Creator / Liana K

Cosplayer, Hostess, Actress, Web Video Creator

Liana Kerzner (born 15 February 1978 in Toronto, Ontario), also known by her stage name Liana K, is a Canadian television host, writer and producer who co-hosted the final season of the talk show Ed's Night Party (renamed Ed & Red's Night Party) with her husband Steven. Liana K also co-hosted This Movie Sucks. She is also a video game journalist and hobbyist cosplayer.

Liana K was an honoured special guest and presenter at several comic book and science fiction events across North America, usually appearing dressed in character-based cosplay costumes. She and Ed co-hosted the 2007 Constellation Awards, and organized and hosted the Aurora Awards ceremony at the 67th World Science Fiction Convention in 2009. She is co-founder of Toronto's science fiction convention Futurecon (annual since 2010), which is sponsored by her company Kerzner Media Arts.

She had the Secret Six comic book character Liana Kerzner, a lover of Scandal Savage, named after her. Liana K identifies as a sex-positive feminist, and her hobbies include collecting action figures and other toys. She has also criticized Anita Sarkeesian's Feminist Frequency series in her own series called "Why Feminist Frequency Almost Made Me Quit Writing." [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

She's had three Edutainment webseries on her YouTube channel; A Gamer's Guide to Feminism, Lady Bits, and Bossfight, which has its own page. The latter also received a video game spin-off, titled Song of Sparklemuffin, due for a 2023 release. She also co-hosts the podcast Two Women Talking, offering a Tomboy and Girly Girl dynamic on pop culture and life in general with her friend Song W Eretson.

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Tropes associated with her work:

