On Doctors...

Who'd have guessed that picking out a new lead actor for a TV show would turn out to be such a depressing experience? I mean, I'm quite sad that Matt Smith is leaving, because the Eleventh Doctor has really grown on me, and even with some of the weaker stories it's been a fantastically watchable performance, but the general state of community around the show at the moment is starting to fill me with fear. I mean, I hesitate to use the word "Fandom" any more; if you read around the web (and I've stopped doing this now, apart from occasional lapses) you'd get the impression that a substantive amount of the shows viewers only watch it to refuel their hate-batteries for the show, it's writers, its actors, and all for which it stands, yet still self-identify as "Doctor Who Fans".

Rant: On Gaming and "Growing Up"

I've written a few versions of this post but I can't make it work without feeling clumsy or "about me". So this is the best I can do.

There has been a lot of press recently about the levels of casual misogyny prevalent in areas of internet "culture", both on the gaming front - for example this horror - but also the in the bear-pits that appear "below the line" or articles wherever they are posted, especially if its a female writer "daring" to question the status quo. And there is a lot of rubbish spouted that it shouldn't be taken seriously, or its free speech, or that its a legitimate "gamer culture" position to expect boobs in all your computer games and if they're attached to a character with say, dialogue, then we should be grateful a developer has gone the extra mile.

What makes it worse is that a lot of this gets characterised as "women vs trolls", and it shouldn't be. It should be "decent people vs Trolls". Because I'm a straight, white, middle class man, and I have all the privilege, and I'm bloody sick of the dreadful way women are generally presented - and treated - in games and around gamer culture, and I'm certainly tired about how the debate around this is conducted.

It's not censorship to expect civility in debate with people you disagree with. It's not puritanism to object to the ludicrous character designs that most female characters have in games. Its not "political correctness" to expect female characters to have roles other than Princess to be Rescued or (even more shockingly) actually be playable in their own. We shouldn't have to applaud the few examples where strong, fully clothed characters exist because they shouldn't be such a stark exception.

And ultimately, and most importantly, this isn't womens battle - this is everyones battle. Because this is the tip of the iceberg, and underneath the churning waters are battles about racism, homophobia, transphobia, and all  those other bitter prejudices that are on display in the insults thrown around in online chat. Gaming as a hobby moving into the mainstream, demanding acceptance, demanding to be treated like a grown up. Well it has got to act like a grown up, and it's everyone's responsibility to shape what sort of grown up it will be. 

Rant: Fake Geek Girls and other such crap.

So, like a turd that just won't flush, the "fake geek girl" debate - although calling it a "debate" honours it more than it deserves - came up again yesterday after this particularly incoherent rant from artist Tony Harris. Twitter and the Blogosphere and so on exploded into righteous fury, and many words have written on the subject. And in many ways it was heartening to see, that this sort of crap is stood up against, and reading through yesterday there was some optimism to be found in the idea that the visceral response is a good sign for geek community being open and inclusive, and y'know, not deep down just a bunch of gynophobic basement virgins with too much access to the internet.

And then the more I thought about, I started to feel genuinely angry about it, because although there are many, many, good people standing up against this sort of behavior, it still keeps happening.

Cons, Representation and Balance

It seems that there is a lot of discussion about women in comics flying around again, between some of the reports on female representation at SFX Weekender panels, and the so-far-announced Kapow! lineup and whilst this is the sort of debate I usually try to hide under a desk from, I just can't help but hold opinions.Now as you can tell from my profile picture, I am a not-yet-middle-age-dammit white male, and I can't - and won't - try to speak on "how women feel" about the comics industry or panels. There are already many erudite and thoughtful posts from women on this subject (like this one) and hand-on-heart I never looked at a panel at SFX and thought "gosh I wish there was more women on it" so in many ways I may be part of the problem. 

But there clearly is a problem - most people seem to agree on it. The question is why?

Firstly I think that we would all love to live in a world where the age, gender, ethnicity or sexuality (or any other mostly artificial line we stick across our society to mess things up with) just simply didn't matter, and it's frustrating that it still does. I'd love to think that I moved in a sub-culture where we could genuinely be beyond it but I know we don't. But it comes from us - from the community - and we need to look to ourselves to drive change as much as expect con organisers to make tokenistic placements or panel guests to make noble gestures in the name of equality. 

