Backseat Gaming, and why I hate it

(I know, this is a mostly asexual blog, but I'm also a nerd and a gamer, so put up with it)

Back seat gaming has got to be one of the most annoying things someone can do, yes? That a physical person in the room with you who is (usually) just watching you play the game can do, at least. For anyone who's got not a clue about what I'm talking about, firstly you are either not a gamer, never play around other people ever, or so goddamn lucky, and secondly, it's when someone who is not playing the game with you tells/tries to tell you what to do in a game, without you asking or indicating you want their help. E.g. - "Please tell me how to shoot a portal on that wall" "Well you have to go over there and portal up to there and then..." is not back seat gaming. You have asked for help and they are giving it to you. Back seat gaming is when you're playing a game and someone watching starts saying "No No No you're doing it wrong you have to go over there there's no point going there to solve the puzzle you just flip the middle leaver twice and the right one once..." and so forth. You did not ask for help, and they have stopped you working things out for yourself and/or discouraged you from exploring.

Most of the time, it's not an intentionally malicious thing - the back seat gamer in question probably thinks they're helping you. However, I tend to find it's like someone who tries to 'help me' read a book by telling me the entire plot when I'm three pages in. It totally spoils the book - now I know what's going to happen, so nothing's surprising. A game example is like if you were playing Portal, and someone walked by and told you how to solve the puzzle just as you walked into the test chamber. More than slightly annoying.

Except with games, I find myself even more annoyed by back seat gamers, because they tend to make me feel like I've cheated -I get no sense of accomplishment from doing exactly what someone else told me to do. It just followed instructions, I didn't work it out for myself or have the chance to try before deciding I needed help.

And, I find, I get really annoyed and kinda hurt because it feels like they're telling me I'm not good enough, not smart enough, to play a goddamn game. I feel like they're saying "Wow, you suck, here, let me help you because you'd never be able to work that out on your own, and there's no point in letting you try because you won't be able to do it". It makes me feel like they think I'm not capable.It makes me feel doubted. And I get enough of that in real life - I really don't have any reason to have to put up with it while I'm just trying to enjoy myself in a hobby.

"best friends"

As I have mentioned before, I don’t like the phrase “Best Friend(s)”.

I don’t like it because it seems to place (or imply) a hierarchical structure on friendship that I really don’t like. It seems to imply that you have (a) best friend(s), and then you have ‘lesser’ friends. I have very close friends, and then I have less close friends, but they are not inherently ‘better’ than each other. I am just closer to some of them, for various reasons.*

The phrase also seems to have a rigid structure of friendship implied, as if you have a friendship that ‘levels up’ once you have completed certain actions.** However, running with the gaming metaphor here, it is as if you can only have so many friendships of each ‘level’, and once you have reached the set amount you have no more slots for friends.***

Society seems to say that you cannot increase your number of friendship slots, you may only have certain people occupying certain slots (other gender? Restricted to level  ~4000 and below. Significant age difference? Level ~3500 and below. etc), and you must start all friendships at lvl 0, working your way up lineally to whatever level you attain. You may not skip levels, you may not do several at once, and you may not pass go and collect $200.

And I’m not cool with that. Everyone should feel free to have as many friends as they want to have, and not feel pressured to only have so many “best friends”/friends/etc. And friendships, relationships in general, don’t progress linearly. No two relationships are the same, so why do we act like they are?

Now, I’m not saying that everyone should have loads of friends. I certainly don’t, and I try not to be hypocritical. I’m saying that the amount of friends you want to have is the right amount of friends for you. If you want to have 50000 close friends, that’s really cool. If you want to have 2? That’s also really cool.

*This is why I use ‘close friends’. It does not presume a value judgement on either my friends or our relationship, but instead vaugly quantifies how close we are as friends. (think of it as plotting places on a map. Place A is closer to place B than it is to place Z. This does not mean that place A’s relationship is ‘better’ than place A and place Z’s, it just means that place A and place B are closer. (except that the metaphorical land distance is emotional distance, and there’s about a million other axes on which distance is measured)

**knowing each other’s names? Lvl 1. Knowing each other well enough that you can interpret their eyebrow wiggles into the entire English dictionary? Lvl 8002.

***in this metaphor, you’d only have room for one “best friend” (lvl >9000), and then more room for each successive ‘lower level’ friend. (i.e, you can have ~2 friends of ‘level’ 8999, and then 3 of lvl 700, and then 5 of lvl 600, and so on and so forth until you reach lvl 1, which would be acquaintances or something. You can have millions of those.

DnD

Tonight I played my first proper session of D&D with my group.  (Our DM runs a blog chronicling our adventures, go read it!)

It was awesome fun, even if I'm now infected with filth fever (got bitten by a dire rat. Along with our bard, who is a shardmind* and thus none of us can understand how the hell he's infected.)

But I want to talk about the gender distribution of our group and our characters, which is something I find really cool.

There's 6 of us playing (or will be, once our cleric recovers from surgery), plus our DM (who is S, for regular readers of this blog).  So, we've got fairly large group, most of whom have either never played or have played little.

