Lire & STYLE. Have a fitness tip or recipe to share? Contact the editor at lifeandstyle@theotherpress.ca Game on, girls! Gamer girl stereotypes and realities Brittney MacDonald, Contributor ecently, a friend of mine was playing Left 4 Dead and came across an enemy player who, let’s just say was less than skilled. So as any good, upstanding player would do, my friend proceeded to rip the enemy a digital new one to gain kill points for their team. In response, the opposing player said “HEY immmma a girl stop it btich!” (word for word, typo and all). Admittedly, picking on a weak player may not have been the gentlemanly thing to do—but then again, my friend doesn’t have to be a gentleman: my friend is a tiny girl who works at a tea house and likes to wear lace dresses. I’ve been playing games since Sega Genesis, and I wasn’t always fantastic at them. Honestly, I pretty much sucked until the PS2 rolled around, but at no time did I blame my vagina for holding me back. Strangely enough, though, female gamers have a pretty bad reputation. “Gamer girls,” as they’re called, have taken over the Internet, and not ina good way. They’re the ones on your computer screen who pose suggestively with a console controller. They might have played a game of Super Smash Bros or been cannon fodder ina game of Halo, and now they’re “like, OMG, such a nerd!”—but their main goal is attention. These are the types of girls who had me playing as a male avatar in my World of Warcraft heyday. In fact, I played ina guild for two years before they even found out I wasn’t a guy. Sadly, even though we had gamed together for so long, their opinion of me changed and I eventually left to seek bigger and better things; things where I didn’t have to have a penis to be part of the cool kids’ club. Nowadays, I don’t bother to hide the fact I’m a girl. I play as whatever I feel like, be it as a cat-girl in Final Fantasy XIV or as a lady champion in League of Legends. I take full advantage of the fact I’m still underestimated on occasion— mostly with headshots. But that doesn’t change the stereotype, and that won’t stop guys from approaching me at conventions and accusing me of being a fraud. Now, I could challenge each and every one of them toa game of Injustice and see who comes out on top—and IJ have on occasion—but that seems really tedious. So I've decided ona different route: welcome, “camer girls”! Pretty revolutionary, right? I don’t care about your motivations for trying a game, or if you're kind of stupid and assume your gender somehow gives you a pass. Eventually, everyone smartens up. They either learn to play or they tire of being humiliated and toddle off back to their makeup and Tetris. My point is that even the best gamers start somewhere, and that’s true for both men and women. All these “gamer girls” posting pictures on their Instagram could one day be the future pros you see winning the big money at tournaments. The truth is that if anything is going to change the stereotype of the female gamer, it’s more females getting into games. Eventually there will be so many of us the menfolk will have to run for the hills—or at least bob and weave to avoid our crosshairs. Good grief! What not to say to someone who is mourning Sharon Miki, Columnist hether it’s a death, a divorce, or an unexpected setback, loss and disappointment are all a part of life—and, unfortunately, the older you get, the more likely it is that you will have experienced a personal tragedy. Even if you’ve managed to avoid or deal with your own dramas, chances are that someone close to you is suffering through their own grief right now. While it’s natural to try to comfort the ones we love when they’re suffering, sometimes our instinctive inclinations can do more harm than good. Here 10 Screen capture fram Jan England - Ylvis are some tips for what not to do when someone you love is mourning. What's the best way to help? First of all, it’s not about you. No matter how much insight you might feel you have based on your own experience, it never helps to try to compare someone’s loss to your own. Even if you and your best friend both happened to lose a grandparent to the Bermuda Triangle, there is really no way that you can fully understand the exact feelings and emotions that your friend is going through. So saying that you “totally understand their feelings” can come across as dismissive and have the opposite effect to the empathic vibe that you were striving to achieve. Even worse, when someone is going through the fresh pain of loss, it isn’t fair to put your own past grief on the table; in that way, you're putting the new griever in the awkward position of having to comfort you. This isn’t helpful. In a similar way, never try to one-up the griever. To you, the loss of your girlfriend’s pet dog might seem like small potatoes when you think about how you lost your father as a child; however, telling someone who is in the throes of mourning that they don’t have the right to be upset because you were once much more upset is disrespectful and will only make them resent you once their intense pain has passed. We all have the right to care and love who we want to care and love, so never make someone feel like their loss isn’t significant because you've lived through a bigger tragedy. If you have nothing nice to say, seriously, just don’t say anything. You shouldn’t feel too bad if you find yourself at a loss for words or are uncomfortable around someone in mourning— it’s natural to not necessarily know the perfect thing to say. However, this doesn’t mean that you should overcompensate with trite platitudes; this is not the time for dick jokes to “lighten the mood,” either. In general, if you really don’t know what to say, the person you love will understand and will appreciate your empathetic presence more than empty Hallmark-isms. In the end, the sad truth is that we are all going to go through devastating times. Even if today is not your day for sorrow, it’s important to be kind, be thoughtful, and be there for the people around you when they’re suffering. You never know when you're going to need them to be there for you, too.