The basement in my childhood 
home 
was 
equipped 
with 
a 
Magnavox box TV, a GameCube and 
a PlayStation 2. The furniture was 
old, and the basement was prone to 
flooding, but it didn’t matter so long 
as my older brother and I had the 
TV and at least one console. Before 
the days of homework and exams, 
my brother and I would spend every 
day after school in the basement: He 
would sit on the ottoman in front 
of the television while I curled up 
in the armchair behind him and, 
for hours, watched him play video 
games. He played any number of 
games — “Super Mario Sunshine” 
or “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight 
Princess” were the most popular, 
and if I was lucky enough, he’d let 
me play “Lego Star Wars” with him. 
I spent years consuming games 
but spent hardly any time playing. 
By the time I reached my tween 
years, I had gotten decent at “Lego” 
games, “Animal Crossing” and 
“Super Smash Bros. Brawl,” and I 
was familiar with the mechanics 
of the Wii and PlayStation. But I 
intimately knew “Legend of Zelda” 
and “Infamous” games and others 
less suited to a little girl than 
“Animal Crossing.” I knew how to 
solve the puzzles in those games. 
I knew the lore and character 
biographies, and I knew that if you 
fell in water in “Infamous,” death 
was immediate, so steer clear. I 
watched the early days of YouTube 
gamers like ChimneySwift11 and 
iHasCupquake, 
and 
in 
recent 
years, I fell in love with Polygon’s 
“Unraveled” series. I had all the 
theoretical knowledge it took to be a 
“real” gamer, but my brother was the 
gamer, not me. No matter how much 
interest I showed, the video games 
underneath the tree on Christmas 
morning weren’t addressed to me. 
So what was a young girl to do?
She gets smart. She learns 
everything she can about video 
games since she can’t afford to buy 
them herself, and she flexes that 
knowledge at every opportunity. 
And it surprises people — men, 
mostly. After they undergo a brief 
period of wondering how a woman 
could have so much knowledge 
about a sphere mostly exclusive 
to them, there are generally two 
ways they follow through. One, 

they accept it and carry on the 
conversation with me. Two, and 
perhaps the more common option, 
is the testing.
If I know so much about one 
video game, then they want to 
see if I know everything about its 
predecessors and spin-off games. 
As a young woman, I am not new 
to men’s attempts to trip me up in 
an arena they do not deem suitable 
for me, but I never face it quite so 
poignantly as I do within the gaming 
sphere. Their singular desire is to act 
as gatekeeper to the academia of the 
video game community — meaning 
I am not allowed in unless I prove 
myself 
intelligent 
enough 
and 
otherwise ought to be kept on the 
fringes of their culture. And while 
I don’t mind saying that I can hold 
my own when it comes to discussion 
about a game’s story or characters, 
I will also admit that I begin to trip 
up when it comes to gameplay. If 
someone asked me to speak on the 
particular mechanics, special items 
or battles in, say, “The Legend of 
Zelda: Twilight Princess,” I would 
be at a loss because even though I 
watched my brother play through 
the entire game, I have never laid 
hands on a “Legend of Zelda” game. 
All these years later, I still find 
myself wondering why?
That why has a number of 
answers, but advertising is at its 
core. Before the 1980s, video games 
were pretty neutral due to a lack 
of data. Yes, the industry was still 
largely male-dominated, but “ 
there 
was hardly any player research 
being conducted.” No developers 
knew who exactly was playing the 
games, so the games were made for 
everybody. 
Enter the 1983 video game crash: 
a recession in the industry caused 
by 
over-saturation. 
Consumers 
stopped purchasing games, and 
the industry lost money by the 
billion until a little company called 
Nintendo stepped in. Aiming to 
avoid repeat over-saturation and 
to create a more niche market, 
Nintendo conducted wide-scale 
market research into who was 
buying and playing the most video 
games — or toys, as they were 
marketed at the time to avoid the 
defunct title of “video game.” And 
what did they find? Boys were 
playing more. It follows that, in the 
’90s, “Video games were heavily 
marketed as products for men, 
and the message was clear: No 

