Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Court a.k.a. frozenflygone, Event Lead of Frame Fatales, a GDQ event. Read more about Court in this interview:
 
Hi Court, thanks for taking the time to talk to us! Could you tell us more about yourself, and your journey towards your current occupation(s)?

All my life I’ve loved video games and how they bring people together. While I studied to be a science teacher, games were always how I decompressed and continued to be an important part of my life throughout high school and college. I joined Twitch as a viewer during college and found “Celeste”, a gorgeous indie platformer about powering through self-doubt and persevering to climb a mountain. I loved “Celeste” so much I started speedrunning it – the name for trying to complete a specific goal in a game as fast as possible.

I had never considered gaming becoming anything more than a hobby until the pandemic struck, when my partner and other women I watched on Twitch encouraged me to give streaming a shot. What started as me streaming in my parents game room upstairs has blossomed into a huge success, as I became a Twitch Partner this past October and absolutely love speedrunning “Celeste” and playing “Super Mario World” kaizo hacks on my channel now.

I became involved with Games Done Quick (GDQ) and Frame Fatales when I joined the Frame Fatales server in July of 2019. I attended Awesome Game Done Quick (AGDQ) in my home state of FL for AGDQ 2020, which was an unforgettable experience of seeing the amazing things the speedrunning community could accomplish- it was the first event to pass $3 million raised for charity. Since then I got more involved as a runner and volunteer, worked at the studio for FF events as an event assistant, and now am the Frame Fatales Event Lead! It’s been such a rewarding journey to give back to this space that’s brought me so much.

What kind of event is Frame Fatales, what is its mission and what makes it special?

Frame Fatales is an all women speedrunning community that puts on two events a year, Frost Fatales in February and Flame Fatales in August. We are a subcommunity of GDQ, and our vision is to uplift the women of the speedrunning community, as women are an underrepresented group in gaming, streaming, and speedrunning. We host two events per year, Frost Fatales in February and Flame Fatales in August. Our past four fundraising events have raised a total of over $395,000 for Malala Fund, which is a charity focusing on ensuring women and girls have access to quality education regardless of where they live in the world. Frame Fatales has created a space for women in video games to meet each other, grow as streamers through access to resources and networking, and overall make the speedrunning community a more unified and diverse space.

As an Event Lead, what are your responsibilities at GDQ / Frame Fatales? And when can we check out the next event? o/

Frost Fatales 2022 was my first event as a Lead, and I learned so much about event production, runner and volunteer coordination, and the importance of holistic planning with end goals in mind. The primary roles of my position are to communicate between the tech workers at the GDQ Studio and the runners and volunteers who are participating in the event virtually through Twitch and Discord. Furthermore, I am the main contact between the charity representatives and Frame Fatales to ensure our programming and games list aligns with the values of the charity. There are many aspects that go into planning a charity marathon: selecting the speedruns, scheduling volunteers and runs, ensuring the tech set up is viable for our talent, organizing interview and prize segments, and setting incentives to help fundraise for the event. It’s a large role, but is so rewarding to see what an impact our community makes each event.

I’m excited to let you know that we have recently revealed the dates for our next event, Flame Fatales 2022. The marathon will run from Sunday August 21st through Saturday August 27th, running in the afternoons to evenings each day! For women in the community who would like to submit to the marathon or assist with volunteering, the best way to stay up to date on our events is follow @FrameFatales or @GamesDoneQuick on Twitter, or go to www.gamesdonequick.com/framefatales. 

Thank you so much for interviewing me, and hope everyone has gotten the chance to learn about Frame Fatales and why it’s such an important community I am proud to be a part of.

Thank you for sharing your story with us, Court!

Courts’s Links: Twitch │ Twitter │ Frame Fatales Website │ Frame Fatales Twitter │ Frame Fatales Twitch

Womenize! – Inspiring Stories Feature by Jessica Hackenbroch