#binary options review

[tsreviews]

(via Tradify Binary System Review - Profit By Up To 1% To 3% Per DAY!)

[hellspawnmotel]

Thinking about Deltarune and how it plays with gender roles made me think about something; when people insist on assigning binary gender to the protagonists, I’ve noticed people usually treat Frisk and Chara as “girls” and Kris as a “boy”. I’ve seen vanishingly few instances where it’s the reverse. I wonder why that is

I've noticed the same thing! I remember occasionally seeing chara referred to as a boy back in 2015, but otherwise it's extremely consistent. I think it's due to a combination of things- one that frisk somewhat resembles madotsuki from yume nikki, so maybe early reviews or playthroughs that came from indie gamers assumed frisk was also a girl and it caught on. I have no way to verify this but it's what I personally always thought. there's also the fact that treating frisk as a pure self-insert was extremely common even after finishing the true pacifist route, and most of the younger members of the undertale fandom were teen girls (or at least they were girls then. many of them are not girls now lmao). so there was a really large community of portraying frisk not just as a little girl but a young woman, usually to be shipped with sans (cuz y'know sans was a hot commodity back in the day). and finally, and probably the most influential reason- undertale came out just after the rpgmaker boom of the early 2010s. and when you think about classic rpgmaker games that involve a young, vulnerable and often voiceless child exploring a dangerous environment (ib, the witch's house, mad father, and again yume nikki, among others), what do most of them have in common? yup, all the protagonists are girls. so I think for people who didn't have being nonbinary as an option at the front of their minds, it would be far more likely to assume frisk was a girl too and not give it a second thought.

(edit: I'm an idiot the most obvious answer is just that frisk has long hair. like it would be considered long on a boy I mean. and people assume any hair length past the ears = girl, so like of course people would see frisk as a girl. and you could argue that kris has longer hair too but still gets seen as a boy, but kris has kind of that emo teen thing going on which is one of the circumstances you might expect a boy to grow their hair out in. and generally younger kids don't have as much freedom with hairstyles.)

as for kris I think it has much more to do with assumptions of gender roles in a story, which is part of why I harp on it so much. in the light world, kris appears to be a depressed loner in a fashion more commonly associated in media with teenage boys. in addition, in their sprite their upper body appears somewhat wider than their legs and hips. in the dark world, kris is dressed as a knight, a traditionally male role, and is the silent leader commanding a party, also a traditionally male role (in JRPGs). given those things I think it's much more likely this was deliberate on toby's part, since he already knew players would leap to label a genderless protagonist as "one way or the other" and there isn't really a way to design a character that is able to convince a lot of people otherwise. so like, might as well use that as part of the meta. (I THINK, anyway. obviously I don't know for sure. I could be totally overanalyzing all this)

[genderqueerdykes]

so this is very embarrassing to admit but im a full grown adult now (18), and i moved away from home to start my life over and hopefully transition. but i realized very recently that because of my dysphoria i actually never took anything in during sex ed (which was very bad to begin with) and i know nothing about my body as is. i'm 18 uears old and my body is not just not what i want it to be but i don't even know what steps i'd like to take in making my body my own because i know nothing about the body i currently have.

i dont know how my body works, i dont know what surgeries will do what. i feel so stupid and lost and embarrassed and going to a doctor for this seems even scarier now with the realization i don't know words to describe my parts, i don't know even the most basic of processes. please please please tell me you have resources for me?

if relevant, i'm afab and looking into masculinizing processes. though i'm sure that there's gotta be other folks in different bodies than mine that are just as lost... i just dont know how to start searching without feeling strange and alien. sorry for being rambly, you're just someone i trust to go to with this and i'm very lost.

i'm sorry you've been made to feel this way, but i'm saying this to reassure you:

nobody is a full grown adult at 18!

you literally just became an adult. you're a beginner at it. a "full grown adult" is someone who is 50+. don't let people worry you too much about your age. you're still developing as a person. you're very, very young. what sort of information do you need in specific? what do you need to know about how your body works?

these may help you for the time being:

Transbucket - A website containing information about medical transition including surgeons and reviews, before and after surgery results, cost of surgeries, and more.

TransGuySupply - Chest binders, packers, STP devices, and more.

TopSurgery.net - Website for locating top surgeons.

Underworks - Safe, trusted medical grade chest binders.

What do I need to know about transitioning? (Planned Parenthood)

I Think I Might Be Transgender - A pamphlet for potential/trans youth, with quotes from other trans youth.

r/FtM - reddit support community for transmasculine individuals.

FtM Surgery Overview (Crane Center for Transgender Surgery)

Metoidioplasty Overview (Crane Center for Transgender Surgery)

Phalloplasty Overview (Cleveland Clinic)

Phallo.net - Phalloplasty ExplainedMetoidioplasty.net - Metoidioplasty ExplainedVagina-Preserving Phalloplasty Overview (Phallo.net)

Non Binary Options for Metoidioplasty (Metoidioplasty.net)

More information on vagina-preserving phalloplasties (Queerdoc)

List of informed consent clinics in the United States that provide gender affirming care services.

National Center for Transgender Equality - Find out how to update your name and gender on state and federal IDs and records (United States)

Guidelines for the Primary and Gender-Affirming Care of Transgender and Gender Nonbinary People - UCSF Transgender Care

Rainbow Health Ontario - Social Transition

you can find the above and a lot more on my queer resources page:

if you would like more info on general sex ed, please check out this blog, they post lots of great information:

@certifiedsexed

feel free to come back with more specifics, i'll be happy to help with what i can!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Emily Yoffe

Published: Jan 20, 2025

Toward the end of the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s campaign released an unexpected ad, and one that was extremely politically effective. The tagline—“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”—could go down in history as one of the most effective campaign slogans ever devised.

The ad reinforced a promise Trump repeated at rally after rally as he toured the swing states: If returned to office, he would immediately take on the gender ideology the Biden administration had embraced. Namely, he would end policies such as allowing males on women’s sports teams and in women’s locker rooms, and the housing of male prisoners who identify as transwomen in federal prisons for female offenders.

President Trump has addressed all this and more in an expansive executive order he will sign tomorrow afternoon called “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

Here is what the order sets out:

The Executive Order establishes Government-wide the biological reality of two sexes and clearly defines male and female.

All radical gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms are removed.

Agencies will cease pretending that men can be women and women can be men when enforcing laws that protect against sex discrimination.

“Woman” means an “adult human female.”

The Executive Order directs that Government identification like passports and personnel records will reflect biological reality and not self-assessed gender identity.

The Executive Order ends the practice of housing men in women’s prisons and taxpayer funded “transition��� for male prisoners.

The Executive Order ends the forced recitation of “preferred pronouns” and protects Americans’ First Amendment and statutory rights to recognize the biological and binary nature of sex.

This includes protection in the workplace and in federal funded entities like schools.

Asked why Trump is making sex-based policy a day one priority of his administration, an incoming senior administration official said, “This really was a defining issue of the campaign. The president is going to be fulfilling the promises he made on the trail.” The executive order puts it more bluntly: “Radical gender ideology has devastated biological truth and women’s safety and opportunity.”

It is becoming something of a presidential tradition to begin a term with sweeping directives regarding “gender identity.” President Biden, on his first day in office, demanded the federal government “review all existing orders, regulations, guidance documents, policies, programs, or other agency actions” that could impinge on transgender rights. Language and rules about transgender identities became embedded in the vast federal bureaucracy.

