Despair - On Race

 Despair - On Race

I am thinking a lot about how to get people excited about learning and exploring other cultures. Because so far I feel many of my attempts with peers have been generally abysmal.

They are uninterested, their bubbles are too tiny, and the task for them appears daunting.

We are 8 months now into one of my largest undertakings as a creative force, and I feel smothered beneath the weight of their indifference.

Or worse yet, their constant comparisons to Western storytellers, characters or art.

As though anything and everything I reference is only best revealed through the lens of comparison to Tolkien, Rowling, Martin, King, or Jordan.

Always white creators. Always white writers. Always white historical touchpoints, or art, or people.

I think a lot about how their priority for learning about it is a privilege of their position. They don't have to. They don't have to welcome or embrace any other culture that is not their dominant one. They can step back when it is inconvenient. They can walk away until another night, push it off until next week.

My parents had no choice, when they arrived in Canada. They had to learn white cultures, pizza, and mac and cheese. They had to raise children listening to rock concerts, driving cars, staying out late, and all that. They had to raise me and work in and amongst, even worship in a system entirely of Western design.

I had no choice either. I grew up with this colour skin and this black hair, and the name "Lee". I had my attitude and capabilities determined for me before I met people, in every career, vocation, and hobby.

And my friends know none of that. Sympathize with none of it. To be straddling two worlds where you fit in neither. Never shall I actually be accepted. I am too Canadian to be Chinese/Malaysian. I am too Yellow to be White.

They nod with 'empathy'. They say..."Yeah that sucks" and then politely look away until it is appropriate to comment on the weather or what's on TV.

I think my soul is filled with a lonely longing because their silence is deafening.

Life - Culture and Games

Life - Culture and Games

I've been thinking and writing a lot of late about the intersection of culture and games. It has been a lasting series of thoughts upon which I have many ideas.

I've been working on Wire Run, my latest universe on and off for years. This is our second foray into it for the RPG table. This 'campaign', I have been working on for about 6 months. During my time creating it the first time, I spent a lot of time building my own lore. Basically taking what was existing, and doing my best to both remove problematic parts of what I perceive as being at odds with a modern Sci-Fi, and also laying foundation work for a sandbox world to play in.

That first campaign was set in Vancouver, about 60 years into the future. It was easy. From a design perspective, it was a simple crutch. The players were familiar with the locations, if not the history. They understood the geography, the places, the people. They know what it means to live in a slum section on the lower East Side. They know what the travel time is between Downtown and North Van. They have a cultural appreciation for what it means to live in Surrey, vs Kits.

It was so easy.

Politics - Student's March

Politics - Student's March

Explain to me what is today, because this is the only thing I can see:

Thousands, thousands and thousands of students who rose up in protest.

Maybe a million. Maybe millions.

Students, teenagers, CHILDREN. Protesting their right to live. To draw attention to the fact that adults have failed them. Adults have failed them again, and again, for 19 years. Since a fateful day in April, 1999, when 13 people died and Americans did nothing.

The pattern repeats itself. Over and over, until Sandy Hook. 20 children are shot and die. Their ages are between 6 and 7.

America does nothing.

Stoneman Douglas literally one month ago. Another 17 students are shot dead, another 17 wounded. In the face of despair, and the agony of what they shared, those same teenagers now are demanding MORE. They are rising up, they are angry and RIGHTLY so.

They have been failed, and they recognize it. You have a country where a dude tried to blow up his shoes and now we all check our shoes before we go on an airplane. But the response to a gun in a school was to arm every teacher.

No one believes it. The NRA has become an organization lobby for the profit of itself and to maintain its stranglehold grip on power by any means necessary.

Including sacrificing children.

Street - One

Street - One

She is in the market, two spread out blankets in front of her, books, and carvings. Corner spot, ideal. Room for people to stand or kneel down, look at things, pick up books. One fold out chair, come and sit. Emily. Her name, is Emily. Clear day, afternoon in December. Teenager runs up. She doesn't know him. Drops to his knees right in front of her.

"Your son went down. On the corner. Howe. Paramedics with him now. They don't think he's doing so well."

She gets up, hustles the two blocks to the corner where flashing lights and paramedics are feeding her boy oxygen through a mask.

Six days in a hospital she holds his hands.

Cold hands.

As his organs fail.

On the sixth day. They take him off the machines. He never wakes. They shake their heads. He never woke up. She never got to look him in the eye again.

Carfentanil. A new street opioid, fifteen times more potent than fentanyl which is the buzz word on every media person's lips.

You want to talk about how do we make lives better?

Here.

There are six overdoses a day.

Fifty deaths a week.

They're dying there on the streets.

Dying invisibly while you fight your war. While you talk about money. While you talk about power. While you talk about equality.

Her son's name was Sean. He sold cigarettes on a street corner and he slipped through the cracks invisible.

He was aboriginal. He left behind a wife and a child.

He wasn't anyone. And he isn't anyone anymore.

It's not safe.

Fuck you.

Help, Me.

Writing - Pizza The Great Equilizer

Writing - Pizza The Great Equilizer

A neat piece of writing from muddyescapeartist:

One of the things I love about pizza besides it's deliciousness is that it levels the playing field. Everybody eats pizza. Well, ok, not EVERYbody, but damn near. As a driver, you are welcomed to people's homes - poor homes, rich homes, your run-of-the-mill upper lower middle class homes, hotels, businesses - and greeted by all types of people - drunk people, happy people, stingy bastards, students, the elderly, the insane, the kindred spirits, animal lovers, athletes, the infirm, and those people that always try to get a chuckle out of you in their two-minute window at the front door.

So often these people get reduced down to a number, specifically the dollar amount that they tip, but these people are beautiful! Even the shitty ones, the ones that pay in exact change, the sad ones that are trying to fill a void in their soul with a tasty midnight pie.... these people are just a microcosm of our society, a near perfect statistical representation of the world that we live in, and yes, I love them! I still bitch about them at times (who doesn't?), but without all the crazies, wouldn't our lives be a whole lot duller?

Perhaps not all delivery areas are as diverse, but I've had the pleasure of taking pizzas into lakeside mega-mansions, ethnically populated trailer parks, backwoods cabins, sprawling apartment complexes and the ticky-tacky houses of working-class suburbia. I am humbled to be given a glimpse into how the other sort live. Sometimes I am frightened, other times awed, by my experiences on the road. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

I have never felt as connected to a town as I do after I have delivered there for a while. You get to know the best and worst of your community. You get to feed the hungry masses. You get to have funny, awkward, creepy, angry, and drug-induced interactions with people that you would never have chosen to socialize with otherwise. You may never be 'equal' to your customer, but you are given a small window, a few minutes, to prove your worth in some seemingly insignificant but potentially positive way.

Don't miss your chance!

Society - Wesly Hall

Society - Wesley Hall

Wesley Hall wrote the following...rant?  Essay?  Reflection?  I don't even know, but it's incredibly eye-opening.  A part of it is of course in response to the Zimmerman/Trayvon racial controversy that has been taking the states by storm.  But it also provides a deep and somewhat chilling look at how our society views itself, and what we need to grapple with.

Gaming - Feminism

Gaming - Feminism



Yesterday, my friend Elizabeth Ludwig and I had a long conversation over facebook about feminism and video games. Sort of touched off by a particular event in relation to E3, but also in a broader sense about the misconceptions we had with each others' perceptions. In the end, I pretty much talked myself into capitulating with her position, but it makes for interesting reading.



Be warned, it IS a facebook conversation, and therefore very ill-written, at least on my part.