Guilty Gear is a fighting game series that began in 1998. Guilty Gear: Xrd SIGN came out in 2014; with a pachinko game and a free-roaming melee-action title also in the bag, the franchise is going strong. In the two-dimensional, Street Fighter mould, the main games star two serious men with a rivalry—one blonde, one…
Review: Chainmail Bikini
Chainmail Bikini Hazel Newlevant (Editor), Various artists Fall 2015 Chainmail Bikini is an anthology centered on the experiences of women gamers. Video games, tabletop games, card games—they’re all covered in this book, with points of view on how alienating, connecting, frustrating, and wondrous gaming can be. The book was funded with Kickstarter, and includes over 40 artists….
Queens, Pirates, and Goddesses: The Women of Swords & Sorcery
Although pulp swords and sorcery books feature plenty of scantily clad women on their covers, sometimes there is a different kind of woman inside. She fears neither man nor beast, leads men into battle, captains pirate ships, and lures men to their deaths. Belit and Valeria fought alongside Conan as equals, while Jirel of Joiry…
Decoupling Gender: Why You Should Care About Toys
On August 7th, Target announced that they were eliminating gender-based signage from their toy department. Proponents of the changes celebrated, and opponents released a flurry of negative media coverage. When I discovered the backlash exploding all over Facebook and Twitter I was pretty surprised, because this isn’t a very big change. The move to separate…
Getting a Feminist Makeover: Red Sonja, Gail Simone, and Chainmail Bikinis, Pt. 1
Gail Simone’s run on Red Sonja has been a huge boon to the character. Simone has changed the character’s origins, tweaked some of her personality (or more accurately, “enhanced”), made her canonically bisexual, and worked with artists who are willing to depict Red Sonja as the powerful warrior woman and complex character that she should be. Issue 18 will…
Out with the Old, In with the New: Gaming’s Attempt to Diversify Leaves Out the Women Already Here
Can you really encourage someone to enter an environment that devalues their experiences and knowledge because of their gender? More men in game development say they want more women in gaming, but they do nothing to make the industry more accepting of women. All eyes have been on the gaming industry since one year ago….
Review: Swords of Sorrow: Miss Fury & Lady Rawhide
Swords of Sorrow: Miss Fury & Lady Rawhide Mikki Kendall (words), Ronilson Freire (lines), Kirsty Swan (colors), Erica Schultz (letters) Mirka Andolfo & Vincent Di Salvo (cover) Dynamite September 2, 2015 Synopsis from Dynamite: “When everything is going wrong, sometimes the only person you can trust is a complete stranger. Can Miss Fury and Lady…
Game of Thrones: Cersei’s Walk of Shame
Cersei Lannister deserved it. That was the crux of my friend’s argument. After all, this was the woman responsible for Ned Stark’s death; for the death of King Robert Baratheon. She has tortured and mistreated any number of characters. She is the one who appointed the High Sparrow to the position of High Septon and reinstated…
Stay Quiet: The Staged Body of Phantom Pain’s Sniper
Spoilers, alright? Quiet is the single woman combatant in the list of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain‘s primary characters. Men outnumber women nine to one in this list, at time of writing, if personality-imprinted AIs count as people (nine to three if not). Other than Paz, the tiny blonde latina beauty who was…
Intent of the Cover Art: A Novice Perspective Gets Unjudge-y
Recently, Scout Comics forwarded a press release to WWAC spotlighting two upcoming titles, Class Action #1, October 2015, and Henchgirl #2, also October 2015. The covers in the email were large and hard to miss. I’m sure that was the point. And so began the visceral reactions. It started with a simple question like WTF?…
Lara Croft, Ledge Hanger: However Much She Weighs, She Can Lift It
I like Lara Croft. I have always liked Lara Croft. The Lara Croft that I understand—which is not always the Lara Croft described by her production companies, or her fans, or commentators. I look at Lara Croft and see: a woman in her thirties of independent means who does what she most wants to: running…
U Serious, Bra? Game of Boobs: Boob Age
Welcome to the very first installment of U Serious, Bra?, where Claire and Wendy discuss the proper use of boobs in gaming. The topic stemmed from Games Editor Al Rosenberg’s simple question: What does it mean for a game that they have to sell it with boobs (see: Game of War: Fire Age by Machine…