Now, Trump has ordered a reversal of all this. In an exclusive briefing with The Free Press, two senior officials provided a summary of the executive order. “Women deserve protections, they deserve dignity, they deserve fairness, they deserve safety,” said a senior policy adviser explaining why the order explicitly embraces the necessity of special treatment for women. “And so this is going to help establish that in federal policy and in federal laws.”

In reading the order, it’s clear that lawsuits challenging the new directives will start stacking up quickly. The order, for example, asserts that “All radical gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms are removed.” This is far from mere symbolism. United States passports—which since 2022 have allowed citizens to choose “X” as their gender—will revert to offering exclusively male and female options, with the proviso that what people select must “reflect biological reality and not self-assessed gender identity.”

The executive order also “ends the forced recitation of ‘preferred pronouns’ and protects Americans’ First Amendment and statutory rights to recognize the biological and binary nature of sex.” When asked about how this would affect public universities, which are bound by the First Amendment’s free speech protections, the senior policy adviser said the U.S. attorney general will enforce these rights. The adviser cited a 2022 federal court ruling to the effect that a Shawnee State University philosophy professor was deprived of his First Amendment rights by being forced to address a transgender student using that student’s chosen pronouns.

The task of the Trump administration now will be to promulgate rules implementing the order, which will affect people’s daily lives. It is inevitable that activist organizations will take these matters to court. The policy adviser said the administration is ready for litigation, predicting Trump will be “100 percent successful.”

It’s a fight the new administration seems to relish. Both officials said the executive order has the potential to broaden the president’s support. “Just take a look at the polling,” the senior official said. “The public is broadly in favor of the president’s and of the Republican Party’s stance on gender. That there are two biological sexes is something that the public is supportive of.”

The executive order does not address one of the most contentious areas of transgender activism: “gender-affirming care” for minors, meaning putting gender-distressed young people on a swift course to transition and lifetime medication. The Biden administration ardently supported such treatments, even as other Western nations began to restrict them, and dozens of U.S. states began to ban them.

The Biden administration sued Tennessee over its ban. That case resulted in a contentious oral argument at the Supreme Court in December, after which most observers felt the court would probably uphold Tennessee’s law.

Asked about why the new executive order does not deal with this, the senior official said, “This executive order is the first of many. I would expect that anything the president said he would do on the trail regarding these issues, he’s going to be fulfilling those promises.”

The order ends with a sweeping statement about the fundamental issue the White House believes is at stake in this order: ”Men and women are equal but have obvious sexual differences,” it reads. “If federal policies promote such an obvious falsehood that men can become women, the government will forfeit all credibility. The government must maintain a commitment to recognizing biological reality to maintain the trust of the American people.”

This order is one of nearly 200 executive actions the White House is rolling out today. Among them: orders to declare a national emergency at the border; end all DEI programs across the federal government; withdrawal from the Paris climate accord; and a return-to-office directive for federal workers.

==

Go ahead and try to explain how this is unreasonable.

[intpstyle]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review Pt. 1 - "How to move on?", The Companions

DA:TV Spoilers ahead!

So what does DA:TV want to say, or rather: to ask?

I think the question at the lyrium-red heart of the game is “How do you move on?”. It does not only make sense narratively, for Solas and his complicated relationship to his own past actions, the companions’ story arcs, and the “good ending”, but also for a game that has been trapped in development hell for 10+ years. How DO you move on?

Specifically, the question seems to be: “How can we move on from guilt/an unjust/imperfect past into an uncertain future?”

We see this theme echoed in all companion quests, to varying degrees.

It is in Bellara literally being faced with a manifest regret from her past (her brother) and having to choose how to honour the legacy of their work for their people.

It is in Davrin taking responsibility for the guilt over and future of the last surviving griffons whose species almost died because of his organisation’s, the Grey Wardens’, abuse.

It is in Emmrich finding the courage to do what Johanna (his more extreme, unethical mirror) could not do: to face the uncertainty and walk across the threshold of death with peace of mind, either in his ritual or later in life, because of Manfred’s sacrifice.

It is in Harding waking up to the injustices towards her and her people that have been buried deep underground and choosing how to unearth them and carry them forward.

It is in Lucanis moving beyond the reality that he was betrayed by one of the very few people he trusted - that he crawled out of a year of torture by the skin of his teeth, forever changed and fuelled by Spite, and choosing to break the cycle by not murdering Illario.

It is in Neve being haunted by (yet another) criminal from her past, grappling with the age-old noir questions of who a detective would be without their murderers, whether the fight with/ against corruption can ever stop and what it means to be “a force for good”, so that she can fully embrace who she is and wants to be for Minrathous in the future.

And it is in Taash, walking the many tightropes of traditional expectations (man or woman? Rivaini or Qunari? Honouring the past and their mother or carving their own path into the future?) only to realise that some choices are not binary, that one can only discover options beyond that which one has been taught by “struggling with oneself” (shokra toh ebra), and that embracing certain parts of oneself does not mean dishonouring others.

All companions must face something that they were afraid to confront in their own lives, made unavoidable through the appearance of Someone Who Is What They Are Not (Cyrian for Bellara, Isseya for Davrin, Johanna for Emmrich, her own unbridled rage for Harding, Illario for Lucanis, Aelia for Neve, and, the Dragon King, but also, surprisingly, I think Neve for Taash?)

What I find most interesting is how this question (“How can we move on from guilt/an unjust/imperfect past into an uncertain future?”) seems to be answered along a sliding scale of personal vs systemic failing and also personal vs systemic responsibility.

The quests that intrigued me the most were the ones in which the personal and the systemic were deeply intertwined and were also acknowledged as such: Davrin’s (his own struggle with individuation vs being shaped (and potentially abused) by a community/ organisation mirroring Assan’s and the griffons as a whole; both he and the system must change), Emmrich’s (his own deep intrinsic fear of death as the driving force behind his a) appreciating and b) being terrified of the Mourn Watchers’ philosophy of going beyond death is beautifully thought out), Harding’s (her own supressed rage as the price for being ever-pleasant, useful, and building others up by mirroring the long-forgotten suffering of the tranquilised Titans who were literal building materials for the elves? *chef’s kiss*) and Neve’s (her constant fear of losing control (which is highlighted in her romance) while still being drawn to the thrill of the chase is mirrored in Minrathous’ constant chaos where just one slip of vigilance can cost you at best a leg, and at worst your life, or your loved ones – but Neve’s quest marries personal and systemic responsibility by asking: would you rather shape the system’s chaos or be shaped by it?).

The quests that fell a bit flat for me had either side of the equation slightly underbaked: Bellara’s (yes, she and Cyrian were deeply invested in Arlathan and Anaris was a Forgotten One, but how does his death directly relate to Bellara keeping or “freeing” (?) the Archive?), Lucanis’ (there is such potential in an assassin re-evaluating whether murder is always the best solution for everything and especially betrayal (and especially-especially because family members assassinating one another seems to be just another Tuesday for the Crows (and especially-especially-especially because it’s heavily implied that Lucanis knew that whole year in the Ossuary who put him there)). But sadly, the game doesn’t really go into Lucanis’ deeper thoughts on the Crows as an organisation, assassination as a moral quandary or the potential culpability of Caterina – which makes his final decision all the more baffling. Him struggling with his “inner demon” would have been a great set-up for struggling with the title of Demon of Vyrantium; what makes him more or less of a demon now than before? But alas), and Taash’s (all the ingredients are there, but the lack of systemic emphasis really dragged down Taash’s story, I felt. Taash explicitly exists between systems, and yet we don’t really see them engaging in either culture and/or going beyond them except for rather shallow markers, like food, clothes, and jewellery – I really would have liked to experience that moment in which Taash talks to Neve, Maevaris and their friends and reflects on their views on gender. I also really would have liked a moment between Isabela, Rowan and perhaps an Antaam defector on what being Rivaini, in-between, or Qunari meant to them, and for Taash to pitch in. In the end, it was not narratively satisfying for me why Taash must now make a choice (or, even weirder, why Rook must now make a choice for them) between being more Rivaini or more Qunari when them thinking through being more man or more woman ended with “neither/both/a third option, actually”.)

