Chas and I used to joke that we should subtitle this blog “perpetually late to the party.” I mean in some ways our entire WoW experience has been basically about playing catchup. I’m pretty sure . . . → Read More: making an art out of being late]]> This blog post has been brought to you by an exclamation mark. Or rather several of them, working in unison.

Chas and I used to joke that we should subtitle this blog “perpetually late to the party.” I mean in some ways our entire WoW experience has been basically about playing catchup. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even have one character at level 70 when WoTLK hit. Even now I still only have one 80 (Chas has 3), which makes me wonder what the fuck I’ve been doing with my time. Although I suppose this is where I get to look smug and explain that because I’ve done bugger all this means my activities have somehow been more valuable – leveling tailoring with one hand and reading Proust with the other. No, that’s not a euphemism.

And, at the moment, largely what I’m reading in the blogosphere is stuff about grinding and burnout and the pre-expansion blues.

So I’m very much aware that I’m going to sound like the world’s almightiest prat with my next sentence, and feel free to point and laugh, but I have to say it anyway:

AMG I SAW THE LICH KING!!!!

I mean, yeah, I know we’ve all seen the Lich King – you can’t take two steps to your left in Northrend without stubbing your toe on the dude, finding yet another excuse about how he’s not going to kill you this time, he’s going to wait for you to get together with 9 or 24 of your most powerful friends and assault his fortress first.

But still

AMG I SAW THE LICH KING!!!!!!!!!!

Sitting right there, on the Frozen Throne looking all … lich kingy. Ug boots and everything.

I mean, yeah, I’ve also seen him enthroned a couple of times before but it’s always been with pugs, so it’s strictly business, strictly business. And one of the major disadvantages of standing at the back in a sissy robe is that the majority of boss fights look like this to me:

So it was really nice to have an opportunity to scamper about, taking in the scenery like an interior decorator on crack. And, of course, spend some quality time with Arthas. I love the fact that Blizzard just have him sitting there – pretty much all the other major bosses, as far as I’m aware, trigger the fight when they’re approached. You don’t get to snuggle up to Yoggy (although who would want to, he’s all … squishy) before starting in with the pwnage, or the being pwned. I don’t know if it’s just the fact he’s right there, or if the giddy joy at having reached the endpoint of the whole expansion makes you go a bit bananas, but the urge to take all your clothes off, jump between his helpfully spread legs and start giving him a lapdance is irresistible isn’t it?

Or is that just me?

It’s just because he’s there you know. It’s like every emote in the game was designed explicitly for this purpose. Or perhaps it’s just a natural consequence of all the dark and serious dark and serious storytelling that it makes you want to immediately starting licking the master of the scourge.

I feel pretty sorry for Arthas, actually, he’s probably suffered some pretty serious harassment at the hands, and tongues, of de-mob happy raiders.

I guess it doesn’t help that the image of him upon the throne, spiky helmet on head, Frostmourne in hand is absolutely iconic in this expansion. Up close and personal he looks disconcertingly like a department store Santa Claus.

Come, sit on my knee, little Tamarind, and tell me have you been a naughty discipline priest this expansion?

No, no, Arthas Claus! I’ve been a good discipline priest, I promise! I’ve stacked sp and int, and I haven’t gemmed for socket bonuses!

I’m glad to hear that, young priest. Do you think you deserve a present?

Oh yes, Arthas Claus! Please give me a present!

Very well, Tamarind. For being a good little discipline priest your present shall be … DEATH AT MY HANDS AND THE ENSLAVEMENT OF YOUR IMMORTAL SOUL MWAHAAHAAH!!!

We had a couple of cracks at the fight but we were already about twenty minutes past the time when we intended to stop for the night so we blundered along happily to some phase that isn’t 3 and then called it. Is it me or does that have fight have about eighty five phases? And what the fuck is with all the pants-wetting transitions? It’s not even the eighty five phases, I could cope with that, it’s the fact that a lot of the time you find yourself in phase 63.45. Which is not to be confused with phase 63.54, or you’ll wipe the raid. And all the mechanics are the I WILL FUCK WITH YOUR MIND mechanics, popularized first by Hodir. Stand over here, no wait, stand over there, run in, run out, get together, get away, get in groups of three, don’t get in groups of three, stand in the bad stuff, don’t stand in the bad stuff, stand in the good stuff, run there, get here, stand on your head, form a dodecahedron … in fact, just save yourself a lot of trouble and die.

I’ve watched the vids, and read the strats, and I’ve had various people try to explain the tactics to me and I swear to God this is what I hear: “buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz INFEST buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz DEFILE buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz.” Kae is the only thing standing between me and drool on the keyboard right now.

It’s kind of exciting really. I haven’t felt this confused by a fight since I first started raiding.

And I know after a long evening of wipes I’m going to be as soul-destroyed and burned out as the rest of you but for now I’m pretty happy with: AMG I SAW THE LICH KING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s been a long, stupid, painful journey to this point. Or rather, I’ve undertaken the same journey about seven times now, and each time I started again it’s been a little bit harder. I’ve been bounced from one level of content to the next, and stood at the Lich King’s throne with unmotivated strangers, and here I am at the bottom of Ice Crown Citadel again, beginning once again the slow climb to the top. Currently my companions on the road are simply a group of friends, nothing more, nothing less, all of us so circumstantially late to the party we probably shouldn’t have bothered getting on the bus, that we’d probably be better off waiting for the next party, which I hear is going to be positively cataclysmic. I don’t expect this to be an easy kill, or a quick one. Getting here was struggle enough – given how rusty and undergeared we were, learning afresh to work together, and in new roles, bashing out tactics that worked for us, wiping repeatedly on fights where we should have known better, but the important thing is that we’re still here. I feel we are a motley crew of embittered misfits but it’s okay, I suspect we’d have only tanked the party atmosphere if we had got there on time.

I have also learned these important lessons:

If your tank is still in blues, he will likely get oneshot by Sindragosa (I’m sure the Undergeared Project will prove this wrong).

The Blood Princes make me want strangle kittens, I hate them so much (the Princes, not the kittens, I like kittens, that’s HOW MUCH I hate the Blood Princes)

British Telecom hates us personally and wants us to suffer.

There is nothing in ICC except hitty shaman mail.

But lest we forget the most important thing:

AMG I SAW THE LICH KING!!!!!!!

All over Azeroth, there are NPCs who will buy Gnarled Claws, Tattered Wolf Pelts, Broken Fangs, and Troll Sweat, all for real hard cash.

From this . . . → Read More: The NPC Guide to Gold-Making]]> My last guide to gold making was fairly well received, but to my horror I realised that I had missed an extremely important source of one hundred percent authentic gold making secrets.

All over Azeroth, there are NPCs who will buy Gnarled Claws, Tattered Wolf Pelts, Broken Fangs, and Troll Sweat, all for real hard cash.

