The CaNerdian

Blackout at Cherry Estates: Part II

Monica Ellis had always had an irrational fear of the dark. At least, that's what her friends called it: irrational. To her, it seemed perfectly reasonable. For starters, it meant being unable to see where you were going. That meant – at best – stubbed toes, bruised kneecaps, jammed fingers, or all of the above. At worst...well...who could honestly say with complete confidence they knew what lay waiting in every dark space?

Take the hallway at Cherry Estates. Monica knew, with relative certainty, that it was about fifteen steps from the elevator to the turn, and then forty steps from the turn to her apartment door. But there was no way in hell she was going to make them shuffling along in the eclipse that had engulfed her home.

Sometimes her neighbours would leave their bicycles outside their doors, anticipating a green-friendly commute first thing in the morning. The building manager, Ashley, had warned them off from doing it because it was a fire hazard, but people rarely listened. Other times the housekeeping staff would leave extension cords in a tangled mess, either through carelessness or laziness.

Nope. Monica wouldn't take a chance on it. Aside from these obvious pitfalls, who was to say there weren't any flesh-eating zombies waiting to take a chunk out of her arm the moment she strayed into the unknown?

There was a throbbing, pulsing ache in Ashley Maddox's head. It pulsated in time with every syllable streaming out of Tommy Salinger's mouth, each calculated, piercing insult he hurled at the young couple another pin in Ashley's forehead.

"Reserved parking," Salinger spat. "Can't you damn well read? I swear to god, if I have to run this through my insurance, I'm going to strip you for all you're worth."

"Look pal," the man in front of him said carefully, "I already told you, it was just a nick. You know, most folks would probably just drive off. I'm trying to do the right thing here."

"Don't patronize me. You yuppie twenty-somethings are all the same. Heads down in your iphones, so fucking entitled you think the world owes you a pat on the back for having the good grace to get yourself born."

There's been a lot of press coverage of sexism in videogames of late, notably the well-circulated story of Aris Bakhtanians and his sexist ravings, as well as the more recent attacks on Anita Sarkeesian's Kickstarter project.

It's interesting that women's rights have taken on the battleground of videogames, given that video gaming by and large is still a very recent innovation and frontier. Console gaming only really took off in the 80s, and only in the last decade has online gaming truly come into being as not only a form of social interaction but also as a competitive sport.

The demographic that comprises the videogaming market falls firmly into the "youth" category. Given that, one would think that the gaming community would be a place of liberal values, but the truth is anything but. When it comes to finding positive female role models in video games culture, it's a bit like finding that rare line piece in Tetris at just the right moment: it might look great, it might fit great, but the moment you let it drop the whole thing just tears apart your well built foundation.

She is SO ready to take a hit to her left arm.