Pt. 2 is here, Pt. 3 is here

[littlebvtterfly]

Hi, everyone! And Happy Pride! This is probably coming in just under the line, but I'll throw it out there nonetheless since someone did ask for it. I've been feeling kind of creatively in a void and I no longer know what to do, so I am doing this because it usually helps me out a great deal. And, I always love to celebrate Pride with you guys! Anyways, I hope you will all join and have fun!

P.s.: I am currently trying my best to rework or make Pinterest boards for OCs who have none, so bear with me.

The rules and regulations are simple, but they exist nonetheless, so here they are:

The exchange, for now, is open until June 30th. I may extend it if people are interested.

LGBTQ+ OC's only, please! Yes, you can send in someone with a non-same-sex relationships as long as one or two of the people in are LGBTQ. Trans and non-binary OC's are always welcome!

You may make 1-2 requests, but I will probably reblog it, saying you can ask for more because I always do (hehe).

Please reblog this post to spread some awareness. You can like for remembrance, but just a like doesn't count (you already know this; I know my 5 regulars who come here every time)!

As aforementioned, this is open to my regular drunks and new patrons alike, so please do not be shy. Think of me as I think of birds; I am more scared of you than you are of me.

Fill out the form linked below and find the password in the form!

Please only send me face claims with good quality and plenty of material to use. Also, no cartoon characters. Video game characters may work, depending on the animation style. I'm not trying to discriminate; it can just be really tough for me to find material for cartoons, anime, video games, etc., as I edit by making little video clips first and so on. However, if you slide in my DMs, we might be able to discuss some stuff.

Please, please, please fill out all the columns I need and choose at least two gift options. I just like to have a fallback in case one gift doesn’t work out for any reason, though I usually do post two gifts for everyone.

Remember the pleases and thank you's; pleases and thank you's make my heart grow fond.

I don't do Harry Potter or Stranger Things OCs, and while I don't have a specific list of FCs I don't use, I ask that you do not request anything for overtly problematic actors. Thank you!

I accept pretty much any gift in return: GIF edits, mood boards, playlists, story reviews, drawings/art—anything is fine. If it's a story review, please let me know in the form so I know you did, as I don't check my accounts every day. You can find my writing platforms in my pinned post.

I'm fine with gifts for any of my OCs; my master list as well as the link to my Pinterest and Spotify are in my pinned post.

Please remember that in order for me to post my gifts for you, I need to know you have given me a gift first. I don’t want to sound greedy in any form; I have just had issues with this before. I do want to make everyone who hands in a form a gift, and it hurts when I can’t. If you submitted and can’t make gifts for any reason that comes up, it’s totally fine; I will most likely do another exchange in no time.

FOR ANY OTHER QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS, FEEL FREE TO SEND ME A MESSAGE, AND I WILL TRY TO CLEAR EVERYTHING UP!

CELEBRATE PRIDE WITH ME HERE; HERE IS THE LINK FOR PRIDE; PRIIIIIIIDE!

TAGGING: @eddysocs @ocs-supporting-ocs @foxesandmagic @veetlegeuse @decennia @hiddenqveendom @arrthurpendragon @luucypevensie @nikosasaki @noratilney @wordspin-shares @oneirataxia-girl @endless-oc-creations @avcrymorgans @andromedalestrange @far-shores @rose-of-oz @bibaybe @come-along-pond @dancingsunflowers-ocs @justahopelessssromantic

[narrators-journal]

Hey, I uhhhh, had a fun little idea for a Yandere!Naoto x Non-Binary reader scénario where the reader ends up downloading a seemingly innocuous dating sim set in Inaba with Rise, Yosuke, Kanji, and Naoto as the main romance options (With Yu as the stand-in Protag). Things start off normal until the game starts acting weird and corrupted, as Yu suddenly starts to take features of the player (Who’s has curly hair with glasses) and Naoto suddenly shows signs of being self aware. Even after witnessing the corruption of the game due to the detective’s influence and later deleting it, Naoto still continues to haunt the player and try to escape their computer (Basically a mashup of DDLC and Ben Drowned)

I hope this wasn’t too long and I hope you have fun with it :).

Okay, so this is a big ol’ experimental one. I tried a new format and I tried to just...really tap into some ben drowned energy. That being said! I do NOT think I succeeded. But hey! It’s just an experiment, and I had a good bit of fun trying to write it! I will acknowledge though, I may have missed some parts of the ask. I hope you enjoy it regardless!

CW: Yandere vibes, I tried to make it creepy. Invasion of privacy is also a thing.

March 21st

Hello! I am starting this blog as a way to catalogue the weird events that I’ve run into while playing that indie game Inabi in love, which I will likely shorten through this ordeal.

Anyways! To start, some context: I am a pretty avid Otome/dating sim fan. Cooking companions, I love you colonel sanders, or DDLC are prime examples of the official ones I’ve played, but I’ve also played fan games, like that Thief of Hearts dating sim Robbing the robbers, or Five nights at love. Long story short, I have played plenty of dating sims, and some of them have been horror. So, I am not a stranger to the genre and the twists on it.

So, when my best friend bought me Inaba in love as a gift, I thought it would be nothing but a cute new game to pick up. The issue was...it’s been a bit weird? I think it’s too long to post in one big post at this hour, so I’ll get into the rest of it tomorrow, but be warned, this gets very weird, and I know how insane this sounds but it’s true. Please at least humor me while I fight my shitty wifi and buggy ass computer.

March 22nd

Hi! I return after a good night’s sleep. Now, let’s try to get into this again.

When I booted up Inaba in love for the first time, I was on a discord call with the friend who bought me the game to give them my initial reactions and things were perfectly normal. Like with most dating sims nowadays, there were two gender options, a bowl cut-having male lead with the personality of a brick, and a matching girl with similarly gray hair in twin braids. They were cute, bland, the perfect projection. Nothing weird there. I chose the male lead for a first run on my friend’s encouragement and I went on.

Next up, I met the love interests. The first one was the mc’s best friends. Chie to start, and she’s a perfectly cute girl, very tomboyish, and less annoying than the male romance option that I think was named Yosuke. Who, by contrast, didn’t strike me as a character I’d enjoy. I thought at first that he’d fall into that whole character trope of cutesy clutz. But, he ended up proving to be pretty cute in the end, so it’s fine.

In terms of love interests, the wild shit happened when I met the final love interest, Naoto.

Now, please know, I am cutting out a lot of content to keep things short. This isn’t a review of the actual game, I am moreso venting about the creepy shit I’ve run into, and that only really started when I met Naoto. Not at first, of course, but it didn’t take long.

At first, Naoto was fine. He was quickly my favorite, smart, funny, mature, I thought he was great. I locked onto his romance route the moment I was given it, and I had fun for the first two or so dates. However, on the third date, things began to get a little weird. Naoto admitted to checking my criminal record. Which, is fine, he’s a cop, I expected that.

What I didn’texpect, was that Naoto would continue that trend of kinda? reasonable, but creepy shit.

