#he like. specifically felt like the inclusion of sex in a gay romance made gay people seem sex-obsessed i think. like do you HEAR yourself

[callixton]

hey remember when people got mad at red white and royal blue, an adult romance, for fetishizing gay men by having gay sex scenes. in the adult romance novel.

[nerdygaymormon]

Pride Flags

1979 – Pride flag

At the request of Harvey Milk, Gilbert Baker designed a symbol of pride for the gay community to debut at the 1979 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day (at the time, gay was an umbrella term that included what we now would call the queer community). The original flag included 8 colors.

When Harvey Milk was assassinated, many wanted the Pride flag he commissioned as a symbol of the community. Demand was so great that there wasn’t enough hot pink fabric, and then to keep the design balanced, turquoise was also dropped.

This 6-color striped flag  is recognized as a symbol by queer people around the world no matter who they are, how they define, or who they love. 

Here are the meanings behind the colors in the Pride flag:

Red = Life

Orange = Healing

Yellow = Sunlight

Green = Nature

Blue = Harmony

Violet = Spirit

1995 – Polyamory Pride flag

Designed by Jim Evans

Blue : representing openness and honesty among all partners

Red : representing love and passion

Black : representing solidarity with those who must hide their polyamorous relationships from the outside world  

In the center of the flag is a gold Greek lowercase letter "pi", as the first letter of "polyamory". Gold represents "the value that we place on the emotional attachment to others... as opposed to merely primarily physical relationships".

There have been a number of alternative flags developed by the polyamory community since 1995 that incorporate both the original colors and the infinity heart sign, which represents the infinite love for multiple partners at the same time. The heart represents love and the lemniscate represents openness rather than infinity/ eternity.

1998 – Bisexual Pride flag

Michael Page designed this flag in order to raise the visibility of bisexuals, both in and out of the LGBT community. Page said the message of the flag was the idea that the purple blends into both the blue and pink in the same way that bisexual people often blend unnoticed into both gay and straight communities. The flag is inspired from the “biangles,” which are two overlapping triangles in the stereotypical colors for boys and girls.

Michael wanted to avoid pink triangles as they were used by Nazi Germany to brand gay men. He also slightly changed the shades of the colors.

Page describes the meaning of the colors in the flag as:

Pink : represents sexual attraction to the same sex only (gay and lesbian)

Blue : sexual attraction to the opposite sex only (straight)

Purple : the resultant overlap color represents sexual attraction to both sexes (bi)

2000 – Transgender Pride flag

Monica Helms, a trans woman, designed this flag and it was first flown at the 2000 Pride Parade in Phoenix. 

Monica explains, “The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it will always be correct. This symbolizes us trying to find correctness in our own lives.”

Light blue is the traditional color for baby boys

Pink is for girls

White in the middle is for those who are transitioning, those who feel they have a neutral gender or no gender, and those who are intersex

Late 2000’s – Ally Pride flag

The “A” represents allies & activism and it’s in the rainbow colors that represents the queer community.

The black and white bars represent opposites, since allies are cis & attracted to opposite sex/gender on the binary

2010 – Pansexual Pride flag

This flag is used to increase visibility and recognition of the pansexual community, and to distinguish it from bisexuality. The pansexual flag consists of three colored horizontal bars.

Pink : represents those who identify within the female spectrum (regardless of biological sex)

Blue : represents those who identify within the male spectrum (regardless of biological sex)

Yellow : represents non-binary attraction, such as androgynous, agender, bigender and genderfluid people.

2010 – Asexual Pride flag

A contest was held to create an Asexual Flag. A flag of striped colors was chosen as it fits with the designs of most other Pride flags and avoids controversy that could be had if symbols were included. 

Black:  Asexuality.

Grey: Grey-Asexuality and Demisexuality.

White: Non-asexual partners and allies.

Purple: Community

2011 – Genderqueer Pride flag

Created by Marilyn Roxie. For people who are uncomfortable with the word “queer,” they refer to this as a nonbinary flag

Lavender – androgyny

White – agender

Green – nonbinary

2012 – Genderfluid Pride flag

JJ Poole created this flag.

Pink : feminity

Blue : masculinity

Purple : both masculinity & feminity

Black : lack of gender

White : for all genders

2012 – Polysexual Pride flag

A Tumblr user who is a poly individual with the signature “Samlin” submitted this design. He made it similar to the bi and pan flags, since they’re all in under the multisexual umbrella.  

Samlin felt it important distinguish polysexuals from the others--Bi who are attracted to people from 2 genders, and Pan who are attracted to people regardless of gender. Poly is someone who is sexually attracted to multiple, but not all, genders. 