From this we can conclude one of two things. Either:

a) Blizzard likes to include small flavour items, but understands that players will want some way to get rid of them, and so hit on the idea of “vendor trash” as a way to both introduce gold into the economy and provide a bit of flavour text to otherwise meaningless monster kills.

or

b) All of these items really are useful and valuable to the people you sell them to.

Now since option A would imply that the in-world economy of WoW makes no sense whatsoever, and would suggest that NPC vendors exist purely for game mechanical convenience. That just doesn’t seem very plausible to me. Far more likely there is a vast and secret shadow economy known only to NPCs.

So I set out in search of it.

You might remember Alethe, my so called “bank alt” who, since last appearing on this weblog has reached level 63 and set out in search of new legitimate business opportunities in Outland. With some reluctance, I managed to persuade her to stop camping the flag in Eye of the Storm and set out in search of the Real True Ultimate Secret of NPC Gold-Making.

Pausing only to change out of her Outland Clown Suit and into something more respectable (and to discover to her horror that she had sold her tuxedo pants in a fit of spring-themed frugality) Althe set out for Orgrimmar to find out what the NPCs were doing with all of the random crap she kept flogging them.

Some of it was easy. Her contacts in the Shadowswift Brotherhood, for example, obviously used the corrosive ichor she sold them to brew their deadly poisons. Or maybe their instant poisons.

C'mon Therzok, you can tell me! I know the /salute and everything!

Therzok, ever eager to help out a fellow rogue, gave her several tips for getting started in the lucrative world of NPC trading.

The Secret Voodoo of Sen’Jin

Although most adventurers sell them for a mere thirty-eight copper pieces, it is a little known fact that the trolls of Sen’Jin village use chipped boar tusks and clean fishbones to fashion protective talismans of wondrous power.

Alethe ponders a new income stream

It is with just such voodoo magic that Zalazane has survived for the past five years despite the best efforts of countless determined Orcish and Trollish warriors. With the Darkspear Tribe’s renewed efforts to drive this menace from their former homeland, demand for these simple animal parts is increasing steadily, with traders in Razor Hill reporting prices of nine or ten gold pieces for a single tusk.

This recent price increase can be traced to a strange belief amongst the Darkspear that the final push to reclaim their homeland is approaching some sort of “deadline”. Vol’jin himself has been heard to observe that “de vengeance of de Darkspear tribe still be on course for a twenty-ten rollout mon.” Demand for these items will likely plummet if the Echo isles are ever reclaimed, but market forecasters do not consider this to be a likely eventuality.

The Curious Demand For Bear Carcasses

The next stage of Alethe’s investigation wasthe curious demand for Rotting Bear Carcasses in the Hillsbrad Foothills.

This is the science bit, concentrate!

These enormous hunks of decaying flesh are generally sold by adventurers for a little shy of two silver pieces but – as Alethe soon discovered – they are of immense value to the Forsaken war effort. As Apothecary Lyndon was only too keen to explain, the vast bulk of a Rotting Bear Carcass makes it the perfect vector for spreading the Royal Apothecary Society’s engineered plagues throughout the region.

To Alethe’s dismay, however, there proved to be little profit in the Rotting Bear Carcass market. Although military contracts can be lucrative, the munitions market tends to be high volume and hauling bear corpses the length and breadth of Hillsbrad is not an effective use of time for a young entrepreneur.

Seriously? You expect me to drag this all the way over there?

Recycling in Northrend

Although a little inexperienced, Alethe’s next stop was the frigid wastes of Northrend (pausing on the way to change into a slightly warmer outfit, Northrend is chilly and that Lovely Black Dress, lovely as it is, leaves one terribly exposed to the icy winds) to look into an exciting emerging market: the Northrend Repurposed Garment Industry.

As Alexandra McQueen, self-declared “Grand Master” tailor explained, the business model was simple yet effective. As hundreds upon hundreds of Vrykul were slaughtered by the advancing hordes of – well – the Horde, Adventurers were paid a token sum of money to collect Fur Clothing Scraps from their bodies. These would be collected, sewn into handy cold-proofed garments, and sold on at a considerable markup to all those who came to the icy wastes of Northrend without their winter underwear.

I forgot to take a screenshot of this one, so this pic courtesy of WoWhead

Alethe, who had to admit to feeling a trifle chilly around the décolletage could see the appeal of the plan, but remained unconvinced about the figures. Northrend Adventurers, being greedy sorts, were charging upwards of ten silver a time for their scraps of clothing, more for those scraps they judged to be “thick” making the average profit per transaction too low to make what she considered an investible business.

After due consideration, and with some regret, she declared herself out.

The Final Mystery

Having ruled out Northrend Repurposed Garments as a business opportunity, Alethe’s final step was to seek the solution to a mystery which had haunted her since she first set foot in Stranglethorn Vale:

Who the hell buys Troll Sweat.

It took some coercion and a little judicious application of her PvP skills, but Alethe finally managed to get Nemeth Hawkeye to cut her in on the illicit trade he’s been plying for the last five years.

Spill it, Hawkeye!

The details of the ensuing conversation are not entirely suitable for a public forum such as this but Mister Hawkeye’s description of his trade, as best it can be relayed, ran as follows:

We don’t talk about it much, but there’s a certain element in Silvermoon which is quite fascinated with all things Trollish. They gather in the inns and hostelries of Silvermoon city and they have Trolls brought to them so they can [REDACTED], or else [REDACTED] or sometimes even [REDACTED] – which is why they prefer the ones with tusks that curve outwards.

Of course sometimes they can’t find a live troll, so that’s when they come to me for a supply of Troll Sweat. Then they’ll [REDACTED] pouring whole bottles of the stuff all over their [REDACTED] so they can [REDACTED] with the heady scent of Troll musk in their [REDACTED].

Some elements of Mister Hawkeye’s testimony have been redacted for reasons of decency.

Eager to see this exciting new business opportunity for herself, Alethe made no delay in her journey to Silvermoon City. There, to her horror, she found that Nemeth Hawkeye had been speaking the truth.

Hello, I'm Greatfather Winter, are you ready for your *present*

Dedicated though she was to her career as an entirely legitimate businesswoman, Alethe felt that some things were too much even for her. She returned to Outland and did not look back.

In my usual late-to-the-party way, I’ve finally got round to playing Fallout 3. I tried to play it a bit on the house Xbox 360 when it first came out – and although your first view of . . . → Read More: looking for stories in all the wrong places]]> Rambly post is rambly – this is bit about Fallout, a bit about WoW, and a bit about stories.

In my usual late-to-the-party way, I’ve finally got round to playing Fallout 3. I tried to play it a bit on the house Xbox 360 when it first came out – and although your first view of the nuclear wasteland was suitably omg!inspiring, I gave up after a couple of hours because it just doesn’t feel like Fallout. I’m a big fan of the original games, you see, and although I’m a unashamedly a graphics whore there’s also this stupid pretentious part of me that believes that games reached their heyday when technology was still primitive enough you it could be all about “the story, man, the story.” Yes, I also know that’s bullshit. Since release, I’ve managed to put enough distance between my expectations of what a Fallout game “should” be that I can enjoy Fallout 3 for what it actually is, which, like tea from the nutrimatic machine, is best described as a game almost but not quite entirely unlike Fallout.

