First of all, I’ve never read her column, nor have I ever read Dragon Magazine. I’m also not a veteran tabletop roleplayer. As of today, I have a grand total of two tabletop games under my belt: a WoW RPG that fell apart due to external drama, and a DnD 3.5 that we’ve only done two sessions of so far. Maybe if I had gone to a large school instead of a small rural one, there would have been people to play tabletops with back in high school. But there wasn’t so I spent my time playing computer RPGs and free-form PBMBs instead. The closest I ever came to a DnD game was Neverwinter Nights.

Anyways, to get back on topic, wundergeek’s post made me facepalm hard. So very hard. Not really even at Shelly, but the character she portrays in her columns (whether she is really like that or not is besides the point). The fashion mentions, the whining, the neurotic behavior…it all makes me cringe. This is the representative for all female tabletoppers? I can tell you this, Shelly is not like me.

Do I get forgetful or confused by the rules in the games? Yes actually. Do I need Vahkt’s help to roll new characters? You betcha. But the reason is because I’m a new player, not because I have two X chromosomes. After spending years playing computer games where all the calculations are done for you, it is a little hard to wrap my head around them. But math isn’t hard for me, I had top marks back in high school. And the forgetfulness is because I am actually forgetful by nature, not because I’m female. In our WoW RPG game, there was another player who had never tabletopped before and surprise surprise! Vahkt had to help him make his character sheet too.

Let me tell you a little something about my characters too. In the WoW RPG, I played Lauka Stonehoof, a tauren warrior who was eventually going to become a mounted warrior. She was a 7 foot 10 meat grinding machine, made of 390 lbs. of muscle charging around on the back of an armored kodo. She could be quiet and gentle to be sure, as some tauren are wont to be. But she also hewed more than one centaur in two with her lance in a ride-by attack. It was rather like an explosion of blood and flesh, which was so awesome that I was giddy from laughing manically at it. I was also ecstatic to be able to wield a massive totem (essentially a big hunk of log that only tauren NPCs get to use in WoW). Lauka literally smashed a few quillboars into paste with it. I think there’s still a tooth and part of a collar bone embedded in the wood. Her skills were so good at splattering blood everywhere that she even earned the awe of a group of trouble-seeking Grimtotems warriors.

My current DnD character is Amli Flamecarver, a dwarf dragon shaman. Why a dwarf dragon shaman? Because I can of course, and it sounded interesting. She’s what I like to refer to as “a small but fierce woman”. She wears worn but usable breastplate armor (because duh, she needs to protect her vital organs) and swings around a morningstar that’s so large for her that she needs to hold it with both hands. Again, because I could. Her personality is more of the friendly-bubbly sort, but she can’t be dismissed as simply an airhead. The best example of her behavior I can think of is when our group had been told they’d be paid more to bring back a group of thieves alive. Due to rolling a crit, she accidentally crushed a man’s chest cavity with one swing of her morningstar. She quickly yelled to her partner, “Don’t worry, I can fix this!” before attacking the next enemy. At the end of the battle, one of the thieves is down on his knees before her, begging that she spares his life. Since she’s so nice (and could use the gold), she decides to headbutt him instead and knocks him out cold.

These are the types of the characters I roll. I like women who kick ass. I’m the sort of person who thinks armor should be both functional and beautiful, not chainmail bikinis. If I rolled a tiefling wizard, they would not be wearing an outfit that bared their cleavage and stomach, nor would I ever give them the last name of  “Sparkles”. (Seriously, a tiefling named Sparkles? I want to gag.) And I will never tote around my fashion knowledge like it’s a badge proclaiming me as a “GRRL”. I also don’t give one crap about fashion anyways so it’s moot point.

For those who don’t already know this, women are not all the same. That’s why all those books about “how men can learn to understand women” don’t work. We don’t have some strange sort of secret language because we have different personalities. I certainly can’t figure out what is going on in Shelly’s mind because it’s so foreign to me.

I truly hope that Dragon Magazine hires more female writers to show the wide range of double-X players. To think that so many readers might be getting their only impressions of female tabletoppers from her columns makes me very, very sad.

I suppose most kids who lived in the city, upon hearing that, would have gone off to the park to play with their friends. And children who lived on farms were never short on chores to do and vast tracks of lands to explore. I, on the other hand, grew up on a 2-acre plot in a rural area with little to no friends within walking distance. My only playmate the majority of the time was my younger brother.

Both of us grew up with healthy imaginations that must have grown out of a combination of fantasy books and having vast amounts of time by ourselves. From this also came a desire to build things, to craft whole worlds.

At home

Around the house, we would choose between two different worlds/games that we had created. The first involved a massive amount of plastic dinosaurs that were divided up into the herbivores and their allied carnivores-gone-vegetarian (the good guys) and the carnivores (the bad guys). We never played against each other but instead took on certain characters on each side and spend entire days acting out elaborate on-going storylines. My brother’s whole room would become our stage: the blanket on the bed would be ruffled into a rolling plateau, the floor would become the valley below, and every bookcase and dresser was a high peaked mountain riddled with caverns, perfect for flying dinosaurs to perch on top of or for land-bound ones to hide in.