The gender distribution of our group is 4 guys to 2 girls, plus our DM is also male. Considering the stereotypical group set up (mostly all male, maybe one female at the best of times), we're doing pretty well. I'm the only girl actually able to play at the moment (again. cleric's in the hospital), but once the cleric's joined us it'll be a little less unevenly gendered. (Not that this is actually a problem. The guys are all really awesome people, ones whom I'd be comfortable being the only girl in the group with.)


Anyway, the group's gender division is not the thing which I find really, really, really cool about it. What I find cool is the character’s gender divisions.

We've got a male shardmind bard, played by a guy (F), a male human fighter, played by a guy(T), a male halfling rouge, played by a guy (M), a female halfling wizard, played by a girl (me), and our cleric has neither a race nor a gender yet (or even a name. She just knows she's going to be a cleric).

We also have an undecided/gender neutral dragonborn sorcerer, played by a guy (W).

The fact that we can have a non-binary character, that no-one raised the "but that's not possible" argument , is fucking awesome. Yeah, we've had a few "too afraid to look" jokes. But none of them were serious. Not once was it actually doubted that someone (or in this case, some dragonborn) could not know their gender or not be either male or female. It wasn't even an issue. It was just "This is my character. They don't have a gender." "Alright, mine is male."

And for a group of people who, as far as I'm aware, have mostly little to no knowledge of queer issues and/or gender issues (our DM has some, as does W), that's fucking awesome. The fact that they could accept someone, albeit a fictional someone, not having a standard gender, gives me hope that someday the whole world will be just as accepting as they are.



*basically a swarm of living crystal, who takes humanoid form. He's jokingly called the group's pet rock.

30 Day Asexuality Challenge; Days 14 - 17

And, having finally had access to a computer, have the last 4 updates at once.

14. Tell us about a time you met another asexual, whether in real life or online.

The first time I met another ace offline, it was a friend’s girlfriend. A group of us were watching a couple of Ghibli movies together at a local cinema, and so we didn’t really talk much.

Unfortunately for my friend and his girlfriend, she worked out she was actually* ace after they started dating each other, and they’ve since stopped dating (not because of her being ace, but because of other, somewhat related issues.)

Her identifying as ace before they started dating also meant that said friend didn’t believe me** when I came out to him.

Funnily enough, he’s now one of my biggest allies.

15. Your favourite asexual character/celebrity/person.

The 11^th doctor, because Matt Smith said it himself.

Favourite celebrity is Emilie Autumn, because she makes awesome music.

16. Your favourite “asexual” book (as in, sex and/or romance are not the main focus).

Uhhh...thinking through all the books, romance tends to be, if not the main point, a fairly major one. Hmmm... favourite book would have to be Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

17. Your favourite “asexual” movie.

That rules out nearly all Disney movies immediately.

So....movies that don’t have romance as a major plot point. Surprisingly hard to think of one. (For those playing at home, try listing as many movies as you can that have no romantic relationships in them. It’s bloody difficult.)

So, anyway. Favourite ace movie would have to be... Watership Down.

*She’d identified as an aromantic ace for three years, then started dating him, and then realised she was actually a heteroromantic ace.

**If I’m remembering correctly, he said something along the lines of “(girlfriend’s name) thought she was asexual, and now she’s dating me. I think all asexuals actually just haven’t dated the right person yet. Besides, everyone’s got a partner out there somewhere.”

30 Day Asexuality Challenge; Day 8

8. Do you believe there should be asexual pride? What do you imagine it being like?

I think there not only should be Ace pride, but that there already is. (we’re just less noticeable than some other pride groups. We tend to blend into the geeks, mostly.)

I would like it to be more visible though. I’d like to be able to wear the ace flag on my bag and not have people assume it’s just “a pretty pattern”, I’d love for people to know what the black ring on my finger is actually about, and I’d just generally like to see greater recognition of ace symbols and ace-ness in general. I'd love to set off people's 'acedar', instead of setting off their 'gaydar'

I imagine being able to get (as in, buy from someone around me, as opposed to either over the internet, from the other side of the world, or having to make it myself) stuff with ace symbols on it/incorporated, I imagine being able to make ace jokes and having a better than none chance of a random stranger get them, I imagine future aces growing up and having the words to describe themselves.

I imagine us not being invisible.

30 Day Asexuality Challenge; Day 7

7. Who’s your favourite Doctor? (Or, do you have a favourite asexual character?)

Because this is my blog, I’m going to selectively interpret the question and answer both bits.

Because I think some people reading this blog need re-assurance I’m not actually mopey all the time, and because this means I get to spam you dear reader(s) with pictures.

Thus:

My favourite doctors are the Tenth Doctor:

And The Eleventh Doctor:

(Although I have a soft spot for the Fourth Doctor, and his awesome scarf.

Look at it!)

And my favourite character who I assume to be asexual (and is human) is Sherlock Holmes.

(all incarnations, though again I have a soft spot for the newest incarnation:

(omnomnom, well cut suits)

And the 2009 movie version

And the literary version (no pic because uh, yeah. Literary.) 

to finish off this update, have a dalek falling off a wall.

Because it's hilarious to watch.