Geek Fatale

You don’t have to be Martha++ to pull it off

If you’re like me and you love video games, you’ve either hosted or been to your fair share of gaming parties, be they strictly LAN (Local Area Network, where everyone brings a PC, a la Penny Arcade Expo), console, or role-playing of the pen and paper variety. It doesn’t take a lot of know-how to pull off a Gaming Party that a geekier Martha would be proud of, but it definitely takes some planning.

• Compile your guest list. This is definitely the first step to getting organized. Compile your list based on the niche of the party. Invite the geeks that are most likely to enjoy themselves. Console geeks for console parties. D&D and pen/paper RPG geeks for role-playing. Etc. Etc.
• Set an event date, with an established RSVP. Setting an event date is obvious, but if you don’t remember to set an established RSVP, you won’t know who’s going to show up until the last minute, which makes it difficult to stay organized.
• Send out reminder emails at least a few times. Your geeks are going to forget and it’s not because they don’t want to come - it’s that they’ll get caught up in painting miniatures, playing Rock Band, and/or the latest and greatest of recent projects. So make sure that you send out emails to remind them, starting a week before and then right up until the day before the actual event. Don’t send too many or they’ll mark your emails as spam!
• Arrange a wide-range of activities within the niche of the party. If it’s a LAN/Console party, check out my List of Essential Games for the Savvy Geek Fatale. If you’re hosting a boardgame party, have a variety of games that include action (Zombies), RPG/Puzzle (Heroquest, Talisman), and card games from the genius that is Steve Jackson Games. If it’s something else, use your discretion and make sure that you have lots of options.
• Make sure that there is a serious supply of food, either supplied by you or by you and your guests. They should include healthy and un-healthy varieties of snacks, like veggie/fruit platters, chips, salsa, mini quiches, etc. Use your Google Fu to come up with some interesting snacks and put them together the night before, not the day of.
• Adequate space is a must. If you don’t have the capacity for your particular gaming party, look into renting a hotel conference room, library meeting room, etc. Just don’t expect people to be okay with cramming into your tiny, one-bedroom apartment to have a console gaming day with only two other people. Not cool.
• Have fun. Don’t forget that at the end of the day, it’s supposed to be fun so don’t get lost in the details. If you forget the food, don’t worry about it and just take a mini-road trip to the local 7-Eleven. If you don’t have enough games, send out word to your geeks to bring their favourites. And if you simply don’t want to set a definitive guest list, be prepared for the mother of all parties.

Rock on, Geek Fatales.

I think that there was a day, maybe when I was small, when I knew that I was a geek. Not just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill-I-watch-anime geek, but an actual full-fledged computer software writing, web site developing, video game playing, blog loving geek. I knew that there were other girls like me out me (even if it was ten years ago) but how can I find them without having a network dedicated to connecting other girls like me?

In the last ten years, we’ve seen serious developments in the world of female geekery. There are finally networks out there dedicated to providing technical insight into the technochic world of a female geek - places like geekSugar, girlgeeks, ladygamers, etc. But we don’t really have a site dedicated to be an all-around female geek in the modern world.

Enter Geek Fatale: a new solution for situations and issues that we female geeks face on a day-to-day basis. Not just something for computer geeks and technofemmes, or gamer girls and World of Warcraft junkies, or even anime Otaku girls with a penchant for cosplay… but something that each subgenre of female geek can identify with.

Welcome to Geek Fatale.