On one hand, it made sense, he’s a cop character, he’s gonna do background checks, but the fuck type of lore did I miss to explain why he admitted to keeping a file on me on the fifth date? Also, some of the stuff he listed from that file, like my name, work history, school history, none of that was put into the game. That’s also not just stuff from my steam page, so where the hell did the game pull that information from?! Where on my computer did it get that stuff about me? My socials? Can games do that?

I have to end this here, though. With my first post, the site’s tab on my computer closed itself and I actually lost that entire post and had to rewrite it a lot faster. I want to make sure I don’t have to do that here too. I’m already red flags on that end, so uh...I’ll return with more!

March 25th

Okay, I return after a small break. I’m gonna stop summarizing the game as a whole. Outside of Naoto being weird, the game’s your general otome game. You go through your day and talk to your romance options, trying to get dates and give them gifts. I mostly want to vent and maybe warn? About Naoto’s behavior. Which, by the way, doesn’t stop just in the game. I took those first two days off of the game to type up those posts, and by that point I had locked myself into his route. That’s how I know all about this stuff, but I don’t think I’ll continue it now.

At first, I thought it was just in-character. Naoto was stated to be a cop prodigy, so it made sense that he’d be able to do a thorough background check on the lead. But then he has a file on the main lead. Which, I know doesn’t sound insane, but this game’s lead is stated to just be a transfer student. I’ve tried googling and researching, but nothing I’ve found has implied or stated that the lead has some secret dark past, so I have no clue why he’s got a whole file. What information do the cops apparently have? Again, what lore did I miss? I tried looking up whether there was some subtle morality system built in, but no one mentions anything like that, so I’m just left to assume Naoto has a file on the male lead’s boring ass life. Why?! That’s creepy as hell when I remember the fact that this character also uses my own information.

But! I’m getting off track. Back to the creepy antics that have killed my urge to complete Naoto’s route. Like how the mc’s design had changed when I opened the game next! (No, I will not elaborate beyond he had the same hair color and texture as me)

Like I said, I took a two day break to write out my first two posts, and after that, I returned to the game. I mostly only did it to try and double check which date I was at with him, but as soon as I ran into him, he blew up on me.

Naoto snapped at me for abandoning him. Leading him on, being a flake, stuff like that. Which confused me? Because when I’d left the game, he was in a good mood, the date at his house had gone great (once I got past him commenting on how my yard is, trust me guys, there’s too much unnerving stuff to put in this series. I’ll probably follow it up with some bullet points at some point.) So, I had no clue how he knew I’d called him a creep? Does this game check your socials in real time? That’d be a really good horror game trick, but this was an otome game, and one that wasn’t marched as a psychological horror like DDLC, so I don’t know why that’d be programmed in. Which, is why I’m done.

A fictional character shouldn’t be able to just dothat, a main character shouldn’t alter his appearance mid-game to look like me, and I got really creeped out at him being so mad that I’d posted about Love in Inaba and his romance route. It feels invasive at this point, and I’m just...gonna delete the game. I suggest that if any of you want to buy this game, maybe don’t? Or, maybe wait until the developers explain this. Because, if they programmed their game to dig around in socials and computers, they’re at least insanely good at their job, or creeps.

For now, I’m gonna cut this post here. My laptop’s been kicking itself off of the wifi when I post stuff, so it’s been annoyingly touch and go just writing this lol. Also! That reminds me!

If you’ve sent me a DM in the last few days, about my post or the game, I promise I’ve seen the notifications, but when I’ve gone to check, nothing’s shown up. So, please feel free to try again, I think this site is bugging out.

I’m sorry if this little vent thread isn’t very good, or thorough on what exactly is creepy about the game, so I’ll go ahead and give a small bullet point on some of the small ways Naoto’s been creepy. I’ll come back to wrap this up and probably go into more detail there as well. Consider this a little appetizer while I try to recall more.

Naoto mentioned the state of my front yard

He mentioned my family in an attempt to get closer to me

On date 3, before I’d locked into his romance route and was also talking to Chie, Naoto got a bit jealous and mentioned where I’d taken Chie for lunch in the game.

The apparent real time reading of my social media

Naoto interrupted and seemed to basically chase Yosuke off when I tried to further his romance route.

He knew what I had for lunch

And this is all just the stuff I can comfortably blame on the game. I’m starting to suspect something supernatural’s going on with my laptop. Because the wifi wasn’t thisbad before, and tabs don’t just close on their own.

April 2nd

Hello! I return once again! I sadly won’t be listing issues I’ve run into with my partner, I just thought I’d post once my wifi had stabilized and assure you all that I’m doing fine. Please don’t actually DM me, I’ll be fine and am plenty happy. I’m no longer scared of that silly game, I’m sorry if I creeped any of you out, I just fell for the game’s tactics. Don’t mind this post, I’m sorry lol, it’ll be down soon.

[frameacloud]

Third Option, by Karma Chameleon

Content: Rated G.

Medium: Physical game. One page of instructions.

Length: A few minutes.

About: "Third Option is a simple game about reaching outside the options you're given. It takes the form of a conversation (written, spoken, or otherwise), and requires no extra materials. Recommended as an icebreaker, idle distraction, or grounding exercise."

Vibe: Thoughtful, playful.

Curator's note: The game doesn't mention genders outside of the male/female binary, but personally I think it's ideal for getting that idea across, and for sharpening the skill of thinking outside of other boxes.

For this reason, I include this zine in my itch.io collections on xenogender. I'm doing this series of Tumblr posts reviewing and featuring other people's creations with links to where you can see them on itch.io to celebrate and draw attention to the cool stuff that folks make.

[connyscomics]

Until I Become Me by Satou Hatsuki

Trans rep: 8/10

General enjoyment: 8/10

Okay so this will be the first of my longer reviews that I post, and so for readers that don’t want that I’ll first say some words about the comic (in summary or smth). Basically the comic is good but oddly executed and is built around a sort of stupid gender swap premise. Okay so uhm yeah heres my goliath of an essay (actually its just like 600 words, but yk this is tumblr not a newspaper… oh whatever):

I started writing about Trans comics almost three years ago because I noticed that there was not one single thorough guide or reading list for someone trying to find comics about Trans people. There are a few guides out there that allow you to search under the tag of “Transgender”, but every single one has the same five or ten entries that barely have any Transgender representation.

The genre of Transgender comics may seem small, but once you start digging you’ll quickly find that there are so many great comics to be found, if only you just look hard enough!

It took me three years of searching to find Until I Become Me by Satou Hatsuki in the footnotes of a poorly written article about another Trans comic I was researching, but boy was it worth the wait. Until I Become Me is a not-so-classic twist on the classic manga trope of “gender benders” or “gender swap,” in which a character (typically male) magically Transforms (typically overnight) into the opposite sex. This trope generally plays into outdated understandings of gender and sex and the intersection of the two to create what has historically been seen as a humorous plot point.

Gender swap tropes are rooted in a gender-essentialist perspective that there is something inherently “female” about some bodies and something inherently “male” about other bodies and that only a magical binary “switch” could turn a boy into a girl. In reality, gender and bodies are not so completely binary and not so completely set in stone, and furthermore if someone wants to change their body, modern medical transition options are very effective for changing someone’s “sex”.

Normally I can’t stand comics like this because they are full to the brim with Transphobic rhetoric, gender-essentialism, and usually a good amount of oversexualization. However, Until I Become Me is different, because the gender swap mechanic is not seen as a funny joke or a one-off bit but instead as a serious and confusing emotional experience for a character with a lot of internalized self-hatred and Trans desires.

