All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces...

I've mentioned that my husband is a gamer. One of the games he's playing right now is Gears of War, a gritty, cinematic game wherein grotesquely muscled soldiers fight grotequely muscled aliens among the wrecked and ruined remains of beautiful estates and industrial parks. It is an intensely masculine game, and in the multiplayer aspect, the only female presence is the voice of the alien mothercreature, who berates the alien players when they lose, or praises herself when they win.

There are a couple of women in the group that he plays with regularly. I'm fascinated by their participation, in a way that makes my atrophied feminist leanings twinge and protest. I think that they make me a little ashamed of my spectator role, my lack of any competitive edge that would make me want to pick up the controller and play with the big boys. After all, it's rather sterotypically girl to lean back and just watch as the men grapple with violence and war.

But I'm not sure that's my motivation...or lack thereof.

There was a conversation on one of the forums I frequent about a study recently released that claimed that telling a kid he or she is smart is tantamount to telling them not to bother with working hard. That rang true with me, certainly. I was told I was smart by all sorts of people when I was going up - my parents, my teachers, the kids around me - and so I understood that my success or lack of it was entirely due to inherent traits over which I had no control. I did the things that I was good at right away, and avoided the ones that I had to work at, because I was convinced that I shouldn't have to work. If I was gifted, then things should just be easy from the start. If anything wasn't easy, it threatened my self image, and I "decided" that I just didn't like it, and wouldn't bother trying it again. This eventually evolved into a habit of avoiding activities that I couldn't be sure about. Competitive sports fell into this category, and then any kind of competition. Losing at anything was terribly stressful for me.

I've come a little way toward dealing with this - partially because writing is demanding of me that I work, and not be put off by a little failure, although hey, haven't finished that book yet and thus be forced into trying to sell it! - uh, where was I going with this? Ah, yes, competition. My fear of failure combined with a prickly dislike of looking stupid in front of guys who might then blame it on my sex has led me to entirely avoid competitive gaming.

But I think it is so very cool that these women are out there in the field, launching rockets and chainsawing and holding their own, even if they have to do it as hulking supermale supersoldiers. The way that one hums and giggles over the Xbox live voicechat subverts the testosteronic atmosphere pretty severely.

Here's to you, Mystic Violet.