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Fear of Girls, a D&D Documentary
FhnuZoag writes "Google Video is hosting the short film 'Fear of Girls', written and directed by Ryan Wood. The film is a hilarious 'documentary' dealing with a pair of self-declared elite table-top roleplayers. The film has already appeared at a variety of fringe events, but here's a chance to see it for free and online from a server that probably can survive a slashdotting." Allright, so it's not that funny, but since I'm off to play D&D this afternoon, it tickled me.
I haven't WTFV yet, but I'm glad it's supposed to be parody. The women in my group (including my wife) would probably have to say that we're anything but afraid of girls.
Sadly, humor like this is why tabletop RPGs are still a male-dominated hobby. Thankfully it's easy to relate D&D to LotR, and that tends to pique to curiousity of the ladies. Of course, not every ranger looks as good as Legolas.
I think the issue may have been less with AD&D and more with you being an idiot.
My Greatest Heist - Muisc partly inspired by the unbeatable Qwantz
KFG's Revelation:
If you can't laugh at the serious stuff; and if you can't take the trivial stuff seriously, you've missed the point and are going to have a hell of a time making it through life.
Insert whatever serious/trivial stuff suits you, such as work/play, religious/secular, etc.
Along the way you may discover the First Corollary; that the only difference between the serious stuff and the trivial stuff is whether or not you take it seriously or laugh at it.
KFG
Who is this 'us'? I'm an introverted and shy geek.
Seriously, if they wanted to do an actually funny RPG nerd bit, they should've done more research. Take a video camera to OrcCon, or GenCon, or even find a local RPG store that has the traditional "tables in the back" and go watch those guys. I can think of half a dozen real life RPG nerd incidents that, if simply reenacted, would be three times as funny as some ham actor dork spasmodically lifting his shirt and rubbing his chest in a poorly simulated homoerotic frenzy.
Conclusion: the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
Things like this is why you have to love the internet. Where would this type of independant film get such a large audience even just 10 years ago? Public access TV? A small town film festival? Doubtful.
The bees are on the what now?
On the contrary. Most gamers would be the first to find this funny. And that's true with most groups, I think. Humor like this lets us see, in an exaggerated fashion, the amusing/exasperating/disgusting aspects of our self-defined group identification we wouldn't see otherwise.
Trolls: The high-tech version of those morons that scrawl obscenities in public bathrooms.
People like you really get under my skin. I have a feeling if anyone would ever dedicate the time and money that we would find people like you were damaged before they started playing D&D, White Wolf, or whatever you blame for yourself being screwed up. What gets me most is Christian groups spreading lies about tabletop games. It gets to me because I am a Christian and these groups spend the majority of time making people like me look bad. There is a line between fantasy and reality. It's not even a small line. If you cannot seperate the two then there is more going on than just playing D&D. I could go on and on about these groups but in the interest of remaining on topic I will simply point out that I, a Christian, have played D&D since I was an early teen and have never ever thought that casting a spell on myself would have any effect on the real world. I have never wanted to go kill monsters with my broadsword. I have had many a night of fun escape from the drudgery of my job, the stress of traffic, and more. I also would like to point out that the best DM/Storyteller I have had the pleasure to play with is currently going to St. Thomas in Houston to be a priest. Tabletop games are no more dangerous than anything else in the world. No matter what you do idiots are going to be idiots. D&D doesn't make them more of an idiot it just gives them an outlet that's easy to publicize.
Everything is simply commmentary on the Tao Te Ching.
However, as Goethe noted: "Everything has been thought of before. The trick is to think of it again."
KFG
There's nothing like fighting stereotypes with stereotypes.
These guys do a good job of stereotyping gamers across the board. Yeah I am a gamer, but I also work as a civlian contractor for a convoy security company in Iraq currently. I'm a geek/nerd or anything else you want to call it and i know it, and more and more with the progression of the internet age people are becomming geeks and not caring about it. cant be anything but good for the world!