The main character, Akira, hesitantly explores what it means to have a feminine body while simultaneously coping with her growing enjoyment of this experience: she didn’t magically become a girl overnight (mentally speaking) but the “girl” might have been there all along.

This strikingly fresh take on both the Transgender experience and the gender-swap trope is as fun as it is heart wrenching. Before her body changed, Akira regularly harassed and bullied girls in her class, and then after changing ends up facing much of the same treatment from boys in her class. Watching Akira reflect on her own past behaviors towards girls when she was a “boy” hits deep into the real-world challenge of many Trans people to balance internalized prejudices with learned experiences.

Although overall I found the comic really enjoyable and its storyline surprisingly poignant, there were definitely some moments that were hard to read.

The way in which her parents treat her, as a freak of nature that desperately needs “fixing,” and the way that boys in her class (particularly early on when they knew her before the change) treat her, as a subject of ridicule and regular sexual harassment, its all quite difficult to read. But this does not make the story any less valuable as a Trans narrative, in fact the balancing of the softer internal exploration with the harsh outside world is exactly what makes Until I Become Me one of the most harshly realistic comics I’ve ever read.

Admittedly, the gender swap mechanic is a bit cheesy at first, but I think Hatsuki did a good job separating the brain from the body and allowing the Transgender themes to come front and center. The comic is on chapter 63 currently and regularly updating, already having cemented itself as one of the greatest Transgender texts, comic or otherwise, that's ever been written.

[thecorvidcurio]

PLEASE NOTE: This game is in very early development. Only the first two chapters are done and posted, but there may be bugs. If you run into any issues or notice any glaring errors, please let me know via asks or messages. Also, please bear in mind that the writing will be reviewed, revised, and updated as the project goes on. What you're reading is not the final product.

Summary: For as long as you can remember, no one you've loved has ever lasted very long.

The moment you come to love someone,  whether that love is familial, platonic, or romantic, tragedy befalls you both. In a desperate attempt to escape this cycle, you have moved somewhere remote, to a run-down apartment building in a mostly-abandoned area of an isolated town. However, the few others living in the building are far friendlier, and stranger, than you anticipated.

The more time you spend around these bizarre people, the more certain you are that there's a layer of reality you've previously been unaware of. As you discover more of what was previously hidden from you, though, it begs the question:

Is there something more to your tragic circumstances than an unfortunate run of bad luck? Could it be the result of some power you don't understand? And, if so, does that mean there's a way out of it?

Or, perhaps more importantly, does that mean there's someone to blame for your suffering?

Can be played as a romance, or with a focus on platonic connections.

Six potentially romanceable companion characters: Two women, two men, and two non-binary options.

Set your pronouns, appearance, and build your personality over the course of the game.

Decide how your character copes with their difficult situation, how their circumstances affect the way they interact with others, and whether any of that changes as the truth is revealed.

Help your new friends face their own troubles (or potentially make things worse...)

Discover the truth and, potentially, a solution. Or, at the very least, find some closure.

You can play the demo for free on itch.io.

More information about love interests and player stats can be found under the Read More.

Vicente - A very polite and put together man who values kindness and respect above all else. He's happy to help, and keen to look after others, but seems unsure what to do with himself when someone tries to show him the same kindness he shows others.

Abby - An eccentric person with seemingly limitless energy who values fun and excitement above all else. He's always looking for new and interesting things to occupy himself with, and seems to have no sense of self-preservation.

Kaida - A taciturn fellow who values knowledge and secrecy above all else. Knowledge is power, and there is safety in secrets. He's quite mysterious, seems to always be many steps ahead of everyone else, and seems to know things no one else does.

Marina - An unapologetically loud and rambunctious woman who values rebellion and individuality above all else. She's easily bored, and always looking for something new to challenge herself with. If you tell her she can't or shouldn't do something, it's just about guaranteed she'll be doing that thing in the near future.

Thea - An elegant and classy lady who values loyalty and honesty above all else. On the job, she's as glamorous as a starlet, singing on a stage and captivating any who hear her hypnotic voice. Off the job, though, she's something much different, and hopes to find someone who can appreciate both sides of her.

Shiloh - A cripplingly shy and skittish entity of uncertain origin who values privacy and comfort above all else. Shiloh enjoys observing others interacting, and lives vicariously through witnessing the connections other people form with each other, though Shiloh is quite sure that it will never manage to make such connections itself.

Personality:

Adaptable - Adamant Are you able to roll with the punches and adjust according to the situation at hand? Or are you stuck in your ways and insistent that the situation should yield to you, not the other way around?

Isolation - Connection Have you given up trying to connect with others? Did you ever want to in the first place? Are you content to keep a distance between yourself and others? If so, is that what you truly want, or what you believe you must settle for? Or do you crave connection? Will you grasp for it if given a chance?

Courteous - Callous Do you try to be kind to others, regardless of your ability or willingness to form actual connections with them? Or do you treat them coldly and keep yourself unapproachable?

Candid - Calculating Are you genuine in your interactions with others, or are your words and deeds measured carefully for specific purposes?

Approach to the Unknown:

Hopeful - Hopeless Do you believe things will ever get better? That it’s worth it to keep trying, keep holding on, keep hoping? Or have you long since learned that hope is too painful, too dangerous to risk?

Curious - Cautious Are you driven by the need to learn, explore, and discover? Or are you held back by the thoughts of what might happen if you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong?

Skeptic - Believer Do you believe the agonising tragedy of your life is just a consequence of the callous indifference of the universe? Do you think it’s just an unfortunate coincidence, a roll of the cosmic dice that you always lose? Or do you suspect something deeper is afoot?

[thelavenderlodge]

Introductory offer: Pay-what-you-like tarot and oracle reading!

Hi, I'm a tarot reader and a pranic healer. I've been on the path of spiritual learning for two decades, and I'm now offering my learning to others on a larger scale. 🔮 To kick this off, I'm offering pay-what-you-like tarot and oracle readings to 10 people. The offer lasts till the end of April. ❓ You send me one question you want answered. If you don't have a question, ask me for a general reading. Send it in the form of an ask. I won't post it!

✉️ I'll send you a response within 7 days of receiving your request. I'll DM you my response. In case your DMs are closed or limited, let me know how you'd like to receive your response. 💲 Pay me what you like once you receive your reading. I accept payments through Paypal. 👍 Please send me a review/testimonial if you like my reading!

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What I Read On Love, relationships, career, ancestral & spiritual messages, messages from those who have passed, conversations with pets and animals, readings on a specific situation or issue. If you don't have a specific question but just want a general reading, I can do that too.

What I Don't Read On Medical issues, legal matters, stock market, mental illness, timelines ("when" something will occur), yes/no answers (tarot does choose for you; it reveals the underlying energies for each scenario)

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My Reading Style

My readings are guidance-based, not predictive. I read current energies to offer insight and direction, rather than telling fortunes. I believe the future is shaped by our choices, and my goal is always to empower.

I reveal the energies - seen and unseen - affecting your life, and offer guidance on how to move forward. For choice-based questions, I explore the energy of each option and provide supportive advice for each path. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How to Submit Your Question

Please include the following details to help me connect with your energy clearly and accurately:

Your initials or first name – whichever you feel more comfortable sharing.

The city or state you currently reside in.

Your age.

Your gender (including non-binary, if applicable).

Your zodiac sign.

The initials of the other person involved (for relationship-related questions).

