Mayday Miss Marcy: Eight’s a Crowd, Safer Spaces, and Umamusume Returns

Welcome back to another edition of Mayday, Miss Marcy! in which I answer YOUR questions, and wow, did you all really like the e-mail option! I am grateful for all of your letters and questions, and I wanted to say that all submitted questions will be answered, although there was quite an avalanche, so please expect a little bit of time to elapse before you see them answered!

As a reminder, if you’d like to submit questions, we now have an e-mail you can use! Please send your questions to:

Marcy@goonhammer.com

With the subject “Miss Marcy: ”

You are also able to leave comments on the article, as well as use the Discord bot command if you happen to be a member, meaning you now have THREE ways to give me your questions to answer! And with that, let us get back to the questions and answers that you all love so much!

The Real Estate Market is Crazy Right Now

Hello Miss Marcy,

I’m a lover of Warhammer 40k. I play the tabletop weekly, I engage in various groups, tournament organize, whole nine yards.

In my passion for plastic I’ve came upon a dreaded realization: I’m running out if space.

I love to put all my finished minis on shelves (the WIP get chucked in bins), but I’m rapidly running out of shelf space and I don’t think ANOTHER shelf is an answer my SO would appreciate.

I own 8 armies, is the realistic solution to just prune one of them and go from there? I genuinely do rotate through most of them, so I’d not consider any “rotting away” per say.

Would love for someone to give me the push to purge!

Sincerely, Crowded in Canada.

How to Construct a Safe(r) Space

Hi Marcy,

My question is something that you’ve touched on a bit with the pronouns Q/A before (which was a really wonderful “call-in” moment), and to preface this, might not even be something you want to touch with a 10-foot pole given how polarizing it can be. But it’s been something I’ve been thinking about for the past couple of years as gaming spaces (of all kinds) have grown. And while I have my own thoughts and ideas, I’d love to hear yours. 

So the question is: What are some tangible ways that those of us in the gaming community can create safe(r) and more inclusive spaces for people of all identities? I think especially for folks that are not dialed into these conversations on the regular. I work in related fields for these kinds of conversations, and while I can talk for days in buzzwords and the most up-to-date accepted language in academia, that’s not reasonable or accessible for anyone (nor should it be expected to be so). 

Ultimately, this is not about being right or perfect, but the more human conversations we can have with each other about this, the more we can grow our hobbies in amazing (and many times unexpected and surprising) ways. I’d love to continue the discussion you began weeks ago if you’d indulge me!

-Nabroleon Bronaparte.

Dear Nabroleon,

If only this question was so easily answered. There is, as we talked about a few weeks ago, the Nazi Bar problem, which is recognizing when a space has been made (or is becoming) unsafe, or is already unsafe. However, making spaces “safer” is often pretty difficult, and many people aren’t willing to do or put in the labor in order to actually get it to be that way. There are a lot of very easy performative ways to make it seem like things are safer, but there’s no foolproof way to do it.

Probably the most successful attempts I’ve seen fall into two categories. The first is “easier” and the second is “harder,” despite how they might seem. The first is to try and ensure that the organizers and main voices of a space are willing to put in labor to make things feel more comfortable. This mean, essentially, that people need to be willing to call others out for their behavior and make people take responsibility for their actions. While you may say “that doesn’t sound easy,” it often means you just need people who have integrity and value making their friends and those around them feel welcome, rather than being cowardly or just making excuses for bad behavior. By simply having someone who is willing to put their foot down, it can make a space a lot safer for marginalized participants because they don’t feel the need to speak up as much, which often feels like putting our necks out on the line.

The second thing is to recruit and include marginalized people in a space, and allow them to be part of the overall creation of that space. The reason this part is “harder” is because it will always depend on many other factors; as they say in business, Location, Location, Location. Having the world’s Wokest Gaming Club doesn’t mean anything if there just really aren’t a lot of marginalized people in your area, or if there are other things that may impact their attending events. Of course, having an open and inviting atmosphere can do a lot of good. And there’s nothing wrong with having your LGS or gaming club decorated with Pride flags or BLM stickers, even if it feels a little performative.

I’ve had some good and bad experiences curating spaces. I don’t tend to make my identity “quiet,” and I have often been called “abrasive and difficult,” titles I’m quite proud of, because I don’t tend to be quiet when people misbehave. But not everyone is going to be like me, and not everyone should be like me, and in a moment of honesty, it is exhausting at times, which is the major issue. Watching people who say they know better turn things into a boys club or spout something “uncomfortable” when they think no one is looking and then having to take them to task takes a lot of energy that I could be using for just about anything else, and this is why the “easy” option can be very helpful.

I’m glad you’re thinking about these topics while also considering that there are a lot of ways that they tend to be used to advertise or push an image rather than do anything to correct issues, but I hope maybe my perspective here can help you–and others–who are looking to try and make spaces safer. Sometimes, you just gotta speak up for people, simple as that.

A Horse is a Horse, of Course, Unless it is a Horsegirl

First of all, hello and thank you for the existence of this weekly column. As a queer Warhammer fan in Russia, it can be pretty disheartening to be a part of this hobby, but your deeply personal weekly responses inspire a lot of hope in me that some day there will be a more welcoming hobby and queer space in my country. My question however is not regarding this particular topic (maybe some other day tho).