8-bit D&D.
Still hilarious.
That's why it's called a *Role* playing game. You don't have to be yourself. I haven't seen many level 3 C programmers, or level 10 pizza deliverymen.
When I played BG2, I was a level 35 chaotic evil male warrior who could bend the earth to his will and became a god! But that was the last time I played a game as myself.
I don't think you, or anyone who modded you up, "get it".
The bigger surprise to me is that so few females play male characters. I question the survey -- it just seems too one-sided. If the result is real, then maybe it's because females have no choice in most games and are forced into female characters. So when they do get a choice, they overwhelmingly play as females.
AlpineR
It's also possible that kids who enjoy street racing might be fond of a street racing video game, instead of two video game fanatics that decided to start street racing after the latest Gran Turismo came out.
This movie would have been hysterical 15 years ago when Revenge of the Nerds was out but now it just seems dated and sterotyped.
Al Gore just called. He wants his sense of humor back.
Seriously. Of course they're just acting like nerds! That's precisely what makes it so funny! This video is a mockumentary, like "Spinal Tap" and "Best in Show." Most people find mockumentaries much more amusing than documentaries. "Trekkies" is a good example of a documentary with real nerds. Some found it amusing, but most people just thought it was plain eerie or weird.
We don't need to be "given" equality. We already have that.
What we deserve and damn well better get, is respect.
Your comment assumes people get zero enjoyment out of their hobbies.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
a friend who suffered from schizonphrenia
I've known a diagnosed and medicated schizophrenic as well, and he is the only person I've known that has suddenly thought D&D was real. He once attacked a couch with a lamp at a party because he thought it was an orc coming to kill him. I've known tons of D&D players in my life, none of them had mental conditions (other than depression perhaps), and none of them ever had anything like this happen to them, which is not surprising to me at all. I've been with several of those people on psychedelics even, and you still can't get something like that out of them. This guy I mention had had other episodes as well, that had no link to D&D whatsoever, but perhaps a favorite comic book, or TV show would be what he'd wind up in instead.
I've always believed that there isn't any kind of fantasy medium that makes somebody do something crazy, there are simply people that don't/can't separate it from reality when they are exposed to it.
Above is the reason for Tomb Raiders success.
I think it's due to the fact that there are fewer gamer-girls/geek-girls, so men try to encourage women to join in on it. It's the online equiv. of free drinks for the ladies in a bar. They're trying to make it easy for a woman to start off/advance in the game so that she'll get hooked on it, and the gender gap will close. *shrug* Most of them back off nicely if you indicate that you're not willing, or that you're already familiar with the rules/etc. of the game.
My guess: They block it because of potential nazi content, just as they're censoring search results in Germany and France for this reason. It's hard to filter video, so they block it completely.
The worst part is, if you don't "come out" and explicitly state that you're a guy playing a female character, you'll end up getting chewed up and spit out of your guild when someone "finds out" that you're a guy in "real life", and they've spent all this time being nice to you (sending you equipment upgrades, running you through BRD and LBRS where noone else wants to go anymore).
People get so attached to those purple-skinned breasts and somehow assume that they're going to get lucky if they be nice to the character ingame. Then they hear you on Team Speak or see your picture on the guild website and get all angsty because they might be "turning gay".
And saying, "no" doesn't help either - "you don't have to run me through BRD for the fifteenth time tonight, go get some sleep" translates to, "I love you and care about you, and I want you to know that soon I want to make sweet love to you." Then when they say, "but I love you" and you say, "um... I'm a guy", that translates to, "I'm a raving homosexual and I am going to abuse you in so many horrible ways, and while I'm at it I'll rip apart the very fabric of your reality and leave you standing naked in the street, both metaphorically and literally."
Go figure.
If I am going to play a game where I am looking at someones ass all day, it's going to be a female ass.
It seems that a lot of guys who play female characters feel, very strongly, they need to tell everybody in the world that they are doing it "to look at the cute female asses" while playing the game.