girls allowed.” Marketing images 
and campaigns often featured 
hypersexualized women, the notion 
that increased gaming skill could 
win you more female attention and 
the age-old joke that video games 
were an escape from the old ball and 
chain. 
This is why video games under 
the Christmas tree were never 
addressed to me as a child. They 
were good gifts for my brother — 
tools for him to be a regular little 
boy —while I was given baby dolls, 
which were tools for me to be a good 
mother. 
As a future homemaker, I was 
represented in countless Disney 
princesses 
rescued 
from 
the 
clutches of evil only to become 
wives and mothers. The only kind 
of women I saw in the video games 
my brother played were these 
same damsels in distress. To my 
child-mind, Zelda and Princess 
Peach 
were 
princesses 
locked 
away in towers, waiting for Link 
or Mario to come save them from 
Ganon and Bowser. Even when the 
rare strong female character, like 
Lara Croft or even Samus Aran, 
did make an appearance, she was 
hypersexualized and seemingly 
animated for the male gaze.
The “gamer girl” identity is 
reflected in this representation. 
Somehow both fetishized and 
scorned, the internet’s definition 
of a gamer girl is, like Lara Croft, 
welcome in the gaming community, 
yet is more ornament than player 
and is non-threatening enough to 
be held at arm’s length within the 
community. She is an unfortunate, 
unrepresentative catch-all term that 
has been applied far too liberally to 
myself and other female gamers. 
In 2014, Gamergate — the online 
harassment campaign in which 
“thousands of people in the games 
community began to systematically 
harass, 
heckle, 
threaten, 
and 
dox several outspoken feminist 
women in their midst” — revealed 
just how dangerous video game 
culture actually was for women, 
and particularly for transgender 
gamers. The campaign produced 
transphobic memes in order to 
push its agenda and highlighted 
just how long transgender women 
had been speaking against sexism 
and harassment in the community. 

Arts
 michigandaily.com — The Michigan Daily 

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Saying goodbye to The Daily

The Michigan Daily’s Arts 
section has impacted us all greatly. 
From the words we have written, 
to the friendships we have made, 
to the ways we have grown, our 
time here has helped make us 
who we are. Even for a group 
of writers, it can be incredibly 
difficult to put into words just 
how much this community has 
shaped us. However, we decided 
to take this opportunity to do just 
that. The Arts B-Sides always 
inspire 
the 
most 
vulnerable, 
intimate writings, and because 
this is the final B-Side that we 
will be participating in before 
we graduate, this felt like the 
perfect opportunity to write 
about how much Daily Arts 
means to us. And because this 
B-Side’s theme is “Firsts,” it felt 
even more appropriate: What 
better way for seniors to honor 
their time here than by writing 
about 
their 
favorite 
“Firsts” 
related to the Arts section, as we 
all contemplate the endings — the 
“Lasts” — that await us?
First interview: Meeting a 
hero is fine, just don’t call them 
a hero
There was a point in my junior 
year — right around the start 
of the second term — when I 
suddenly awoke from my album-
review-every-week grindset and 
realized that I hadn’t done a single 
interview in my four semesters 
at The Daily. I’d be lying if I 
said 
that 
nose-to-the-ground 

mentality wasn’t an escape from 
the monolithic task I had always 
envisioned 
interviewing 
to 
be. The irony was, in my hasty 
attempt to snag an interview 
at a concert, I stumbled into 
speaking with an all-time hero. 
The immense pressure didn’t 
wash over me until Phil Elverum 
(of The Microphones and Mount 
Eerie fame) replied to my email 
saying that he was starting his 
tour next week, so the interview 
had to take place within the next 
few days. I only had a day to come 
up with all of my questions. For 
the next 24 hours, nothing else 
existed in the world. My life 
became a maelstrom of logistics: 
what sources could I find, what 
questions should I avoid, how 
to even record a phone call — it 
was very much a learn-as-you-
go process. And then the actual 
interview came, announced by 
my phone screen lighting up with 
a Washington area code. A gentle 
voice that was as recognizable to 
me as members of my own family 
gave a meek “Hello,” as if to gauge 
whether he had the right number. 
It was time. The conversation 
went about as well as I ever could 
have expected. We talked about 
infinity and the music industry 
and (because I couldn’t help 
myself) iconography. Ultimately, 
he found the sort of indie folk 
mythos fans build around him 
rather baffling and occasionally 
unnerving. 
Even 
in 
hearing 
all this, something in me felt 
like I would live to regret not 
mentioning how impactful his 

