Love and Legos

Day 41: Last week was a big week for the married gamers. 

“Everything is Awesome”

In a previous blog I discussed how my son spent his birthday playing Lego Batman on the Xbox with me.  For his party he extended his lego theme but we super sized it.  We successfully hosted 30 kids at a “Lego Movie” birthday (yup we are crazy people). We had a lego cake, lego doors, lego balloons, lego poop (lego people in ziplocks with MnM’s).  We showed the movie outside and the kids each had lego cars (aka cardboard boxes) for their viewing pleasure.  One of the great miracles of this event was that I popped 8 cups of popcorn, 8 cups not fully popped but in kernel form, and prepared other food but did not set any small fires.   

Geek parent Lego birthday win #Lego pic.twitter.com/jHuEsz2Ab4
— Chris Cruz-Boone (@ProfessorCCB) February 13, 2015

It was so powerful to see all these people come together and just shower our lil' guy with love and legos.  Yesterday I came home from a super tuff hike and found the hubs on the floor assembling birthday minecraft legos with the lil’ guy and this moment brought me so much joy.  I am not sure if having gamer geek parents makes a difference for the kids but having kids makes my life so much better.

Valentine’s Day

It was around Valentine’s day over 16-years ago when my best friend held my hand while we watched Monday night raw.  There was no pretense, or flirting, and it didn’t go any further but it changed the course of my life forever.  That being said I don’t really believe in Valentine’s Day.  I become physically ill when I hear the 50 Shades commercials come on and I do not want freeway roses.  But since things have been rocky, and a friend offered to babysit, I thought we would have a romantic day of games. 

Instead, after the post-birthday sleepover and subsequent cleaning I slept through most of the afternoon.  By evening we took a romantic walk to Target where I was super uncomfortable because most of the women there were dressed in their finest hoochie wear.  Note: Women can wear whatever they want and should not be judged or shamed, but droves of women wearing their chonies on the outside at Target is yet another reason for me to despise this holiday.  The plan was to loose ourselves in games and that plan never happened.  We ended up playing some Forbidden Isle on the iPad and going to bed early.  You can’t schedule geek romance, you can’t force play, you just have to give over to the other person and the fantasy.   Any maybe if you stop planning for one second, you will share a moment, like the brush of your best friends fingertips.  

Game Night

Sunday after church we played three new tabletop games.  Thankfully, we have a great and growing network of friends who are lending/leasing us games to try in our ongoing play. “Leasing” seems like a strange word for sharing board games but one of our friends is trying to weed out some of his un-played games and is letting us test drive them before we buy.  We played Sheriff of Nottingham (one round adults and one round with the kiddos).  We played Machi Koro and SushiGo as some quick card games.  I realized even in all my years playing magic I had never done a draft and it was awesome this weekend.   Having friends to play, share and talk about games keeps the hearth burning bright.  Plus me winning a bunch always makes my day.

“@ProfessorCCB: Face palm and Sheriff of Nottingham with the kiddos @JohnRBoone #gatheryourparty pic.twitter.com/fY25yWeGUI”
— MrNinjaman (@JohnRBoone) February 16, 2015

Update: Paladin Game Castle has scheduled in TableTop day & #GatherYourParty for all day April 11th.  But alas still no news of Wil Wheaton. Curse you Wil Wheaton all the cool kids are playing and leasing board games in B-town.  

Pebbles: Moving the trash cans back up the hill & scheduling the babysitter.

Rapists, Video Games, and Valentines Day

Day 35: Gamer Gate and Gone Girl the Game

My last blog post was about how digital spaces do not replace RL interaction.  But today I want to illuminate that what happens online does matter, it matters a whole lot.

Getting Punched by Gamer Gate

Yesterday, I guest lectured in a Women & Gender Studies course on the subject of sex and video games.  I had a chance to throw some Extra Credits, Colbert and TED talks in the mix.  During the presentation I surprised myself, because even though it has been a while, every time I watch Anita Sarkeesian talk about Gamer Gate in her TED talk I am uncomfortable.  This powerful feminist is clearly pained as she discusses the virtual threats of violence she has suffered just because she deconstructs problematic representations in games.  I heart me some video games but there are some games that just disgust me.   But I digress really the part that stuck out to me was my emotional reaction to a discussion of bullying, hate, and virtual violence against women.  Because men think that their behavior online does not impact RL when it really hurts women, even a confident kick-ass feminist, just as much as getting punched in the face.  When you sit at your computer and type the words that a woman deserves to be raped, murdered, or beaten no one is laughing, certainly not the woman who has to live with those threats.  Because even without those words being typed those are real life realities for women everywhere.

Women still have reasons to be afraid when we walk to our cars in the darkness.  More women have armed themselves for fear of both the predators they know and the ones they don’t .  To emphasize this reality, a cardinal rule of prostitution is that women don’t drive to locations because having a car increases the chance they will be beaten or murdered ten fold.  When you joke on the internet about killing, cheating, maiming, raping, or beating women, we feel fear, because everyday we have to live in a patriarchal society where violence against us is our reality. 

And I did not mean to say that women are not culpable of nefarious virtual behavior that bleed into the margins of RL because yes, women can be jerks too.  

Gone Girl and a Gamer Scorned

Spoiler Alert: If  you have not seen it stop reading because this post totally ruins the movie. 

The movie Gone Girl is a roller coaster because although the main protagonist Amy is a crazy person, there are many moments during the movie that I empathize with her.  As the story unfolds, Amy describes this perfect moment when her husband wipes the sugar from her lips as when she found her soulmate.  Later in the movie she follows her husband and finds him in the same exact intimate moment, wiping sugar from the lips of a younger woman he is cheating with.  Yup that guy is a total jerk, if you are going to cheat at least come up with some new moves.  I hazard to write this next section because maybe my reaction can be attributed to being raised in a patriarchal culture with distorted understandings of relationships and romance. But people, people like me, want moments that belong to them.  And when we have to share we might just loose our sh*t like Amy, but hopefully not that bad.

Because it was Lincoln’s birthday, and the hubs is a teacher, the whole clan was home on Monday.  It may not surprise folks that we spent most of the day playing games.  At one moment in my PJ’s I mentioned to my partner that I am glad a specific video game we play together belongs to me.  After a few hours of growing tension between the two of us, he admitted that over the last year he actually played that game with another woman.  I do give him credit for fessing up, that games don’t just belong to me but it doesn’t make it sting less.

Our friendship, our marriage, my sanity, and our blog all are based on the idea that games might be our salvation.  But like Amy, it is hard to hold on to hope when you discover the things in your life that were never really yours to begin with.

Valentine’s day is just around the corner but instead of buying chocolate, or flowers, or diamonds, or silly hallmark cards give someone a moment.  Give them a moment, or a game, that belongs just them.  Give someone a moment, and never take it away or you deserve whatever you have coming.

Decided it's time the kids learn the joy of RPGs @privateerpress #IKRPG #Geekdads pic.twitter.com/gVb2AYcKF5
— MrNinjaman (@JohnRBoone) February 10, 2015

Stalking Update: The hubs was re-tweeted by privateer press for his new obsession with an ongoing family RPG that he is slated to blog about sometime soon.  I will admit I am a jealous of his retweet because I am still stalking Wil Wheaton in the hopes we can get him to Bakersfield to play some board games and I feel like I am losing momentum.