Pushing for change can be dangerous when change starts pushing back.
Video game writer Niles River loves the work he does at Third Wave Studios: creating games with mass appeal that feature women, people of color, and LGBTQ characters. To make his job even better, his best friend is his boss, and his twin brother works beside him. And they mostly agree that being on the forefront of social change is worth dealing with trollish vitriol—Niles is more worried about his clingy ex and their closeted intern’s crush on his brother than he is about internet harassment.
But now the bodies on the ground are no longer virtual, and someone’s started hand-delivering threats to Niles’s door. The vendetta against Third Wave has escalated, and to make matters worse, the investigating detective is an old flame who left Niles heartbroken for a life in the closet.
No change happens without pain, but can Niles justify continuing on with Third Wave when the cost is the blood of others? If he does, the last scene he writes may be his own death.
Video game writer Niles River loves the work he does at Third Wave Studios: creating games with mass appeal that feature women, people of color, and LGBTQ characters. To make his job even better, his best friend is his boss, and his twin brother works beside him. And they mostly agree that being on the forefront of social change is worth dealing with trollish vitriol—Niles is more worried about his clingy ex and their closeted intern’s crush on his brother than he is about internet harassment.
But now the bodies on the ground are no longer virtual, and someone’s started hand-delivering threats to Niles’s door. The vendetta against Third Wave has escalated, and to make matters worse, the investigating detective is an old flame who left Niles heartbroken for a life in the closet.
No change happens without pain, but can Niles justify continuing on with Third Wave when the cost is the blood of others? If he does, the last scene he writes may be his own death.
This is an
action-packed mystery with some romantic themes. While this book is a departure
from the normal sweet and sexy romances in the m/m genre it is still worth
reading. This story will grab onto you
from the very beginning and doesn’t let go until the end. I loved the characters Ms. Gormley created and
I would love to read another book with these characters.
This book
revolves around Niles River, the head writer for a video game development
company. However, we are given insight
into not only him, but the other top execs at Third Wave as well. Rosie and Jordan were just as fully fleshed
out as Niles and his boyfriend. I am
really hoping Ms. Gormley writes another story with these characters but
concentrates on Niles’ twin, Jordan, this time as he deserves to find love and
acceptance as well.
The main
themes in this book are the homophobia and misogyny that are prevalent in
online gaming forums. I have seen some debate about whether or not these things
are actually happening currently, but regardless they are good things to be
aware of. While this book did get a
little soap boxy at times it fit with the story and did not seem overwhelming
to me. Overall, a thought provoking and
thrilling read.
Amazon || Barnes & Noble || ARe
Hi, and welcome to the Player vs. Player blog tour! Today I’ll
be sharing a scene with you between Niles River and Detective Tim Wyatt, as Tim
picks Niles’s brain about the activities of two cosplayers who have been found
murdered, unaware that Niles has a connection to the victims.
*****
Niles
nodded, though he seemed shaken, and took a sip of his drink. “That’s pretty
common. We geeks are plenty happy to talk about our obsessions in the hopes of
converting someone and sharing the joy, but we get dismissed a lot.” He gave
Tim a look, reminding him that he’d been one of those dismissive types. “It’s
why we tend to be so insular. Stick with our own kind.” He reached for a chip,
though he seemed more inclined to stare at it thoughtfully than nibble. “You
know what fandoms they were into?”
“The
first victim had an extensive anime and console game collection, but the second
victim’s family said she had been playing video games on her computer lately.”
“Any
titles I know?”
“No
clue.” Tim growled in frustration. “Both girls’ computers are missing. They
apparently took their laptops with them when they went out the day they
disappeared and the computers haven’t been found, nor have their cell phones.
Which gives us reason to suspect they had contacts on there who don’t want to
be found.”
“You
think they knew the people, or person, who killed them?”
“Either
that or there was something on their computers and phones that could connect
them to the killer.”
Niles
ran a thumb up and down his pint glass. “I have to admit, I’m a little hesitant
to believe that a gamer could be responsible. Gaming gets an undeserved rap for
promoting violence. I would hate for this to trigger a witch hunt. Geek culture
is . . . It’s about sharing the love of something. People with similar
interests coming together to indulge those interests. No different than a
knitting club or sports fans who get together and go to games. Gamers are
harmless.”
“Ask
any European country how harmless sports fans are when they riot after the
World Cup,” Tim said with a smirk, taking a long drink. “Not to mention all
those messages you receive.”
“Yeah,
but that’s just smack talk. You can’t look at it that way.” Niles began to
gesticulate, a mannerism Tim remembered him lapsing into whenever he’d start to
get worked up.
