Star Crossed Musing

On Facebook,  Chuck Wendig  pointed out a controversy involving a YA author named Andrew Smith. I do not read a lot of YA fiction currently (heck, I don't read a lot of non-eighteenth-century fiction currently -- grad school will do that to you) but I'm told that his work is very good. Recently he did an interview online where in he made a sort-of-odd statement in response to being asked where all the women were in his work. Thanks to a tumblr post then commenting on the inherent sexism its author saw in Smith's response, the YA world on the Internet apparently blew up. Smith's books are YA fiction for boys, about boys, with all the questioning of sexuality and what it means to be a man and how to find your own way in a world that is anything but clear that would seem inherent in that. There are apparently women in them, but as secondary characters at best. In today's female saturated YA market, that means his books are actually pretty unusual -- boys are not the...

So, I have hit a new game design threshold today -- I found a game system that I appreciate as a player, but I have no real interest in designing anything for it, as does the thing it does and doesn't have a lot of room for customization. That's not a bad thing, especially if your goals for game theme line up with the themes of that rules system. I'm a hippy indie gamer at heart, though, apparently, and I really have a thing for custom (or customized) rules systems that focus on bringing out a particular feel in a game. This is not to say that universal systems are bad, but rather that they aren't my choice anymore -- and I say that as someone who came up in the industry during the d20 boom. I mention this primarily because I think one of the underrated things about game design, particularly as a woman in game design, is having opinions about games. And I don't mean ethical or cultural or feminist opinions, because those are actually expected and hang like neat ...

At some point in here I got sick and behind and just didn't feel up to dealing with it, so I slacked off on the rest of the Oscar movie reviews. I'm a bad poster, and now it's far enough past that I think I may not finish out the list. That being said, I'm totally going to post about the dinner we had. Here's the menu: Whiplash: Whiplash cocktail  Boyhood: Queso and chips  The Imitation Game: Tea & sandwiches  Selma: Grits with slow-cooked collard greens  The Theory of Everything: Curried potatoes and peas  American Sniper: Whiskey pulled pork  Birdman: Drunken chicken and barley pilaf  The Grand Budapest Hotel: Courtesans de chocolat  Whiplash Whiplash was a kick -- a real old fashioned booze cocktail. We altered the recipe a bit -- we used the rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, orange liqueur, and tequila (we couldn't get mezcal), and bitters, but we left out the spicy stuff. Instead, we used a bit of blood orange rind f...