Deus Ex Machinatio

Heroes: Kate Harding

If you haven't heard of Kate Harding, boy howdy are you missing out. Ms. Harding is a blogger and activist devoted to the shocking idea that fat people should be treated like intelligent human beings, and not stupid sacks of moral failure. It's an idea whose time has definitely come.

She founded a blog, Shapely Prose, some years ago, that has been instrumental in forming a lot of my current thinking on feminism, fat, prejudice, and self-acceptance. This was my gateway to such earth-shaking ideas as "Eating a cupcake is not a morally charged act," and "Women should not be obligated to look hot for the benefit of random strangers." Through her blog I learned that people in the overweight BMI category are actually the ones likely to live the longest, and got some amazing perspective on what BMI looks like in practice. It's eyebrow-raising.

That blog is still active, though these days it's run largely by her equally witty co-bloggers; Harding herself has been busy using her pen for the forces of good on such topics as Roman Polanski, plus-size model Crystal Renn, and cyberbullying. Oh, and: She's got a book out.

Kate Harding, y'all. She's smart and funny. She tells it like it is and backs it up with science. She, too, isn't afraid of any consequences for sticking up for herself and what she believes in. 

This post is a part of Heroes Week 2010. Please post a link to a post about your own heroes in the open thread!

See You in Austin!

I am thrilled, boggled, amazed, and other combinations of excited-plus-surprised to say that I'm in the first batch of speakers for SXSW this year, announced today. My topic is ARGs and Women: Moving Beyond the Hot Brunette, and I find the more I think about this subject, the more I have to say about it. 

This will also be my first time at SXSW, so I feel like I need some mentoring. Anyone have any SXSW-related advice for me?

Augmented Reality & the iPhone

Augmented reality still has the aura to it of a far-future technology, something eternally five, ten, even twenty years away. But the truth is that we have the tech right now. I'm sure you've all seen GE's fun augmented reality demonstration. Or maybe Hidden Park. Or how about Kweekies? That's just a trickle compared to the flood we'll be seeing by this time next year.

AR hasn't taken the center stage yet, to be sure; but since it's inevitably coming, this means we're in for this decade's biggest and most significant format war. Forget HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray; who cares about dead media when digital distribution is the future anyway? No, the next big format war is one of platform, and has more in common with Xbox vs. PlayStation, or Mac vs. Windows.

A cabal of high-profile AR developers and researchers have come together to fire the first big shot across the bow in this looming battle. They've written an open letter to Apple asking the company to open up the iPhone SDK to provide developers with a public API to manipulate live video in real time. This is a crucial tool that would make the iPhone a powerhouse for mobile augmented reality applications. If you can't access live video, the device just can't access reality in order to augment it, so to speak.

I don't know if Apple will do it; they're a company that take their walled gardens very seriously. But hey, Apple, I think it would be a foolish business move not to. Developers are on your doorstep begging for the chance to make your device the go-to platform for mobile computing -- and you can give it to them now, not five years from now. How can you possibly turn that down?

Tribute to Dave Szulborski

A moment of silence to mourn the passing of Dave S., game designer, author, and all-around warm, wonderful human being. 

We'll all miss you. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, there's more information here.)

Racebending

I've talked about gender issues here before, but really, all elements of social justice are important to me. Gender, gender identity, sexuality, and of course good old-fashioned race exist in a dazzling variety of combinations, and they all deserve respectful representation in media. This is something I learned how to do at the knee of Naomi Alderman, and I hope to continue it as long as I work (which will probably be as long as there is breath in my body). Perplex City was a place where men and women existed in equal numbers in authority roles; where gay relationships -- and, yes, marriages -- were celebrated as much as hetero; where skins and faces and hair came in all colors, textures, and configurations, and not much was made of it. Not bad for a quietly but profoundly xenophobic city-state, don't you think?

Around my house, we're all big fans of the cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender. (Bear with me, I'll tie it all together in a minute.) We watched every episode, bought the video games, evangelized to our friends, and in general were the kind of consumers that any IP property longs to have. When we found out there was going to be a live-action film, we were cautious but excited; when we found out M. Night Shyamalan was on board to direct, we were frankly a bit skeptical, but still willing to give it a shot out of sheer loyalty to the franchise.  

