Page 49 of Looking for Group
By and large we have, as a culture, got better at not assuming people’s genders based on things like voice or looks but Drew (unlike Tinuviel who brings the point up immediately) doesn’t really move in LGBTQ+ circles and so his first instinct on hearing Solace/Kit’s voice is definitely to think “guy” even if it really shouldn’t be.
Also, I say we’ve got better at this as a culture, but honestly what’s actually happened is that, as a culture, we’ve polarised into camps, and one group of us try to avoid making assumptions about people’s genders based on this kind of thing, while another is obsessively measuring the biceps of women athletes and reinventing phrenology.
4. Paragraph begins with: “Holy shit,” gasped Sanee.
Alexis: Straight guys, huh? I increasingly wonder if they’re okay.
5. Paragraph begins with: But, honestly, this felt like a time in Drew’s life when a label would be really comforting.
Alexis: Ultimately, Drew never actually defines a label for himself and, ultimately, that winds up being okay.
Despite the premise, I didn’t really want the core conflict of this book to be the coming out/am-I-or-aren’t-I element.
Rather that bit of the story is part of a wider set of questions about how you think about and define yourself when you’re in the specific stage of life Drew is in at the start of this book.
And not all of those questions need a definitive answer, if that’s where you are and what you need.
6. Paragraph begins with: In the end he settled for X-Com .
Alexis: This is another semi-dated reference in that even X-Com 2 is quite an old game now.
However, I think there’s something so iconic and specific about both games that sometimes you just boot one of them up anyway.
Also, as far as I know, we still refer that kind of turn-based cover-centric squad strategy game as X-Com -like.
Chapter Six
1. Paragraph begins with: “But it is a bit funny.”
Alexis: Something I tried to capture with Drew and Sanee’s relationship was the low-key homophobia that was at the time (and which, from what I’ve seen, still is no matter how far we tell ourselves we’ve come) a very normalised part of social interactions between young straight men or, in Drew’s case, young men who have hitherto assumed themselves to be straight.
2. Paragraph begins with: “Genuinely not making a joke but I am a bit worried…”
Alexis: This still makes me giggle a bit, and thankfully still works as a reference. Clearly neither Sanee nor Drew know what “Gay Tinder” is called, or that it came first.
3. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Aconite]
Alexis: One of the things I really enjoyed about writing this book was the way the characters move between different forms of communication; I like thinking about how people express themselves in different formats, and I really liked the opportunity to do things like Kit’s last four lines here, which he clearly wrote over quite a long period of time while Drew was alt-tabbed but which Drew is now seeing all at once.
There’s a higher-stakes version of this later when Drew and Kit are in conflict/crisis and the people around them, in guild chat, are trying to innocently engage them in ordinary conversation.
4. Paragraph begins with: They made their way north over the blasted heaths surrounding Tormenter’s Bay…
Alexis: Navigating parts of the map while avoiding bears that massively outlevel you is an MMO right of passage.
5. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Aconite]
Alexis: I think, for fans of A Certain Popular MMO, the vibe of this particular dungeon is a mash-up of Sunken Temple and Wailing Caverns.
I will admit that while I do appreciate the streamlining that tends to go into most modern games, there’s part of me that always misses design choices that prioritise immersion over convenience.
I mean, I say misses very specifically. When faced with them directly, I usually complain.
6. Paragraph begins with: He gave an actual fist pump…
Alexis: Some of my best memories of A Certain Popular MMO are of stuff like this.
Doing content you’re not really meant to be doing, in a way you’re not meant to be doing it, with people you care about.
I can genuinely remember attempting to get through Wailing Caverns (an area designed with five players in mind) with only my partner, a dear friend, and a tamed chicken we were attempting to use as a main tank.
I can’t remember if we actually beat the dungeon. But that also wasn’t the point.
7. Paragraph begins with: You have received [Enigmatic Bracers of the Whale].
Alexis: Okay, this is explicitly a reference to the fact that low level gear in A Certain Popular MMO very often came with the suffix “of the whale” for, as far as I can tell, no fucking reason.
8. Paragraph begins with: [Charnos] says:
Alexis: A tiny thing I’m low-key pleased with when it comes to the MMO-ishness I tried to capture in the book is the way NPCs will often interject their pre-scripted comments into the middle of chat.