If you were feeling uncharitable you’d probably say it was basically post-apocalyptic Oblivion and it is certainly more reminiscent of Oblivion than it is of Fallouts 1 and 2. But I do like Oblivion – even though I tend to end up playing it as some sort of fantasy themed jumping and flower picking simulator (but everyone does, right?). However, I like Fallout 3 much MORE than I ever liked Oblivion. In fact, now that I’ve accepted it on its own terms, I’m really really loving it. It took me a bit to stop fighting the narrative: I mean the thing about Fallouts 1 and 2 is that although they take place in a post-nuclear world there’s actually relatively little nostalgia for the world that was before. Everywhere you go people are rebuilding and making coherent lives for themselves, and the general feeling is less apocalyptic doom and more frontier life in an old western. Fallout 3, however, is embedded in nostalgia and destruction: partially I think because you can literally see the wrecked world you inhabit, but also because there’s very little evidence of rebuilding or continuance. I mean look at Megaton: they’ve been sitting on a live bomb for 200 years. Dudes, what the hell. Two hundred years is a massive cultural span (I mean think of the difference in the world we live in from 1800 to 2000): even in a post-nuclear world you think there’d have been more progress and less waiting for a PC to turn up and sort everything out. The goddamn Wasteland Survival Guide quest, in particular, feeds into this absurdity: are you seriously suggesting that it takes 200 years for someone to conclude that standing on landmines is bad, m’kay?

I think the key to enjoying Fallout 3 is to jettison plausibility concerns and just … go with it. Given that most of my “hey I will play a computer game in this block of time” time goes to WoW these days, I always find it somewhat bewildering to return to single player games. I play RPGs almost exclusively, prioritizing those with strong narratives and an emphasis on those industry buzzwords: choice, consequences, morality. The thing about Fallout 3 is that it really doesn’t have a strong central narrative at all – you’re following your Dad, and he’s faffing around with something called Project Purity, so what. And its morality system is genuinely facile. One of the thing I quite liked about Fallouts 1 and 2 is that the question was less about what was right and what was wrong but what you were willing to do to survive. Fallout 3 offers you such complex moral decisions as: blow up a bomb or don’t blow up a bomb, steal an old woman’s violin or don’t steal an old woman’s violin. Everything about it, from the story to the dialogue to the choices you’re offered seems an order of magnitude less sophisticated than anything Bioware has put out in the last 10 years.

But the more I play Fallout 3 the more grateful I am that it exists. I know there are other cRPGs clinging desperately to tiny pieces of the Western RPG market – let me see, there’s the Risen/Gothic series, there’s Divine Divinity, there’s the Witcher, there’s Drakensang, there’s Fable, – but in fact, the words “commercially viable RPG” are pretty much synonymous with Bioware. And, don’t get me wrong, I love Bioware games, I truly do, and I await Mass Effect III in a frenzy of mild enthusiasm, but each of their games I’ve played has left me less satisfied than the last, at least once the initial passion has faded. And what bothers me, I think, is the streamlining. ‘Narrative’ is moving ever further from ‘game’ – I mean although shooting things with a space pistol is never going to get old for me, I increasingly found myself moving through the dungeon delving segments of Dragon Age with little engagement, solely to get to the next bit of plot. Although I have a strong sense of the world I’m meant to be inhabiting, the familiarity comes from literature, from cutscenes, from conversations, not from moving through the world or being a part of it. I know the epic sprints across the Citadel in MEI were tedious but I think I’d give anything for a planet, or a city, or a space station that felt like a plant, or a city, or a space station, rather than a backdrop. I mean most of the locations in MEII I could have fit in my living room.

Fallout 3, however, is all world, and it’s full of stories. I’ve been playing for about a week now, not obsessively admittedly but when I’ve had the time, I’m level 10 and I’ve completed 10 quests. What the hell have I been doing with myself? In all honesty: I’ve been wandering around and looking at stuff, and y’know, savaging desperately for survival. I’m honestly astonished, overwhelmed and thrilled at the amount of love and detail they’ve put into the world. I know Cyrodil was just as vast and just as lovingly constructed but there’s something a bit less affecting in discovering a cave full of scamps than an old elementary school full of psychotic raiders. Of course there’s only a limited amount of “things” you can find in the world: only so many teddybears, burned books, overturned crockery, but there seems to be something individualized about the way they’ve been placed, telling a different story each and every time you encounter them. And because resources are scarce, especially at the beginning of the game, it’s sort of necessary to spend a fair bit of time sifting through the ruins of civilization, trying to scrape together enough shit to sell so you can afford bullets so you don’t get completely mullered by the nearest radscorpion. There’s always been an element of this in the Fallout games but the difference between actually scrambling through the wreckage, opening somebody’s fridge or knocking their furniture over in your pursuit of valuables and simply clicking on a pile of loot in the game world is profoundly affecting.

I’m semi-tempted to download some kind of “complete masochist” mod or something, turn off fast travel, and make food and water actually important for survival. I mean, necessity means that you do spend a lot of the game looking after yourself and making sure you live a healthy lifestyle, since travelling at night is dangerous and you can’t see very well. But zipping back to my own hovel in Megaton in the blink of an eye kind of takes the edge off, and most of my most meaningful Fallout experiences have vaguely involved finding somewhere safe to wait for the night to recede.

I think there’s a posh term for this kind of storytelling, I think it’s called emergent narrative or something. But I’ve taken to thinking of these experiences as found stories (y’know like … found art … okay it’s slightly cringe-worthy but it works for me). And too much heavyweight Bioware narrativism has really made me appreciate, and understand, the importance of found stories. I mean, the other day I found myself in the Capital Mall, exchanging potshots with a super mutant across a ruined children’s playground, while Cole Porter’s Anything Goes was playing over GNR. Cheap? Perhaps. But still extremely evocative. And then I scored a critical hit and the super mutant’s head exploded all over the broken slide. Oh the symbolism, oh the bathos!

At one point a quest took me to the top of the Washington Monument and, having done what I was supposed to do up there, I found an old mattress tucked into a corner. I was pretty bashed up from battling the super mutants below so I spent the night, waking at about five in the morning to a grey sky, peeling at the edges as if someone had put a match to it. So I stood on the top of Washington Monument and watched the sun rise over the desolated city. I can’t remember the last time a game made me do that. Just stop playing, to watch and think, and feel moved.