A unique personal detail that helps distinguish your energy – for example, “I chipped my front tooth falling off a skateboard at age 10.”

Next, describe your situation or concern in detail, and ask your question. The more details you share, the better the cards can respond to your query. Please don't feel shy - more is better! It helps me better understand and interpret the advice the cards have to offer.

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What You Receive

You’ll receive your report - by text, audio, or video - within 10 days of your confirmation email or message. Your report will highlight the energies around your situation, with brief mentions of the cards pulled.

If a card image is shared, its symbolism is part of the message. Notice how it makes you feel.

I may include meditations, affirmations, or other helpful tools when needed.

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Payment

After reading for clients in person for more than 5 years, I'm offering pay-what-you-like readings to 10 people in celebration of my foray into online tarot reading.

Please pay what you think is fair, and what you are able, within 2 days of receiving your reading. This helps me keep track of my payments in an efficient manner.

Please remember that while the reading is pay-what-like, it isn't free. I ask that you understand and respect this agreement.

I accept payment here: PAYPAL LINK

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Feedback and Testimonial

Once you have received your reading and have read through it, please give me feedback on the reading. Let me know what resonated with you and what didn't as much, which aspects of the reading you need clarity on, etc.

If you like my reading, please consider sharing a testimonial by emailing it to me or sending it to me via DM or the "Asks" section. Your testimonial would be shared on my website and socials. (You would remain anonymous - only your first name or your initials and your location would be shared.) It would mean a lot to me and help others feel confident to reach out.

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If this speaks to you, I’d love to read for you. Can’t wait to connect with your energy and offer insights to support your journey. ✨

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

In recent years, U.S. politicians have selectively framed European healthcare policies to justify restrictions on transgender care, seizing on a handful of conservative policies to claim that “Europe is pulling back.” The most extreme example, the United Kingdom’s Cass Review, has been wielded to justify a near-total ban on puberty blockers and even cited in U.S. Supreme Court arguments. But new medical guidelines from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland tell a different story. These countries have reaffirmed the importance of gender-affirming care for transgender youth and issued sharp critiques of the Cass Review, calling out its severe methodological flaws and misrepresentations.

The guidelines, released Friday in German, span more than 400 pages and represent the collective expertise of 26 medical and psychotherapeutic professional organizations, along with two self-representation organizations from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Their stated goal is "to provide guidance to all professionals in the healthcare system who deal with young transgender and non-binary people for the best possible professionally informed care based on the current state of medical knowledge." From the outset, the guidelines explain the importance of gender affirming care, stating that there are “no proven effective treatment alternative without body-modifying medical measures for a [person with] permanently persistent gender incongruence.” Importantly, the guidelines were developed with those who are experts in the fields of gender affirming care having a voice at the table, unlike the Cass Review: “Current guidelines, which are published by medical societies, were predominantly developed by clinical experts for the field of application and are based on an integrated synthesis of the assessment of available evidence and the broadest possible expert consensus.” The guidelines directly recommend puberty blockers and individualized, prioritized care for transgender youth undergoing physical changes. In the section on puberty blockers, the guidelines state with a strong recommendation: “If, in individual cases, the progressive pubertal maturation development creates a time pressure in which health damage would be expected due to longer waiting times to avert irreversible bodily changes (e.g. male voice change), access to child and adolescent psychiatric or psychotherapeutic clarification and medical treatment options should be granted as quickly as possible.” The guidelines also deliver a strong critique of the Cass Review, the report currently being used to justify bans on gender-affirming care in the United Kingdom and leveraged in other countries to further restrictions. German medical societies deem the Cass Review largely inapplicable to their own guidelines due to its numerous methodological shortcomings. One of their sharpest criticisms focuses on the lack of transparency regarding those who advised and produced the review, as well as the limited expertise of those involved. [...] The new German, Austrian, and Swiss guidelines mark a significant advancement for transgender healthcare in those countries, reinforcing a growing trend in Europe toward expanding, not restricting, access to gender-affirming care. They join the ranks of nations like Spain and France, which have taken more progressive stances on transgender rights, including medical care.

In a marked contrast to the US and UK’s war on trans rights and existence (see: Donald Trump [US] and Cass Review [UK]), the DACH countries of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland released guidelines on gender-affirming care that expand it for trans youths.

[axvoter]

Update on my Review VII (WA 2025): Stop Pedophiles! Save kiddies!

Perhaps the most entertaining review to write during this WA state electoral cycle was that of Stop Pedophiles! Save kiddies! [sic] and there is yet more to say about them. As with my first review, I will refer to them as SPPK for convenience.

First, I noted how utterly anonymous the SPPK’s candidates are, with most listed only by initial and last name. Some scouting around has enabled me to identify at least a couple of them. One appears to be Radomar Kobryn-Coletti, who in 2019 claimed to have no commitment to any political party even though he worked in a role churning out far-right memes for the Facebook page of Fraser Anning, one of our most bilious senators of recent years (in a crowded field!). Kobryn-Coletti is down in 11th, while up in 3rd is an A. Middleton: this is Andrew Middleton, who is active in far-right “freedom” circles.

Middleton appears to have not gone ahead with a projected independent candidature and joined the SPPK instead. He has an Andrew for WA Facebook page, which, among some extreme stuff including “vaccine injury” covid conspiracism, includes a link to an already-defunct Independents for WA page. You can still view it via the Wayback Machine: here’s one version promoting him in January; and an updated version promoting a bunch of people that appears to have gone offline mid-February after the deadline to nominate for the election passed. It seems he was going to co-ordinate far-right independents, including some now associated with Group M, and others who haven’t stood at all.

Neither Middleton nor Kobryn-Coletti suggest anything good will come from the SPPK—and the party’s how-to-vote cards (HTVs) confirm this. They have registered a bunch of HTVs with the WA Electoral Commission, most of them after I drafted my original review and queued it to post. The page with all HTVs is here; use the filter options to select “Legislative Council cards by party” and scroll down.

They’re very rough HTVs, some of the most basic and crude I have seen, and they coalesce around messages for tougher punishment of paedophiles and greater police funding. WA last year passed new legislation to toughen and extend police monitoring of known sex offenders in the community, but this evidently isn’t far enough for SPPK, who appear to oppose any sort of community release for people convicted of sex crimes against minors. They would mandate life sentences for murdering police officers, despite the fact that removing discretion from judges can lead to negative outcomes and undermines the independence of the judiciary. Some of the HTVs specify that the SPPK would fund a police task force to the tune of $5 million annually, plus another $1 million for victim support groups; they do not explain how they came to this total and what gaps or shortfalls they seek to address with it beyond “moar cops!”

Not all their HTVs are emotive “protect kiddies” calls to action. It seems they’re using HTVs as their one way of disseminating policy. You won’t be surprised to learn they’re transphobes who insist on a gender binary, for instance. Although they’re passionate about protecting “kiddies”, they don’t seem to be a fan of young adults and think of them as ungrateful layabouts: they want to compel all Western Australians aged 18–22 to either serve in the Army Reserve or the Department of Fire and Emergency Services so that they can “become Heroes not victims”. This is SPPK’s idea of a bushfire policy! Another HTV states a housing policy: scrapping stamp duty for anyone over 60, ostensibly so they can downsize and free up family homes in WA. I can’t see this having any unintended consequences or being exploited in the slightest! (hoo boy I can)

Predictably they hate “the Greenies” and “their mad energy policies”, they want to ban all wind farms, and they support continued mining and gas exploration. The best of their HTVs on this theme claims “Greenies and the Left hate the family 4WD”, which, look, guilty as charged: I loathe motonormativity (car brain), desire much greater modal choice, and endorse policies that deprioritise cars in favour of public and active transport for a whole host of reasons. Giant road beasts in urban areas are dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists, they cause much greater wear of road surfaces, and they barely even fit into parking spaces, so, yes, tax them into oblivion. Instead, the SPPK want to slash the state diesel tax and they seem to be afraid that not just catering to the whims of 4WD drivers will send us back to using goat carts.

