Punching Up the Patriarchy - I don't care if you laugh, I amuse myself

I resemble this teacher.

I would like to start this post with a disclaimer: I am not a comedian. This shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone. I am not very funny - to most people. I am that dorky lecturer that will drop jokes and references that none of the teenagers in front of me gets. "That's ok, I amuse myself," is the cue I follow jokes with so that the students know it won't be on the test (I mean if I gave tests, but that's another post).

To a certain extent, I also approach streams this way. This is not to say that I don't want to entertain my viewers, I do, but I want to enjoy myself first - or I won't continue to stream anyway. Playing The Witcher is great for me because I absolutely love this game (seriously, I haven't had this much fun playing a game since I had an actual raiding guild in WoW many years ago) and the extreme and obvious masculine point of view of the game allows for one of my favorite past-times - satirically behaving stereotypically macho.

This is not a new pass time for me. I noticed early in life, being raised in a fairly traditional Catholic household, that being a girl in America was not the best character creation roll I could've made (certainly by no means the least privileged, but that is also a topic for another day) and even as an elementary school kid, I remember pushing against the gender roles adults were trying to enculturate me into. At first, this was mostly born of frustration, but as I got older and I learned those boundaries and expectations better, I also learned that I am both amused by and feel empowered when I subvert such cultural expectations with this sort of satirical role-play.


I am Geralt. Sometimes this is because I immerse myself in that role while playing, but other times it is because I am playing at being a comically toxic version of Geralt. And, of course, nowhere am I more likely to start playing at being, rather than being, Geralt than when it comes to the sex cards.