PinkFae Archive #31: Crossplay: A New Adventure in Geekdom

This week's entry is another PinkFae archive. The article is another entry in my series that I wrote on Gen Con 49 in 2016. It was a fascinating look at an interesting phenomenon in the geek community: crossplay and gender bending cosplay. It was originally published on 27 August 2016.

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Gender identity is a hot topic at the moment. With issues like the current assault on the rights of transgender individuals in Texas, the nature of gender is at the forefront of socio-political discourse at the moment. This points to a current major trend in modern culture, with gender at the centre of that trend. Many people still firmly believe that sex and gender are binaries, and equivalent binaries at that. However, others realise that sex and gender are spectra which do not always correspond to one another. One of the more fascinating phenomena resulting from this is the concept of crossplay.

Fighting with your Allies

As you may already know if you follow the Game Dork's Gaming Corner page on Facebook (and if you don't, you should! You get to see some cool stuff over there!), I have helped to organise a series of special community events with Loot & XP, in conjunction with the local chapter of PFLAG. Specifically, there was some interest expressed in getting together for some board games. PFLAG does great work, and I'm pleased to be part of what they do, but one night, it was put forward that there are seldom any social meetings in the group. When there is a PFLAG meeting, it's either to support people who are having issues, or to advocate for people who are being marginalised, or to educate people. Rarely do group members get together to socialise.

Well, I took those ideas, and I ran with them. I spoke to the PFLAG leadership, and I co-ordinated with the owners of Loot & XP, and we hosted what we called the 'Trans Friendly Game Night.' The idea was to provide a welcoming space for a fun activity in an inclusive environment. The first session took place this past May.

PinkFae Archive #15: Discrimination in the Geek Community

It's time once again for another article that I wrote for PinkFae. As we continue to reproduce the writing I did over there so as to ensure that it is not lost to the annals of time, we come to the post that I wrote on 20 April 2016.

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A friend of mine recently posted a link on facebook. This link led to an article about women experiencing harassment at gaming conventions. He also included a link to a second article discussing the same topic. Both articles were, I thought, well written, and described a common problem. The sad truth of the matter is that the geek community does include a lot of discrimination. Obviously, it's most commonly directed at women, but it's not limited to that demographic. There are examples of anti-LGBT+ discrimination as well. I would like to take a moment to discuss my thoughts on this matter today.

WARNING!

I'm going to be discussing some fairly bothersome topics in this post. In order to adequately talk about discrimination, I will have to provide some examples of that discrimination. This will include some language that will be offensive, as well as possible triggers. Please be aware that some of what I am about to say is going to bother some people. Use your best judgement in deciding whether to continue reading beyond this point.

Transgender Representation in Board Games

I recently found an article on Transgender Representation in Board Games. When I first saw it, I thought, 'I'm not sure how to represent any particular demographic in board games. For example, when I play Power Grid, there are different coloured pieces for each player. There's no gender involved in that in any way!'

What I was forgetting was story-driven games, such as Betrayal at House on the Hill. Apparently, I still suffer the old person mindset of someone who grew up in the 80s with games like Balderdash, Scotland Yard, and Trivial Pursuit, along with still-popular classics such as Monopoly, Sorry, and Scrabble. These games have only colours, no characters at all. Even games that did include characters, like Cluedo/Clue, the characters were not a big part of game play. Although I always knew that the yellow pawn, for example, represented Colonel Mustard, it never felt like I was playing him as a character in the game. The disassociation between the characters and the game itself was pretty strong.

The only game I can think of that really involved gender at all was Life, which boiled everything down to incredibly abstract concepts of 'pink pegs and blue pegs.' There were a lot of games that used characters from existing franchises, such as Star Wars and other movies.

So perhaps I can be forgiven for not immediately thinking of character-based games.

PinkFae Archive #8: Transgender Changeling

It's time once again for another entry in the PinkFae archives. This week, we cover an interesting advanced technique for use with Changeling: The Dreaming. This article was originally published on 21 February, 2016.

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As a gamer who is a fan of stories and storytelling, I tend to be drawn towards games that allow and encourage the telling of stories. This is why I became a fan of roleplaying games; they are the single best framework for telling stories as a game. Of all the RPGs I've tried (and I have tried many), my favourite is, without question, Changeling: the Dreaming. It emphasises creativity, and is set in a world which includes a vast realm made entirely of dreams. This allows you to play in any setting you can imagine. The important thing right now is that the characters in this story are faeries inhabiting human bodies. Normally, players assume that the human body in which a fae spirit is housed matches the demographics of the fae spirit itself. But as I find myself thinking more about Changeling as a result of the recent 20th Anniversary Kickstarter, I realise that nowhere in the rules does it say that this is necessarily the case. In fact, there are places where it hints that it isn't always the case; specifically, it mentions that the Eshu, an African kith, are not always born into host bodies of African descent. Thus, I begin to wonder if there are other ways in which this disconnect can be expanded. And my first thought is: what if the human body is of a different gender than the fae spirit born into it? And thus I find myself contemplating the possibility of Transgender Changeling.