The flag uses the blue and pink, as does the bi & pan flags, but replaces the purple and yellow stripes with a green one.     

Pink: attraction to female-identified people.

Green: attraction to people who identify outside the traditional male-female binary.

Blue: attraction to male-identified people

2013 – Demisexual Pride flag

Similar colors to the Asexual Pride flag, the Demisexual Pride flag was created specifically to represent those with “a sexual orientation in which someone feels sexual attraction only to people with whom they have an emotional bond”

 Black stands for asexuality

Grey represents Gray-Ace and demisexuality

White represents sexuality

Purple represents community

2013 – Intersex Pride flag

The intersex flag was created by Morgan Carpenter of Intersex Human Rights Australia. 

The flag features nongendered colors that celebrate living outside the binary. The circle means unbroken, whole, complete.  

2014 – Agender Pride flag

Created by Salem X, this flag has seven horizontal stripes. 

The black and white stripes represent an absence of gender (instead of being blue & pink)

The gray represents semi-genderlessness

The central green stripe represents nonbinary genders because it is the inverse of purple and purple is a mix of blue & red which often are used to identify m/f binary.

2014 – Nonbinary Pride flag

Created by activist Kye Rowan, it is intended to go alongside Marilyn Roxie’s genderqueer flag, not to replace it. Each stripe color represents different types of non-binary identities:

Yellow is for those whose gender exists outside or without reference to the gender binary, because yellow is often seen to distinguish something as its own

White is for those with many or multiple genders as white represents the presence of color or light

Purple for those who feel their gender is a mixture of both male and female genders as purple is the mix of traditional boy & girl colors. The purple also could be seen as representing the fluidity and uniqueness of nonbinary people.

Black is for individuals who feel they are without gender, as black is the absence of color or light

2014 – Aromantic Pride flag

The Aro community worked together to create a flag and redesigned it several times before eventually landing on this 5-striped flag. Here’s the meaning of the stripes:

 Green – Aromantic. This color chosen because it’s the opposite of red, which is commonly used to indicate romance

Light Green – represents that there is an aro spectrum, not everyone is 100% aro

White – Platonic relationships

Gray – represents gray-romantic (experiences romantic attraction, but not often) and demiromantic (can experience romantic attraction after forming an emotional connection with a person)

Black – represents the sexuality spectrum (aro people can have any sexual orientation)

2017 – Philadelphia People of Color Inclusive Flag

Noting that people of color are often not fully included in the queer community, Philadelphia added the black and brown stripes and flew the flag outside City Hall for Pride Month. 

While the impulse to be more inclusionary is good, this flag sparked controversy as the traditional flag already was meant to include all LGBTQ people and none of the other colored stripes represent skin color. And some people argued additional stripes should be added, such a white stripe for white people. 

In times when people of color need to be lifted & highlighted, this flag does a good job.

2018 – Lesbian Pride flag

You’ll find a lesbian flag from 2010 included in the list of flags for gender and sexual minorities, however it’s not common for lesbians to use that flag. The reason is that pink flag was seen as representing those who have a more feminine gender expression (lipstick lesbians), which means it didn’t feel inclusive to much of the lesbian community.  

A new flag for the lesbian community was introduced in 2018, one with much less pink and meant to represent all lesbians, not just a subset. It seems to be on its way to being better accepted, but we’ll see. Each color represents key aspects of lesbianism:

Transgressive Womanhood

Community

Gender Nonconformity

Freedom

Love

2018 - Progress Pride Flag

Inspired by the Philadelphia People of Color Inclusive Flag, Daniel Quasar added a 5-color chevron to the traditional LGBT Rainbow Flag as a way to emphasize greater inclusion and progress. 

The traditional 6 color stripes are retained so as not to take away from their original meanings. 

The additional stripes added to the left side of the flag are meant to look like an arrow to represent forward movement because more progress is needed. 

The pink, light blue and white are from the Transgender Pride Flag. 

The black & brown stripes represent LGBT communities of color and those living with & who’ve been lost to AIDS.

[adaarsimp]

bioware rant okok

I’ve felt the need to speak on this for a while and I don’t quite know how to start this off so bare with me- I’ve never felt like Bioware was performative in their activism. So allow me to read off some points I’ve had wracking through my brain for a hot minute. 

