Airplanes! Gen Con! History!

Man, I cannot stop using exclamation points today. Must be the caffeine.

If you have no idea what I’ve been up to this month: I’m kicking off an oral history of women in tabletop games and live-action roleplaying. I’ll be spending the next 12-14 months interviewing women for the project. There’s a starter post about the project, and a GoFundMe to help me cover my travel expenses. I’ve managed to swing tickets to and from Gen Con, and already had a pass. I still need to cover meals, my hotel room, and misc transport (like taxis.) Gen Con 2013 is the first “away” trip to do on site interviews.

Now that I know I have the flights to get to and from Gen Con, I’m starting to schedule the interviews I’ll be doing at the con. If you self-identity as a woman, and either work with or enjoy playing tabletop games, and/or LARP, I’d love to talk to you. Drop me a line via my contact page, and we’ll see what we can get on the books.

Thank you so much, to the people who have helped me get this far, and the people who have already said yes. I couldn’t do this without you.

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Safta

Gram Joanna

I bought an Olympus Pearlcorder S700 in college. I’d wanted to record lectures onto micro-cassette, but hardly ever used it.

 

The first interview I recorded on it was with my Grandmother, Joanna. We talked about her parents, of how she would watch her father light the sabbath candles on Friday night, keeping the curtains of their trailer closed. The curtains were keeping the secret of their heritage safe from the rest of the carnival which they were a part of in the years before World War II. She told me more than I had ever known about my heritage before that afternoon. She spoke about her family, my family, and through her words I could glimpse our past. Her father was an investigative journalist,  and photographer – he captured my imagination when she brought him to life for me. I’ve leaned on the gifted memory of him for years, now, trusting I’d find my way, maybe better than he had.

Her descriptions of her first husband, my mother’s father, filled in gaps I had labored with for years. He had died decades before I was born, when my mother was only a child.

Gram gave me so much that day, while we hulled strawberries and the tape recorder hissed, almost muffled by the sound of the fans, which alleviated some of the unremitting desert heat.

Pearlcorder

That afternoon was the last time I ever saw her in person, and the last day I would ever speak to her. She died a month later on her birthday: June 16th. She died at home, in the very room we spoke in, surrounded only by her children. Her cancer had metastasized and spread swiftly, brutally, robbing her of speech and breath and ultimately, life. I sat on the floor after my mother called to tell me she had died, weeping inconsolably as I wailed the Mourner’s Kaddish.

I had seized that moment the month before, to ask questions, and learned things that would have died with her if I hadn’t asked. Her final stories, and that tape, gave me solace in my grief. I’ve moved eight times in the intervening years, and somewhere, somehow, I lost the tape. I have learned since then to be very careful with history, and how to keep it safe. To safeguard audio and transcripts so others can learn.

I live in desperate hope that someday I will find that tape, and hear her voice again.

I’m raising money to go to Gen Con this summer, to conduct interviews for an oral history of women in games. To support it, visit my GoFundMe page.

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The Missing Piece

This is a guest post from historian and peer Elsa E. Sjunneson-Henry.
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“History is also everyone talking at once, multiple rhythms being played simultaneously. The events and people we write about did not happen in isolation but in dialogue with a myriad of other people and events. In fact, at any given moment, millions of people are all talking at once. As historians we try to isolate one conversation and to explore it, but the trick is then how to put the conversation in a context which makes evident it’s dialogue with so many others – how to make this one lyric stand alone and at the same time be in connection with all the other lyrics being sung.”
~ Elsa Barkley Brown

This quote illustrates perfectly why I am a women’s historian, and why I am passionate about telling the stories of not just men – but women.

The collection of oral histories is something I began doing professionally 3 years ago, but I had volunteered before that. I believed strongly that the collection of history written by those who lived it illustrates a more perfect song of history.

Historians get distracted. There is so much that has come before us, and so much that has happened at the same time as something else – it is easy to lose a group in the shuffle.

