Nerd Meets World

This week has been a rough one in the gaming community. #TwitchDoBetter is the latest iteration of a problem that has plagued gaming and nerd spaces for as long as I have been a part of them. It is part of the reason I backed away from things I have loved my whole life and watched from the sidelines for nearly two decades. I was there playing some games, occasionally joining small groups, and usually leaving because of the way marginalized people are treated. Only recently have I found friends and allies in these spaces that have reignited my passions and given me hope that I can be a part of something that resembles my idea of community.

I am no one important. But I am in possession of something that I have had to learn how to use properly and am still mastering. I have an abundance of privilege granted to me by a society that still values certain traits more than others. There are a lot of us out there with these superpowers. I have some superpowers that were unwittingly given to me by a society that doesn’t understand me. Those superpowers come with a lot of dysphoria and confusion though.

I am a queer white neurodiverse AMAB nonbinary gamer. I usually don’t include my birth assignment or my race in my intro or bio. However, it is very important to the conversation I want to have. I come off as a straight white male. It is a mask (masc) I wore for many years. That mask has given me a pass (passing). I am allowed to speak in spaces many queer nonbinary people can’t. Yet the only part of that identity that is mine is my white European heritage. I have the privilege of being a chameleon. Even my neurodiversity has given me an excuse for why I say or do “weird” stuff that a “normal” straight white guy wouldn’t. This is where you come in.

If you have any of these superpowers you may be using them improperly. I know I have been guilty of this. I used them to cover my own ass plenty of times. Then I realized if this works so well for me, why can’t I use it to help others? I have always protected people. I was and am the big, tattooed guy who will take care of anyone fucking with my friends. I used the toxic cultural norms that have been applied to me to let others live their truth.

So, I am asking those of you with these innate abilities to do the same. Make space for marginalized people, by force if necessary. The effort it takes for a straight white male to ruin a bigots day is minimal. They have so much invested in their ideal person that any resistance from those same ideals is more powerful than anything. Our friends and family are being attacked. So, I am asking that you weaponize your privilege against itself. Fight fire with fire. Take the privilege that society has given you whether it is part of your actual identity or not and take power from others with that privilege that are abusing it. Now I understand this is a hard ask. I also know that this may reach a grand total of zero people. I’m gonna shoot my shot anyway.

This past Sunday my wife (Wonder Woman), children (Robin [7] and Nightwing [15]) and I went to an FLGS to play board games from their collection of over 1000 games. The store has an all-day pay fee for each person with the option of a subscription which we may be looking into when we are a bit more sure about the Delta COVID variant and Robin being vaccinated. I have played most of the games we played. But, it was fun to introduce them to the family.

I started us off with ICE COOL, a dexterity game where you flick wobbly penguins through doors and try to collect the most fish. I first played this game as a break between rounds of LCG Card game tournaments. The whole family enjoyed watching mom try to escape one room for the majority of the first turn. She turned it around on the third turn and caught all our penguins. I won the game. But, it was a perfect way to get the energy up for a board game day.

Robin got to choose first. He kept grabbing games that basically had campaign modes and would be hard to play in one sitting. So, we promised return trips to play those games. He finally settled on TSURO. I love this game. It is a simple path-building game where you try to keep your dragon flying around the board the longest. ROBIN laughed maniacally when his brother and mother were forced off the board. In the end, it came down to the last tile which forced myself and Robin to run into each other, resulting in a tie.

Nightwing picked a game I hadn't seen before. SUPER MARIO LEVEL UP was a racing and voting game. You advance characters up a mountain to get to the castle. when a character reaches the castle all players vote on if that character is champion. each player has 6 characters they are trying to get points for. When a champion is declared the remaining characters get points based on the level reached. If the champion is not voted in they are eliminated and score zero points. This was a fun bluffing and racing experience. I enjoyed the thematic elements of the Mario game. I also won after promoting some champions that weren't on my card to get my family to waste their no votes and eliminate each other's characters.

I chose MYSTERIUM. Robin was excited about this game when I described it to him and he wanted to be the ghost. I explained to him fo the first game it was better to be one of the psychics. He had never heard of or played CLUE. So it took a little bit more explaining for him. In the end, he was the only one who figured out his cards in time. So we never made it to the second portion of the game. Nightwing thought I was a bad ghost. He gets to try his hand next time. Then Robin will probably show us all how it is done.

