The Guild was a webseries about a group of gamers who are members of the same Guild in an MMORPG who meet up in real life to help each other deal with their real life problems. The jobless, friendless, greasy haired Codex (Felicia Day) gets a drop in from Guildmate Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh) that she’s been in game flirting with and suggests that the whole team meets up. Including teenaged Bladezz (Vincent Caso), bald pennypinching Vork (Jeff Lewis),
The uber tech obsessed and glittery girly Tinkerballa (Amy Okuda)
who uses the hot nerd girl/loser nerd boy stereotypes to her advantage. She hates work and questions about her real life. She sees most men as marks and plays Nintendo DS between turns. She’s a flirt but she is actually a prude. “He only got to second base, and my second base is everyone else’s first.”
And Clara (Robin Thorsen)-
wearing her +20 intelligence thinking cap. Her avatar is called Clara, the mother of 2 has to use her real name since she previously used the pseudonym “Mominatrix” and her kids started calling her that. Her husband was not amused. Basically, gaming and drinking is her thing, she’s a breeder and her husband picks up the tab. She always has a ponzi scheme and her kids are usually covered in shaving cream and oatmeal. She ditched out on her sister’s wedding to get some “me time.” She’s an I Love Lucy-esque housewife cliche, but she’s funny, cheerful and she’s the only one who gets any play from the hot stunt guy.
Notably, Bladezz’s little sister, (played by real life sister Tara Caso) Dena is always antagonizing him and kicking his ass and being cooler than him
Codex, our main protag (played by series writer Felicia Day) is neurotic and weak stomached, she often relies on her avatar for her confidence.
After she ditches Zaboo, Zaboo falls for BDSM, bi-sexual, FPS obsessed Riley. Riley is tall, confident model hot but her personality is very demanding and ‘masculine”
Riley (Michelle Boyd) is a little much, she keeps Zaboo tied up in a closet and thinks The Game is stupid, but she was a confident and awesome addition to the gamer-girl fold. As was Venom (Teal Sherer), hot goth chick in a wheelchair from the rival Guild.
Who touted a snarky dark and stormy attitude, took advantage of people’s preconceptions about her disability and her good looks and played them to her advantage, whether it was to get in line first at GameStop or to distract “helpful” people. Bonus points that the actress is actually in a wheelchair after a car accident when she was a teenager.
This series plays up the nerd stereotypes and archetypes to infinite degrees. Teenage pervert, middle-aged loser, hot tease, attention starved, flaky mom, tough chick, neurotic social-phobe… they’re everywhere. The best part about it is that women show up as all sorts of side characters as well, from sassy waitresses to quirky bloggers to Masterchief bodyguards that beat up Kevin Sorbo.
Totally Badass.
I had such a hard time picking ONE girl to single out as the greatest female character. I was immediately tempted to go with Tinkerballa (the former pre-med major turned costume designer is my kind of nerd) but with previous Fantastic Female Bernadette Rostenkowski I figured we had recently had a “Yeah, nerds can be hot-chicks, too!” fist bump. The same would go for Riley or Venom. And Clara. With the turnaround in later seasons with Codex coming out of her shell, admitting she loves the Guild as people not avatars, she saves the game at Mega-Game-O-Rama and gets a job working for the neurotic Game creator. She really gets her shit together and confronts social situations head on problem solving and sticking up for her friends. Tinkerballa gets a similar closure when she stops keeping her persona separated from her real-life self, tells her parents that she’s into gaming and fashion design and finds a guy she likes enough to buy dinner for.
Meanwhile Clara still shuns parental responsibility in her quest to never stop gaming, Vork gets a sci-fi icon girlfriend but is still hugely out of touch and Bladezz is still a perverted teen looking to get internet famous.
But ultimately I could decide between Codex and Tinkerballa
If you haven’t watched you completely should, there’s a rainbow of personalities and nerd cookies everywhere!