While researching the Wasteland Survivor’s Guide, there’s quest that takes you to a town that’s been transformed into a minefield (for reasons I can’t recall). If you’re a clumsy oaf like me, minefields are a real problem and I remember being glad when I found an intact house along the road, so I could take a break from getting my limbs blown off. I ducked inside and, naturally, started scavenging around, conscious of that faint sense of discomfort you always get because the scavenging is just a touch too real. Upstairs there was a double bed, upon which lay two spooning skeletons. Saddened, I slunk back outside to discover the sun had set while I was rummaging about inside, and there was nothing to light the mine-strewn path. Yes, I know, I could have fast travelled, I could have simply waited the 12 hours it would take for the sun to rise. But I did what seemed most true to the story I had found: I went back into the house and slept next to the dead lovers. It was pretty macabre. Also it’s why I don’t like the term ‘emergent’ because it suggests my character is an emergent lonely necrophiliac, whereas actually the story was already there, embedded into the very fabric of the game, and I’m really not that lonely. Yet. And even if I hadn’t been forced to spend the night (uncomfortably I presume) snoozing next to a pair of entwined skeletons I would still have remembered the house in the middle of the minefield, which was different to the house near the diner at Marigold station, which was different to the house in Springvale.

The Wasteland is vast and hostile, and I have to confess I spend a lot of time feeling quite lonely and alienated. For a while there, I only had the voice of John Henry Eden, promising me, in his honeyed all-American tones, a better future, to keep me sane. God, no wonder I’m shacking up with skeletons. You really do find yourself seeking out contact with other human beings – even though most of them will try to kill you for it. And maybe it’s just me but the more time I spend on my own in the Wasteland, the more I seek out those little stories that, the more I need to somehow invest some meaning into the destruction and the less I understand it.

Please God, Bethseda, gimme a dog already, I’m going nuts out here!!

Not so long ago, Rhii wrote an excellent post about the goblin starting area, inspired by an equally excellent post by Pewter. I’ve generally kept myself insulated from Cataclysm stuff, preferring to experience it for myself when the time comes, but Rhii’s post articulates very well the attendant problems with Blizzard’s increasing focus on narrative. She identifies “developer stories” and “player stories” – the interesting thing is that, as much as it seems Blizzard would like to bring the two more closely in-line with each other (like single player RPGs), found stories naturally straddle the gap between writer and player far more effectively than imposing a narrative on the player. Take Rades’ response to Gerk for example, a developer story, certainly, but one he made entirely his own.

The imposition of narrative is, of course, much less of a problem in a single player game, because the narrative is shaped around “you” and you shape the narrative, you are literally the only person who matters in the entire fictional universe. But in a multiplayer game it becomes both limiting and absurd – every single goblin is horribly betrayed by their lover and personally saves Thrall? Thrall must have been pretty seriously nerfed if he needs help from 11 million level 5 goblins, unless he wants some AH tips.

WoW has always required a bit of double-think. It’s good at making you feel like you’re the hero of Azeroth, despite the fact that you know that no matter how many plainstrider beaks you bring to Crossroads it will never overcome the plainstrider menace. But I think the point is makes you part of a global heroic effort, to keep Crossroad protected from really dangerous chickens, to save the Sporeggar, to take down Arthas in Icecrown Citadel. When your orc leaves the Valley of Trials, you’re going to out to be a warrior for the Horde, among other warriors. Where you’ve come from, why you do what you do, how you feel about the tasks you perform and the people you encounter on your journey: that’s left entirely up to you. And although you will take part in a larger narrative that leads you from a level 1 chicken-killer to a level 60 dragon-slayer to a level 62 poo-forager to a level 80 arthas-pwner, you’ll find stories on the way, a lost NPC who catches your attention, a quest chain that sucks you in, a rep grind that just seems right for your character, a quest you decide you just don’t want to do, a hidden cove, a cave beneath a water fall, some baby cows on an island. Your experience is massively shaped by the bits of the game you choose to explore, and the way you choose to explore them – whether you want to be a pacifist, an explorer, a savior, a killer.

The parts of my journey I have found least satisfying have always been the ones where the greater narrative subsumed me: the battle for the Undercity for example, which I spent fishing because it was clear my presence, or absence, would make no difference to the triumphant outcome. And I am not prophesying gloom, because I’m looking forward to Cataclysm, but Blizzard’s increasing preoccupation with their greater narrative bothers me. I just don’t think this is the natural future of multiplayer games, I think it merely serves to emphasize their limitations, without playing to their strengths. Like the Capital wasteland, Azeroth does best when it’s comfortable to be a space to tell, and more importantly find, our own stories.

It’s kind of received wisdom in Ye Traditionalle Fantasy Worlde that there are no atheists, because being an atheist means denying the existence of God or the Gods, and in a fantasy world they provably exist.

As Wulfy points out, . . . → Read More: He’s Not the Messiah, He’s a Very Naughty Boy]]> So a couple of days ago Wulfy wrote a post about Atheism in Azeroth which got me thinking.

It’s kind of received wisdom in Ye Traditionalle Fantasy Worlde that there are no atheists, because being an atheist means denying the existence of God or the Gods, and in a fantasy world they provably exist.

As Wulfy points out, that’s not entirely true not least because atheism does not necessarily require you to believe that there are no Gods, only that you shouldn’t worship them. In this respect our perception of atheism is coloured by the modern world, in which the majority of atheists do literally believe that God does not exist (but then again, so do some Christians – there’s a reasonable number of people who are actually active within the Church of England who believe that while Christian teachings are correct and a good basis for morality, the actual supernatural underpinnings should be taken as allegory).

What is an Atheist Anyway?

A holy man was once asked: “What is it, more than anything else, that binds all of the world’s many faiths together. What principles do they share. What, oh wise one, makes something a religion?”

The holy man thought for a while and then said: “Singing.”

The truth is that it is very hard to define a religion, or the absence thereof. A very, very naïve definition of “atheism” is “not believing in the God of Abraham” but that definition would include Hindus, Wiccans and (if you believe certain fringe elements of the Baptist community) Roman Catholics.

You could expand your definition of “atheism” to mean “not believing in a God or Gods” but again that causes problems. Firstly there’s the thorny issue of Buddhism, because while Gods do exist within some areas of Buddhist philosophy, they’re seldom central to it. Secondly, the truth is that it’s quite hard to define what a “God” even is. Does ancestor worship count? Are the kami of Shintoism “Gods” or are they something else? And if they’re not gods, does that make Shintoists atheists? What about people who believe in fate, or luck, or are nebulously superstitious? What about people who believe in positive thinking?

When you get right down to it a religion is a shared cultural notion which contains an element of ritual (and often involves singing). It often, but not always, contains elements of the supernatural.

Of course it would be relatively straightforward in the real world to define religion in terms of belief in the supernatural. It would be a bit of an oversimplification but since what we’re mostly concerned with here is atheism, it’s not too much of a stretch. I don’t think many people would argue that you could be an atheist and still believe in reincarnation (at least not without applying argument from etymology).

In a fantasy setting it all gets a bit more messed up. What, after all, counts as “supernatural” in a world where aliens regularly invade your planet through glowing portals, and resurrecting the dead is easier than riding a horse?