So Mass Effect was released in 2007, and if you’ve played the game you’ll know that there is an entire alien race that has no gender or lacks the concept of one; they reproduce through the melding of the brain, and in their society there is no actual need for sex in terms of reproduction. A lot of asari characters we see do present in a feminine way, but they actually have no concept of gender. They have little to no care for it, they might use female pronouns, gender ambigious pronouns like they/them or any variation of that, and even male pronouns. We see this in conversations about asari/asari mating as one of the pair is refered to as the ‘father’ depending on which carried the child or not- where as in human society, they would both be referred to as the mother. Asaris are also able to reproduce with any of the species in mass effect, as the product of that union will always be asari though they will carry certain traits of the ‘father’ species. Ie, a krogan union, a human female union- They are still the ‘father’. 

This caused a fair bit of controversy, especially since as a female player you are able to romance an asari. Back in 2007, there was little to no discussion about the possibility of there being more genders than male and female, or even nonbinary. Due to this, the games were banned in certain countries for having a wlw sex scene. 

Fast forward to 2009, Dragon Age Origins is released. You have two party members who are both bisexual (Zevran and Lelianna) and two straight relationships made available to you. And even the option of open relationships or poly relationships was introduced. They never upheld any sort of negative stereotypes about either of the same sex relationships in any way, shape or form. 

In Dragon Age 2, there is a wide variety of character romances accessable to the player as either gender; I actually think there’s only one character you can only romance as a female player, and he was only a DLC character. For the first 2 games, there was no mention of homophobia or shame for same sex relationships. Even in a continent unified under one banner of church, there was no law against same sex as we see in our own religions in our society. 

 Inqusition (2014), a trans male character (Krem) was introduced to us, with a progressed backstory a lot unlike most characters that are not integral to the game. There is a specific dialogue choice that you get in a cutscene where your character gets schooled for asking transphobic questions. 

Also in Inquisition, you meet Dorian Pavus, a mage from Tevinter from a wealthy noble family. This is the first mention of homophobia in the entire series from what I’ve seen- Dorian comes from a long line of nobles in Tevinter, and as you know they all battle for dominance when it comes to who is in power, and to garuntee you stay in power you need an heir. His father expected Dorian to enter a marriage with a woman, produce an heir and take over his place, as his child would do after him. Dorian tried to live up to his, but he did not want to live a lie understandably so, and marry a woman he knew he could never love, as he prefered the company of men. In Tevinter, same sex couples are kept behind closed doors, they are free to do so but it is a badge of shame on a family to not keep a bloodline going. Tevinter is however not part of Thedas, and they have a different Chantry with different rules, however the Chantry is not in rule there, the mages/Magisters are. 

And also in Dragon Age, the discrimination and racism towards the elves throughout all 3 games so far is widely known to be linked back towards racism in our society towards people of colour, specificially black people.  And while there are people of colour in the game, there was no distinction between race in terms of humans. The racism was towards elves, dwarves, and Qunari. I brought up the elves in this case because despite the fact they were freed as slaves, they were segregated from humans, kept in factions of cities called the ‘Alienages’ and forced to live in slums, while also being used for cheap labour or hate crimed regularly by rich humans. This is a clear play on the way that african americans were segregated in the early 1900s, and the injustices they faced throughout that and still to this day as we see the systemic racism now uphold in crimes commited by the police to citizens.

In ME; Andromeda, there’s a character Peebee that is strongly implied that she is neurodivergent; autistic/aspergers to be specific.

These are the points I can think of from the top of my head, and currently we see game companies under fire for being inclusive in their work, people angry over trans characters and gay characters, people complaining that it is performative and that they are simply ‘throwing us a bone’. However I don’t think that Bioware has ever added characters or concepts into their games for a gold star on activism, I think they come from the actual beliefs of the game developers. The characters are all complex and written well, they aren’t just thrown together last minute to keep people happy. I personally think Bioware has always done well in terms of representing marginalized groups in our society. 

anyway rant over i think

[contre-qui]

Book 6 of 2021: The Birth of Venus

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

(paperback, 391 pages, historical fiction, romance, adult)

I am like Icarus without wings. But the desire to fly was very strong in me. I think I was always looking for a Daedalus. (11)

I didn't really enjoy this book, but I feel I should also mention I wasn't aware that this book was extremely historical romance, and focused a lot on a very specific point in history I know basically nothing about. Also I think the blurb was kind of misleading because it sort of implies one of the characters is a famous artist but he's not there yet when the book takes place, and that's just not the case at all.

First things first: the title makes no sense. The actual painting The Birth of Venus - the one everyone knows - was painted at least ten years before this book takes place and has no relevance to the plot or characters. Again, I think it was misleading because the title paired with the blurb made me think this mysterious young artist was going to be someone like Botticelli (who painted the big famous painting), and he just wasn't. He was just a random artist who wasn't famous and didn't do anything big. I think that's still a cool premise because I like reading about 'normal' or 'forgotten' people from history, but honestly this guy was so irrelevant I couldn't even tell you his name. I think they only use his name once or twice, anyways. I think Dunant could have done a lot with the anonymity of this painter and what that meant for him and for the main character, but she just didn't because the book wasn't really about him and he was more of a plot device than an actual character anyways, in my opinion.

