Cerise Magazine

I have always enjoyed creating villains. For me, they are the heart of a good adventure. A well-sculpted villain gives players an object to loathe and pursue over the course of many gaming sessions, or perhaps even an entire campaign. Sometimes, however, it can be difficult to devise a villain who is both a suitable antagonist for the game and genuinely threatening and dangerous. For obvious reasons, no Game Master wants all of their players’ characters dead before the adventure gets going, but if nobody feels threatened by the villain, then something’s clearly missing. One solution to this is the “Guest Star” villain.
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Many RPGs follow heroes into battle against villains with a clear, nefarious agenda. The Tales of series has frequently deviated, blurring the lines between good and evil. Legretta the Quick of Tales of the Abyss represents such non-standard opposition and brings a strong feminine presence to the game’s antagonists.
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This year, the excitement and planning for WisCon (“The World’s Leading Feminist Science Fiction Convention,” held every year over Memorial Day weekend in Madison, Wisconsin) started early for me, when several of us from Cerise and sister-site Girl-Wonder.org put in a request to throw a party at the con. We were allotted a room for Saturday evening, and the plotting for a truly excellent party – codenamed “Capes and Consoles” – began. The party wasn’t the only thing going on, of course. Here’s an overview of all the cool things I did at and leading up to WisCon:
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As we walk, the once-vampire introduces herself as Ivy, asks me a few general questions about my life, and doesn’t say much else. She is quiet, but not shy. She only talks when necessary, like a soldier. Or a commander.

We approach a cluster of cabins that, at first, look just like all the others, except that there is a pickup truck parked behind one of the cabins, piles of fabric and weapons strewn across the picnic tables, and there are groups of tired looking people dressed in black and standing and sitting on benches.

“Welcome to Monster Camp,” Ivy says.
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I first found Girls Don’t Game several months ago and was immediately drawn in by the depth and variety of posts by the five women who write for it, so I jumped at the chance to interview Monique, founder and administrator of the blog. She offers a unique perspective on video games and the online community, and I hope you enjoy her responses as much as I did.
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I’ve always wanted to be a hero. To fight for truth and justice. To inspire people. To make a difference. Clichéd, I know, but I’m not alone. I mean, why else would superhero stories be so popular, not to mention all those “generic hero saves the world” RPG plots, if not to satisfy a craving for heroism in the hearts of us “ordinary” folks?

When I was little, characters like Rydia from Final Fantasy IV (well, I knew it at Final Fantasy 2) inspired me. Rydia was powerful. When adversity struck, she struck back. Hard. Not only did she survive losing her family (heck, her whole village) and being swallowed by Leviathan as a girl, but she used those tragic events to forge herself into a strong, capable young woman. More often than not, she was the voice of reason when the people around her were falling apart (her favorite method was “tough love”). My first time through the game, I even named her after me (hey, I was like 10 at the time!). I don’t know how much of my early feminism Rydia shaped, but she certainly left a lasting impression.

As I got older, while I continued to identify with the female protagonists that I came across, I also found inspiration from real life women in the industry. Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen were my heroes growing up. I loved their games, and I loved that they were women who made games. If they made games, that meant that I could, too. At that point in my life, I wasn’t sure that making games was what I wanted to do, but because of them I knew in a real, tangible way (not just the “girls can do anything that boys can do” sense) that I could.

Real women continue to inspire me, even today. Not just those who are in the industry, but the bloggers, gamers, and other women who put themselves out there and refuse to accept the “boy’s club” mentality that continues to pervade both the industry and the culture. I admire those women and the work that they do.

I, too, want to be a heroine. I want to give young girls (and boys) heroines in their games that will inspire them. I want to show young women that they don’t have to stop at playing games, but can create them too. I want to make the industry a more inclusive place, where a wide variety of ideas can take root and grow.

All it takes is one person who is willing to fight for what they believe in. All it takes is one person to inspire others to become heroines themselves. Maybe I’ll never be that person, but I sure as hell am going to try.

Sara Girard, Associate Brand Manager at Wizards of the Coast and marketing lead for Dungeons & Dragons, started visiting our forums in August last year, and I quickly started looking forward to her contributions in discussions. She’s been very visibly involved in the publicity surrounding the fourth edition of D&D (which will be launching almost as soon as this issue of Cerise goes live!), and I’m thrilled that she was willing to take some time out during what has to be a very busy month indeed for everyone associated with Dungeons & Dragons to answer some interview questions for us.
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If you’re like me, you have a lot of gaming geek t-shirts. And if your t-shirt collection is like mine, there are plenty that have bleach stains on them, or holes, or are otherwise unwearable except on laundry day. If there’s an image on the shirt that you like, though, you can recycle it into a nifty patch for a geek-punk jacket easily – no sewing skills required!
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Welcome to the Back Page! This is where we publish the odds and ends that our readers send in, from artwork and writing, to shout outs, thoughts on gaming, and whatever fun and silly things we can come up with. If you have something you want to show off to the rest of our readers, head over to our submissions page and fire off an e-mail to us! (more…)

Our theme this month at Cerise, “Heroines and Villainesses,” is the sort of broad topic that the editors love best. We’re always interested in a wide range of articles, and this month we’ve got it! Melissa Velte sent us an article examining a particular villainess, and Brendan Davis contributed a how-to about using “guest star” villains to spice up a tabletop game. Robin Sevakis created a fantastic piece of art for the cover, Robyn Fleming wrote about attending WisCon 32, and Andrea Rubenstein discussed her personal impressions of heroism. Sara Girard also speaks briefly about what she finds appealing about heroines in one of our interviews. There’s a lot of great stuff in this issue - check it out!

And if you’d like your own work to appear in a future issue of Cerise, stop by our submissions page to find out how.