Today We Can Implement the Same Functionality With Data-Mining Algorithms

The big argument against Atheism in a fantasy setting tends to be the fact that serving the Gods gives you real supernatural powers.

Except that in Azeroth everything gives you real supernatural powers. I mean seriously everything. Being sufficiently sneaky allows you to teleport. Being sufficiently good at fighting allows you to create actual thunderbolts which come Cataclysm will actually hang around on the floor in a little field of electric death. Or at least electric mild irritation.

Magic in Azeroth relies on using “mana” (which it is worth noting is used by every spellcasting class, restored by the same potions, and drained by the same spells) to manipulate natural forces. Mages manipulate Fire, Frost and the Arcane. Warlocks manipulate Fire and Shadow. Druids manipulate Nature and the Arcane. Shamans manipulate Fire, Frost and Nature. Priests manipulate Shadow and the Holy Light. Paladins manipulate the Holy Light and nothing else.

There is no particular reason to view the Holy Light as an intrinsically more spiritual or more worthy of worship than any other source of mystical energy. Indeed in early Burning Crusade, there was a lot of evidence that that is exactly what the Holy Light was – Blood Elf Paladins drew their power from a captured Naaru by strength of will, essentially deriving their powers from raw alien juice. Of course it turned out that Mu’ru was in on it all along and blah blah the light cannot exist without the shadow blah blah Sunwell blah blah but even now, the Blood Elf Priests and Paladins are getting their power not from their religious devotion to the Light, but from the Sunwell which has always been nothing more than a source of magical power.

From a certain point of view, worshipping the Light makes no more sense than worshipping fire.

When Somebody Asks If You’re a God, You Say Yes

Like many people, I have a favourite rebuttal to the ontological argument.

Put forth by a mathematician, the rebuttal simply goes: Accepting this definition of God, it is logically necessary that all Gods exist. It is does not, however, show that at least one God exists.

People tend to take the existence of real, actual Gods as evidence that people should believe in them, but this is because people assume that the only criterion for rejecting the existence of a God is to deny the reality of a specific entity, when often it is enough to deny their divinity. That is to say, to deny that there is any reason to treat them differently to anything else of a similar type.

The simplest real world example of this is Jesus. Most people accept that Jesus was probably a real person. Christians believe that Jesus was literally the son of God (or God the Son, depending on how deep you want to go into the theology of it). Muslims believe that he was a prophet. A lot of secular humanists believe he was a dude with some good ideas. Atheists believe he was just some guy. Believing that Jesus was a real person is in no way incompatible with Atheism.

One of the things which I think Azeroth does really well is not get too hung up in distinguishing “Gods” from other beings. It’s not like D&D where a “God” can be clearly and unambiguously defined (in 3rd edition at least, it’s something with a Divine Rank of greater than zero, and which has the power to grant Divine Spellcasting to Clerics).

The World of Warcraft is full of powerful, immortal creatures which are often worshipped as Gods and often treated like Gods – some of them are even called Gods but you can’t say that any of them really “are” Gods in the sense of that being an innate, undeniable part of their identity.

Indeed a lot of the beings worshipped as Gods on Azeroth are fairly clearly not Gods at all. The Elemental Lords are elementals. Deathwing is a dragon. Arthas was – well that one’s complicated but he’s a Death Knight fused with the soul of an Orcish Shaman, instilled with the power of the Burning Legion. Then there’s the Angels (the Naaru) and Demons (the Burning Legion) both of which, while they have trappings of Judeo-Christian religious icons, are pretty clearly space aliens from space.

The only things in the game which are canonically described as “Gods” are the “Old Gods” and they’re basically icky psychic tentacle parasites. And of course they have strong Lovecraftian influences, and you can make a case for Cthulhu and his ilk actually being strongly Atheist figures – embodying the idea that there is nothing out there but a vast, impersonal universe, cold and uncaring.

So you might argue that far from being an aberration in Azeroth, Atheism is practically the default. From a certain point of view, WoW is set a world where powerful monsters roam the galaxy, and get worshipped as gods by people who don’t know any better.

Until twenty-five guys get together and pwn them.

What we tend to forget is that it can also be a world of … epic romance!

Coincidentally, we recently uncovered a selection of the works of Thunderbluff’s most prolific and best selling romance novelist, Isadora Grimtotem.

And, finally, we present this not uncontroversial . . . → Read More: Romancing Azeroth]]> We’re all used to seeing Azeroth as a world of high fantasy and mythic adventure.

What we tend to forget is that it can also be a world of … epic romance!

Coincidentally, we recently uncovered a selection of the works of Thunderbluff’s most prolific and best selling romance novelist, Isadora Grimtotem.

And, finally, we present this not uncontroversial cinematic offering from the Undercity Film Festival:

This post would have been in no way possible without the input and hard work of, err, other people. So many thanks to Chas for his slightly creepy habit of playing mainly female belves in pretty frocks, to Ahost for cuddling up to me on Red Cloud Mesa, and Naofa for posing in his blood knight tabard (and only his blood knight tabard) in the middle of Silvermoon City on a Saturday afternoon.

But mainly massive massive thanks to Issy who did ALL the arty stuff (i.e. all the work).

Finally a couple of out-takes:

Dude, where's my kodo?

I'm too sexy for my tabard

Booooooooobz......

Thanks to everybody who replied, I’m deeply flattered by all of the positive attention it’s received, and all your comments have been extremely supportive, but there have been one or two themes running through the comments which I think need to address.

This . . . → Read More: Menz Again: A follow up post]]> So yesterday I wrote a post about men in WoW and in life in general.

Thanks to everybody who replied, I’m deeply flattered by all of the positive attention it’s received, and all your comments have been extremely supportive, but there have been one or two themes running through the comments which I think need to address.

This one’s going to go into a bit more detail about issues of rape, so y’know, trigger warnings and that.

A trend I’ve noticed in the comments is the notion that discrimination against women and discrimination against some sorts of men somehow “cancel out” – that the fact that I feel unrepresented by male avatars and NPCs somehow balances the fact that many women feel unrepresented by female avatars and NPCs. That was very much not my intent, and I thought I would look at this in more detail and explain why I think it’s very important not to go from “patriarchy hurts men too” to “there is no patriarchy”.

The Fairy Princess Effect

The default fantasy heroine is a plucky princess who runs away from an arranged marriage, and falls in love with a swineherd or whatever. There is almost always a speech at some point about how ironic it is that although they live in luxury and are given everything they could conceivably want, they never the less do not have the freedom that the simple peasants enjoy.

Because, y’know, peasants in the middle ages all married for love.

Point being, no matter what your situation, there are some drawbacks. If somebody came up to me tomorrow and gave me ten million pounds, it would cause me some problems – I’d have taxes to deal with, it would change my lifestyle in ways I might not be prepared for, I’d have people trying to scam me and swindle me and suddenly find myself wondering if all of my friends only hung out with me for my money.

But that wouldn’t change the fact that I’d be ten million pounds better off than a whole lot of people.

