Posts Tagged ‘ gamers ’

Zero Charisma

Well, poo.

I had planned on an twelfth day of Christmas post, perhaps writing a bit about Twelfth Night celebrations involving wassail, wassailing, and special cakes. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Say, “La vee.”

Over the weekend, my son Christopher and I watched Zero Charisma, starring Sam Eidson as Scott Weidemeyer. (N.B. That link is to the trailer.) I’ll avoid spoilers for those who’ve not seen this 2013 independent film, but I’ll offer my two coppers after the still of a scene from the movie.

Zero Charisma is not a bad movie. It’s not a particularly good movie either, in part because it can’t seem to make up its mind what kind of movie it wants to be. Is this a parody? Sort of. Is it a comedy? Sort of. Is it a melodrama? Yeah, it’s kind of that too. Who am I supposed to be rooting for? It’s hard to tell. Most of the characters are pretty unlikeable, especially Eidson’s Scott. At times, it seems I’m supposed to pity Scott, but other times he’s so horrible that he merits scorn. The same is true for several of the supporting characters.

Scott is not a nice guy. He rains on parades. He’s dictatorial. He’s verbally abusive. He’s dishonest. He’s got a hair-trigger temper. He is, in his own estimation, a loser, and he embodies all the worst stereotypes about gamers: overweight, socially awkward, stuck in a menial job, intimidated by pretty women, and resentful of those better at things he wishes he was good at.

While watching Zero Charisma, uncertain about what the movie’s conflicting tones expected of me, I was reminded of a guy I gamed with for a short time. Let’s call this guy C.A.

Shortly after I left the Army at the end of 1992 and moved back to Houston, I got together with a few of the folks I gamed with in high school. We also roped in some new players, including C.A., who answered an ad thumbtacked to the gamer board at Nan’s Games and Comics Too. At the time, we were playing Champions, and C.A. via phone conversation seemed an enthusiastic player.

We met a Fred’s house to play. C.A. showed up, dropped off by his mother, which didn’t really raise eyebrows despite C.A. being roughly our age (that being mid-20s). Fred’s mother lived with him, and another player, Ben, lived with both his mother and grandmother, whom he helped care for. The first thing I noticed about C.A. was how familiar he looked, but I figured he might have one of those faces, so I left it alone.

It didn’t take long to figure out C.A. was a bit off kilter. His insistence on the letter of the law regarding the rules extended mostly to other characters, but not his own character (which was a sort of martial artist rubber man in the vein of Bruce Lee meets Mr. Fantastic). During non-game talk, C.A. seemed a bit too eager to either one-up the experiences of others, or else he made claims that were simply bizarre and untrue (such as his claim that he knew for a fact that H.P. Lovecraft based the Necronomicon on the “real Necronomicon”, which C.A. had read). I chalked C.A.’s behaviors up to either nervousness in a new situation or to a rather dry sense of humor that we didn’t know him well enough to quite get.

And so we gamed about once a week, and we had fun. C.A. was quirky, to be sure. He showed signs of being a bit volatile when he didn’t get his way, but can’t anyone have a bad day? He wasn’t abusive. He wasn’t violent. He more intense and stubborn, and I’m hardly one to condemn someone for being stubborn. That is a level of hypocrisy to which I do not aspire.

Some time after meeting and gaming with C.A., I figured out why he looked familiar. He had been a student at Spring Branch Senior High School at the same time I was there doing as little as possible to earn my high school diploma. I still remember the first (and possibly only) time I noticed C.A. It was in the morning in the cafeteria. He was sitting facing my direction several tables away from where I was sitting. He was reading a comic book. Two of the high school’s many third-rate thugs sauntered up to him, took the comic away, and tore it in half before laughing and walking off to congratulate each other on being jack asses. I remember feeling bad for C.A.

C.A. was a student in special education. Back then, circa 1984-1985, most students identified as needing special education services were segregated from the main student population. There were several temporary buildings (called T-shacks) behind the main school building where students in special education received instruction. From what I remember, most of the students were obviously developmentally delayed. Children with Down Syndrome, for example, seemed more common three decades ago.

C.A. was not developmentally delayed, at least not intellectually. He was a bright guy. Looking back through the lens of years of experience as a teacher, I can say with a degree of confidence that C.A. was some shade of autistic. High-functioning, to be sure, but socially quirky enough to have been identified as “disruptive to the general education learning environment” (as was the public school thinking back then).

