Quickies
Quickies: Being a female gamer, the Moon’s age, microbe accelerated Permian extinction
- Float like a butterfly, sting like a Peach: On being a female gamer – “Just as no one ever told me a girl couldn’t be a gamer, no one had said that a game’s main character couldn’t be female…but to actually see it happen and to play it was a revelation.”
- Moon’s age revealed and a lunar mystery may be solved – From Michael.
- A new microbe might have accelerated the Great Dying – “The end-Permian extinction has generally been blamed on massive volcanic eruptions that took place at the same time. But now in a new analysis, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argue that the mass extinction event may have been instigated by microbes.” From Criticaldraagon1177.
- Batgirl fights for equal pay – I think this has been posted before but it’s been a while and Batgirl is awesome. From Phillip.
The author of “Float like a butterfly..” and I must be about the same age. She basically described a variation of my childhood as well. I remember Samus first, and feeling so validated at the ending. A feeling that was fleeting because my male friend who was playing it with me happily mentioned that Samus would take off more of her suit if we beat the game faster. She was a role-model to me, a toy to him.
I played SMB2 with the same fellow. He preferred Toad, but I could never understand it. I always played Peach. I mean, I tried the other characters, but never for long. Peach was it.
And I played all those PC games, too! Laura Bow — I don’t see her mentioned much. I never did properly solve the Curse of Amon Ra. I mean, I got to the end, but there are 32 some-odd endings almost all of then resulting in her death. And April Ryan from The Longest Journey! I was a Junior in college when that came out, and there had been a dearth of good female characters. April was ion college too and the story immediately resonated with me.
Wow, anyway… yeah.
As an aside, when I’ve played single-character challenges for Mario 2, Peach is probably the easiest one to play. (It’s World 6-2. Luigi—and only Luigi—can skip it, and of course they had to include a similar level in Mario 3; did I mention the Mario series is known for difficulty curves that make no sense whatsoever? Single character no warp challenges, Luigi is actually a lot harder because of World 6-2.)
I have noticed a tendency in developers trying to reach out to women (since, of course, more money is always good), but the problem is the gaming community itself. There’s a small but vocal minority which flies its bigotry (or at least its trolling) high.