“You keep doing that and you’ll wear a path through that carpet,” Nolan joked. He continued to input numbers into the spreadsheet while I paced to and fro in the background. After a half hour passed, Nolan squinted at the monitor and said nonchalantly, “I think I’m finished. Want to grab a bite to eat?” He saved the file and uploaded it to the shared drive.
Worst-case scenario, this was one of those misconduct simulation scenarios in the making. No thanks, I couldn’t afford the risk. “Nah, I better get home.” I didn’t bother to elaborate. He didn’t need to know Friday nights it was just me, a frozen pizza, and more Shark Week reruns.
“Maybe a rain check then?” He stood up to stretch, his shirt lifting to reveal his firm lower abs. Oh my god.
I replied, “Maybe.”
But most likely not.
Chapter Twelve
For the first time ever, I got the prime parking spot directly in front of my apartment garage elevator, which opened immediately as soon as I pressed the button. Could the universe be signaling to me that my life wasn’t all gloom and doom? I unlocked my door and exhaled quietly, comforted by my messy, lived-in apartment, with its familiar smell of Bounce dryer sheets and old coffee grounds. Home at last.
Firing up my laptop before dinnertime turned out to be a terrible idea. Out of morbid curiosity I searched my name online and HOLY HELL. My appetite disappeared, boom, just like that.
I found hundreds, maybe even thousands of disparaging messages and comments about me. A chunk of them were about the shittiness of the Ultimate Apocalypse game concept, and the widespread hatred of it, but most of the posts and comments were just personal attacks on me. The “fucking feminazi.” The “stuck-up asshat ho.” And my favorite, from @alfredfem: “cunty fuckign slut.” @alfredfem needed to spellcheck that shit before he put it online. Also, was ‘cunty’ even a word? And, me . . . a slut? That word was so contemptuous, and if any of these people actually knew me, they’d get why that was so fucking ridiculous to say. I had NO sexual game. Those fucking ignorant, vocal assholes.
Chewing my nails was a nasty habit I had stopped in high school and resurrected again during my current life crisis. My life derailed overnight, without any warning, and I couldn’t manage to get it back on track. It had already really taken a toll on my mental health and my body. Skipping lunch that afternoon, I needed more nourishment than a bowl of cereal from breakfast. I poured myself a wine, grabbed some baby carrots from the fridge, and nuked a Trader Joe’s corn dog. It felt like a corn-dog kind of day. Quite possibly a two-or-three-corn-dog kind of day. All these racist, sexist, homophobic messages and comments hit me where it tore at my soul and I needed some hot-dog-wrapped-in-cornbread sustenance to shoulder this torment.
While settling into my meal, Ian sent an email to Joe, Sue, and me at 8:53 P.M. “Joe, please draft a response to the online petition calling for action to fire Melody and boycott of Seventeen Studios. Let’s meet 6 A.M. tomorrow to discuss.—I.M.”
What online petition? I searched for “Melody Joo petition” online and fucking hell, a crowdsourced document with hundreds of signatures was the first search result, demanding my removal from Ultimate Apocalypse, as my involvement in game production caused “tangible detriment to the entire gaming industry.” The consequences according to the ranting petition, if the request was not met, would be a worldwide boycott of my game when it launched.
Anti-Melody online discussions were everywhere and I couldn’t stop reading all the angry and bitter commentary surrounding my femaleness. These misogynists were all over the globe, spewing vulgarities toward me at all hours of the day. Some cloaked their hate with anti-left-wing feminist arguments, hearkening back to the good old days when games were all about men, for men. This seemed to be about the categorical hatred of women by certain men, and these jerks finding an outlet to vocalize their opinion. I group-messaged with Candace and Jane, to vent.
Jane: WTF is wrong with everyone? Why all the hate?
Candace: Yeah, WTF???
Jane: Seriously! I took tons of art history classes in college (4.0 GPA!) and studied Western classic art, and men used to CELEBRATE women in their artwork. Even ugly women. Remember Leonardo’s Mona Lisa? She was like a four out of ten on a bombshell meter.
Me: That’s a funny way to describe the Mona Lisa.
Candace: Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, also celebrated. She was pretty though.
Jane: I did a sr. thesis on Monet. Women in the Garden. Very pro female. And Matisse’s Woman w/a Hat. The Dance. All pro XX chromosomes!
