I’m not ashamed to say it – Felicia Day is my newest celebrity crush. If you watch her web series, The Guild (about a cast of online gamers), you’ll know why – she’s smart, talented, and, as the writer and creator of the series, geeky as can be.
Best of all though, she’s a gamer. She’s a real, honest-to-goddess hardcore video game enthusiast, out there making quality entertainment for dorks of all stripes. Imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon this Wired interview (written to herald the coming of The Guild on DVD), in which she extols the annoyances of Hollywood stereotyping and the pleasures of a good, geeky life:
In general, there’s nothing more frustrating than that stereotypical gamer – the teenager in the basement with his mom getting him Hot Pockets. That’s why I wrote the show as well; because that stereotype is not accurate. Every quirky girl doesn’t have to be the best-friend character. It’s a very limiting and self-fulfilling prophecy. People only write things that will get green-lit so they write to those stereotypes. And that’s why I think that the audience is crumbling. Because the things they perceive that the audience wants aren’t necessarily what the audience wants. I don’t identify with a lot of the things I see on TV nowadays. I’d probably rather be gaming, to be honest with you.
Amen, sister!
She also happens to be my hero. As a pioneer of the web series as a legitimate entertainment form (along with The Guild, she co-starred in Joss Whedon’s exceptional Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog), Day’s accomplishments are as swoon-worthy as her persona. As someone who’s taken the plunge and produced my own little series and fallen in love with the zany creative energy involved, it’s incredibly heartening to see that these things can actually go somewhere.
In other mildly inspirational, video game-related news, Tim Shafer, the comic mastermind behind games such as Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and the upcoming (awesome-looking!) Brutal Legend has just posted a hilarious recounting of all the rejection letters he received as a young man looking to get into the games industry. 20 years, only a few tears commemorate his 20th anniversary of being in the business of making games (and, if you ask me, there hasn’t been a dud in the bunch).
“My job hunt was getting kind of depressing,” Shafer said. “I was building up a pile of rejection letters, most of them from jobs I didn’t even want. I got rejected by a company that made library-cataloging software. Stuck-up jerks! I bought a tie for that interview! I ironed my pants.”
It’s an awesome; funny read for anybody who’s ever had to deal with the joys of rejection and unemployment – and best of all, it comes with illustrations!
Here’s to making a living being a big geek.