But back to our Champions game, which was interrupted by my wedding and honeymoon. I don’t remember if we invited C.A. to the wedding. If we didn’t, that might explain what happened while my bride and I traveled to El Paso, Texas, to visit my aged grandmother who could not travel. If we didn’t, we should have. It might have made a difference (but maybe not).

We’d been out of town for a couple of days and our regular game day rolled around. A very irate C.A. called Fred. He yelled at Fred, demanding to know why I wasn’t answering the phone. Fred explained I was out of town. C.A. demanded to know when Fred was coming to pick him up for the regular game. C.A.’s mother wasn’t available for transportation, and C.A. assumed this meant Fred was responsible for picking him for the game. Fred explained there was no game because I, the GM, was out of town. Fred wasn’t much of a gossip, but he let me know enough about C.A.’s phone call that day to understand that C.A. went from very irate to verbally abusive at the top of his lungs.

We never gamed with C.A. again after that incident, and watching Sam Eidson as Scott Weidemeyer in Zero Charisma reminds me of why. But it also makes me a little sad.

January 11th, 2022  in RPG No Comments »

Socially awkward? Don’t make me disintegrate you!

Stereotypes are just oh so convenient, being a sort of shorthand generalization that encompasses so much in so little space. Work as a television writer? Need to instantly identify a throwaway character as a bad guy? Toss in the shaven-headed, tattooed Hispanic male wearing a white undershirt and baggy pants. Instant identification from the audience. “He looks like a bad guy; therefore, he’s a bad guy.” Next, spice up the dialogue with a few Spanish words, especially if they’re delivered with a noticeable accent and bad grammar. Example when addressing a female detective: “I ain’t gonna talk, chica.” More instant identification from the audience. “Ooh, he speaks a foreign language, and he’s disrespectful to both authority and women; therefore, he’s a bad guy.”

Simple, huh?

The only problem with the syllogisms that stereotypes tend to prompt is that they’re not really syllogistic. Straight from “looks bad” to “is bad” is not a reasonable conclusion, but the images aren’t meant to be reasonable. They’re meant to evoke responses based on prejudice in order to create a quick, cheap emotional reaction as a substitute for thoughtful writing crafted to lead to a more authentic emotional investment and reflective conclusion.

And television isn’t the only medium that goes for the easy reaction. Watch The Avengers. It’s an entertaining movie full of paper-thin characters (but, to be fair, I’m certain no one meant for it be anything more). Now watch Spider-Man 2. Compare Loki with Doctor Octopus, and tell me the latter isn’t a much more interesting character. In comparison, Loki is just another stereotype (specifically, the neglected foster child jealous of the real son’s paternal relationship).

So, what does this have to do with gaming?

Attend a gaming convention. Even if you’re a gamer, you have to admit that some of the attendees look like geeks. Sure, not you, but certainly that guy over there. He most likely gets no exercise and is way too socially awkward. He certainly doesn’t date anyone outside of World of Warcraft taverns, probably lives at home with Mother (in the basement, of course), and you just know there’s a personal hygiene problem going on.

Sound familiar? If you’re a gamer, it’s dollars to donuts it does.

And, to be sure, it’s likely true about someone somewhere. That’s another convenient part of stereotypes. They’re always true at least some of the time, which only makes sense. All generalizations are ultimately false, which means they’re sometimes penultimately true.

But remember the advice about books and covers? I’m a gamer. I get some exercise. I don’t date, but that’s because I’m married. I haven’t lived at home with Mom since I was 17, and I never lived in Mom’s basement. My personal hygiene is impeccable, unless you count not shaving every day as a problem. None of my gamer friends fit the stereotype either. Last time I went to a convention, I gamed with about 20 or so strangers over the course of the weekend. Not a one of them was immediately identifiable as the stereotypical gamer. I mean, maybe they had hygiene problems, but, since I don’t have a sense of smell, I couldn’t tell. We didn’t talk much about living arrangements or dating either, but that’s not what we were at the convention to do.

Gamers go to gaming conventions to game. That means we walk into rooms and sit at tables with six or so strangers, and spend about four hours pretending to be hard-boiled pulp noir detectives, dwarven warriors, elven wizards, cape-wearing superheroes, and dauntless space explorers. We crack jokes, use bad accents, engage in Shatnerian feats of thespianism, and boldly save the day with humor and aplomb. We do this largely with the approval and encouragement of those strangers, and without fear of being judged or mocked. This sort of self-confidence and camaraderie is, in my experience, the norm for gaming convention attendees.

Whatever else that norm might be, what it ain’t is socially awkward.

May 11th, 2012  in RPG No Comments »