Kapow! is headlining guests that will get ticket sales through the door. SFX fills its panels with people that will get bums on auditorium seats. I'm no great con veteran but I've stood enough queues to know that a lot of con-goers aren't interested in up-and-coming creators, or small press publishing, or first time authors, and that means that change takes a long time, and also means that some genres are going struggle more than others. With so few women writers and artists at mainstream comics top table, for instance, they don't get the exposure, so a lot of fans never hear about them, so they don't get the con invites, and it's all a horribly vicious circle. 

Literary genres don't quite seem so bad, although there does seem to be a growing opinion I overheard at SFX that SF has become the "boys genre" and Fantasy the "girl writers" genre, something the reported treatment of a female panelist at one event may be a symptom of. And it's clearly nonsense - but if the community reacts so that SF panels become male-audienced and fantasy female-audienced, that it will be come a "truth" in no time at all. 

Is there an answer to this? Well if I had an answer to this then I'd screaming it from the rooftops, but I don't. I suspect that the fact that we're talking about female representation in a way we aren't talking about say, ethnicity, is a sign both that women are really, properly, breaking into a white male geek world, and a sign that there are still battles to be fought. Because I don't believe that there is much malice in Geek Culture, I don't think we mean to exclude anyone, or make anyone feel uncomfortable. But often we don't think enough, and debates like this show that we should. 

OK, so the Watchman thing...

I've seen this rumble around my twitter feed (oooh, get him!) for the last couple of days and as my thoughts on the matter are not easily broken into 140-letter chunks, I thought I should get it off my chest here.

So, the story is that DC have announced the creative teams and covers (which can be seen here) and as you might expect the Internet has exploded in it's usual confused and vaguely angry way. Some people a cross because they are doing Watchmen prequels. Some people are cross because of the people doing the Watchmen prequels. Some people are cross because other people are getting cross about the Watchmen prequels.

No-one actually knows what they're going to be about, how the supposed "interlinking" is going to work, or has read a single page of them. Hear that? It's the sound of a Hundred Thousand Knees Jerking as one.

Here's the thing - Watchmen means a lot to comics fans. It means a lot to me. It's a great work of art, by a great writer and a great artist. Its been constantly in print since it was written and is read by people who "don't read comics" - it routinely turns up on "Best Ever Novels" lists. It is that good and deserves that reputation. On the other hand, I don't see why those characters and universe must remain inviolate and never touched again. Watchman isn't great because of it's universe - it's great because of how it tells it's story and how it handles it's characters, and how it approaches superhero comics as a grown up, storytelling medium.

The most common complaint I've seen is that Alan Moore created the characters and "should" be involved. Now Alan Moore is not someone who needs random denizens of the internet to fight for him, and I'm sure if he has a strong opinion on the matter we'd all know about it. But we do - he's repeatedly said he'd put all that behind and he doesn't care any more - and quite right too, in my opinion. And these were adapted characters in the first place - used to dissect and analyse trends in comic book heroes, not hugely original concepts but hugely original uses. (Also, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls. So that's enough about using other peoples characters on the Alan Moore front, OK?)

The second complaint is that Watchmen is a complete story and any else is unnecessary. I have some sympathy with this point - Watchmen nested ambiguities are part of it's strength and shining a light on those does feel unnecessary, even more given the frequent flashbacks in the books. And there is certainly an argument that the advertising budget and talent behind these books could just as easily launch something new into the comics world, more original stories, in an era where mainstream comics feel a little stagnant - certainly it is unlikely these will make the sort of impact on the industry the original did.

But this isn't a reason to dismiss them out of hand - the comics industry is built on retelling of the same stories with the same characters in different ways. All the big characters shift and change over the years in response to new writers and artists, and changing times and trends. If DC want to try and make the Watchmen universe somewhere they can tell more stories, then good luck to them, frankly, it's a big ask of the creative teams they've assembled.

But let's wait till they're actually written, eh?

Thinking: This is why we don't deserve anything nice.

Sometimes I think the internet is one of the greatest inventions since the Printing Press. Sometimes I think I could spent the rest of my life swimming in the digital depths and never run out of things to read, or see, such is the breadth of material available. Sometimes I think its capacity for free conversation, the equality of access for differing viewpoints, and the opportunity for people of similar interests to find common cause has the potential to reshape how human society itself functions. 

Sometimes however it makes me want to unplug the internet in despair.