Wonder Woman picked the last game we played before heading home. She liked the art on the box of LANTERNS. Lanterns is a tile-placement game where we take turns placing lantern tiles and exchanging cards to earn the most honour at the Lantern Festival. This is an easy to learn game with a cute theme to match. I squeaked out the win over Robin by collecting one last honour tile on the last turn.

I can't recommend highly enough supporting local game stores with this style of pay to play and subscription service. Most of them have discounts for members and offers where the money spent on the first day can go towards the first month's membership. This is an innovative way to help out and form a bond with a store of your own.

I want to start with a warning. It isn't a trigger warning or a spoiler warning. I will endeavour to keep this spoiler-free unless you haven't seen the trailers or maybe the first movie at all either. I also hope I don't write anything triggering. This is a warning about using my opinion to gauge the value of anything. Suicide Squad (2016) has a 26% Rotten Tomato Score. I am willing to acknowledge some of the failings of this movie. However, I actually enjoyed it. I wouldn't put it in my top 10 or even my top 100. But, it would probably enter the top 50 of superhero films. So, you have been warned.

I LOVED this movie! James Gunn brings his familiar irreverent and subversive directing style to a property that is meant to be both of those things.

So we know the story. Amanda Waller sends the most dangerous supervillains in the world on what amounts to a suicide mission (hence the name). Armed with high-tech weapons, they are sent on a search-and-destroy mission, with only Col. Rick Flag on the ground to make them behave. Things go awry and the team has to fight their way out...or (probably) die in the process.

As always Margot Robbie is amazing as Harley Quinn. I feel about her the same way I feel about Michael Keaton's Batman. I doubt anyone will ever do the character justice the way she has. Idris Elba as Bloodsport was surprisingly more than a reskin of Will Smith's Deadshot character. I find that I always enjoy his acting, and this was no different. He brought depth and emotion to a character that I had no interest in going into the film. However, these are leading actors playing the star roles of the film.

The heart of this film was Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher. James Gunn brought another deep cut D-level character into the spotlight and she was phenomenal. Her storyline was the most inspiring to me and was integral in the signature directing style of Gunn.

Gunn has mastered the style of the gore and gross out gag comedy with a heart of gold. The emotion in his writing somehow comes across as deeply sincere and heartfelt juxtaposed against the sometimes crude, but always chuckle worthy humor one expects from his movies. He is probably the only director that can make me tear up in a short scene or one liner sandwiched between an exploding head and a dick joke .

The film fully acknowledges the absurdity of a team of villains sent on a mission that will likely kill them and the way these ego-driven, over the top charicatures of our own inner demons are forced to cooperate with one another. It also fully acknowledges that these are living, breathing characters with emotions along with the role these emotions play in the lives of everyone including the viewer. Gunn accomplishes all of this while jam packing in cameos, easter eggs, and side eyed references to the first movie and other properties.

I have been kicking around ideas for a blog for a while now. I suddenly had the inspiration to write today from a muse that is no stranger to me but may seem a bit macabre to others.

This morning I heard about the passing of Richard Trumka. Trumka was the president of the AFL-CIO for the last 12 years. He was secretary-Treasurer for the 15 years before that. The 13 years before that he was president of the United Mine Workers. His father was a coal miner with a Union job that put him through college. He worked in the mines as a young man as well. These are the same Mine workers who are in the middle of a 5-month strike in Alabama as I write this.  

I had the honor of hearing him speak multiple times and I met him on one occasion. The day I met him changed my life. Here is where the introduction to me comes in.

My father was a Master-at Arms in the Navy, and my mother was a telephone operator for Pacific Bell. As a child in the 80′s I watched as our nation went through this extravagant decadent period of economic prosperity (for the wealthy). Meanwhile, I was the kid with the Payless buy one get one for a penny shoe, and the chip on my shoulder about being in what should have been a middle class working family that couldn’t quite make ends meet enough for my brother and I to participate in some of the extracurricular activities of our peers. My brother was teased about the pink banana seat bike we inherited from somewhere as the other kids rode new BMX racing bikes.  