Look, just say it. It's fun to play with gender roles.
That explanation is a lot less sad than obsessing over the posterior of a CARTOON for hours on end.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It's no kind of weird sick transsexual thing for me and I'm sure most other players. I just don't want to sit there and stare at a guy's ass for hours on end.
Right. You are walking around for hours at a time in a virtual world, presenting yourself as a woman before everybody you meet in that world, and dressing your little cartoon proxy in feminine clothes while you are at it, because to not do so would mean you're gay. Gotcha.
Keep telling yourself that if you must.
P.S. Transexuals and gays are not "sick" (although maybe a little "weird"). Denial, on the other hand, is a tad unhealthy.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
And if you are roleplaying, well... I'm not really a great wizard capable of snuffing dragons with a mean glare and a snap of fingers, so since I'm already roleplaying something I'm not, why would gender be the hanging point ? Most people don't seem to have any trouble switching species and playing elfs and half-orcs and halflings, so why would female be such a taboo character ?
Or is it simply the fear of being thought as a homosexual or somehow "lesser" man that makes this a special case ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
When a woman has to sign up for SELECTIVE SERVICE then she can come talk to me about how bad she has it in life.
A solid point. We see this huge push for equal treatment, but everyone just avoids the few perks that being a woman does have. i.e. not being forced to go get yourself killed when we run low on willing cannon fodder. They actually don't even have the option of signing up, though that's somewhat moot, since if you would choose to, you'd probably just volunteer for the militiary anyways.
this section was still ok I guess:
As for women whining about being hit on all the time and being stared at? Give me a break and a half. Us men would give our right nut to be treated that way by women. Get paid to have sex? Bring it on!
not sure I'd do it myself, especially having to deal with a pimp, but as a freelancer, there are probably plenty of guys who would be glad to. on the other hand, there are likely a fair number of women who wouldn't mind either, under the right conditions, though perhaps not as many, and perhaps they aren't as open about it in todays society, which whether you're one of those women or not, is a pretty solid example of a rediculous double standard.
I'd also like to note that while I'm not suggesting rape is acceptable, but a fair amount of women's fashion these days probably contributes to that (not blaming it on the victims at all here, but come on), and just the constantly being hit on. if a guy walks down the street without his shirt on, his friends will just laugh at him if some fat girl whistles. if a woman is wearing a skirt that is just barely long enough for her private areas to be hidden, and a shirt that leaves a 4 inch gap between itself and the skirt, she somehow seems to think she still has the right to complain about guys hitting on her. if you don't wear tight clothes/clothes that don't entirely cover your body, and you still get more attention than you would like, ok. as long as you're not being forced into anything though, I think the parent's point that I most recently quoted applies here; if you're getting hit on too much, sorry, but on the other side of the fence, most guys are expected to do absolutely everything themselves. yeah, it's more or less acceptable for a girl to ask out a guy, but very few of them actually do it! if you want us to stop making a move on every woman that interests us, make it reasonable for us to expect to be hit on ourselves once in a while. it's no picnic when it almost never happens either. (and no, I'm not ugly, most of my female friends tell me I'm quite attractive.)
here's where it really went down hill:
Now, I'm not condoning rape at all, but sheesh, let's look at the cold hard reality here for what it is: if there was a city on Earth where women sneaked into windows and jumped on guys' wangs at night, and where a random walk by an alley was likely to end in a guy being snatched by a gang of sex starved women? Ya damned SKIPPY almost the entire world's male hetero population would immigrate there! That's the stone cold truth. Can I get a witness out there??
uh... no. there would be some guys like you, who would be stupid enough to think that this was fun, go down there, get raped buy several hideous women, and then promptley move back home. the rest of us are smart enough to realize that rape is very differnt from casual sex, and can appriciate not wanting to be jumped, dragged into an alley, and violated.
No single raindrop believes that it is responsible for the storm.