The second world was made from a combination of Legos and plastic sea creatures. It too would consume the entire room once we had set it all up, with everything below the top of the dresser being underneath the water’s surface. There were about half a dozen submarine type vehicles, a multi-roomed Lego castle that was the human’s base of operation (and the home of one friendly dragon), and more sharks, whales, octopi, and squids than you could shake a stick at.

Destroying and dismantling our worlds was never something that appealed to use. We absolutely loved building it but to take it all apart? Where was the fun in that? It was for that reason that over time, these two collections would simply continue to grow as we’d ask for more Legos, more dinosaurs, more sea creatures. The dinosaurs filled up an entire drawer in my brother’s mate bed and began spilling over into other containers. Our refusal to dismantle our Legos resulted in the submarines lining the bookshelves and the castle becoming a permanent fixture on my brother’s dresser.

In the bush

The Manitoban winters can be particularly cold and to keep the high electrical heating bill down, our home had a wood furnace in the basement and plenty of storage for all the cords of wood we’d need. So my dad would spend several days a year out in the bush on his parents’ farm, cutting down poplar trees and splitting the logs. He would bring me and my brother along despite the fact that at that age, my brother and I were pretty useless for anything other than carrying and stacking the wood. So when we couldn’t help out, we’d spend the hours exploring the nearby area and constructing very crude forts. We’d set a dozen or so branches between some trees to create the “walls” and then roll a spare log or two into the area for our seating. We’d spend all of the time we could improving our fort, using more branches for support and of course looking for suitable “staffs” so we could properly defend it. When it was time to leave, it was always sad to know that by the time we came back weeks later, the weather and the cows would have taken down our creation and we would have to start all over again. It was a good thing that building was so fun.

The virtual world

It probably isn’t surprising that this desire to build and create carried over into my computer game play. I used to spend hours upon hours in games such as Pharaoh, Stronghold, Age of Empires, and Majesty, building and maintaining these vast empires. My favorite activity was always to choose the largest free-form maps and expand my kingdoms until there was literally no more room on the map. Those maps were never too big for me and I’d always want to build more, to trek further out and forge new settlements. Even while playing the campaigns, I’d always hold back from completing the objective until I had explored the entire map and placed all of my favorite buildings.

Continuing into new worlds

I had heard of the concept of sandbox MMOs before, usually in reference to popular Minecraft. I was intrigued by the idea but was somewhat reluctant to try Minecraft due to its 8-bit-style graphics and lack of a sense of an overarching world. It was through the MMO Melting Pot that I heard of Wurm Online just yesterday though. I didn’t even have time to finish the tutorial last night but I am already excited to get home from work and spend the entire weekend playing this game. Here is a world with a map that is much larger than any building sim I’ve played before, so I can explore to my heart’s content. I can craft my own tools, buy a plot of land, create houses and walls, grow crops and trees, raise and hunt animals, dig out a mine…the possibilities seem endless.

There was one part of the tutorial where I cut down a tree, chopped it up into logs, carved a wooden shaft and head, and put the two pieces together to make a mallet. It probably took me about 10 minutes to do because of the chance to fail (which I did repeatedly), but I can’t even remember the last time I was so proud of a virtual item that I had created. And that was just a simple mallet!

I think this is exactly the type of game I need as of late. Something that’s simple overall and relaxing, a place where I can mold the world in the way that I want, and it will stay that way as long as I continue to maintain it. My Legos and dinosaurs and sticks have come back to me in virtual form and I’ll be damned if I don’t create something wondrous out of them.

If I was a month, I’d be December, the month I was born in. Once you get past the cold, it’s beautiful and clean and gives you a reason to quietly curl up with a good book.

If I was a day of the week, I’d be Sunday. The lazy day to do whatever you feel like.

If I was a time of day, I’d be 9pm…when you’re either revving up for a party, enjoying a quiet evening, or peacefully asleep.

If I was a planet, I’d be Earth. I have too many facets and hidden treasures to be anything else.

If I was a sea animal, I’d be a nautilus. Because it looks neat and has a cool name.

If I was a direction, I’d be North. I’ve just always felt drawn in that direction.

If I was a piece of furniture, I’d be a large overstuffed couch that’s so comfy you can sleep on it.

If I was a liquid, I’d be mercury. Because liquid metal is awesome.

If I was a gemstone, I’d be a quartz, because diamonds are overrated.

If I was a tree, I’d be a true Redwood. Towering over everything. One of the last living dinosaurs.

If I was a  tool, I’d be a swiss army knife. Because I like being useful for many different things.

If I was a flower, I’d be a wood lily. That brilliant red flower hidden in the forest and prairies, smelling wonderfully of Froot Loops.

If I was a kind of weather, I’d be a thunderstorm at night, hands down. With lots and lots of lightning.

If I was a musical instrument, I’d be the uilleann pipes.

If I was a color, I’d be black like my dear Blacky. Showing the world that black doesn’t have to mean death and sadness, but life and joy.

If I was an emotion, I’d be wistfulness. I am ever the dreamer.