I didn’t do well in school despite being tagged as a GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) student. My grades suffered and I was sent to live with my uncle who was a teacher in the L.A. area. It was here that I encountered more diversity than I had ever experienced before. My openly gay uncle and I stayed in Long Beach in an apartment about 2 blocks from Martin Luther King Blvd. (If you know you know). I went to school in a predominately Chicano neighborhood near where he taught in Whittier. 

It was during this time I also learned about racism and police brutality. Even before Rodney King was beaten by four officers over 50 times, I had run-ins with the Whittier Police and LAPD. The most memorable impression was an incident where my friends and I were out skateboarding after curfew. We were pulled over and placed spread eagle on a wall. I was the only white kid in the bunch. An officer walked over to me and said, “It’s late. Go on home.” He was taken aback when I told him I was staying with one of my Latino friends and I couldn’t go without him. They patted everyone down and released us. But I could feel the malice towards my friends.

It was also around this time that I got into alternative, punk, and hip hop. I was raised on Country and Western, R&B, Metal, Big Band, Surf Rock, Pop, and Hard Rock. Music is and was a gateway to all kinds of different worlds for me. I never learned to play an instrument. However, music played a huge role in my career path. More on that later.

The rebel DIY attitude and Gen X grunge nihilism did no favors to my grades or my future as a model citizen for that matter. I made dumb kid mistakes and did dumb kid things that I won’t go into detail about here. Suffice to say, “easy money” for a teenager in LA County in the 90′s came with a lot of strings attached. Despite being a white kid raised in suburban San Diego County, I molded myself to fit my environment. I wouldn’t give any of it back for all the money in the world. In the “hood” I learned about friendship, community, loyalty, and respect. I also unfortunately became a Raiders fan and a Dodgers fan, where I learned more about those values along with disappointment and defeat. 

High School brought me back to North San Diego County. My grandparents didn’t want me attending the school in the neighborhood my parents and I lived because there was “gang problems” there(translation: Hispanic and Pacific Islander students). So, I went to Carlsbad High School, where not only was I not a minority, but I am pretty sure the minority population percentage was in the low 30s. This is where I got to lean into being a weird punk rock, goth kid and enroll in Drama. My grades never recovered, and I dropped out in my Senior Year. 

I had been doing technical production for Drama and found a passion for the arts that didn’t involve me being front and center and allowed me to play a supporting role in a small community of nerds on campus (foreshadowing). This new passion led me to an internship at a theatre and eventually my first real Union job (I don’t count the 3 months I worked at a grocery store).

I became a pre-apprentice with IATSE Local 122. I was a professional stagehand. I experienced live music, theatre, comedy, drama, board meetings, tv shoots, conventions, arena tours, stadium tours, and so much more as I honed my craft. I was literally shining a light on some of the music I grew up listening to. 

I was an apprentice when I met Richard Trumka. We had set up audio at the Convention Center for him to speak at a rally for one of the many labor battles we were fighting in San Diego at the time on behalf of hotel workers, grocery workers, teachers, or other workers in what had been a very conservative bastion of California. 

Now, I have ADHD, so I don’t remember specifics. I do great with ideas though. President Trumka’s words inspired me to become more involved with my union than the transactional experiences I had to that point. I was already beginning to learn the value of the Camaraderie in a union thanks to a few wonderful mentors who frankly took on father figure roles in my life that had been absent or temporary until then. Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO represented something new in the labor movement for me personally despite the long history behind it. I finally realized how much community matters and how the labor movement is centered on that community. 

Since that day, I became a trustee of IATSE Local 122, and I returned to school at 36 years old to receive two AAs in Political Science, and in Social Science. I am now finishing up my B.A. in Political Science, minoring in Art and Media Technology. During the 2020 election cycle I was Assistant Campaign Manager for the first Asian American La Mesa City Council Member Jack Shu, as well as acting as volunteer coordinator for the first openly bisexual Black and Latino National City Council Member Marcus Bush. I am still a card-carrying Journeyman of IATSE Local 122, and I hope to be attending Law School next Fall. Everything that I have done has been in an effort to create the community that President Trumka painted for me that day. 

Those who walk uprightly enter into peace.