Web Crush Wednesdays: Critical Role

This is it, folks; this is the last Web Crush I will ever write, because I have found the best thing on the internet and possibly the world, and I shall never care about anything else ever again.

… Okay, okay, I’m joking. Just a little bit.

In all seriousness, though, this week I want to share my love for Critical Role, a weekly internet broadcast from Geek & Sundry, which basically shows how a bunch of nerdy voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons. The series features some of the most compelling storytelling and some of the best acting I have ever seen, as well as some excellent queer characters. It’s really difficult to speak about this show—this phenomenon, really—without descending into an incoherent blubbering mess whose feelings boil down to “OMG OMG it’s amazing!”, but I shall try.

A couple vague spoilers below.

Lady Geek Girl & Friends’ Best of the Blog Thursdays

Hello, readers, we here at LGG&F have an announcement to make. Starting off 2015, we are taking a short break and will be on a hiatus for a couple days. We will return with new content January 6^th, but until then, we’re reblogging some of our favorite posts for your enjoyment. Happy New Year, and we’ll be back soon! And also, if you like what we do here and are interested in joining the LGG&F team, don’t forget to check out our Careers page and drop us a line!

Theatre Thursdays: How I Learned Representation Matters. Fiyero discovers the importance of representation through musicals.

In the Heights tells the stories of multiple people living in the NYC barrio of Washington Heights. The music, composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, is known for being one of the first hip-hop scores to find some success on Broadway. The production is also known for having a predominantly Latino cast and this is what really spoke to me.

Theatre Thursdays: Sex Work as Portrayed in Musicals. Saika takes a look at stigmatized sex workers through the lens of musicals.

As with many other forms of media, prostitution is shown as pretty much the lowest possible rung a woman can reach. Sometimes it’s used as a code word that means ‘she has a tragic backstory’; sometimes it’s used to show just how low she has been brought. Either way, if you’re a sex worker in a musical, odds are you’re gonna have a bad time.

Role Playing and Sexism

Online role playing, as a writing form, has seriously come into its own in the past decade. I remember hopping online back when everyone was congregating in AOL chatrooms and, unsurprisingly, most of the role playing I saw going on there was either animal role playing or cybering (typing out sexual acts, one of the most noted forms of role playing). These days, we’re a long way away from those chatrooms—role playing can be found anywhere with a text-based posting system and with as much diversity as all 500 or so cable channels. Especially in my life, role playing has taken a huge role in shaping my writing style as well as who I am as a person; I’ve improved in character building, I met my girlfriend and a wide majority of my friends through role playing, and I even offer to help others in building their own characters. I also help run a role playing site, so my co-admin and I experience the good as well as the bad of the community. And let me tell you, when role playing gets bad, it’s really bad.

Only 90’s kids will remember.

If one were to ask what the worst part of role playing is, or rather, what’s the worst thing to run into, I’m sure that a solid eight times out of ten, people would mention something about Mary Sues in all their overpowered glory. However, this would be incorrect. First of all, Mary Sues are fantastic and should be protected at all costs. That aside, one of the largest problems to plague the role playing community, at least from a forum-based standpoint, is the manner in which male characters are held in higher respect than female characters.