Why did we love this show so much? It's hard to say. The writing was tight, surprisingly deep and sophisticated for a children's cartoon. Avatar actually examines the themes of good and evil at some length, and there is a whole season establishing that the people living in a nation with aggressive leadership are still just regular (and sympathetic) people. We loved the research that went into it -- four distinct styles of martial arts for the four types of 'bending.' We loved the original and heavily Asian-inspired world and aesthetic. I particularly loved that there are girls in active roles, both as heroes and villains. The show was like a breath of fresh air, even/especially to withered cynics like me who despair of getting my girls out of the pink ghetto of consumerism and incredibly strict gender roles. Last year, my daughter chose karate over ballet, and I'm sure Avatar influenced her decision.

But the news out of The Last Airbender film is bad, and it keeps getting worse. The problem? Casting.

See, in Avatar-the-cartoon, there simply isn't a white face on the show. It's all shades of brown and yellow. You see thinly-veiled renderings of Inuit and Chinese cultures, very specifically, with the people from them colored to match. I loved this to pieces (I was shocked to find this show was made in America, and not an import). The world is a big place, my friends, and I'd like my children to grow up knowing that not everybody looks like them, and that's OK. More important, I'd like all of those children in the world who are brown and yellow (and black and red, too) to get to see people on the screen like themselves, who are good people doing great things. And then the film announced who it had cast for the leading roles. And by now you see where this is going: They were white, every one of 'em. Nary even a suntan in the bunch. That's standard-op Hollywood racism right there; it happened with Earthsea, too.

Now, this was pretty awful, and people were justifiably upset about it, so the powers that be behind the film decided on a change of course and recast a role to a minority actor -- one. You know who he plays? Zuko, the bad guy. So suddenly a show that was all about the strength and beauty of Asian cultures and the interplay between them has turned into a movie where three white folks are battling a brown menace. I'm sure I don't need to draw you a diagram to explain why I find this problematic. This is just as awful as if they had kept the all-white casting -- and arguably it's a lot worse.

Fortunately, there are actions you can take to try to get the studio's head on straight. For a more thorough explanation of the problem here, including some historical information on screen shots, please see Racebending. They have a fantastic list of resources on things you can do to protest, from signing a petition and joining a Facebook group to writing to Paramount Pictures to contacting local media. 

Let's make some noise over this, people, and see if we can get it fixed. I'd really hate to have to skip the movie over this, but if nothing changes, me and a lot of other people will be staying home when it comes out.

Speaking of Creative Heroes...

I'm developing something of a wicked girl-crush on Amanda Palmer. It started with the ukelele Creep performance, which is mind-blowingly effective.

Now look, I've been spending a lot of time in a cave making games lo these past several months, and even before that, let's face it, I'm just not hip to the cool kids and their music the way I used to be. Scratch that: I've never really been hip to the cool kids and their music. So I didn't know much of anything about Amanda Palmer before now.

But that ukelele and that low, lovely voice and, most of all, the incredible creative vision that led her to put the whole performance together tickled me in the "you're seeing something special" sense, so I've been looking around a little more.

What I've found is someone to admire. Someone who pursues her craft with abandon and without fear, stays true to her creative vision, and keeps strong her principles. Seriously, check out the Chogyam Trungpa quote on her MySpace page and try to tell me that isn't the most awesomest thing ever with a straight face. You won't be able to.

Damn, I want to be Amanda Palmer when I grow up, too. I'd better get cracking on that, huh?

Using Games to Make Everything Better

In this season of high political drama, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth going on over the U.S. budget and economy. I know many of us have thought if we had a crack at it, by gum, we could balance that there budget. C'mon, guys, tell me it isn't just me. Hubris? Maybe, maybe not. But now is your chance to try!

Welcome to Budget Hero, a game from American Public Media that lets you try your hand at balancing the budget, slashing the national debt, and saving our sorry buttocks from a looming financial armageddon. Check it out and see if you have what it takes. My takeaway from it: Some pretty comprehensive tax reform looks necessary to do... well... much of anything differently. Fascinating stuff.

(Link found via Consumerist, and thanks to them for covering it.)