Some HTVs, such as this one, have an odd emphasis on getting things done in the first 100 days after the election. This “first 100 days” malarkey (which from my understanding has been borrowed from US political discourse) seems to be growing in popularity in Australia and NZ as a way for parties to suggest they are serious and for new governments to show they have entered office purposefully and are Doin Thangs. What it often means in practice is rushed policy with inadequate expert oversight or community input.

My favourite, though? The fat cats HTV, which depicts a fat politician with two cat heads. It uses the Democrats’ old “keep the bastards honest” slogan and suggests SPPK will be “an angry dog in the game”. Personally, I’d rather cool heads in parliament, not angry dogs—or people who cynically drum up fear about crimes against children to advance a far-right agenda.

Edit, 7 March: see a second update here

[kaidanworkshop]

Workshop Progress: November Update

Happy Holidays guys, gals, and non-binary pals! Firstly, apologies for the delayed update! Flu and COVID season is in full force this year, and it seemed to have it out for not only the Workshop staff and families, but for our VA Paul Warren! We're happy to report that everyone is on the mend and returning to our regular workflow. Learn from our follies; make sure you're taking care of your own health as well! Last update we focused on our alpha and beta testing progress with the Creation Kit and Assets Team -- progress on that front continues as we add in more recorded lines and refine the new systems we've implemented; this update will be a deep dive focusing on our Writing Team and their workflow process in organizing, evaluating, and proposing changes to the base script via our peer review system. Besides this, we have our fourth recording session with Mr. Warren in the coming weeks; after this session, our business lead is projecting one more session will be enough to complete the rest of the original script, and we can begin to finalize what options the community has towards allocating the remaining funds. We've been compiling a few synopses of what those bonus content options will be, so stayed tuned on that front! Finally, we're very excited to show off some of what we've managed to implement, so one of our Community Team members will be streaming some of our current 1.3 beta for our Discord community this upcoming Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 at 3pm CST, and Thursday, November 16th, 2023 at 10am CST! With that out of the way, here's our Writing Team Workflow Deep Dive! Warning: The below contains spoilers!

The temperatures might be cooling down outside but we're staying nice and warm working on the Kaidan romance lines commission. As we move towards the more emotionally charged dialogues the player can have with Kaidan (i.e. his friendship and romance quests), we realized that our previous script notes for our VA needed to be a bit more robust in order to really convey the tone we're looking for. As much as we all love this silly little 10+ year old game, the reality is that Skyrim's engine has its limitations with regards to NPC emotivity and expression, so the onus falls on the voice acting to carry the extra emotional weight. While Kaidan is, on the surface, a rather reserved person, a major part of the growth he experiences with the player character is allowing himself to more vulnerable and forthcoming with his emotions. For prior commissions, our script to Mr. Warren was aggregated into spreadsheets broken up by quest name and dialogue path, with brief notes on delivery/different quest paths as needed.

For each commission, we have two members of our staff sit in with Mr. Warren and offer direction as he works his way through the script. We tend to get around 3 to 8 different takes of each line, with around 250 - 300 lines per commission. Once complete, Mr. Warren sends us the full audio, and the next leg of processing begins. Our absolute savior of an audio tech gets to work splitting all the hundreds of different takes up into individual cuts, as well as processing the audio for any latent sounds or fuzziness in the background. Once separated, they're placed in an associated thread for staff members to listen to and vote on.

Sometimes we are very lucky, and there's a clear winner for the individual take. Sometimes.

Other times, ties must be split. Or not.

It is also during this process that we'll identify lines that might've been misread or otherwise need a retake. We aggregate a list and discuss our feelings on it, then shoot them back to Mr. Warren with further clarification on what we're looking for in his delivery. The process of receiving, splitting, and voting on the retake lines then begins again.

This method of breaking down these emotion-fueled dialogues really helps us as a staff keep a firm grasp on the original presented characterization of Kaidan, and not get wrapped up in trying to unnecessarily change or otherwise alter his dialogue. There's a reason this follower remains one of the most popular within the Skyrim community, and the last thing we want to do is damage LivTempleton's magic with arbitrary wordsmithing. Still, sometimes changes are needed. We try to keep them as minimal as possible, but some lines stuck out due to strange wording or odd delivery. For example, Kaidan's response to this line was originally "You do, eh? Well keep digging there, you might make it to Akavir." We felt that it didn't flow very well, and depending on how far the player has progressed in his personal quest, it might not make any sense for him to be mentioning Akavir at all yet. The below change smooths out the transition in this conversation.

Another example of a change we're adding in is creating a path for players to exit the romance path completely -- as it is now, if you wear an Amulet of Mara and initiate the romance path, there is no way to change your mind. However, we always felt that the below line pathing was very harsh; after all, Kaidan exits the conversation completely and shuts down. Working in a way to 'break up' with him via this dialogue path (sorry Kai!) felt like an easy way to work in a new mod function without having to create entirely new dialogue -- it saves money for extra content in the future, something very near and dear to our business lead's heart.

Finally, one of our favorite changes is rewording the "How do you feel about me?" dialogue tree. Given that not all players will be following the 'hot' or 'warm' romance paths, this line of questioning from the player felt like the LDB was fishing for compliments -- not a good look in our opinion. We changed this to instead be a more equitable exchange of compliments between the two ("I think we make a good team" & "Can I tell you something? I'm glad we met"). Also, we use this format to track which lines will have multiple nickname/pronoun takes.

As we approach the final sets of scripts to wrap up the revoice section of the Workshop timeline, this process may undoubtedly change again when we begin discussing how we'd like to work with the community in producing Workshop original scripts -- which is exciting! In using a peer review system from start to finish, we keep ourselves open to workflow improvement suggestions that ultimately makes the process easier in the long run. While this method of group voting and review undoubtedly adds extra time to production -- especially given the logistics of scheduling multiple staff meetings to accommodate all the different time zones our staff members live in -- we feel that it results in a more polished product, and one in which all the members of each team feel empowered to discuss and offer their insights for our favorite CVF. We'll see you for the beta 1.3 livestreams on Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 at 3pm CST, and Thursday, November 16th, 2023 at 10am CST!

[hamstermastersamster]

LOOK. AT. MY. BOY. <3

I've just finished the main quest of the 2nd (and supposedly final) DLC and I am genuinely sad to be running out of meaningful stuff to do in Avatar. I've enjoyed it massively, way more than I expected, and I'm a bit sad that it seems to have landed amongst the gaming community with all the acclaim of a sad little fart.

Rambling/review/comments/etc. under the cut!

When I say I liked it a lot more than expected, that was partly because open world games can be grindy and map-icon-spammy, but mostly because . . . well, I like the original Avatar movie in spite of its flaws, but it and its sequel are plagued by some awful writing and tropes. The sequel was a bad fanfic checklist, and in particular the painfully human-centric narrative choices are just blegh.