Nothing in life is free. A position of power and privilege had drawbacks, but those drawbacks do not change the fact that it is still a position of power and privilege. I can’t help but feel that a lot of people seem to have interpreted what I saw as a post about ways in which discrimination against women has negative consequences for men as a post about ways in which men are disadvantaged relative to women.

This, for what it’s worth, is why I don’t like the term “kyriarchy.” Apart from a general distaste for neologisims, I dislike the alienness of the term. The patriarchy is something which men have to accept that they are part of (and which many men get deeply offended by the suggestion that they might be part of) whereas the “kyriarchy” sounds like something which we can all comfortably position ourselves outside.

As came through very strongly in my last post, and the reaction to it, geeky men very often feel rather alienated from conventional notions of masculinity, and are in many ways harmed by them. Unfortunately there’s a tendency to take this a step further and assume that this sense of alienation somehow absolves geek men of having to worry about gender issues.

Idealized != Sexualized

One of the major things I talked about in the original post was the way in which male body-types in WoW are absurdly overmasculinized, and are not necessarily representative of either the bodies or the desires of male players. A couple of people took this as evidence that male characters in WoW were sexualised in the same way that female characters are. This simply isn’t true.

Male characters in WoW are designed to appeal to the fantasies of a conventional male audience. My desires aside, there’s a lot of guys who absolutely do want their video-game avatar to look like He-Man, and these men are well catered for. No consideration whatsoever is given to designing male NPCs that women would find sexually attractive. That isn’t any part of the function of a male character in a video game.

If male characters were sexualised in the same way as female characters, they’d all be stripped to the waist at all times. They’d all have the butt-cheeks cut out of their armour, and skin-tight leg armour which is cut very specifically to draw attention to their massive bulging packages.

They’re not.

Now I would add that female avatars in WoW are actually pretty well done – they represent a variety of body types, and they genuinely did modify them on the basis of feedback from actual women, and there’s a lot less overt sexualization of female characters in WoW than in some games but there is still a fundamental difference between “designed to look really powerful” and “designed to look really fuckable”.

It is absolutely legitimate to say that the portrayal of men in WoW is problematic, but this does not change the fact that the portrayal of women in WoW is problematic in different and arguably more serious ways.

Every time somebody brings up the fact that female characters in video games are designed primarily as a male sex-fantasy, with the option for women to identify with those characters being a dim afterthought (and again, I recognize that WoW is ahead of the curve in some ways here) somebody always brings up the fact that “the men are idealised too!” What I hoped to do with my post was to highlight the fact that it was possible to have a sensible discussion about representation of men without it taking over the discussion about representation of women.

Representation Matters

Another slightly difficult discussion I got into in the comments was about representation of female characters in positions of power, in particular about the question of whether the new Goblin Trade-Prince could or should have been female.

Just to avoid doing the “some people said” thing I’ll say specifically that this was a conversation between me, Tchann and Larisa, and was mostly just an amicable difference of opinion (Tchann broadly believes that Blizzard’s main priority should be telling the story the best way they know how to tell it, whereas I think they’ve got at least some duty to make certain that their stories reflect their player base).

So yeah, I would have really liked to have seen a female trade prince. It would have been a major step forward for the representation of women in the game, not only because it would have raised the number of female faction leaders to a cataclysmic thirty percent, but because it would have been a major female character that was not some variation on evil seductress or virtuous healer. Having a female character who was a shrewd, covetous, grasping goblin would have been ten kinds of awesome because it would have genuinely challenged stereotypes.

I was casting around for reasons why representation in the game matters when I came across this post from Adam at the Noisy Rogue, in which he expresses surprise that women expect to be represented in their own damned hobbies saying:

If you are a girl, and you choose to play in it, then great. I’m very happy for you and I hope you have fun. But don’t start crowing about femisnism and sexism and any other ism that gets your knickers in a knot. When I was at school I was openly made fun of by the girls for playing these games. Now twenty years later girls are getting worked up about the fact that those same games don’t have enough female representation in them? Give me a fucking break.

Or to put it another way: “If you wanted me to treat you like a human being you should have fucked me in high school.”

Now Adam isn’t a bad guy [Edit: sorry that should read "Adam is a complete bigot - I particularly like the bit where he suggests with horror the notion that if you start listening to *women* you might eventually start having to listen to *gay people* and then where would it end], and I’m sure that’s not how he meant to come across but it’s basically what he said, and it’s a depressingly common sentiment from male geeks. Sorry girls, you had your chance when I was sixteen, and now we’re going to punish your entire sex because I didn’t get the prom date I wanted.

You see this is a fantasy game, and that means it’s about escapism. Feminism is a real world idea, when people play a fantasy game they want to be able to get away from all the stuff that upsets them in real life. Like women, and the way they keep running their mouths all the time and don’t know their place. Or gay people, because seriously I don’t want to have people grossing me out in my free time. Or black people, because I’m sorry Conan was a white man, like Jesus. You can all play the game if you want, but just don’t be in my face about it. I play this game to relax and I can’t relax if you people keep, y’know, existing at me. What? Look: If you want a “politically correct” game with women and queers and blacks in it, you go make one. Straight white men do it, why can’t you guys.

I mean seriously what’s wrong with this country, when women expect to be treated the same as men just because they’re women. I’m sorry, but actually I think that’s the most sexist thing of all – women expecting us to treat them the same way we treat men because of their sex. If you were really interested in equality you wouldn’t care if we discriminated against you, because it would be the same as if we were discriminating against ourselves.

And by the way, why is nobody talking about men’s issues.

Sorry, that got long but yeah. That’s why I think representation matters.

The Sexual Offences Bill (Scotland)

Start talking about issues of gender, violence, and sexual violence, and you invariably wind up talking about rape culture.

Start talking about rape culture and you’re very likely to get somebody telling you that “men get raped too!” like this somehow changes everything and nobody’s ever thought of it before.

Something that this particular branch of discussion brought to my attention was the Sexual Offences Bill (Scotland) which I believe has not actually passed into law at time of writing, but has been on the books since 2008.

The Sexual Offences Bill (Scotland) is designed to overturn some major flaws in the way Scottish law handles rape and sexual assault. The position of rape and sexual assault under Scottish law was presented to me as evidence of one of the ways society discriminates against men, and as evidence that rape culture is a myth.

Ten seconds on Google gave me the actual contents of the bill, and what it actually highlights very clearly is some of the ways in which discrimination against women can get so bad that it becomes harmful to men as well.

The flaws in existing Scots rape legislation were twofold. Firstly, “rape” was defined extremely narrowly as a man penetrating a woman’s vagina with his penis, without her consent. Secondly, that “consent” in Scots law was defined particularly loosely, requiring only that a man believe the victim consented, and with no requirement that this belief be “reasonable” – only that it not be “reckless.”

