nearly everything wrong. Well, here's an example of a game that is really, truly doing it right. And even though the Kickstarter deadline for this project has passed, there are still ways that you might be able to help it get the funding that it needs.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the internet! A whole lot of dimwitted male movie critics have been trying to gain Feminism Points by critiquing how Black Widow is portrayed in The Avengers. The overwhelming problem with most of these reviews, however, is not that there isn't anything bad to be said about Black Widow's portrayal or Joss Whedon's often strangely limited flavor of feminism - because there most certainly IS an awful lot worthy of critique there - but that movie critics are, for some inexplicable reason, complaining about Black Widow being useless in the film. Uh, what? Fortunately, Ian Grey has an excellent takedown of that argument. Bonus points for actually calling out the offending movie critics by name.
Speaking of Doing It Right: Dan Norton is the amazing character designer for the new Thundercats series and he's posting all of his character and mech design work on Deviantart. Well worth a gander even if you're not into Thundercats. Also, some time ago Norton's gallery hosted a hilarious flamewar during which Norton beautifully smacked down a sexist fanboy who showed up to complain about Pumyra's new design being "too manly" and not having big enough breasts. Sadly, however, those comments seem to have been deleted now.
More potpourri links:
Paul Tobin hilariously describes stupid depictions of gender in fiction.
Swan Tower writes about writing fight scenes.
How to Illustrate Weelchairs. Also useful information for anybody who wants to write about or film characters who use wheelchairs.
Push Girls is a show that documents the lives of four women who use wheelchairs.
This is the best Avengers/Disney mashup. The BEST.
Uktena is a historically accurate (well, with the addition of a few supernatural elements) free PC roleplaying game created by Toye Heape and based on native cultures that lived in Tennessee about six hundred years ago. It needs some funding help to get off the ground. As to why this game is awesome and important, here's what Heape has to say:
When the game is finished I want to make it available as a free digital download. I have plans for future games that I'd like to create and possibly sell, but it's important to me that as many people as possible have access to Uktena. Here's why: When many people hear the words Native American they think of teepees, war bonnets, and other icons associated with the great horse riding, buffalo hunting cultures of the American plains, but you won't be seeing those things in this game. Uktena is about a different Native culture and a different period in American history, neither of which is very well known to most people. I believe Uktena has the potential to help change that by immersing players in that prehistoric world and letting them participate in that civilization while having a fun gaming experience.
[...]In recent years road projects, housing developments, shopping centers, and even libraries and museums, along with illegal looting, have impacted or destroyed major Native American archaeological sites in the Nashville area. It may seem inconceivable that America's heritage could be wiped out like this, but I believe a major reason is because most people aren't aware of it. This was one of my main motivations for creating Uktena. I think a video game can have a powerful impact on the imagination in a way that other media can't, and once the player has "experienced" the history he or she will be more likely to object to what little is left of it being crushed under the treads of a bulldozer. [...] At the same time I want you to know that, like most people, my main objective when playing a game is to have fun, and I'll do my best, with your invaluable assistance, to make Uktena a fun and exciting game.
Recently there's been a lot of discussion on Tumblr and Dreamwidth about fan-funded indie games that are intended to be inclusive of people and cultures not normally represented in your typical mainstream RPGs. Unfortunately a lot of that discussion is fueled by a Certain Project doing nearly everything wrong. Well, here's an example of a game that is really, truly doing it right. And even though the Kickstarter deadline for this project has passed, there are still ways that you might be able to help it get the funding that it needs.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the internet! A whole lot of dimwitted male movie critics have been trying to gain Feminism Points by critiquing how Black Widow is portrayed in The Avengers. The overwhelming problem with most of these reviews, however, is not that there isn't anything bad to be said about Black Widow's portrayal or Joss Whedon's often strangely limited flavor of feminism - because there most certainly IS an awful lot worthy of critique there - but that movie critics are, for some inexplicable reason, complaining about Black Widow being useless in the film. Uh, what? Fortunately, Ian Grey has an excellent takedown of that argument. Bonus points for actually calling out the offending movie critics by name.
Speaking of Doing It Right: Dan Norton is the amazing character designer for the new Thundercats series and he's posting all of his character and mech design work on Deviantart. Well worth a gander even if you're not into Thundercats. Also, some time ago Norton's gallery hosted a hilarious flamewar during which Norton beautifully smacked down a sexist fanboy who showed up to complain about Pumyra's new design being "too manly" and not having big enough breasts. Sadly, however, those comments seem to have been deleted now.
More potpourri links:
Paul Tobin hilariously describes stupid depictions of gender in fiction.
Swan Tower writes about writing fight scenes.
How to Illustrate Weelchairs. Also useful information for anybody who wants to write about or film characters who use wheelchairs.
Push Girls is a show that documents the lives of four women who use wheelchairs.
This is the best Avengers/Disney mashup. The BEST.
