Jan 25, 3:11 am
Last week I was on a tropical island in the Caribbean with my mother on a vacation devoid of all things gaming, internet, tech (aside from the scuba diving equipment), and even fantasy literature (reading a fictional novel about comic books during World War II doesn’t count). As if it were necessary for me to make up for lost time, during the last few days I have been inundated with reminders of my nerd heritage.
First I got an email from an awesome chick I’ve been in touch with since PAX saying that she’d cut together a short video from some of her nerdcore documentary footage and that I should check it out. I suspect that the thousands of people who watched this through Penny Arcade or Kotaku will agree that “Nerd of the Week” is an exceptionally well done vignette of nerd culture. Since its inception, PAX has been an amazing demonstration of nerd unity and the directors for Vaguely Qualified Productions captured this feeling well enough to make me a little misty-eyed with pride towards the end.
I recommend that people keep an eye out for this documentary and check out the clip if you haven’t yet. It’s worth watching even if they made it seem like I said SCDA was my favorite game ever. The game is Splinter Cell and Splinter Cell is good stuff, but I’m like a robot when it comes to the “what’s your favorite game” question. I would either say that that’s a dumb question or “Final Fantasy VII. DUH.” I don’t remember exactly, but I would guess that the question I was answering was something like “so what have you been playing here at PAX?” This was filmed during PAX, afterall. I wouldn’t be so silly as to say that an unreleased game was my favorite game ever.
The second brick-to-the-face reminder of my Geekland citizenship came when I realized that an event I thought was weeks away was actually happening this Thursday (today). I am currently preparing for a reading/signing at City Lights Books in San Francisco for a book that I contributed a chapter. Aptly named “She’s Such A Geek” is a compilation of essays written by women describing their experiences in typically male-dominated geek fields.
Someday, out of pure laziness, I might copy-paste part of the story from my chapter in the book and call it a blog. But until then, if you want to read what I wrote you’re just going to have to get a real copy. I know, inconceivable, a real book. If you do so I highly encourage you to briefly skim my chapter (I blab to you all enough as it is) and spend your quality time on the other ones. There are some cool perspectives represented, not the least of which are those of the editors themselves, Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders. Their bios are each too awesome and extensive for me to recount here so just trust me when I say that they’re worthy of being looked up to by an entire generation of geeky females.
My first time being published, it’s hard to believe that I wrote this chapter a year ago and am now going to be standing in front of people reading a couple pages OUTLOUD that paint my geekiness in excruciatingly clear terms. There will be no denying it, now. Not that I’d want to, but it’s in a book! It’s permanent! The very pages of history have been tattooed with a tiny footnote that says “Don’t let her fool you, Rhoulette is a complete geek.” Not that any of you were fooled, of course.
