From the Bookshelf of She-Geeks…

In Real Life

Cory Doctorow,

Jen Wang

Start date: January 1, 2016

Finish date: January 31, 2016

Discussion: Comic Books

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What Members Thought

Jun 13, 2017 Chinook rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: america, kids, graphic-novels, asia, signed-by-author, denvercomiccon

I decided to read some Doctorow because he's coming to Denver Comic Con this year and this was available on Overdrive. I found it fascinating since I've only heard people talk about gold farming and MMOs and knew almost nothing about them. This was a great intro to the subject and I'm now curious to read more. ...more

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Mar 05, 2017 Jamie rated it liked it

Shelves: books-i-own, comics-graphic-novels

Not a bad graphic novel but I can't say I was impressed with it. I didn't like the introduction. Info overload that was not necessary. The art was pretty good. I liked that Anda was not some perfect model looking girl. The characters are not perfect and that was a big plus.
Liza's character made little sense to me. She was from Australia but spoke an English/Spanish mix. It was weird. And the going to the school to get girls to try out for a guild that they still had to pay for...who travels for ...more

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Jan 28, 2024 Cornerofmadness rated it liked it

Shelves: popsugar, graphic-novel, contemporary

About a 3.5 read thanks to some (most likely) unintentional things in here. First up, this GN is a decade old at the time of my reviewing it and the short story it's based on is I believe several years older. My biggest problem with this is it split its focus rather unsuccessfully. We have only one pov character, Anda, a young girl who is getting involved in her first MMRPG much to her mother's hesitation fearing (rightfully so) that her daughter could be preyed upon.

Anda was motivated by a spea About a 3.5 read thanks to some (most likely) unintentional things in here. First up, this GN is a decade old at the time of my reviewing it and the short story it's based on is I believe several years older. My biggest problem with this is it split its focus rather unsuccessfully. We have only one pov character, Anda, a young girl who is getting involved in her first MMRPG much to her mother's hesitation fearing (rightfully so) that her daughter could be preyed upon.

Anda was motivated by a speaker at the school, an Australian gamer girl (woman really, just not as alliterative) Liz is trying to put together a group of women gamers for this fantasy game and is giving these middle grade girls a free trial, talking at length about even in game girls tend to hide behind male avatars and gender neutral names (sadly a decade later that is still partially true).

Anda is swept away and is recruited by another girl to beat up gold farmers and she can earn IRL money for this. Knowing this might not be right, Anda goes along until she talks to a gold farmer and realizes this isn't an NPC. She's talking to a young Chinese man, Raymond, who has been too injured to work in a factory despite him being in his teens.

She learns that gold farming is when people get hold of and sell high value in-game objects to help players level up. The problem is the farmers tend to be people from developing countries and in poverty, selling to the wealthy first world players. So you have the problem of this illegal trade and it being someone's sole income (often working in bad conditions) plus ill feelings about a) people buying this stuff b) ESL players all being held as suspect in this activity.

Anda's attempts to help using her father's union's strike goes horribly wrong (not shocking in a communist country) and Raymond's situation gets more dire until she helps to spread his message (so it doesn't look like the whistle blower is within that company).

I think this would have worked better if it concentrated on just one thing, the farming or the misogyny. Doctorow is a long time activist and has a point that activisim only works if we ALL help regardless of race or gender. On the other hand, seeing this all through Anda's eyes there is an element of white savoir in this (even though the message that does it is coming from the Chinese players) Maybe if it didn't work so easily the ending might have sat better with me.

I think this had the best of intentions though. I wish gaming was a safer place. I've been a gamer girl since the 80s and it almost felt safer then (as you'd have to insult me to my face and not hide in the internet's shadows to do so). The sad part is if a woman gamer had written this, the ratings and the vitriol would likely have been worse. ...more

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Aug 06, 2015 Adriel rated it really liked it

Shelves: comics, ya

I liked this sweet short book about a young gamer being introduced to the problems of the real world via people she meets in an online game. The illustrations were stylized, imparting a ton of information about the characters and their feelings. I think the story was a little to feel-good for the realities of the topic.

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