work has been to me when the 
interview was over. His response 
was a sort of muted graciousness, 
one that couldn’t quite disguise 
a slight discomfort. It was then I 
knew I perhaps made a mistake.
Cut to several weeks later, I’m 
at the concert before Elverum’s 
set begins, and as I approach the 
front of the merch table, who is 
there but Phil selling his own 
stuff. The question of whether 
I should mention the interview 
was looming large in my mind. As 
I grabbed a poster and paid for it, 
my last opportunity was staring 
at me. But I realized I was just 
staring at a man. I walked back 
to my seat, waited for that man 
to come on stage and tell me his 
story in the one way he knows 
how.
First Race Day
The Arts marathon team was 
the first time I was convinced to 
leave my book behind to sweat 
it out across the finish line. 
Bizarrely, I credit the Arts section 
for pushing me toward physical 
fitness. While not the fastest 
runner, I found my way back to 
running through Daily Arts. The 
Arts section runs the Probility 
Ann Arbor Marathon as a relay 
team of four. We have written 
extensively 
and 
scrupulously 
about our experience training 
(and sometimes not training). An 
unlikely combination to be sure 
— media reviewing and sprinting 
— but it works. Besides the other 
memories made, I will treasure 
running in the Arb, making 
race T-shirts and navigating the 

labyrinthine Michigan Medicine 
complex with Arts friends. I’m 
thankful to have seen the people 
whose 
brains, 
writing 
and 
personalities I adore in a new 
context. The Arts marathon team 
was the first time I was convinced 
to leave my book behind to sweat 
it out across the finish line.
First time I was personally 
vulnerable in an Arts article: 
The Queer B-Side
I knew I’d wanted to write 
about Queerness, quarantine and 
my One Direction phase again; 
Katrina Stebbins’s announcement 
of the Queer B-Side a year ago 

gave me the perfect opportunity. 
But to do it, I would have to come 
out — not only as a Queer woman, 
but as a Directioner. Luckily 
for me, Arts is an incredibly 
wonderful, 
welcoming, 
supportive 
space 
where 
I 
have never felt uncomfortable 
with my identity or with my 
opinions about media (everyone 
is surprisingly nice about my 
“Twilight” obsession). I was 
nervous about coming out in such 
a public way — sometimes, when 
I get an email from a random 
person who read my article, I’ll 
realize I’ve forgotten how big of 

a readership The Daily really has. 
After all, someone could Google 
my name (no one is Googling my 
name) and have this article come 
up! Still, having this platform, 
and being able to use it to talk 
about things that are important 
to me, has been invaluable.
It’s 
fitting, 
and 
somewhat 
bittersweet (and a little bit meta), 
that this is the last B-Side I’ll 
write for. I’m being vulnerable 
about my vulnerability. A Last 
about my First. I loved you then, 
Daily Arts, and I love you now.

