The Week in Gay Geek: Go APE at the Alternative Press Expo or nuclear in "Fallout 3" this weekend

This week:

• What's gay at this weekend's Alternative Press Expo?
• The Transgender Day of Remembrance is seeking webcomic submissions.
• Fallout 3 finally hits the store shelves. Can a game with such a strong following live up to fans' expectations?
• Fable 2 just may be even gayer than its predesessor.
• Could we give up Pushing Daisies if we got a Bryan Fuller-led Star Trek?

Check it all out after the break!

GET YOUR APE MASK FOR HALLOWEEN:
It's time for one of the gayest comic conventions around when the Alternative Press Expo (the APE), takes place in San Francisco this weekend. Focusing on small press publishers and minicomics, APE has one of the largest concentrations of gay creators for comic cons. I'd love to credit that quality to its San Francisco setting, but Wondercon, the other major Bay Area comic gathering, is almost entirely lacking in gay offerings.

APE 2008 art

Prism Comics has a look at the weekend's gay offerings, including a list of where gay creators can be found at APE. This year also features out Jane's World creator Paige Braddock as one of the convention's special guests. After the mess that San Fran is on Halloween, APE sounds like a great tonic.

WEBCOMICKERS AGAINST INTOLERANCE:
The San Francisco Concourse isn't the only queer comics event on the horizon. November 20 is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, an event that has a comics countepart in the Transgender Day of Remembrance Webcomics Project, a day meant to bring attention to anti-transgender violence. Organizer Jenn Dolari is looking for submissions for this year's collection of webcomics.

A panel from "a denizen's entertainment", a submission to the 2007 Transgender Day of Remembrance Webcomics Project

This year Dolari is seeking comics that "illustrate(s) a word or a feeling that the Day of Remembrance makes you feel".

FINALLY OUT OF VAULT 101:
This week saw the release of the highly-anticipated Fallout 3, which means there's been plenty of excited hype for the game. My favorite bit is a retrospective of the game offered by Gametrailers that takes a look at the evolution of the game (I almost forgot about Wasteland, a game that never escaped my 'Games to Try' list because I was too busy trying to navigate spinner traps in The Bards Tale) as well as a recap of the what we've learned about the Fallout universe:

I'm just starting to make my way through Fallout 3 and it's certainly making a strong first impression. I've barely gotten past the introductory mission and so far it's living up to the promise of the Fallout series meeting up with the jawdroppng Oblivion game engine. Still, not everyone has high expectations for the game. At Brainy Gamer, Michael Abbott, who is teaching a course on storytelling in computer RPGs, examines the evolution his students had towards Fallout:

"Our first Fallout conversation was a disaster ... They basically tried the game, got frustrated, threw up their hands, and walked away. ... All of these students have seen the trailers for Fallout 3. When I told them we would play the game immediately after release, they burst into spontaneous fits of delight ... In this setting, Fallout 3 was received like mana from RPG heaven. Subsequently, Fallout 1 and 2 were seen as trials to be endured while awaiting the modern gameplay savior of 3."

C is for Charisma, it's why people think I'm great!

Eventually, however, Abbott's students learned to appreciate the earlier Fallout games and lost their sense of excitement over the latest edition.

"After a long and productive conversation I asked them how they were feeling about Fallout 3. 'They're totally gonna screw up that game,' said one student. 'They're gonna say shoot this guy in the eyeball, like they're giving you all these choices, but you know they're gonna make it run and gun. You're gonna be running around blowing stuff up, and all the shooter players are gonna love it. But it won't be Fallout. I promise you. It won't be Fallout.'"

At the very least, I'd say Fallout 3 certainly captures that feeling of helplessness and isolation, though my memory of the first Fallout is too dim to make a comparison. I haven't had long to play but I've seem my character die plenty of times already and restarted my character.

Who is exploring the Capitol (BTW, is that a typo in my game?) Wastelands? As I've mentioned many times in the past, I'm hoping that this installment is gay-inclusive; one of Fallout 2's many distinctions is that it was the first role playing video game that allowed you to play a character in a same-sex relationship.

DO THEY STILL SAY "I DIDN'T KNOW YOU COULD DO THAT!"?
If Fallout 3 ends up being anywhere as gay-inclusive as Fallout 2, October 2008 will go down in memory as a great month for gay gamers. As I mentioned last week the sequel to another gay-inclusive RPG, Fable, became available for X-Box 360 users and a GayGamer.net review indicates the sequel is even more gay-inclusive than before:

"You can choose to play as either male of female this time around and while the gameplay doesn't actually change depending on your gender, it certainly changes the way certain NPCs or other characters react to you. As we have been touting here on the site, you can marry anyone you choose, including members of the same gender ... If you are exclusively gay however, you will not be able to have kids ... you can also do what many gay folks do and adopt your pet as your child! The dog sidekick is a great addition and gives you a sense of companionship throughout the game."

Fable 2

So not only can you can play as a gay man or a lesbian, you can have the child-substitute pet, as well. I really enjoyed the original Fable when it came out in a Windows edition, so I'm definitely hoping we'll see something similar for Fable 2.

NOW I HAVE THE SOUND OF KRISTEN CHENOWETH SINGING "THERE'S KLINGONS ON THE STARBOARD BOW" STUCK IN MY HEAD:
Fans of Pushing Daisies like me may be wringing our hands in worry about the delightful Bryan Fuller dramedy's low ratings, but maybe we can hope that if we lose Daisies we'll get to see Fuller's take on the Star Trek franchise? When we talked to him last month, that was the first we heard Fuller talk about his interest in the franchise:

"I would love to do it. Star Trek was so important to me growing up and also so pivotal and why I became a writer. When I was working at this health care trade association and writings spec scripts for Star Trek, my desk was littered with Star Trek figures. Every time I saw a Jem’Hadar, I would buy it so I could collect a Jem’Hadar army. And it’s a great universe with a lot of hope. It’s a great metaphor to explore the human condition and it’s just fun. And I think it can be fun again in the way the original series was and I was so encouraged that they were going back to the style of the original series."

"I told my agent if anybody starts talking about a Star Trek series, throw my name into the hat. It’s something that I would love to do."

Bryan Fuller with Lee Pace and Anne Friel ... am I the only one who
finds Fuller extra swoon-worthy with a Comic-Con badge?

Since then, Fuller has continued to talk about his interest in Trek, this time chatting with iF Magazine:

"I want to create another Star Trek series and have an idea that I’m kicking around. I would love to return to the spirit of the old series with the colors and attitude. I loved Voyager and Deep Space Nine, but they seem to have lost the ‘60s fun and I would love to take it back to its origin."

If anyone can update the classic Trek's social relevance while maintaining its sense of "60s fun" Fuller can ... such a development is probably the only thing that could take me to the "acceptance" phase with Pushing Daisies' seemingly-certain demise.