You have said that we can ask about anything that you cover on the website, and technically you have recently covered the release of global server for Umamusume: Pretty Derby. Your review was really great and inspired my to try out the game. The gameplay loop is indeed deep and stories are surprisingly compelling (some of them have made me shed more than one tear). What I have noticed however is a strong through-line of ADHD and generally neurodivergent traits in many runners. I have definitely a long way to go still form covering the wholeness of the narrative experience of this game and franchise in general, but stories on Haru Urara, Mayano Top Gun, and Gold Ship (And may be even Opera O to some extent), in particular got me really curious if this is a consistent trait of the franchise and if it will be continued in anime and later releases for the game that are prepared from the Japanese server. I am an avid gacha player of almost 10 years at this point, and I don’t think I have ever seen such consistency in neurodivergent characterization of characters in other games before. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. Can you shed some light on the matter as a self-proclaimed Umamuseme fan of many years?

Once again I acknowledge that this might not be the most relevant topic to cover on Goonhammer of all places, but as you have inspired me on this new journey, I think I just had to share some of my discoveries too.

Writing from the faraway land, gratefully,
– Nona Gone.

Dear Nona,

Thank you for your email. I will be very transparent: I skipped you to the front of the line, because I found the first part of your email touching, and wanted you to know that I appreciate that my queer opinions and column can reach around the world to people like yourself. I deeply hope that we can all look forward to a brighter, more open, queer space for us all, as the overall color of clouds on the horizon are quite dark these days for many of us.

I will be even more transparent: I wanted an excuse to talk about Umamusume again, and your email came in right as I was finishing up my draft. The discussion of horsegirls has been something of an entertaining bit of excitement in my life since the global release, as I’ve watched countless people fall under the charming spell of the series, and seeing people talk about it and read about it on the site was amazing. Being able to write about one of my largest passions and favorite properties on Goonhammer was enough of a delight, but I was even more thrilled to see the reception.

To your question, a lot of people have noticed that the narrative of the individual Umamusume are shockingly relatable, often dealing with fairly “human” concepts: competition, loss, expectations, familial legacies, inadequacy, and more. I think one of the parts of this series that is often overlooked, even when people are familiar, is that the Umamusume are a composite of a few things: the actual horses that raced, as well as their careers, jockeys, and other aspects. Gold Ship seems like an absolute menace until you see the actual horse she was based on, while other horses like Rice Shower or Silence Suzuka embody a spirit of tragic “what could have been” energy that makes them seem ephemeral. But it is the more “human” horses that we connect with more, because their human failures and struggles make us see ourselves in their stories, and thus make us connect with them.

Of course, it certainly includes the audience performing a little bit of literary analysis and reader response in regards to what we “see” or “feel” from the horses, but the fact is that their narratives are not obfuscated; sometimes it feels so relatable because they are discrete and represented in a fully realized way. Haru Urara and Mayano Top Gun are popular choices for this, but I think characters like King Halo make it even easier: King Halo struggles with confidence and feeling like she’s valued because her mother is abusive, treating her like a failure. This is borne from the actual King Halo’s career as a horse that never quite managed to live up to expectations, changing later in life to a distance that fit his skill set better; having that represented as a daughter struggling under a controlling and dismissive parent while trying to figure out what she wants in life is just easily relatable.

Perhaps the greatest example, and a point of great contention in the series fandom, comes from people who misunderstand the narrative of Season 2 and Tokai Teio. Tokai Teio was the son of Symboli Rudolf, the “Emperor” himself, and Teio (which also can mean Emperor, by the way) was expected to live up to that lineage. While Tokai Teio was indeed successful, he suffered a staggering three fractures over his career, all of which he overcame to still end with a win at the Japan Cup and Arima Kinen. Fans of the show often complain that season 2 “spends too much time” on Teio’s anxiety and recovery from injury, but these are people who miss the point of what the show is about: it isn’t fictionalized sports action, it’s recreating historical events; beyond that, the show is also showing the realities of competition and the fact that sometimes things really just do not go our way. Competitive sports (or almost any competitive endeavor, really) tend to be great examples of the human condition, which Umamusume embodies inside of a shell people don’t really expect to encounter it in.

I highly, highly suggest that you, dear Nona Gone, watch the movie Beginning of a New Era, as well as readers who are curious. I’ve mentioned it in my overview article, but BoaNE is a movie that explores the idea of injuries that are both physical and mental, of legacies, of inadequacy, of being your own worst enemy, and living up to people’s expectations. It ranks highly as one of my favorite movies of all time, which is pretty high praise for a list that also contains In the Mood for Love and Daisies. Is it as masterful? No. But is it poignant and explores its concepts well? Absolutely. The fact that the game also replicates these narratives is due to the fact that they are easy to explore and consider, and show that anyone can be a competitor, and that anyone’s story can be a success, even if they’ve never won a single race (yet).

PS: As a final note, and a question to you, Nona, have you tried Reverse 1999? I find that it explores concepts of neurodivergence and queer identities in ways that a lot of other Gacha games don’t, if you haven’t given it a chance yet.

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