• Accentuate the Negative: Defied. She has pointedly said she's avoided resorting to this and similar bad faith hot takes for the sake of better views or engagement on YouTube - because she genuinely wants to open a healthy, sensible discussion about whichever topics she talks about.
• Acclaimed Flop: During the COVID-19 Pandemic, she started doing a 'Wellness Wednesday' feature on her channel - focusing on mental health, self care etc. She's said that the videos tend not to get as many views, but they have a dedicated pool of viewers who "really love them". This was then subverted when she parlayed the enthusiasm for Wellness Wednesday into a private coaching business called Liana Kares and later expanded the concept into a successful radio show titled It's Not Therapy.
• Acting for Two: She plays about ten different characters in her Bossfight sketch series.
• All Men Are Perverts: Very much against the use of this trope. She points out that many men actually have lower sex drives, and that men with high sex drives do not have uniform desires. She is more in favor of All Women Are Lustful for normalizing female desire, though she does hasten to point out it's not strictly accurate either.
• Ascended Fangirl: As with the Secret Six issue above.
• Appropriated Appellation:
  • She created "Beelzeboob: Literally The Devil" after some of her critics called her "literally The Devil", in part to mock their inappropriate use of the word "literally".
  • And when Anita Sarkeesian accused her of playing the role of the 'cool chick okay with sexism', when she was done Face Palming, she changed her Twitter name to Liana "Cool Chick" Kerzner - and joked about some of her more outspoken tweets indicating that she was okay with sexism.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: She actually devotes a whole video to explaining the context surrounding this fashion trend in the 1990s and 2000s — particularly in reference to Lola Bunny from Space Jam (and the sequel director's poor choice of words questioning why she was wearing a crop top in response to her sequel outfit being more modest). According to her, the AIDS epidemic led to women having to become more assertive and forward about their sexuality — and a bare midriff was a sartorial statement that the female was in control of her body and sexuality. She called crop tops "the COVID masks of their time".
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: She singles out the use of this trope in The Avengers (2012) as part of a criticism to Joss Whedon; the fact that Black Widow is tied up and about to be tortured, yet still has perfect hair and makeup and her Little Black Dress provides mild Fanservice gives the sequence an uncomfortable sexualized violence vibe.
• The Bechdel Test: She likes to point out that the test started as a joke and was not meant to be a litmus test on female representation.
• But Not Too White: Due to being red-haired and fair-skinned, she was pressured into wearing a lot of fake tan for television, which she was not a fan of. She also frequently points out how Hollywood's disdain for pale complexions shows up when their redheaded characters are usually played by blondes or brunettes in wigs or with dye so they don't have to worry about the skin.
  "Sadie Sink is our saviour!"
• Cassandra Truth: When allegations against Joss Whedon surfaced, first by his ex-wife Kai Cole and then by Buffyverse actresses Charisma Carpenter, Amber Benson and Michelle Trachtenberg — she reminded people that she had denounced him long before after one of his previous victims confided in her, and suffered backlash because of his then-glowing reputation as a feminist ally.
• Cosplay: Is a cosplay enthusiast and hobbyist.
• Deadpan Snarker: Her videos have a droll and amused sense of humor.
• Denser and Wackier: A Gamer's Guide to Feminism was completely educational, with only light comic relief from the occasional snarky joke. Lady Bits incorporated Liana cosplaying, playing various characters, and was more Edutainment. Bossfight is an outright Genre Throwback to early 90s JRPGs with a full plot in between the information segments.
• D-Cup Distress: She frequently draws attention to the fact it's actually harder to be taken seriously as a large-chested woman. Also did a number of videos which analyzed the impractical outfits of Quiet, Triss Merrigold, other video game women not because they're skimpy but because they wouldn't work due to RL physics concerns. She's also said that she was too big for dramatic roles, and was shunted into comedy because of it.
• The Deontologist: She is a deontologist, and she considers consequentialism to be a nonsensical philosophy because it's very hard to be sure of the consequences of your actions.
• Gamer Chick: Particularly fond of the Dragon Age series. She's not a fan of the term itself however, feeling that games are for everyone, and it reinforces the myth that only white, straight cisgendered males play them.
• Girl-Show Ghetto:invoked A variation; she mentioned that marking almost anything as "feminist" makes it instantly radioactive due to popular depictions of the movement in recent years. Lady Bits was originally titled as A Feminist's Guide to Gamers (making it a sequential title to her previous series) before it was suggested she change it for that very reason.
• Good Is Not Nice: She has been quoted saying she doesn't consider herself 'nice', but she does consider herself fair.
• Hollywood Beauty Standards: References this, particularly when talking about how video game remakes give Adaptational Modesty to some characters who were scantily clad in their originals - notably Tifa Lockhart in the remake of Final Fantasy VII. She finds Tifa's newer smaller breasts and more modest outfit still highly impractical, since her waist is still far too thin for someone as athletic as her, and the hairstyle is likewise not practical for combat.
• Horrible Hollywood:
  • Spends a fair amount of time talking about the problems of Hollywood, including sexual harassment and general corporate ruthlessness. This largely comes from personal experience, as she attempted to make it in Hollywood and was subjected to much of the typical abuse. In one video, she refuted the idea that Hollywood hates white men by claiming that Hollywood hates everyone.
  • The Canadian entertainment industry gets particular focus. She's discussed Canadian performers actually leaving for Hollywood proper to escape the toxicity, despite the US's higher cost of living. The Canadian industry is that bad.
• The Horseshoe Effect: This is one of her major criticisms of Sarkeesian in the series linked in the description, that she loops back to a kind of "benevolent patriarchy". She accuses Sarkeesian of trying to force all female characters into a very narrow set of roles and appearances, and thinks that her influence has had a negative effect on the portrayal of women as diverse individuals. The biggest is that she thinks Sarkeesian's complaints about all women with large breasts being automatically sexually objectified and not valid characters (which she takes rather personally) is just body shaming, especially when Sarkeesian started calling such characters "Fighting F8ck Toys".