AFOP kinda does away with that by casting you as a legit Na'vi from the outset. Humans in the game are divided into 2 groups - firstly the resistance, who help you out and are allowed to be a bit nuanced at least with shady pasts and personalities and such. And secondly, the RDA, who are the same old 2 dimensional militant aggressive army types with no thoughts in their precious little heads besides money and exploiting the environment and killing 'blues'. But at least that makes them fun to murder >:3

Refocusing on a narrative that is from the Na'vi perspective just makes everything in this IP so much better. I get the irony of saying that, while being a human technically playing a Na'vi 'avatar' in a game, but story-wise, you ARE a biological Na'vi and that's what matters xD

I would argue the game even shows massive critical disdain for the in-world avatar or 'dreamwalker' Na'vi, in a manner completely opposite to the movies' glow-up of them. The ethical problems with adopting an avatar body are a huge thematic component of the story, which I can't really get into without massive spoilers. But in one scene, for example, a human resistance member in their Na'vi body is trying to help with battle planning and basically gets told to piss off by the actual Na'vi because the People can handle it and YOU'RE NOT ONE OF US. I loved that <3

After all, avatar bodies as a concept is inherently fucking horrible! Imagine if some alien species 'discovered' our planet and then made uncanny valley copies of humans to walk around with and interact with us, and they looked like us at a glance but they moved and smelled and talked and behaved all wrong and gave you bad vibes. Often their diplomacy only paved the way for the in-person aliens to come along and inflict great violence on us. That's gene-stealing nightmare fuel, man. Not only do they take everything from you but they even think they can be a better YOU than you can be.

Can't help but imagine how much better the Avatar movies would have been if the stories had been told completely from the Na'vi perspective :(

I beseech my fellow tumblrinas to give the game a go, if you are so inclined :3 Character creation has non-binary options and heavily implies the Na'vi don't have strong concepts of social gender at all; the human resistance is diverse; it's pro-environment and pro-ethical science, anti-military; and the Na'vi are so engaging as a people and culture with no concept of profit or money.

The devs went all-in on embedding that culture in the game mechanics - there is no real currency, only very limited trade with a few human NPCs and something called 'clan favour' which is effectively redeemable goodwill earned through helping your community. Speaking of which, there are so many cosmetics available in-game without spending a real-world dime and they're SEPARATE TO YOUR GEAR STATS and if you create shudder an Ubisoft connect account you can get even more of them, still free. If you like playing dress-up, it's a lot of fun.

The protagonist has a deliciously tragic backstory, being Na'vi but raised by the RDA, which drives an ongoing inner conflict about identity. There is a nice found family feel. I love the concept of the Sarentu as a diplomatic, storytelling nomadic clan who bring the other clans together, and the way their storytelling is represented through totems and paintings and oral tradition. Some of the NPCs are really great and it's a real shame you don't get to spend more direct time with them. You get your own personal lizardbird to fly around on and you can ride alien horses.

Movement in general is joyous in this game. Whether parkouring through the jungle with an agility you don't often see in first-person games or leaping off a mountain and getting your ikran to catch you and flying off into the sunset, it all handles and feels REALLY nice.

Pandora is beautiful. This is one of the few open-world games I've played where I genuinely limited my fast travelling because going around it on foot/ikran/horse is just so enjoyable and pretty. Foraging is particularly tactile and fun.

The levelling system is absolute perfect. Your overall combat strength (effectively your level) is dictated by your gear, which is dictated by what materials are available to you for crafting said gear. So you could explore the whole of the first map (Kinglor Forest) and still not become overpowered because you need crafting materials that are only found in the later maps to craft the best stuff. Enemy combat levels also scale. This makes exploring more enjoyable because you never feel like you're somewhere "too early" or, worse, "too late". Avoiding the inhibition of player exploration behaviours is so important for a game like this.

Being a 10-foot tall blue cat person and sneaking into RDA bases to take them down without setting off the alarms and taking out army grunts with a single arrow and grabbing an annoying helicopter with your ikran and YEETING it into a mountain is just so much fucking fun ;w;

It's not perfect, of course.

Although you get to create a character, dialogue is fixed and, as such, so is your personality (there is ONE sidequest where you get to make quite an important personal decision, which was nice - too bad there weren't more of these!).

NPC interaction outside of quests etc. is sadly a bit half-baked. Sometimes you'll think someone is being set up to be a major player and then you'll never see them again unless you go looking really hard, and then you just get ambient dialogue from them. It would have been nice to be able to talk more with your fellow clan members outside of scripted quests, for example.

Item storage system is eghhhhh. I found a rhythm with it eventually but your 250-item portable stash gets full very quickly. The difficulty, I found, was partly due to my own ingrained habits. What do you do when you have too much stuff? You sell it, right? But there are no shops! There's no money to be had! You can either drop them (waste!) or donate items to Na'vi community baskets. But donating items earns you clan favour, and clan favour has a cap, and it also fills up very quickly! What can you do with clan favour? You . . . can redeem it for more items . . . so you see the storage problem xD Could have been easily solved by at least removing/extending the clan favour cap, I think. My protip is not storing more than 2 of any material, nothing lower than Superior-grade items when you're low-mid level and Exquisite only onwards. In general, USE YOUR STUFF! Eywa is generous and you can always get more <3

YMMV on the hacking/power-rerouting mini-games. While I think they add somewhat to the sense of the protagonist's "between 2 worlds" inner conflict, they can be annoying and a bit jarring after traipsing through a jungle in a loincloth :'3

Anyway, I love it <3 I have a few trailing sidequests to mop up and some gear I still want to craft, but I can easily see myself playing it all over again at some point. Beloved mutuals, let me know if you ever pick this one up! I'd like to yell about my Feelings sometime xD

I may reblog more AFOP stuff now that I'm done, so blacklist afop spoilers if you care!

[shelvesofsiddurim]

Have you done any reading with the JPS Tanakh - Gender sensitive edition? I am a genderqueer Jew and have been interested in potentially investing in a copy, however I haven't found many reviews of it online to know if it is worthwhile. Do you have any scholarly reading recommendations for queer observant Jews or recommendations for siddurim?

I have. It's entirely in English and the translation is...pretty decent. I appreciate what it's trying to do and I think its worth having as a reference copy. If I was doing Torah study with people who aren't familiar with Hebrew or don't have a strong background in Biblical Hebrew, then it would be the one that I would teach from because I think the translation is more accessible and engaging.

For scholarly recommendations:

A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts from the First Century to 1969 by Noam Sienna

The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective by Joy Ladin

Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (various authors)

Siddurim recommendations are going to be a little harder. For Ashkenazim, the classic queer siddurim are Siddur Sha'ar Zahav (Congregation Sha'ar Zahav) and Shavat va-Yinafash (Beit Mishpacha), but those lean heavily Reform in their liturgy. The Rabbinical Assembly's Siddur Sim Shalom is good for someone who wants traditional liturgy combined with poetry and an egalitarian framework (Modeh Ani in Sim Shalom is still gendered in that siddur though); it has Hebrew-English, with a few things transliterated here and there. Depending on your feelings towards Orthodoxy and davening with an Orthodox siddur, Koren is my go-to, although it's very binary in how it deals with gender both in its prayers (only Avot) and the halachic guides** that are in the back of their Hebrew-English and Hebrew-with-English-Instruction siddurim.

If your Sephardi, then your only real option is Siddur Or uMasoret, which - although not advertised as an explicitly queer siddur - is a queer-friendly*, traditional egalitarian Sephardi siddur that comes in weekday, Shabbat and Festivals, and Friday night variants.

*queer friendly in that it has non-binary Hebrew, which I know that some queer Jews prefer to see used

**the halachic guides assume that the reader is male

Hope this helps!