For much of the written history of, say, the United States, women’s stories have been told less often than those of men. Many will tell you that this is simply because women didn’t have anything important to do, perhaps they will tell you that it doesn’t matter what someone did at the hearthstone of a home. But those stories are just as much a part of the history of our country as any other.

I’ve heard it said that being a gender studies/women’s history scholar means that I’m a bleeding heart liberal who just wants to feel better about what they do with their life.

But they are dead wrong.

If I didn’t do the work I do, stories would get lost, peoples histories would be swept away by the thump of an easier to study drum.

I cannot imagine a world in which Abigail Adamses letters to her husband were not archived. I cannot imagine a world in which Eleanor Roosevelt did not make a difference. I cannot imagine a place in which we do not recognize Jackie Onassis as a fashion icon.

Women have made deep impacts not only on our fashion and cultural history, not only on our social histories, but on our political and military histories. Without their stories we’re missing an enormous piece of the puzzle – and I for one will not allow that to stand.

This is why I run the Burlesque Oral History Project. This is why Lillian is doing Makers, Schemers and Dreamers – that’s why all of us who believe in the preservation of history should be writing; not just about the men who are visible in our histories, but about the women of all abilities and colors and religions who have made our world richer by changing it.

Elsa E. Sjunneson-Henry
Feminist Sonar - Founder & Editor
Historian, Performer, Editor
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To support the Makers, Schemers and Dreamers oral history trip to GenCon, you can find the GoFundMe page here.

 

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Why an Oral History of Women in Games?

I’ve been asked that question a lot in the past few days. My answer is relatively simple.

Because history needs recording.

That’s why I want to chronicle women’s lives in tabletop and LARP games as an oral history. I believe that knowledge of women’s history, contributions, and life stories should be preserved.

When you employ oral history to illustrate how culture and the world evolves, you make that illustration in an immediate way. You offer names, faces and stories that can be connected with. Empathized with. By personifying history, you take it out of a pure academic frame. But that doesn’t mean a loss of form, or absence of standards. Oral histories are collected with academic and journalistic rigueur. What that means is that people being interviewed  by me can expect that journalistic ethics and oral historian best practices inform the project, to make clear the universal benefit of its output, and the fair, compassionate treatment of those participating.

When Makers, Schemers and Dreamers is done, which will be many months and interviews from now, there will be a whole new phase of work. Transcriptions, audio cleaning, and making sure all the materials are accessible to as wide an audience as possible. To learn about the lives and contributions of other human beings is to better understand and share the world with each other. That’s what I believe history can do.

If you would like to be interviewed, please use my contact page to get in touch. To support my GoFundMe, which will pay for me to conduct interviews at GenCon 2013, you can find that here.

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Books I Built On

There are three books that influenced my interview style early on, as a journalist and researcher.

Elements of Crisis Intervention. James Greenstone, Sharon C. Leviton.

Greenstone and Leviton’s short but packed manual came out in 1993. I’d read the book for the first time around 2001. I was surrounded by friends in crisis constantly, and my grandmother loaned the book to me to help. Being able to tell where someone being upset ends and in crisis starts is valuable, way beyond when I interview people. But it helps me see red flags that I may be approaching a topic I didn’t know was difficult for someone to talk about. It gives me things to watch for that could be my cue to suggest talking to a professional counselor. When I was doing health beat articles that had me talking to patients and not researchers, I leaned heavily on what I picked up from this book. I had crisis line training before reading the book, and picked up other crisis training later in life. But this book was a big help as starting points go.

In terms of peer work: Journalists are not a substitute for a trained psychologist, not even for each other. But if more of us knew the signs of burnout, post-traumatic stress and decreasing psychological health, we’d be able to be there for each other as part of a support system.

Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Valerie Raleigh Yow.

