Angry Puppy

The Guild is a web sitcom about a group of gamers who make up The Knights of Good in a World-of-Warcraft-style MMORPG. The moments of character development that pop up here and there add a lot to the series, so I’ll hold back on describing the characters:

• Codex is a little like Willow without the witchcraft. Or the lesbianism. The episodes mostly revolve around her, and each one opens with a short and funny (to those of us who make our own fun) entry in her web-cam diary.
• ZABOO’s mis-interpretation an emoticon (and the ensuing crush) drive a lot of the plot. If I were 10 years younger and a foot shorter, I think I’d have a little crush on him myself. Well, at least up until episode 5 or so. Do you remember how Sarah, Saffy’s friend from Absolutely Fabulous, played by Torchwood’s Naoko Mori, went from sweet, shy girl to raving lunatic over the course of the show? It’s sort of like that. Here’s a sapphic Sarah clip if you haven’t seen it (you haven’t seen it?):

• BLADEZZ is the guild’s rogue and does his best to live up to his avatar.
• Vork is the leader of the guild. He’s older than the others and kind of creepy, IMHO.
• Clara is an absent-minded, pleasantly plump, mother of three who became my favorite character after about the fourth episode. You should see the way she treats those kids!
• TINKERBALLA, who always has a Nintendo DS in hand, is what you would call “fierce” or “bitchy”, depending on your social leanings. You should see the way she treats Clara’s kids!

At the beginning of the series, the guild members have still never met IRL, but in “Episode 3: The Macro Problem”, they have brunch face-to-face to discuss a guild problem: BLADEZZ had been banned for spamming a chat room with “fag”. He literally LOLs the whole situation, but I think the series itself stayed well on the funnier side of offensive. It upsets Vork because he wants to maintain The Knights of Good’s untarnished reputation for, well, good. Codex objects that it’s “not cool” and that her father had “turned gay”.

“And her ex-boyfriend too,” quips Clare.

Here’s “Episode 1: The Wake-Up Call”:

There are currently eight episodes available, but the official website says:

We’ve taken our Paypal donate button down for Season 1. Thank you so much to each and every donor! As soon as preparations are made for Season 2 we will replace it!

If Felicia Day, who plays Codex, looks familiar to you, it might be because she also played a slayerette named Vi in a little TV show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You can’t say Joss Whedon isn’t loyal to his actors: she’ll be starring in his upcoming musical web series Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog with Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion.

[Via Slate Cultural Gabfest]

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