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Showing posts from January, 2017

What I Learned from Playing Lori

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There’s been fair amount of discussion in recent years about women in gaming.  In feminist spaces, much of it has centred around what happened to Feminist Frequency’s Anita Sarkeesian when she so much as dared to start a conversation about it on YouTube, and think pieces and op-eds abound about the various ways in which women are depicted and discriminated against both in games and in the industry. Women and girls have not just recently wizened up to sexism in games, though. It’s been sitting uncomfortably with many of us for most of our lives.  I went the path so many 80’s girls took when they saw pathetic, stereotyped, damseled female characters all around them in media; I tried to emulate the boys. I went with a “if girls are really as silly as they are shown to be, then I want nothing to do with them!” attitude, proudly proclaiming I liked boys’ toys and shows, boys’ clothes and boys themselves (though strictly platonically). I devalued the feminine, not because I natura

D. C. Fontana: The Woman Behind Star Trek

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By Matthew J. Healy A television series is only as good as its creative team. Star Tre k is no exception. For 50 years now the franchise has been a cultural phenomenon, pulling in new fans with each new incarnation. The original series (1966-1969) pioneered many things and seriously went where no TV series, of the time, had gone before. It presented a unique view of the future where humanity had put their differences aside and explored the galaxy peacefully in starships. Our hero ship, the USS Enterprise , was led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) with Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Doctor McCoy (DeForest Kelley) not too far behind. A big behind the scenes imprint came from writer D. C. Fontana. Not only did she write some of the most notable episodes, but she held a position very few women had in the male-dominated era of 1960s Hollywood. Dorothy Catherine Fontana was born in Sussex, New Jersey, on the 25 th of March, 1939. From an early age, Fontana had a