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