Daily Arts Writers

Design by Phoebe Unwin

4 — Graduation Edition 2023

It’s time to talk about John Green

No, John Green has not been 
officially “canceled.” In fact, his work 
remains quite popular: His latest 
book, “Turtles All the Way Down” 
(2017), debuted at #1 on The New 
York Times bestseller list, and in 2018 
Green confirmed its film adaptation. 
Last August he announced that he 
will be publishing his first work 
of non-fiction in May 2021. So, no, 
Green isn’t canceled in the sense that 
we have all agreed to stop reading 
his work and unsubscribe from his 
YouTube channel, but he is canceled 
for me. And he has been for quite 
some time. 
To be truthful, I was always a great 
admirer of Green’s work, particularly 
in middle school. His Young Adult 
fiction is known for its young female 
readership, something that held 
true in my school district and friend 
group. I can’t remember which novel 
I picked up first, but “The Fault in 
Our Stars” was undoubtedly my 
favorite — a love story between two 
young and beautiful cancer patients? 
It was as if its sole purpose was to 
attract romance-giddy teens. 
Regardless, by the time I reached 
high school, I separated myself from 
his work and most of YA fiction. 
This isolation wasn’t provoked by a 
controversy surrounding Green, nor 
had I simply grown out of the genre; I 
still loved the glorious romances that 
were stuffed into my bookshelves. I 
was just afraid to admit it. 
It was around the same time 
others did fervently stop reading 
Green’s books because they were “for 
girls” or “not actually that good” or 
“overrated.” Maybe other YA fiction 
readers have encountered the same 
sentiment — that because we enjoy 
books with cheesy friendships or 
coming-of-age themes, we must be 
superficial. So I can’t blame my first 
dissociation with Green on him, but 
I can hold him responsible for the 
second. 
Unfortunately for me and John 
Green, I was diagnosed with a rare 
form of cancer when I was 17. It was 
an odd experience: The diagnosis and 
the scans and the surgery didn’t feel 
like they were happening to me, but 
to someone else. Maybe another me 
in a different universe, or someone 
else entirely. Either way, like many 
survivors of cancer, I had adapted 
a new perspective. A new way of 

seeing things, both things trivial and 
significant, including the way society 
treats disease and diseased people. 
Especially John Green. 
When I reread “The Fault in Our 
Stars,” it wasn’t so I could relate to 
Hazel or Augustus or the other cancer 
patients depicted. I subconsciously 
started reading it on one of the dark 
days anyone fighting illness, whether 
it be mental or physical, knows well. 
I picked it up out of muscle memory: 
I had read it on multiple occasions 
when I was in need of comfort or a 
distraction. It was simply one of those 
times. I depended on the trustworthy 
characters and their cliché remarks 
to provide some degree of relief. 
Something to softly pull me out of my 
reality and into another. 
And the truth is, I both enjoyed 
and detested the book. Lines like 
“Grief does not change you Hazel. 
It reveals you,” and “But I believe in 
true love, you know? I don’t believe 
that everybody gets to keep their 
eyes or not get sick or whatever, but 
everybody should have true love, 
and it should last at least as long as 
your life does” stuck out to me. As 
tacky as they may appear, they were 
successful in distracting me from my 
metastatic cancer. 
But what also stuck out to me 
were the fallacies. Green invents the 
therapy that keeps Hazel alive. It’s 
not real. In the acknowledgements 
section of the book, Green writes: 
“The disease and its treatment are 
treated fictitiously in this novel. For 
example, there is no such thing as 
Phalanxifor. I made it up, because I 
would like for it to exist.”
And that’s not fair. Not for cancer 
patients like me whose cancers 
don’t have definitive treatments; 
not for those who live in constant 
uncertainty and fear; not for those 
who are told that we will just have 
to monitor our bodies for the rest 
of our lives, as long as we may live. 
And I know this is a work of fiction; 
I know that Green is entitled to 
create any fantasy he would like. But 
does fantasy belong in a book about 
cancer? 
Perhaps it is shocking because 
of Green’s other statements: “This 
is hopefully not going to be a 
gauzy, sentimental love story that 
romanticizes illness and further 
spreads the lie that the only reason 
sick people exist is so that healthy 
people can learn lessons.”
But if the only reason his main 
character is alive is because of 