“Well,
how should I look at it? What do you get from it, hanging out with people who
send death threats?”
“If
you just look at that, then you’re missing everything else that fandom does for
people.” Niles sighed. “You’re missing the millions of dollars raised for
charity in fan-led activities. You’re missing the kids saved from suicide
because they have one bright spot in their life, a circle of people with a
hobby in common. You’re missing the isolated and disenfranchised outsiders
whose lives are made better by knowing there are other people like them out
there. It’s not just harassment.”
Tim
nodded. “Fair enough. But gamers are just like everyone else, right? You get
your good; you get your bad.”
“Yeah,
I guess, but generally speaking, even when it gets vitriolic, it is, as I said,
harmless.”
“Noted.
But harmless didn’t kill two girls.”
Niles’s
shoulders tensed visibly. “You don’t know it was a gamer who did that.”
“Of
course I don’t. If I make any such assumption, it will be because that’s where
the evidence is pointing us. And that’s what I’m trying to find right now:
evidence, one way or the other.” Niles blinked, then nodded and settled back in
his chair. Tim gave him a comforting smile. “Okay. So, let’s talk about these
gamers and the sort of people these girls might have hung out with.”
“It’s
like any other fandom, really, except that TV and book fandoms are frequently
dominated by female fans, and comic, sci-fi, and gaming fandoms tend to be
dominated by male fans, or so the male fans think.”
“Explain
that to me,” Tim prompted, pulling out a notepad.
“In
reality, the numbers suggest the demographics are nearly equal. Women make up
forty-eight percent of the gaming market.” Niles grimaced. “The guys claim
that’s because they play more ‘casual’ games that don’t require a lot of skill,
but there’s no data to back that up. I know plenty of hardcore female gamers,
including my boss. As I’ve mentioned before, the male fans are a little resistant
to the fandom trending toward serving female fans equally.”
“You
mean like the harassing texts and emails you receive? I thought that was mostly
homophobia.”
“No.
The homophobia is bad. The misogyny is much, much worse. The default male gamer
assumption is that if a woman has entered into gaming or comic book fandom,
it’s to garner male attention. They’ve been known to try to make the
environment very unwelcoming for female fans.”
“In
what way?”
“Check
out Fat, Ugly, or Slutty—all one word, no spaces or punctuation—dot com if you
want to see some samples. One common response to a female fan bringing up anything is ‘Tits or get the fuck out,’ by
which they mean, ‘If you’re not here to entertain and titillate us, you’re not
welcome.’”
Tim
frowned. “Couldn’t that be chalked up mostly to the age demographic?”
“The
average gamer is around midthirties.” Niles sighed. “And male gamers,
specifically, don’t want to see gaming change. Homophobic and gendered slurs
are common, and they like that female characters in games and comic books tend
to be designed to appeal to the male gaze—unrealistically dressed, objectified,
anatomically impossible, hypersexualized poses.”
“And
it’s grown men defending this?”
“Well,
as you’ve seen with my harassment, guys can get very vitriolic when their
preeminence is challenged. It’s basically the whole
anti-sexism-racism-homophobia debate in a microcosm: ‘I, the privileged
demographic, don’t have a problem, and therefore anyone pointing out that
problems do actually exist or trying to change the status quo is a threat to
me.’” Niles shrugged. “But they do their bullying anonymously, with words and
cyber attacks, not physically. Any hints otherwise is just them talking big.”
“Yeah,
well, one guy—or a group of them—could take it into his head to up the ante.”
Tim frowned thoughtfully.
Niles
groaned, rubbing his temples. “See, you’re doing it. Assuming it’s a gamer.”
Tim
sighed. “Niles, I’m acknowledging that it could
be a gamer. It could also be
some random stranger who got the drop on the young women in the parking lot.
The difference between those two theories is that one leaves me a possible
connection to investigate, and honestly, the crimes don’t seem random.
Stranger-on-stranger crime is much less common than crimes where the victims
know or have some connection to their attackers. So I need to know the sort of people these young
women would have associated with.”
“Fine.
Okay.” Niles scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “Just . . . don’t get
tunnel vision where gamers are concerned, okay? Especially not based on all the
crap people have thrown out about gaming and its effects on our culture.”
“I
know how to do my job.” Tim fought to suppress a frown. “You can trust me to
give everyone a fair shake.”
“Can
I? You were never very open-minded back when we were in school.” Niles pressed
his lips together and shook himself. “Forget it. What sort of cosplay did they
do?”
Tim
blinked at the change of subject but forced himself not to be diverted into
discussing personal business that had no place here. “There are different
kinds?”