Me: If angry trolls got to rename these masterpieces: Bitches in the Garden. Feminazi with Hat. Nekked Hos Dancing.
Jane’s point was on point, though. Women used to be depicted positively in art. Centuries ago, women in distinguished works of art had been portrayed with reverence and tastefulness, even those presenting nude female subjects. Well, except for Picasso. He created some pretty jacked-up, abstract paintings featuring women. But Picasso didn’t create portraits of women with glistening DDD breasts and raunchy attire, à la the game industry.
After venting to Jane and Candace for a few more minutes, I got back to revising production timelines and taking notes from one of the game production books Kat had lent me.
A buzz from Candace’s text shook me awake. Maybe you should quit. I want you to be safe. It’s gotten really bad. I’d fallen asleep on my new laptop keyboard. I felt the side of my face: my fingers traced the key imprints across my left cheek. Thank god my pool of drool on the keyboard didn’t short out my computer.
It was the safest way out of this, quitting. The controversy would die down if I threw up my hands and yelled “You win!” But then, well, the bad guys would win. And bad guys should never win.
I wrote back. This game might bomb, but I’m not quitting. I’m staying and fighting these bullies. And my game is going to launch on time, damn it. And it will be profitable. I’m going to make this happen because I’m not standing down!
I’d invested so much time already into it. I couldn’t back out now.
Candace wrote back. 100% here for it . . . I have no doubt.
I wished I could say the same.
AT 6:00 A.M. sharp, I met the others in Ian’s office. Everyone looked so haggard, including me. More nights with troubled sleep, tossing and turning with worry. I tried to add some early-morning humor. “What, no catered breakfast?” Joe and Sue looked up at me with dead eyes. Note to self: no breakfast jokes to add levity at 6 A.M.
Ian, on the other hand, snorted. “If you can get us out of this mess, I’ll pay for your catered breakfasts for a whole year.” A pretty tempting offer. Too bad I had no idea how to make this problem go away.
A shadow moved outside of Ian’s office, triggering all the automatic lights in the executive hallway. Asher, in the office at 6:10 A.M. with a goddamned Starbucks again. I’d need to confront him later about his role in this whole fucking fiasco. But now I needed to focus on the crisis at hand: the online petition.
Joe said, “Ian and I consulted our legal team. We could go out with another official statement against the petition, but sending another one out so soon after the previous one would look incompetent from a PR standpoint. I think we could post a statement on our website, but not necessarily blast it out in any of the gaming outlets.”
Ian furrowed his brow. “That seems sensible.” He added, “This type of controversy has never happened to me before. I never thought the gaming community would come after me like this. The game community loves me.”
Sue chimed in. “Well, to be frank, it’s because you’re a man that you’ve never dealt with this before. How many other female production leads did you have at your last company?”
He struck The Thinker statue pose. “None. So let’s suppose you’re right and it’s all about bashing women. Isn’t this game launch a no-win situation? Aren’t we going to fail because no one will buy this game?”
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
The loud, rapid-fire knocking made my heart stop. Kat threw the door open and almost knocked Joe’s coffee mug out of his hand. “Sorry I’m late. My kid projectile vomited Cheerios all over the kitchen and I had to get an emergency babysitter.” She met my stunned stare and waved at me. I wasn’t expecting Kat to be here. What a relief. A familiar, trustworthy face.
Joe said, “I asked Kat to join us for three reasons. One, she is a core team member of the Ultimate Apocalypse project and is integral to its success. Second, there’s a leak at this company so I want to keep our circle of trust to just us. Kat knows a lot of people here and might be able to help HR home in on the culprit. And third, she’s a chick. I mean . . . a woman. Er . . . female? And she’s been in the gaming industry for a long time. We could use her advice and street cred to aid in digging us out of our hole.” I scanned the room for any dissent. Nope. None. Even Ian nodded in agreement. If I went down in flames, it wasn’t just my career that would be destroyed. Seventeen Studios and Ian MacKenzie would go down too. Ian’s life and mine were intricately intertwined. He had all the incentive in the world to make this situation better.
Ian cleared his throat. “Okay, can we focus here and get back to my question? Isn’t this game inevitably going to fail, with all this bad press?”