If I was a fruit, I’d be a strawberry.

If I was a sound, I’d be the rain falling softly to the ground as thunder rumbled in the background.

If I was an element, I’d be earth. Stoic and stubborn.

If I was a car, I’d be a Mercedes CKL-GTR. Because I loved that car in Need for Speed.

If I was a food, I’d be a platter of fruit. Sometimes sweet and sometimes sour.

If I was a place, I’d be a giant monolith like Uluru.

If I was a material, I’d be smooth, tightly woven cotton.

If I was a taste, I’d be like Sour Patch Kids.

If I was a scent, I’d be vanilla and oranges. Calming and comforting mixed with tangy and crisp.

I also don’t appreciate masses of people the way others do. They make me feel nervous and edgy, and god forbid I’m the center of attention. Want to see me turn beet red? Have a crowd focus their attention solely on me. I have no grand dreams to be a movie star or something similar. I value my privacy far too much.

On the other hand, my personality has shifted towards being much more social and outgoing than I previously was. Back in high school, I was painfully shy. Literally. Maybe the reason no one ever remembered my name was because no one remembers the wall flower, especially when she has two rather boisterous friends (they were still awesome friends though). University and college were no better. I made one or two friends in the entire 5 years and I didn’t keep in contact with them. And talking to guys? That was yet another way to get me to blush.

I’m not entirely certain where my personality turned around or even what caused it. Perhaps working in retail helped develop my backbone, made me bold. After all, it’s hard to stay completely shy when you have to yell over 30 10-year-olds. Maybe it was my roommate being downright stubborn about pulling me out of my shell. Or it could just be good old growing up.

Regardless, I can now do things I would have never thought possible before. Talking over Ventrilo with someone new? No problem, I greet them with a cheery hello. Years ago I would have died rather than talk to a stranger. As a matter of fact, in high school, my phone conversations with my friends would never go over 1/2 an hour. These days I can spend all day talking with someone I’ve never met in person, albeit it’s not a non-stop conversation. At least over Vent, I’m still a bit rusty over the phone.

In person I’m still somewhat shy but I don’t get flustered just from someone paying attention to me. When someone asks me what my interests are, I don’t answer with “stuff” and “things” anymore because I’m not as self-conscience about what I tell them. If we have similar interests, I can actually keep up a good conversation for a couple hours. Hell, I can even crack jokes without freaking out. I’m able to talk about myself in respect to deep meaningful topics without being paranoid that everyone will think I’m crazy. My shell is still there but it’s much thinner than it was before.

I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve but I’m not as terrified as I was before that I’m going to be hurt. Oh I still worry, wondering if everything will come crashing down on me if I say one wrong word or do one wrong thing. But I’ve also come to the realization that living safe all the time isn’t living. If I don’t take the chance of giving a little bit of myself in hopes that it might improve my life, I’ll go nowhere. If I get rejected, then oh well, that person probably wasn’t worth my time anyways.

Part of me is still the misanthrope, taking pleasure in being by myself, away from others. But more and more I’m realizing that there are people out there who do know where I’m coming from and can actually relate to me. In years past I felt as though I was my own race, the only one left (there’s teen angst for you). But curiousity prompted me to crawl out from under my rock and actually take a look around. I may still be different from the majority and unique in my own respects, but I am not alone. Not by a long shot.

*quietly sings “Que Sera Sera” as she wanders off*

Then there was that chilly night in February so many years ago. My friend Angele and I were waiting outside for our other friend Amanda (who had run off without us but that’s another story). It was cold, probably around -30 Celsius, and very crisp, so much so that the snow crunched beneath our boots. There was no wind to speak off and no animals, people, or vehicles to break the silence save ourselves.

I don’t remember exactly who saw it first and what it looked like when it began to creep up from the horizon. What I do remember is stepping away from the buildings to get out of the electric lights and standing in the middle of the driveway just staring upwards.

It was unlike anything I have ever seen before and have yet to see since. The Lights were a green that wasn’t bright or yellowish but still glowed vibrantly without a neon-like appearance. The entire northern half of the sky was filled with it. I could see the Lights move in waves and curls and spikes, the motions being sedated individually but together…it was as though the night sky had turned to a liquid filled with currents and eddies. There were too many shapes to pick out but I didn’t even try. It didn’t seem chaotic or busy in the least.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

It was peace. It was serenity. It was…the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I don’t think there are words in any language that could do its beauty justice.

It was almost an hour before it finally faded away and Amanda returned. An hour that we both stood there in complete awe of the Lights. A year wouldn’t have been long enough to gaze at it, never mind a mere hour.

With my awful memory, there’s a lot of things I forget. But the most precious things in my life always remain clear to me, and if I close my eyes I can see the Lights again wavering over me. So silent yet so close that if I could reach just a little higher than I could on my tiptoes, my fingertips would brush against it.

With life as it is, sometimes I wish I could just go back to the night and stand there forever. To let the silence and solitude seep into my bones and muscle and let the Lights hold my soul again.

That’s what I need right now…a little beauty in my life. Something to lift my gaze upward and give me something to reach for.