Thorns

What options do you want to see in games which allow the player to customise their character's gender and appearance? What existing games have impressed you?

( Read more... )

So, a question that's come up in a game I'm working on, and is likely to come up again in future: how do you combine allowing the player character (PC) of a dating sim having a spectrum of gender identities available with having love interests who aren't all bi/pan?
( Read more... )

Recently it's felt like I've totally lost the ability to express disagreement with people I like without utterly ruining that relationship. Part of that is to do with various things going on with my personal life/brain chemistry but I'm wondering how much of it is that a lot of these conversations have moved to tumblr.

Like...in my experience the best arguments happen when you can be open and understanding and try and see the other person's pov, engage with what they're actually saying instead of what you THINK they're saying, and not get all defensive and antagonistic.

But I'm too wordy for asks or replies (and those often get replied to publically anyway) and when I post a reblog I feel very aware that I am engaging not just with that person but with everyone who reads me, everyone following the post, and all of their followers (if they reblog my reply). And that awareness makes it SUPER HARD to be all the things I said in the paragraph above. Even if I trust that person to engage with me in an open and productive way, I don't trust all those other people, and so I put my guard up.

Does anyone else have this problem? And if so how do you deal with it?

Emailing them privately is an option when I have their email address, but it makes everything seem SUPER SERIOUS which puts me off. There's also writing out my argument in a text editor and dividing it up into as many asks as neccesary, I again feel weird about it but maybe it's a better approach. I like that reblogs can feel more like a casual discussion instead of a super serious "taking aside to express private disagreement" but it so easily goes from casual discussion to huge visible argument it seems not to be worth the risk for fraught topics.

"Don't argue with people on tumblr" is not a helpful aproach for me, I have recently tried arguing less but there are some opinions I find too upsetting to let slide and in my experience these unspoken arguments have a tendency to bubble up and explode if you ignore them. "Don't follow people with opinions you want to argue with" would mean cutting out a lot of people I mostly really like. And an echo chamber of people who all entirely agree with me is not entirely appealing. I really like being able to have productive discussions with people with different povs, and I know I used to be better at it.

Thinking about, I have taken the "just don't argue with people and unfollow anyone who makes that unbearable" approach to twitter, because expressing myself in 140 characters is just impossible. But I follow a very different group of people there, and barely post at all.

EDIT: Some interesting responses on tumblr...which of course I can't easily link to because tumblr but at worst you'll have to scroll down a little through that tag.

(going to post this on tumblr too, god help me, but point out that this post exists as a space for conversation for those who prefer it)

I keep seeing discussions about this on tumblr, and have a Theory about how it relates to age. Apologies to people over 55, I realise you are not a monolith :)

So, over on my art blog I've started a meme to draw 30 Monster Girls.

Both to keep it interesting and for Great Justice I like the idea of moving beyond the fairly narrow box of typical depictions of "monster girls" (or female monsters, which aren't quite the same but are close enough for my purposes) you usually see eg as on fuckyeahmonstergirls. Thinking about what that box really is has been instructive, and I'd love to get some suggestions for things you guys would like to see (can't guarantee I'll draw them, but more inspiration is always good!)
( Read more... )
EDIT: Managed seven! I plan to do more later. Anyway, some things from the comments and elsewhere:
Femaleness is personified by cuteness as well as sexiness.
The definition of monster and the way it's used really does tie into disability a lot.
Markers of biological femaleness for monsters and non-humans can differ dramatically from ours (a mane-less lion for example)
the seam of skin and scales is a trans woman talking about "a feminism of the monstrous".

So! I just made this anxiety related icon, and would like a similarly cheerful icon about being touch averse (and specifically, not liking hugs)

Thinking about it, while I had a number of sympathetic anxious characters to choose from I can't think of any positive portrayals of people being being touch averse in a good natured "this is just how I am" way, it's all grumpy messed up people like Fenris. Can anyone else think of any examples? Closest I can think of is Rogue, who is polite about telling people not to touch her or they'll die, but I'd rather someone less wracked with angst.

I've been pondering how to do polls about various things in a way which minimises people feeling excluded or otherwise misrepresented. And I think the easiest way to test those ideas out is make polls and see what people don't like about them!

First off, nationality. As was pointed out to me the last time I tried doing a poll on this topic, just because I've lived in the same country my whole life and fit comfortably into it's majority culture doesn't mean other people's identities are so simple. It struck me that asking where people are currently located is a much less ambiguous question though of course you have to be careful not to then make the jump from "geographic location" to "national identity" in the analysis etc (especially since people might be on a three day business trip or something :)).

So! Please do this poll and then tell me anything about it that bugs you.
( Where are you?? )

EDIT: I have realised that this post, while it may have some merit, is mostly wrongheaded. I'm going to edit it to try and knock it into some sort of sense but keep in mind it used to be different. (Yes this erases my mistake, but it also means it's readable as a coherent argument)

I'm taking a break from responding to comments or editing the post etc while I think about the points people are making but I am increasingly uncomfortable with what I was saying. Ack.

( Proof I shouldn't post when I have a cold )

I'm not entirely comfortable telling LGBTQIA people what "queer" means but I'm pretty sure the definition of "queer" at canonqueer is too narrow.

Anyway, they look like they would benefit from a wider range of opinions regardless (and could be an interesting comm!).

Since I just made a post and belatedly locked it, leading to at one person going "I clicked 'Read More' and it won't let me! :(": anyone want on the locked post filter who isn't? All it'll require is your immortal soul agreeing to my very reasonable policies.

If you don't want on the filter but are sad about the post: sorry! It wasn't that good anyway.

Because people are lazy:


(nb: if it's more than a few days or so after I posted this, I probably won't notice that you added yourself, so leave a comment)