“I
mean the characters.”
Tim
was interrupted when the waitress approached to take their orders. He tried not
to flinch when Niles ordered two meals packaged to go.
“One
was a sort of femme fatale,” Tim answered when the waitress was gone. “The
other was sort of an alien or nonhuman creature, we think, judging from the
leftover face paint. No one working the crime scenes recognized a specific
character or costume.”
“Okay,
well, that narrows it down to, oh, at least a couple hundred archetypical
characters,” Niles said wryly, refilling his glass. But then something
tightened in the corners of his eyes and his face went a little gray, putting
Tim on alert. “Um, one of the girls wouldn’t happen to have been wearing brown
leather, was she?”
Tim
straightened, then leaned farther across the table, pitching his voice low.
“Yes, actually. Do you know who she was portraying?”
Niles
closed his eyes, his lips moving silently. When he opened them, they were
bright with tears. Tim felt an answering knot of unease form in his stomach.
“If it’s who I’m thinking of, she was playing Issis Lowe. And her companion,
the alien, was a character named Gairi. I saw them that day. Talked to them. Me
and Rosie and Jordan, at the autograph signing.”
“Did
you get their names?”
Niles
nodded. “Yeah, but off the top of my head, I couldn’t—”
“Charity
Anspach and Lakshmi Agrawal?”
“Oh
God. That’s them.” Niles blew out a shuddering breath. He hung his head for a
moment, then wiped his eyes and looked up. “They’re really dead?”
Tim
nodded and reached across the table to squeeze Niles’s hand, hesitating at the
last moment. He cleared his throat. “Look, I’m going to need you, your brother,
and your boss to come down to the precinct and give us statements on your
contact with the victims that day.”
“All
right.” Niles’s voice was little more than a whisper. “I’ll call Rosie and
Jordie. Just let me take the food home to my guest, and then I’ll come down to
the precinct.”
“Okay,
I’ll call Payne, have her meet us down there.” He stood, digging his phone out
of his breast pocket while Niles stared at the table. Tim could almost see his
mind trying to throw up its defenses, shutting out the ugly image of what those
young women had suffered. Things like that had no place in Niles’s universe.
Tim had always adored him for that dewy-eyed worldview, but it was
heartbreaking to see Niles when he couldn’t protect himself from the harsh
realities of life.
“Niles?”
He had to repeat himself before Niles looked up. He didn’t like how hard Niles
was taking this. What sort of connection had he had to those girls? “Just one
thing: the characters the girls were playing . . . where were they from?”
“My game.” Niles’s mouth quivered, and he
drew a deep breath, meeting Tim’s eyes dead-on. “Issis and Gairi are my
characters. I wrote them.”
Amelia C. Gormley may
seem like anyone else. But the truth is she sings in the shower, dances doing
laundry, and writes blisteringly hot m/m erotic romance while her son is at
school. When she’s not writing in her Pacific Northwest home, Amelia
single-handedly juggles her husband, her son, their home, and the obstacles of
life by turning into an everyday superhero. And that, she supposes, is just
like anyone else.
Her self-published
novel-in-three-parts, Impulse
(Inertia,
Book One; Acceleration,
Book Two; and Velocity,
Book Three) can be found at most major online book retailers, and be sure to
check
Riptide for her latest releases, including her Highland historical, The
Laird’s Forbidden Lover, the The
Professor’s Rule series of erotic novelettes (co-written with Heidi Belleau),
the post-apocalyptic romance, Strain, her
New Adult contemporary, Saugatuck
Summer, and of course, Player vs. Player,
available now. She is presently at work on two more novels set in the Strain universe, Juggernaut and Bane,
coming summer/fall of 2015.
You can contact Amelia on Twitter, Facebook,
Goodreads, BookLikes, Tumblr, or contact her by email
using the form at http://ameliacgormley.com/
Every
comment on this blog tour enters you in a drawing for
a choice of one a book from my backlist
(excluding Player vs Player.) Entries close
at midnight, Eastern time, on December 13th. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries.
Thanks so much for the review!
ReplyDeleteTrix, vitajex(at)Aol(Dot)com
GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR BOOK AND THANKS FOR THE GIVEAWAY! SHELLEY calicolady60@hotmail.com
ReplyDeleteHi everyone! I apologize for not commenting sooner. Things went a little crazy in my life last week for a number of reasons, up to and including my husband losing his job. But thank you so much for the lovely review, Melissa, and thank you to the commenters who have followed along on the blog tour. I will be contacting the winner of the giveaway shortly.
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