alexandraerin

So, whenever somebody takes up the issue of promoting greater representation of marginalized folks in fiction--particularly racial representation--there's a couple of things that happen.

Say someone's talking about how few comic books that put anyone but white people front and center, or that there aren't enough comics headlined by women.

The first thing that happens is you get the people who say things like, "So what? I'm white and my favorite comic character is Blade. If you can imagine yourself in the shoes of a Kryptonian or a robot or a cyborg then a different skin color shouldn't matter."

The other thing is you get people who say things like, "If you want to read comics by women and with women in them, just get out there and make them."

This brings me to The Arkh Project. Arkh is a computer game (action roleplaying-style) in its early stages of development. Arkh was conceived of as a game made by queer people of color for queer of people of color. The main character and their canon love interest are both genderqueer. Here's a fan-drawn picture of the main character, Ain:



And here's an official concept picture of them and their lover Haruka being adorable:



The concept of the game as I understand it is that Ain is an Arkh, which is a sort of higher dimensional being (little-g god) who is able to incarnate into lower-level worlds at an energy cost. The home world functions as a sort of hub level, and the other worlds serve the function of different levels/regions of the game. There's a resource management aspect in that traveling between the worlds costs energy, and ordinary matter can't make the transition. You can find out more about the game and concept by reading the FAQ, which includes links in the last few questions to relevant tags for blogposts about the gameplay and characters.

Now, some of you as you read this are going to find yourselves thinking, "A game that focus on a Black genderqueer character is going to have really narrow appeal." And that thinking is why this an indie effort. The rebuttal to this, of course, is up there in the first thing I cited people as saying when complaints about representation are made.

The list of demographics that I'm not a member of would be pretty long, but it includes Hylians, Italian-Americans, particle physicists, superheroes wizards, elves, bounty hunters, vault hunters, duck hunters, go-kart drivers, drivers, and the star of any video game, ever. Of course it helps me that most video game characters who fit into any of those categories are going to bear some resemblance to me in the ways that society has trained us to think of mattering...

Anyway, the point of all this is that as soon as someone decided to go out and make a video game that represented them, the project came under attack from people who suddenly think that representation is an important issue. As in, they can't believe that this game isn't going to have any white heroes, that there isn't going to be any way to play as a cisgender individual, that there's no romance options that accommodate their orientation. The critics are basically saying that in a marketplace full of the straight and the white, one game that fully gives the spotlight to someone else instead of making them share it is an act of exclusion and marginalization that is just as bad as anything the industry has ever done. It got to the point that people were making threatening legal noises at the IndieGoGo campaign because they felt discriminated against.

So to recap the thinking here: it definitely shouldn't matter what color or gender or orientation a character is and people should make the stuff they want to see instead of complaining that no one else is making it BUT DON'T YOU DARE MAKE SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T GIVE EQUAL TIME AND ATTENTION TO ME OR ELSE YOU ARE AS BAD AS THE WORST RACIST EVER!

Oh, and by the way: yes, there is an IndieGoGo campaign. There will be more in the future, as this is an ambitious project and it's being developed in phases. There is so much enthusiasm and so much demand for a game like this that the first fundraiser is on track to hit its goal way ahead of schedule, but because this is just phase one, every dollar's still going to count.

Edit To Add:

You know... I follow one of the organizers of Arkh, and I watch them day in and day out being attacked for speaking out against racism and one of the things that anyone who speaks out about racism butts up against again and again is, "How dare you cast aspersions on someone's intentions! You don't know what's in their heads You don't know what's in their heart! You can't accuse them of racism because you don't know what they're thinking!"

This ignores the fact that it's generally actions and effects under discussion, not thoughts or feelings, but turn about is fair play: there will be no questioning the motives of the Arkh team here. You can doubt the ability of the people behind the project* but in this space you will not doubt their sincerity.

*Though if you wish to register an informed opinion, please realize that the point of the fundraising is to hire people with the necessary expertise. I think part of the skepticism and doubt is coming from people who fail to grasp what's going on here.

I'm not sure I have the words for it right now myself, but it's bigger than one person saying "Give me money and I'll make a game." It's a ground-up, grass-roots attempt to make a game happen completely outside the system. I think the sheer level of not-precedented-ness there is why people keep glomming onto Rosegold Games's involvement and going, "Oh, these folks are making it." Because that's the easiest way to make sense of it if you're looking for a traditional development path.

popelizbet has a new poem up at Apex, called "Down Cycles".

Her previous works concerning a neglected bride, an angel fallen on hard times, and a sea hag (NGL, I was disappointed when this one didn't turn out to be about the Popeye character, but Hans Christian Andersen is okay, too) have already earned her the title "The Gregory Maguire of Genre Poetry" even if nobody in the world has ever called her that.

Her M&Ms sometimes lets me see her poems before they're finished. I never have much to say about them... I don't have much poetry in my soul (not enough room; too much prose), but I confess to a touch of pride in having helped with the title of this one.

On the subject of things lyric, jewelrymaker thegreenyear has unveiled a series of pieces that draw inspiration from the poetry and songs of some poets and songwriters of her acquaintance. If you have ever wanted to own a pair of dangly earrings that end in the word "PANIC" and bear the title "You Are Fucking Up Real Bad", now is the time.

I'll be honest and say I don't fully understand what this Kickstarter project shadesong has been linking to is about, but it's got 68 hours to go and isn't quite there so I'm going to give it a boost anyway.

It's some kind of fabricating machine that cuts stuff into stuff? The creator has a video, but the dude said something about self-replicating machines and I got scared and unplugged my computer for a while in case it gets ideas.

I do recall seeing some kind of capsule description on the page, let me just snag it:

It’s essentially a robot capable of milling complex three-dimensional shapes out of wood, soft metals, and plastics.

Oh, there you go.

The impression I get is that it could help put 3D manufacturing capabilities into the hands of small businesses (and artists and artisans and hobbyists)... and you know, anything like that is bound lower the cost and barrier to entry faced by new start-ups, which is great. I mean, I think about what the technological advances of the past decade have meant for writers and graphic artists and musicians. When tools get cheaper and better and less cumbersome and more open, possibilities multiply.

Okay, wow. It says that with a 3D scanner, it could reproduce any shape that fits inside its milling area. So, if I am in fact reading this right then an artist could conceivably make a prototype and then... without touching or harming the original in any way, this thing could then turn out 3D copies of it, and/or produce a mold from which copies could be cast?

Am I reading that right? This thing could help sculptors make "prints" of their work?

And it's not even a machine built specifically for doing that. That's just one potential application of what seems to be a very open-ended and general purpose... manufacturing... thing.

I can guarantee you something of it, because this is true of any usable technology: people are going to look at it and figure out things they can do with it that its creator sindrian never even dreamed of.

And I don't say that to slight his imagination. I'm sure he's counting on it. I say that because that's the history of the world to date.

Anyway, this isn't one of those Kickstarter projects that is basically a stealth pre-order, because the finished machine will have a production cost outside most people's internet pocket money range. But the final product is going to be an open source design, But people who support his start up are eligible for a number of fun and interesting rewards that I gather are actually produced using his prototype.

The "Launcher" sounds intriguing, but the "Custom Clue-By-Four" engraved with a helpful message of your choice sounds like a real winner. I can actually imagine something like that in a mail-order catalogue for a price not too dissimilar from the $30 pledge it would cost you. People with a serious enthusiasm for home manufacturing can pledge at the highest levels to get the parts they need to assemble their own.