There’s so much wrong with this that I barely know where to begin, but broadly speaking, the problem with the law as it stood was that it seemed to treat rape as a form of property damage. Very serious property damage, of course, but still property damage. The notion that rape requires a penis to penetrate a vagina is deeply bound up in notions of feminine virtue, and masculine entitlement, it is based entirely on the idea that raping a woman ruins her for other men, that it emasculates her husband or future husband. Non-vaginal penetration has no such issues and therefore constitutes a lesser crime (indecent assault).

This is a law which discriminates against women so much that it ceases to treat them as legal agents at all, treating them instead as objects upon whom a crime can be committed, the chief victims of which are other men. Sort of like a car stereo or a shop window.

Of course a consequence of this law reducing women to the status of inanimate objects is that a woman can never be convicted of rape either. This is apparently evidence that the law unfairly discriminates in favour of women in rape cases.

I know.

Does this law harm male victims of rape? Of course it does. It also harms female victims of rape. It’s a shitty law, but it doesn’t discriminate against men, it simply has negative consequences for men.

People persist in the belief that the moment you can provide a single, solitary example of a situation in which being a woman is more convenient than being a man, that this is proof that there is no longer any inequality between the sexes whatsoever (or that things have gone “too far the other way”) this is and always has been nonsense.

Do bad things happen to men? Of course they do, it would be completely ludicrous to suggest that every single man in the world has a better life than every single woman in the world, and if feminist theory relied on that assumption it would be rationally unsupportable. But it doesn’t.

Discrimination against women is harmful to men, discrimination against men (which does exist, particularly in areas to do with childcare and the more nurturing professions – Miss Medicina gives some good examples) is harmful to women. It’s important to realize that the harm caused to one sex by discrimination against the other does not somehow negate the original discrimination.

As one might expect, the comments on the original post are a mixed bag, one part people genuinely engaging with the concept and one part “wah wah nobody understands . . . → Read More: What About the MENZ?]]> So there’s been another spike in feminist commentary in the Blogsphere, which recently wound up with Pewter putting up an open post in order to address Men’s Issues.

As one might expect, the comments on the original post are a mixed bag, one part people genuinely engaging with the concept and one part “wah wah nobody understands how hard it is to be a straight white man, stop telling me I have privilege!”

So I was going to comment, but things got rather long and rambly, so I thought I’d post something here instead.

So this is about being a man in WoW, and in gaming in general. I should probably say at the start that this starts out quite silly and lighthearted but then takes a sharp turn into talking about rape culture and victim blaming, just a heads up for those who might find that sort of thing triggering.

Why I Play Girls

With very, very few exceptions I don’t play male characters in WoW. Of course I like to pretend that the reason for this is, hur hur, looking at my character’s arse all day, hur hur, I AM TOTALLY NOT GAY hur hur.

But actually it’s not about that at all, it’s about body image.

I decided to start this post with an experiment. I decided to try to create a character which I thought looked like me. Taking the most obvious starting point, I decided to go with a human.

Man that's a stupid outfit.

Okay, where to begin. For a start that guy’s neck is thicker than his head. His forearms are as thick as his thighs. Not only do I not look like that, I have no desire to look like that ever. Also dude, what’s with those boots. Of course I shouldn’t be complaining really, I can’t imagine how much harder this would be if I wasn’t white.

Okay, so, next try. Well we all know that if you’re after a male avatar who’s a bit less macho, a bit less hypermuscular, you should go for a Blood Elf. Right?

I've got to admit, I dig those pants

Okay, okay, looking a bit better I’ll admit. Nice cheekbones, good hair (bit lighter than mine but you can’t have everything. And his wrists are actually thinner than his legs so y’know, all to the good. At least there’s one race in the game where I can roll a male toon without being stuck with this stupid, hypermasculinized muscleman.

Time to break out ... the guns

Okay, maybe not then. (I had to make a macro to get him to do the /flex animation while my UI was hidden, I am so proud of myself).

Here’s a second picture of this character, with some annotations.

Why yes, they are the same size

And just to remind you guys, these are the nancy sissy girly boys of Warcraft. These are the guys who everybody everybody insists are weak wussy spindly little bags of twigs, fit only to be Arcane Spellcasters and Paladins, the race so pathetic that they can’t even be Warriors. The race whose males are so tiny and fragile that heterosexual men feel uncomfortable playing them.

To highlight how stupid this is, please compare the following pictures.

Sissy girly boy

Arnie

Signs that your game might have unrealistic ideas about the human body #27, the characters who everybody says look too tiny and effeminate to carry a sword are built like fucking Conan.

So actually if I want an avatar which I can comfortably inhabit, one which reflects how I actually look in real life, or an idealised version thereof, what I wind up with is this:

I have the same problem with shoes

Yes, my hair’s a slightly different colour and isn’t braided, yes I have more than two toes and yes I don’t actually have breasts or tusks but if I had to pick a WoW avatar that I most strongly identify with it would be the female troll. Tall, thin, kind of lanky and with big, slightly funny shaped feet that you have trouble getting shoes for. That’s what I look like, and by and large it’s what I want to look like.

Video game avatars are idealised versions of ourselves, but it’s very rare that I encounter a male avatar in a video game which I either recognise or aspire to. I’m playing a male character in Arcanum at the moment (because I wanted to be able to wear a Top Hat, although it turns out that the darned thing isn’t modeled on my character) but that’s a game from – like – 2002 so I really don’t know what my avatar looks like other than “vaguely person-shaped” and I played a male Exile in Knights of the Old Republic 2 because I could play somebody who more or less looked like a Jedi, rather than like Macho Man Randy Savage with a lightsaber.

Why yes, that was a twenty year old pro-wrestling reference. Thanks for asking.

Class Prejudice

See what I did there… because “class” right …

Anyway.

Pop quiz. Name three male Lore figures who are (a) casters (b) not evil and (c) actually fight by casting spells.

Thrall ticks boxes one and two, but fails to tick box three – when Thrall mixes it up he fights in melee (despite the fact that “fanon” tends to assume that he’s primarily an elemental shaman). Anybody who’s played the Battle for the Undercity (or for that matter any of the Caverns of Time instances where he shows up, or anybody who’s raided Orgrimmar) knows that Thrall never got the memo about Shamans not being able to tank any more, the dude goes toe-to-toe with Varian Wrynn (who I believe canonically soloed Onyxia – although presumably that was the level 60 version). Sure, Thrall has a role as spiritual leader to his people but Blizzard is very careful to remind us that he can also murder you in the face.

What about the Prophet Velen then? Well yes, he’s technically a priest (the poster child for priesthood if you believe the Alliance T9 set) but he does remarkably little healing. Mostly he’s just a … well … prophet. Certainly we never see him standing behind Varian Wrynn, wearing a sissy robe and spamming Renew.

The Mages of Dalaran? Frankly if you can remember the names of a single one of them you’re doing better than me, and anyway the poster child for Dalaran magecraft is still Jaina Proudmoore. Plus their city got roflstomped by Arthas before he was even the Lich King.