Again, I remember that so vividly from my Certain Popular MMO days.
Like you’d be standing around, talking about gear or life, or the raid tactics, and then a boss would bellow out something like “PREPARE TO BE EVISCERATED MORTALS” or someone would summon their pet and it’d be all “I am summoned, Master.” I guess you by definition had to be there. But it was a whole vibe.
9. Paragraph begins with: [Group][Aconite]
Alexis: FWIW, that comic is Knights of the Dinner Table , which I haven’t read in years, and clearly Kit and Drew are too young to have heard of. It was pretty popular in tabletop RPG circles in the late 90s/early 2000s.
Chapter Seven
1. Paragraph begins with: “Oh man…”
Alexis: Is The Game even still a thing? Was it ever at thing? Regardless, I just lost it.
2. Paragraph begins with: “Or the Leicester Chapter of the Ryan North Fan Club.”
Alexis: I’m glad Dinosaur Comics is still going strong. I reference it a weirdly large amount, and not just in my explicitly nerdy books. I think it’s because I’ve been reading it so long I literally can’t imagine the world without it.
3. Paragraph begins with: “It’s good.”
Alexis: Proof that I was into Supergiant Games long before Hades came out and everyone jumped on the bandwagon. I’ve even played Pyre which no fucker played, as far as I can tell.
4. Paragraph begins with: “I kind of lost track of the series.”
Alexis: This made me feel old when I wrote it. Imagine how I feel now.
5. Paragraph begins with: “Does it come with Orlando Bloom?”
Alexis: This was originally Johnny Depp but, honestly, I was getting bored of him even before the abuse allegations.
Also, I know Captain Jack is the character everyone remembers from Pirates of the Caribbean , but Will Turner is the perfect straight man, against whom Captain Jack’s outlandishness flourishes.
Without Will, he’s just a weirdo in too much eyeliner.
And I think Orlando Bloom does not get enough credit for that.
Chapter Eight
1. Paragraph begins with: “You know what’s weird?”
Alexis: I will never not love writing this kind of character. I know it’s cheap as hell. But fuck it.
2. Paragraph begins with: “Mana’s not an issue for me,” Kit went on, “so what really matters is wisdom and conviction.
Alexis: This kind of bullshit should not make me nostalgic but it really, really does.
3. Paragraph begins with: “Fine. Two evil women and one victim.”
Alexis: I like this scene for two reasons.
Firstly because council fights are genuinely great and it was fun to make one up, and secondly because while this fight-made-up-of-sexist-stereotypes is slightly satirical, it’s only slightly.
This kind of game tends to draws its lore from an era and a culture where the target audience was assumed to consist entirely of straight men under twenty-five and the idea of asking “hey, is this making some weird assumptions about women” was completely alien to the industry.
4. Paragraph begins with: [Raid][Dave]
Alexis: Wow, this link still works. I don’t know what to make of that.
5. Paragraph begins with: [Raid][Ialdir]
Alexis: As I keep going on about in these annotations, pretty much all of the characters in LFG engage with games in different ways.
Because Ialdir is older, his perspective is one that increasingly resonates with me as I get older myself.
His-slash-my generation is kind of the first that’s really had this experience of there being game franchises that are consistent across literally your entire life.
It can be hard to engage with from the outside, but having something that connects you to your own past in such a direct way is really powerful. Or it can be if you let it.
6. Paragraph begins with: [Raid][Heurodis]
Alexis: This is another obscure Baldur’s Gate reference that, I believe, maintains its obscurity.
It’s the line my favourite Baldur’s Gate character—evil wizard, Edwin Odesseiron—says when you make him party leader.
All his lines (even though there are only about six of them) are solid gold, though.
Like, “I am Edwin Odesseiron. You simians may refer to me merely as sir. For a less syllable intensive workout.” Or “PLEASE don’t disturb me while I plot to overthrow you. ”
Chapter Nine
1. Paragraph begins with: Tinuviel thought about it.
Alexis: Oh dear. Everything old is new again. Ironically, with the Final Fantasy VII remake, Sephiroth is now less dated than Viserys.
2. Paragraph begins with: “I don’t identify with him, but I think I understand him better.”
Alexis: Tinuviel should have waited for Season 8.
3. Paragraph begins with: Drew was kind of sleepy and a little bit sad.