I didn’t know how much I’d love this book. This book was the Bible in my college oral histories course. It was a sink-or-swim, application as soon as our instructor introduced new material kind of class. I loved it. In Yow’s book, she gives you a very clear guide on your duties as a researcher to your informants. If the word flags word for you, I raised my eyebrows the first time I read that. But it makes sense. When you interview someone, they’re informing you. In the case of oral histories involving non-dominant cultures, that’s where it really resonated for me. The people I was interviewing were my informants, teaching me about a culture I didn’t know, or only knew a small part of. When I was interviewing men about their experiences with mental health, they were showing me something I would have never experienced or seen without their help and information. The debt we owe to the people willing to speak on record is huge.

The other thing I walked away from the book with was an extra way I had to be mindful, particularly if my informants came from a cultural background I shared. It’s easy to get “inside baseball” with someone from your neighborhood, occupation, religion. But disparities of knowledge exist within and outside those cultural connections. Researchers have to walk a very specific line, where they make history accessible to those outside it, honor the experiences and knowledge of their informants, all while never over or under explaining the subject at hand.

Covering Violence A Guide to Ethical Reporting About Victims and Trauma. William Coté, Roger Simpson.

I came into this book with crisis training, crisis hotline training, a pile of psych credits from college, and I still learned. The skills I had from a crisis services provider standpoint were not a perfect match to the ones I’d need as a journalist. In many ways, those skills have at times given me conflicting feelings.

In Covering Violence, a strong ethical grounding is present in all chapters. Conduct to be observed on the scene, how to respect the needs of emergency responders, the legal places you’re allowed to go, recognizing trauma in yourself and others, multimedia content (when and what to take photos/video of), how trauma works on the human body, how to report on rape, handling stories that involve children, all that and more are Covering Violence’s toolkit for doing your job with empathy and great care on the worst day of your informant’s life. There are case studies of articles that were done with the intent to minimize harm to the survivors, but to inform the public. There are essays paired with them by the original journalists who broke their stories, explaining what it was like.

Was it upsetting and difficult to read at times? Yes. I also think it would be that way for others who are empathetic, not just survivors of traumatic incidents.

To know how to report humanely and with empathy, this is the kind of book people should read. To understand trauma from that context, as a member of the press there to inform the public, to add to knowledge and the greater good of the community. Journalists are not counselors, but that does not preclude them from being sensitive to the pain of others. The same goes for researchers.

I’m raising funds to collect an oral history of women in tabletop and live-action gaming. You can learn more about the project here.

 

 

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Make, Scheme and Dream

In January, I asked for help getting to California, to cover the incredible work being done at NASA’s Dryden facilities.

This August, I’ll meet with women during GenCon. I’ll be interviewing them about their lives as gamers, GMs, and game creators.  But I need help getting there to make that happen. The groundwork for my oral history of women in tabletop gaming has been over a year in the making. I started planning for the project in 2011, even though I knew I didn’t have the resources yet. I have the non-monetary skills and resources now, but I need a little help with the next step.

Makers, Schemers and Dreamers  is something I want to take on the road, and GenCon is the maiden voyage. Should the trip go well, I’ll know to start taking the project on the road, to collect a history we may lose if it goes uncollected. If an oral history chronicling the history of women in tabletop gaming intrigues you, check out the GoFundMe page for more information about what I want to do, how to help, or how to volunteer to be interviewed.

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Reading Allowed

I have fantastic news! In June, I’ll be part of the author lineup for a University Bookstore Reading Allowed event. Jennifer Brozek, Kat Richardson and I will all be reading from new/upcoming releases of ours. Mine is going to be an excerpt from the Guide to the Village by the Sea. If you want to check out the reading, details are below for your edification.

Thursday, June 27th, 7:00 P.M.

4326 University Way NE, Seattle, WA 98105

Since the Guide won’t be in print till later this year, it won’t be on hand to purchase. I’m still happy to sign anything you have that I did contribute to, as a writer or as an editor. I’m also willing to sign autograph books, cocktail napkins, and other treasurable random items.

