Women who Roleplay at Convetions: Stalking Incidents?

[Gothmog]

I haven't heard anything like that happening at cons, although I have heard of stories of reject-type guys hitting on women at the cons, even though their advances are clearly unwelcome/inappropriate/creepy. I do know that when my girlfriend and I go to gaming stores/comic book shops/computer game stores she gets gawked at a lot and it sometimes makes her pretty uncomfortable- to the point of not wanting to be in the store unless I am there. I think it has more to do with socially retarded guys than any sort of actual mental problem, but I am sure there have been a few nut jobs among those gawkers.

 

[el-remmen]

. I know times that women have been approached with unwelcome advances, but all of those were appropriately handled with no creepy follow-through on the part of the wanna-be romantic.

Man, you are never going to let that drop are you, Kev?

 

[mythago]

I wonder if we're not using different definitions of "stalking" here.

In America, "stalking" usually means a creepy weirdo who follows his/her target around constantly, making midnight phone calls, rifling through their garbage for receipts, that kind of thing. Constant surveillance and inappropriate attention.

If, OTOH, by stalking we're talking about "following around and bugging the snot out of someone because you looooove them," without that level of obsession, then sure, that happens. It tends to happen a lot more in the SF/con world than in gaming, IMO.

 

[megamania]

good point

After reading this the other night I was thinking about it and recall my wife being gawked at by many a player but no more. Some people and societies would call that sexual harassment. Unfortunately for me, my wife calls it a good time....things to make you say hmmmm...?


(she's just teasing and don't mean to make lite this possibly serious subject...just what I do)

 

[incognito]

This one time, at band camp...

Stalking is pretty odd behavior, and this is from a guy who is broderline OCD

(CDs, and/or DVDs clearly need to be in little stacks, arranged by what order you play them in the CD player, right? RIGHT!?)

 

[mythago]

Oh, no wonder--you're in Boston. Here on the Left Coast, we'd just say you're a triple Virgo.

 

[Andy Kitkowski]

>>>
(she's just teasing and don't mean to make lite this possibly serious subject...just what I do)
>>>
Oh, totally- I understand. That's the thing, though- different people have different "implied comfort zones".

I guess the stalking in question is the predatory kind- following someone home like they were shadowing her, using subversive means to find out her name, address, number, etc. Not just Being Creepy (although that's a pain, too, and indicates the social immaturity of the antagonist), but actually doing things that, well, involve actually Stalking someone.

>>>
I'm curious about what manga that is and how old it is.
>>>

This manga is called "Piyopu Seikatsu" (have Shift-JIS? It's u‚Ò‚æ‚Õ`¶Šˆv)@by Naoko Kanazawa (‹ààV®Žq). ISBN is 4-907792-04-2. My family's in Gunma pref so I feel your pain (no gaming stores nearby), but the next time you go to Tokyo make sure you hit the Yellow Submarine in Shinjuku's west side. They'll definitely have copies, as well as other RPG Manga (but Piyopu is the best I've seen).

I didn't mean to come here to plug my stuff, but if I was a GI Joe action figure my specialty (instead of Machine Guns, Desert Survival or Tracking) would be Independent RPGs and Japanese RPGs and related materials. If anyone is interested in these "RPG-themed" manga or checking out some pretty Japanese RPGs, I've got this URL in my sig: http://www.z-builder.com/trpg/ . I'm just getting over an eye injury, hence the lack of updates, but by this weekend I'll have lots more scans and info about these games. I'll post an update to this thread, so if you subscribe to this thread you'll get an update.

I also write articles (save for the latest issue, which I had to skip)for the online RPG zine "Places to Go, People to Be" (http://www.ptgptb.org) and, until recently, wrote articles about Japanese RPGs in the Viz comic release of the manga "Bastard!!". I'll be rewriting articles about Japanese games and gaming culture for my own site and the aforementioned PTGPTB.

If anyone has any more stories, please share. I'm still looking for data/stories.

 

[megamania]

I relieze this is waaaaay off subject (both this message and D20) but do you know of good places to get lupin III (or rupinIII) DVDs? I'm aware some are due out in US but haven't seen them and finally there will be some decent US exposure to this fun series. For the month of January the Cartoon Network will be showing some Lupin IIIs.

 

[Quartermoon]

I've experienced some creepiness during a session from some of the less socially favored among us, but have never had a problem that extended beyond it.

 

[Chimera]

This is a bit apocryphal, but at a Gencon back in the 80's it became necessary for me to point out a guy's "overenthusiasm" and ask him to knock it off. It was making the girl uncomfortable (she was sitting back in her chair, arms folded staring daggers at him. He was probably just glad of the attention!) and disrupting the game. He was a bit embarassed, but did oblige. Although he pretty much spent the rest of the game silently staring at his character sheet while casting furtative glances at the object of his desire.

But hey, Thanks for (not) Playing!