a made-up treatment, isn’t he 
glamorizing the scarce miracles and 
hope some cancer patients may have? 
By keeping Hazel falsely alive to 
share with us her newfound wisdom 
upon Augustus’s death, does it not 
turn into her and her experiences 
becoming a lesson for healthy people? 
And Green does not stop there. 
The other principal character and 
cancer patient, Augustus Waters, is 
said to have just been re-diagnosed 
with cancer right before embarking 
on a grand adventure to Amsterdam 
with Hazel. In what world is that 
possible? Having Augustus endure 
the long trip and the exhaustive tours 
around the city while simultaneously 
maintaining his emotional and 
mental capacity is another delusion I 
cannot forgive. 
It is also difficult to ignore the 
other unreasonable decision to have 
the two cancer patients share their 
first kiss inside the Anne Frank 
house. Not to mention the heedless 
combination of cancer and the 
Holocaust, something like a kiss 
should — and would — never happen 
inside so sacred a place. Did Green 
think it would not matter because it 
is cancer patients performing the act? 
That they were not normal, healthy 
people, so in turn their actions should 
be excused in exchange for pity?
My particular position might 
make me overly sensitive to Green’s 
mistakes — but that’s another 
comment I’m sick of hearing. My 
sensitivity stems from my truth, 
as does my criticism. The errors of 
authors like Green do not deserve to 
be disregarded because of their merit 
or their well-intentioned ventures 
into sensitive subjects. Instead, that’s 
exactly why they should be held 
accountable. By putting their work 
and themselves into the world, they 
are inviting both criticism and praise. 
“The Fault in Our Stars” is 
expertly problematic because its 
flaws can be easily overlooked. 
However, other errors of Green 
are not so deftly unnoticed: His 
repetitive 
usage 
of 
the 
same 
rudimentary character tropes and 
his lack of diversity in terms of 
race, gender and sexuality (noting 
a few exceptions: Tiny from “Will 
Grayson, Will Grayson,” Hasan from 
“An Abundance of Katherines,” 
and Radar from “Paper Towns”) 
make me wonder why Green has 
been, and continues to be, such an 
influential figure in YA fiction, and 
why he hasn’t been canceled before.

LILLIAN PIERCE
2022 Managing Arts Editor

ARTS

over the

YEARS

Bis etum il ius eliquam usaerum eium 
velicti comnit dunt, tota que consequo is 
essunture dolor molesti beriore, il ea ne 
plab ipsae excero te volorep tation re 
videndunt omnihil ipienda veliqui nobites 
et laboriame lantiossunt hil ius arumqui 
dentibus, qui aliat pa qui simolessit, nes 
escilit harum que volorit eicia con plis 
everum fugitatur si quiae esto blaturem labo. 
Itatas mos venis arumnihilla ntentotatem 
aut etum hil il mod quam es est as endaesc 
ipiendis escium lation cupta doluptam ab 

2013
2014

JANUARY 31 – The final eight episodes of the 
Netflix original adult animated series “Bojack 
Horseman” premiere, solidifying its status as 
one of the best television shows to ever air. 

MAY 7 – As the COVID-19 pandemic halts 
traditional releases, the Arts section starts 
a series titled “Art during COVID,” exploring 
the methods of creating art for oneself in 
quarantine, including environmental art, 
yoga, watercolor and protests.

JANUARY 10 – Prince Harry releases his tell-
all memoir “Spare,” commenting on his time 
in the royal family. He shares just a bit too 
much about his life, including about his 
t-word. 

APRIL 5 – “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” 
releases and has the biggest opening 
weekend of all time for an animated film. 
Jack Black’s musical number as Bowser 
becomes a viral hit and debuts on the 
Billboard Hot 100 chart. 

2021

MAY 30 – Standup comedian Bo Burnham 
releases his new special “Inside” on Netflix. 
Filmed and edited solely by Burnham, the 
special features musical numbers intertwining 
themes of mental health and isolation. 

JULY 20 – Months after U-M alum and 
Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick 
donated millions to the University, the 
California Department of Fair Employment 
and Housing sues his company over allegations 
of harassment towards female employees. 

ARTS
over the
YEARS

2022
2023
2020

MAY 13 – Kendrick Lamar releases his most 
confessional and controversial album Mr. 
Morale & the Big Steppers, half a decade 
after the Pulitzer Prize-winning album 
DAMN. 

APRIL 8 – Before going on to sweep the 
Oscars, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” 
releases to critical acclaim. The multiverse 
epic features healthy doses of sci-fi goofiness 
and family drama, and is a perfect film to 
bring people back to theaters. 

Gaslight, Gatekeep, Gamer Girl

MADDIE AGNE
Daily Arts Writer

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