• I Am Not Pretty: She had a very muscular physique growing up, due to dance and basketball, and recalls thinking she was ugly because she was a Tomboy without the 'heroin chic' figure that was the beauty standard of the day. It then became quite a jolt to go into the entertainment business, where suddenly she was treated like the Brainless Beauty.
• Insane Troll Logic: Dedicated a video to dissecting a group of trolls more outrageous claims about her. They'd made one accusing her of being fat and ugly (among other charges) as well as being a worker at a notable RL high class Toronto strip club. Became a Funny Moment when she pointed out this made no sense since she knew several women who worked there and they were anything but.
• Intentionally Awkward Title: Her series Lady Bits.
• I Take Offense to That Last One:
  • The aforementioned Insane Troll Logic incident was beautifully deconstructed by her. Also averted as she refused to deny she was a former sex worker, not because she was, but because she didn't want to demonize it.
  • She took offence to Joss Whedon's Take That! to Jurassic World, referring to it as "70s era sexist". She pointed out that the 70s was when Second Wave Feminism was around (as well as producing some of pop culture's first action heroines) and thus was an odd decade to reference.
• Kindhearted Cat Owner: She owns several cats, and was fond of using her cat Momo in her videos until he passed away in 2022, and her other cats Link, Scout and Zelda appeared in Bossfight, along with her dog Loki.
• Male Gaze: Argues that this is not a useful concept because men's desires are very diverse, depending on race and sexual orientation among many other things. She calls the prevailing societal POV should the "Hollywood Gaze" instead, and devoted two Gamer's Guide to Feminism videos on debunking both gaze theory and objectification theory as seen through this hypothesis.
• Ms. Fanservice: She does not believe that having these characters is inherently sexist, and argues against people who think they are. Also, irritated when the fact she's considered such for cosplay or past work that she should have her intellectual work dismissed. She's also said that she knows she has no chance of ever running for office because of her cosplay history.
• Nerds Are Sexy: An opinion of her she's well aware of. She also tries to motivate her fanbase by reminding them that this trope could apply to them too, even if they think they're undateable.
• Old Shame: The famous Slave Leia bikini Beauty Contest that happened on Attack of the Show was something none of the participants really wanted to do, although she had fond memories of working with Olivia Munn.
• Older Than They Think:invoked Discussed in an video on 'Cancel Culture', where she reminds viewers that it is not a new thing; and has been happening since Ancient Athens, where people would be stripped of their Athenian citizenship and sent into exile. She also draws a comparison to Ellen DeGeneres being cancelled first in the 90s when she came out as gay, and the 2020 workplace allegations against her being her "second cancellation".
• Once per Episode: In her series Lady Bits, which focuses on women in gaming, she makes it a point to mention that she hates The Sims in every episode.
• One of the Boys: Often tells the story of how she was tutoring a crush in high school, and he said something to the effect of "Liana, if you were a girl..."
  "Okay, I said he was attractive. I didn’t say he was terribly smart."
• Real Life Writes the Hairstyle: She cut her hair to shoulder length in 2020 because of her Boss Fight project - which would require a lot of wigs, and short hair fit under the wigs better.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: She accuses Sarkeesian of taking this to extremes, to the point of misogyny.
• Running Gag: Constantly reminds people that she hates The Sims.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: When devoting a Two Women Talking episode to Once Upon a Time, her and Song lambast the series for employing this trope with how only the villainesses are allowed to show cleavage, and redeemed Regina has to dress in bright colours that seem more suited to Snow White.
• Sex Is Good: A strong believer in this principle of feminism.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: A non-funny example as she talks about being considered not attractive enough not to be constantly made to feel bad for her appearance but too pretty to have her intellectual credentials taken seriously.
• Straw Feminist:
  • Considers many other feminist critics to be playing into this stereotype and making feminism look bad, and declares her intention is to combat this.
  • Showing that she's not above having fun with this trope, Zarkazaan of Boss Fight is a parody of pop feminists who quote Anita Sarkeesian without context or understanding.
• * Sultry Belly Dancer: She trained in belly dancing in her youth, and there's a video of her winning a Slave Leia cosplay competition on Attack of the Show by demonstrating her belly dancing.
• Take That!:
  • In her commentary about the potential female Lord of the Flies movie remake, she repeatedly take potshots at Jonathan Macintosh.
  • She also really doesn't like The Sims and will insult it at every opportunity.
  • Even more then the above two, she despises" The Last of Us 2''. She has often said that the dark game severely depresses her and that she views it as everything wrong with modern media. She uses this game as a yardstick for media she doesn't like and even real-life attitudes she disagrees with.
  • She's not been quiet about the awfulness of Amber Heard's performance in Aquaman (2018), also pointing out her wig as a shining example of Hollywood's disdain for casting actual redheads to play red-haired characters.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Laments that a lot of the people she grew up with in a poor, multicultural neighborhood, who had a lot of potential, were prejudged continuously, which broke their spirits and led them to be the sort of people they were treated as being.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Her podcast Two Women Talking with friend Song W Eretson, where they refer to themselves as such. Liana herself is the Tomboy, while Song is a lover of romance novels, fashion and traditionally female oriented media (though as a comic book lover, she is also a Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak).
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Despite being more of a Lad Ette, she was a fan of Jem growing up, did own at least one Barbie doll and has a passing interest in costume design.
• Typecasting:invoked Back when she was acting, she recalls only being asked to play vampires for an absurd amount of productions.
• Voice-Only Cameo: She provides the voice of the offscreen Janet in Mad Cows From Planet Moo, recording her dialogue remotely, due to the production being in Ireland.

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