I can count the number of ‘good’ video game movies on one hand, but why is that? There are dozens of video games with rich backstories and interesting characters, so the backbone of a great story is already there. So why are these stories largely ignored?

When I was twenty-four, I remember having a conversation with a coworker about the idea of dating a man who had children. I didn’t have any children and told my colleague that I couldn’t see myself dating someone who did, because I wasn’t sure that I wanted any myself.

My colleague’s response was to become angry and demand to know why I felt like that. I knew we weren’t interested in dating each other, so his strong reaction took me by surprise. I later reasoned that he’d probably gotten angry because he had a daughter and assumed many women would…

Recently, I’ve been seeing articles that depict makeup in a negative light. So many women are ‘finally being freed’ from their makeup prisons, and others argue that women only wear makeup to attract the male gaze. The women who wrote these articles have only seen makeup as something that they were ‘forced to wear’. Those women were never makeup lovers, and that’s fine, but I am a makeup lover and I want to share my two cents.

I love everything about makeup, from the act of applying it to the confidence it gives me. I’ve always considered makeup another form…

Dear Future Self,

I’ve been thinking about you a lot today and wondering where I’ll see you in five years. Right now, you’ve got positive things happening. You’ve recently had a company ask if one of your articles could be featured in their ad. You’re extra excited because you’ve shopped at that retailer since you were small. You never bought much from there, because you couldn’t afford it. However, you loved going there to pick up lipstick or nail polish. You especially had a soft spot for anything marketed as color changing, like mood lipstick. You were also recently approached…

When I started writing about female characters in video games, I didn’t intend to make a series out of it. I only intended to write about Chun Li, but then I realized that many other characters deserve to be examined. While I still have a few female characters that I want to write about, today I’m going to be looking at the men in gaming. How are they viewed compared to the women of gaming?

“Do you, as a woman, like to wax your armpits?” I can still remember the chill that ran down my spine as the creepy voice filled my ear. He’d started by asking if the store waxed armpits, and I thought he might have been calling to make his wife an appointment, so told him we only waxed eyebrows. His second question made it clear that he wasn’t looking to make an appointment. He had a more disgusting motive for calling, one that I wanted to know nothing about.

“Hold on, I’m going to get someone who can help you,” I…

I did not mean for my article to be offensive and considered how much detail I should go into about the term and where it came from. I was trying not to offend and trying to show how the usage of a slang word can take on many different meanings when people began to misunderstand it.

A few days ago, I wrote an article about the term ‘Pick Me Girl’ and how I’ve seen it used. I wrote about my own experiences with the term, which have been overwhelmingly negative and also limited to my own point of view. In my original article I described the use of the term ‘pick me girl’ that I had personally witnessed, such as a girl being called a ‘pick me girl’ for being interested in video games, comic books, and Magic the Gathering.

Since I wrote that article, I have been getting so many notifications that it’s getting hard…