On the subject of which, Ner’zul? Fails the evil test (although he was arguably redeemed at a couple of points) and he somehow lost a mystical battle for control of his own damned soul to a whiny prince with no mystical training whatsoever.

Tirion Fordring? Technically a caster, and definitely a conduit for the Holy Power of the Light, but once again does all of his work up close and personal with the Ashbringer.

Even if you take out the “not evil” clause, which opens things out a lot the biggest male figures in Lore are still warriors or warrior-themed hybrids, the most obvious example of this being the Lich King himself. Despite the fact that his entire army is built around the work of mages, priests and scientists, Arthas himself remains a resolutely martial figure. None of this nancy-boy necromancy, nerdy plague-crafting or girly book learning for Arthas, no sir – like an undead Chuck Norris he delivers a roundhouse kick to the frozen wastes of Northrend and bam, a legion of Frost Dragons rises up out of the ice. Kapow.

About the only male lore figure who’s an out-and-out spellcaster is Kael’thas Sunstrider, and look what happens to him. Starting out as the young ambitious leader of his people, he becomes a weak, ineffective pawn of the Burning Legion. Yes he was technically a bigger boss in Burning Crusade than Illidian, but only because the developers timed things wrong. And the guy finally goes down in a freaking five man, how pathetic is that? It’d be like if Arthas escaped from you in ICC and you downed him in Halls of Reflection.

All of the real men in WoW are fighters. Honest, in your face, teeth-punching axe-wielding fighters. The scientists, the intellectuals, and the magicians are all sidekicks, madmen, or failures.

There are reasons why this is weird, and reasons why it’s a real problem.

It’s weird because you’d think that since the target audience of WoW is, by and large, geeky that it would be more inclined to represent the geekier pursuits in a more positive light. Surely at least half the player base must be people who would rather solve their problems with their brains than their fists – even if all they use their brains for is focusing the vast eldrich power needed to destroy their enemies. Again, if the game is about fulfilling our fantasies then – well I can’t speak for anybody else but I’ve spent far more time thinking “If I could throw fireballs I would be totally asploding you right now” than thinking “If I was six foot six, heavily built, and good at fighting, I would be beating you up in a conventionally manly fashion right now.”

It’s a problem because it reinforces the notion that conventional physical violence is an integral part of what it means to be a man.

Okay, so this is the part where the frivolous gender-issues post with the lighthearted pictures of Blood Elves gets all serious and after-school special.

If you hang out in the feminist blogsphere you hear a lot about violence against women, you hear a lot about rape culture, you hear a lot about victim-blaming and slut-shaming and all sorts of horrible stuff which the patriarchy, or the kyriarchy or whatever the heck you want to call it does to women. This isn’t a post about women, it’s a post about men, but it’s going to be difficult to talk about one without talking about the other.

Gender, Intersectionality, and Violence Against Men

If I had to summarise the concept of “rape culture” in a short paragraph at the end of a blog post, I’d do it like this:

There exists a notion in society at large that on some level women are “for” sex. Part of the reason that rape is so widespread, so little reported, and so seldom the subject of successful prosecutions is that on some level, society considers the sexual abuse of women to be part of the natural order. On some level people really do think that women who flirt with strangers, women who go out drinking, women who wear short skirts or high heels, or who go home with men they meet in bars really are “asking for it”.

This is, I hope nobody will disagree, totally fucked up.

What I want to talk about now is the analogous concept applied to men. I don’t in any way want to belittle or demean the experiences of women, and the reason I’m making the comparison with attitudes to rape at all is to highlight how messed up our attitudes to gender are in general so apologies in advance if anybody finds the comparison offensive. I’m not trying to start a round of Oppression Olympics.

Just as conventional notions of gender tell us that women are “for” sex, so conventional notions of gender tell us that men are “for” violence. One of those statistics that everybody knows but nobody thinks that anybody else knows is that young men are overwhelmingly more likely than any other demographic to be the victims of most sorts of violent crime. An eighteen year old woman is actually a lot safer walking alone at night than a man of the same age. The simple reason for this is that while there are taboos against physically attacking women, there are no such taboos against attacking men. It’s not okay to beat up women, because women aren’t able to defend themselves, but it’s perfectly okay to beat up men, because if a man can’t defend himself it’s his fault.

While Tam and I were in Edinburgh we went to see a comedian called Sammy J – he’s a very good comic and we’d seen his show in Edinburgh the last two years we were there. Normally he did one-man comic plays, but this time it was a standup show full of personal anecdotes and a strong theme of the show was the fact that Sammy J (who is Australian, for what it’s worth) is somewhat lacking in the qualities which his culture requires of a “proper” man. “Sammy J isn’t a fighter” he told us several times over the course of the evening.

The final anecdote in his show was about his stint at a comedy festival in Australia (I want to say Melbourne) which, in its last week, overlaps with a nationwide stock car rally. I won’t give the full details because I can’t really remember them, but the long and the short of it is that during his set he inadvertently offended a large, drunk stock-car enthusiast. After the show, this large, drunk stock car enthusiast broke into his dressing room, forced him onto his knees, threatened him with a glass bottle, and told him that when he got outside he (the stock car enthusiast) and his mates would be waiting for Sammy J in the car park, where they would kill him.

What was so upsetting about this anecdote was the genuine sense of shame that came across throughout the anecdote. Of course Sammy J is a comedian and it’s possible that he’d invented the whole thing for comic effect but since the whole thing was … well … not at all funny I’m inclined to believe it was true. His commentary on the whole experience was shot through with this genuine sense of self-blame which was deeply uncomfortable – he explained how his friends had asked why he didn’t just “lamp the guy one” how he didn’t blame the guy for breaking into his dressing room and physically assaulting him, because it couldn’t have been nice to have a room full of people laughing at him, and how it was alright because probably the guy had “only wanted to humiliate him”. You had the victim of an assault standing on stage and blaming himself for the attack, because he didn’t have the qualities that his culture expected men to have.

This is all kinds of fucked up, but the same sort of thing goes on every day. From school age on upwards, boys and young men are physically attacked for being small or weak or bookish, or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some will be badly injured, some will die, and they’ll all be taught that it’s their fault for not being strong enough. Because if you’re a man you have to be able to fight, and you have to be able to win, or else you deserve whatever you get.

And you’re not allowed to say you’re upset. You’re not allowed to say you’re scared. You’re not allowed to say that actually you don’t feel safe walking home at night. You’re not allowed to say that since you were attacked you’ve not felt safe in your own town or on your own street, because that’s not what men do. And the most supportive thing anybody is going to say to you is “give ‘em hell next time.” It’s exactly the same shaming, victim blaming mentality we’re so used to talking about when it’s applied to women, and it’s exactly as wrong and as messed up.

Of course WoW is just a video game, but it’s part of a broad cultural movement that promotes a narrow, damaging view of masculinity, and supports a very real culture of violence which is genuinely harmful.

On the upside though, it lets you kill internet dragons.