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Twitter Jail

Yesterday I had two laptops open during the Soyuz capsule journey back into our atmosphere, bringing the two astronauts and one cosmonaut of Expedition 35 back to Earth. One laptop had the NASA stream open. On the other, I had open

double laptops

  • My main Twitter feed
  • My interactions
  • Canadian Space Agency Twitter
  • 3+ NASA Twitter accounts
  • Twitter searches for: ISS, Soyuz, Exp35

In addition to miscellaneous news websites, a world time map, a world map, and a number of different Twitters for space tweeps around the globe. I tweet a lot during big events like yesterday because a lot of people on my Twitter feed don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to be newsies. They want good, solid news, heart warming tweets, Twitter-sized wisdom, and bites of science.

So I landed in Twitter jail (exceeding the Twitter API limit) while tweeting

  • What I could see/observe on the NASA live feed
  • Answering questions
  • Retweeting  information
  • Doing my very best to be a useful, entertaining science nerd

Turns out that 1000 tweets a day/100 tweets an hour is really easy to hit. Thankfully, my sojourn in Twitter jail was short. I was able to return to tweeting in the final 10 minutes or so before the Soyuz capsule landed, but every time I go to Twitter jail I think about what and how I’ve tweeted. I’m learning to be judicious, and prioritize information, which is fabulous. But I still wish Twitter jail, like Monopoly, had a get out free card. Till then, I continue to try  learning how to live tweet without exceeding the limit. If you too land in Twitter jail someday: ease your finger off the send button for a bit. Get a drink, and ask a friend or two to tweet dependable alternative feeds for people to follow for continued coverage. Keep on reading as things unfold, and test the door on Twitter jail after some time has passed. If you’re sprung, try to keep the volume of tweets down, lest you return to the electronic cell you so recently vacated.

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Twine and Failure

I made a Twine in April. If you don’t know, Twine is a neat little program that helps you snap a story together in a frame that closely resembles the Choose Your Own Adventure books of my (and many of your own) childhood(s). I want to start with things I fucked up.

 

  1.  There are more than 12 entries that end in “dead ends,” and I didn’t link back to earlier parts of their respective plot trees (the path of pages to hit the dead end) and left no sign that these dead ends were indeed deliberate.
  2.  I broke the Rewind function on my Twine.
  3. I managed to somehow orphan a crucial page from the rest of the Twine. This means that when people playtested it for me, they were missing a vital statement to understand the end of that plot line.

 

I’ll probably post it up at some point so others can poke around, but it is about my past mental health and rather lacking in the sugar coating department. So, it’s not a Twine to play when you want to feel good. I keep resisting saying “I made a game” and saying “I made a Twine,” because I’m still not sure how I feel about having the ability to make a game for others to explore things like my mental health.

Things I didn’t fuck up:

I built a Twine. My initial thoughts about that:

  • It may not work well, it may have narrative/artistic issues that can be debated, but I built the damn thing. And that’s a start to making more.
  • I couldn’t run Twine on my main laptop (in a bit of a hurry right now, will try and drop specs back in later) but it could run well on my other laptop. It’s a very simple visual interface, and the Help file isn’t too opaque in terms of usefulness. Since there are so many people using Twine, it was also fairly easy to Google things I needed to know that weren’t in the Help file. It was my first time making something with so many interlinking pages (well over 60) and the way Twine tracks those connections visually as well as showing all outgoing/incoming links for each page was a huge help to keeping track.
  • I did the entire thing in Twine, no other programs, over the course of a few hours. When I build my next Twine I may see about doing the bulk of the writing before hand. I don’t know if there’s any way to do it that isn’t as equally messy as writing it all in Twine was. But when I experiment again, I’ll have hopefully found out.
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Convention Book: Progenitors

Can you guess what today is?

Today is release day! Convention Book: Progenitors is for use with Mage: The Ascension. It’s an updated look at the Progenitors Convention, the brave souls of the Technocratic Union that administer to humankind and Earth alike. You can get the book at DriveThruRPG in print or .pdf. I had an amazing time working alongside Ryan Macklin, David A. Hill Jr, Josh Roby and Jeremy Tidwell. It’s a strange new world these days for the healers of the Union, and I hope you enjoy exploring it with them.

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