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Basically: It's spearheaded by a group of people who have zero experience making a video game and who have made it abundantly clear that they have no idea what they're doing, up to and including waffling about what engine they're actually going to use to create the game. They raised a ton of money without having a design document, characters, a story, or, you know, a demo or anything. For context: Generally a gaming project can't raise money unless they have at least a design document, or more ideally a completed demo, i.e. Uktena. But the people behind Arkh are tumblr-popular so all they had to do was say "hey we've got an idea for a video game!" and money started pouring in. This was before it became clear that the Arkh project was spearheaded by clueless individuals with no programming experience. I mean, they raised thousands of dollars without even having a coherent story or cast of characters finished yet, and now it looks like they don't have the programming competency to actually get the game made. That's why people are calling Arkh a "scam," but that's really not the right word for it. They obviously intend to actually make their game, or at least go down in flames trying. Many have pointed out that since this is the first time anybody involved in the project have tried to make a video game, they should perhaps be aiming for something simpler, like a visual novel, rather than a fully-fledged multilevel RPG. But one of the leaders of the Arkh Project is a notorious wanker who has responded to all criticisms of how the project is being run with accusations that all of the detractors are racist and homophobes (even when many of the critics are themselves queer and/or POC). To be fair, the Arkh Project HAS gotten a lot of racist, homophobic shit flung at them from the gaming community. I remember one dumbass Homestuck BNF writing on his tumblr that the Arkh Project's insistence on hiring queer/POC artists is oh my god totally the most RACIST thing ever. So yeah, they got a lot of dumb shit and a lot of dumb "criticisms" hurled at them. But there were also a lot of smart, experienced artists and game developers that offered them advice and constructive crit too, and for their efforts those people mostly got flamed and harassed about it.
Then there are the problems with the game itself. Obnoxious kawaii desu uguu stereotypes of characters, terrible artwork (featuring bizzaro anatomy, at least one dress design blatantly copied from a famous designer with no credit given, those weird fucking facial expressions, and clothing that reflects a poorly-researched mishmash of the real-world cultures that the characters are supposed to represent), and a lot of obvious failures in terms of being "inclusive" despite constantly patting themselves on the back about how awesomely inclusive they are. Like, they have a character with an artificial leg because they want to be inclusive of people with disabilities. But that character is a super-powerful diety-like shape-shifter who can make his body into any shape or form that he wants... It doesn't make sense for that character to have a disability. Another character is a magical genderqueer healer shaman apparently based on a very poorly-researched mishmash of Native American cultural stereotypes. That particular character is also supposed to be "from South America" but apparently nobody can be arsed to give him any sort of specific cultural traits. Because, you know. Those South American cultures are all interchangeable and not at all unique or distinct, right? Also it's extremely disconcerting that this whole thing is based on an epic romance that begins when one character is kidnapped to become the second character's slave. Yup, you read that right: Epic romance that begins as a master-slave relationship. No, that's not uncomfortable at all. The game has also been criticized because despite being advertised as queer-inclusive, all of the canon couples so far are pretty gender-essentialized: You have man + woman, woman + genderqueer butch, and woman + genderqueer butch. So far there are no pairings in which both characters are masculine or both feminine.
And that's barely scratching the surface. That combined with the infamously wanky behavior of one of the project leaders and their total inability to accept any criticism has basically made the whole project a trainwreck from the start.
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a magical genderqueer healer shaman
man + woman, woman + genderqueer butch, and woman + genderqueer butch
Oh for fuck's sake. I've read trashy yuri manga that was more enlightened than this.
Yup, you read that right: Epic romance that begins as a master-slave relationship.
Ha! I actually did read about that one after leaving my above comment, and I was like whaaaaaaaat. And it was especially facepalm-worthy because one of the two characters is black, or so I heard. Speaking of which, someone pointed out that the black character has very Caucasian-looking facial features and hair, which kind of shoots the racial inclusiveness in the foot. As does the racist behavior of the notorious wanker you mentioned, and one rumor I heard that their character designer is a white cis man. Even though they've been refusing offers of help from white and/or non-queer people because this is supposed to be a "by queer POCs, for queer POCs" project.
Judging by my further googling, I think you're right that "scam" is perhaps too flattering a word for this... mess. These people don't strike me as being organized enough to run a scam, unless they're extremely skilled at obfuscating stupidity. I guess people saw "please give us 100 grand even though we have no design doc!" and assumed there was some kind of cunning scheme behind it.
But thank you for summarizing for me! I genuinely hadn't heard a peep about this until you mentioned it, so I was very ?__? Though I'm not connected to the gaming scene at all, so that's probably why. (I was reading one blog post that was pointing out the art quality, and they were like "Just look at the sprites!" and I was like "Wait, what's a sprite?" And then Wikipedia told me.)
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What...?
I don't necessarily agree that Ain (the black character in question) has "Caucasian-looking" facial features. But I do think it's worth pointing out that ALL of the characters have the SAME facial features - the same noses, the same eyes, the same mouths, the same facial shapes - despite the fact that they're supposed to represent different races. Which, to be fair, is (usually) perfectly fine in terms of cartoon and game design. A lot of cartoons and RPGs use skin tone, hair, and clothing design to visually code a character's race, then use the facial features to visually code things about the character's personality (i.e. big eyes or narrow eyes, different mouth shapes, etc.) rather than race. Both Avatar cartoons do this, most anime does this, and most JRPGs do this. The problem with Arkh's character designs, however, is that they DON'T use the facial features to reflect anything about the character's personalities. AND they make such a big deal about reflecting race in other aspects of the characters' physical designs, such as having an entire plot point about "black hair" (no seriously). So they have a bunch of characters of different races with THE EXACT SAME FACES and they have that ridiculous plot point about "black hair," so they're definitely opening themselves up to the criticism that their characters don't have any recognizable differences in their facial designs, whether race-based or not. If they're going to pat themselves on the back for having racially-accurate hair on their characters then they better follow through with some better facial designs too. Or at least not let all of the characters have the exact same eyes, noses, mouths, and face shapes. Jesus.
And speaking of the hair... Yeah, Ain's hair design has been criticized a lot. Not so much that it's "Caucasian-looking" hair but that's it's seriously WTF hair. It looks like fucking moss growing out of her head. NO RACE has hair that actually looks like that, because no humans have hair that actually looks like that. If it's meant to represent "black hair" or even "Caucasian-looking hair" then it fails on every level.