The Birth of Venus is about teenage Alessandra, the daughter of a wealthy textile merchant in 1490s Florence. When we first meet her, Alessandra is resisting the idea of marriage and is only getting out of it because she hasn't started menstruating yet. Her father hires a promising young artist to paint their family's chapel walls, and Alessandra - who draws in secret - is immediately intrigued. She tries to to convince him to teach her how to paint, but he refuses because of the impropriety of the request. Eventually, Alessandra begins menstruating, but the political climate of Florence is becoming charged and dangerous, especially for unmarried women. Faced with a difficult decision - marriage or a convent - Alessandra agrees to marry a slightly older man who seems interested in her intellect more than her looks. On their wedding night, however, she discovers her husband is gay and she is to be his beard now that the Catholic Church is looking more closely at its parishioners. Alessandra also discovers that her husband has been maintaining a long-term relationship with one of her older brothers, who she also did not know was gay. The political climate continues to tighten, Alessandra has to figure out her opinions on her husband and brother's particular sin, and she continues to think of the artist in her father's home.

This keeps happening to me, but this was such an interesting premise with such a disappointing execution. I get that it's historically accurate or whatever, but I'm honestly so tired to reading about straight people trying to figure out if queerness is a sin. It just sucks to read, and the way queerness is presented in this book was just odd. Alessandra never came to any definitive conclusions about it - which is fine - but I could have used a little less of the vague villainization of queer people and the way it felt like her husband was taking advantage of her. Everyone sort of 'assumed' Alessandra knew about her brother, and they paint it as this phase they expected him to grow out of once he got married. Because of that, Alessandra is presented as this innocent and clueless teenager who is startled by queer sexuality. Honestly, it's tiring. It felt like some straight lady patting herself on the back for representation. This book was written for straight people, and that is so obvious. Her husband gives Alessandra permission to see other men, as he does, as long as she's quiet about it - and that feels like some straight lady fantasy for women who aren't happy in their marriages and would rather pursue some grungy young artist than their husbands. It was annoying, and I don't like having my community debated, even if it is thinly veiled as historical accuracy.

I was also super turned off by an uncomfortably graphic description of Alessandra's wedding night (meant to be uncomfortable I'm sure, but just kind of unnecessary in my opinion) and by an equally graphic description of Alessandra later giving birth. I get it, these things are part of life and weren't very pretty, especially in that time period. But I think Dunant could have given the reader the same sense of discomfort and frightened urgency, respectively, without the graphic descriptors. They were just really gross and hard to read for me, personally.

Let's not even get into Alessandra's maid, a Black woman whose portrayal gives me mixed feelings.

The book was also a little more historical than I expected, which was kind of interesting to read about because I'm not super familiar with Savonarola's rise to power in Florence and the subsequent religious and political fallout, but it was pretty dry. As much as some of the impacts did affect Alessandra, she was upper class so it wasn't that big of a deal for her. And though her father's business was heavily impacted, she was out of the house pretty quickly when things started going downhill, so she missed most of those ramifications. I don't think the artist really added that much to the story if I'm being honest. His inclusion felt like straight woman fantasy about cheating on their husbands or pursuing some secret passion for art or something. It was weird. And the conclusion of the novel with his impact on Alessandra's life felt kind of random with where the book had been going. I just wasn't that impressed.

Trigger warnings for weird/homophobic descriptions of queerness and queer relationships, heavy Catholicism and older Catholic teachings, murder, descriptions of murdered bodies, self-injury, injury mentions of blood, medical care, illness/vomiting, pregnancy, graphic descriptions of uncomfortable sex, graphic descriptions of childbirth, and mentions of racism and slavery.

My overall opinion: This book was not written for me, and that was abundantly clear throughout the entire thing.

[spiralatlas]

PAX Australia 2017 Day 3

There are no notes for Day 2 because I spent it socialising a little and sleeping a lot.

Queer Coded: A History of LGBTQIA+ Gaming

David Gaider Q&A

Brian Fairbanks Talks about Addressing Accessibility Through Game Design

Misc: I spent a chunk of the day in the diversity lounge which was fun. I met some great people at the Gender Diverse card game, and got to the semi finals of the Xena Nintendo 64 Fighting Game Tournament (there were only three rounds, but given how much I suck at fighting games this was still a happy surprise, and a sign of what a random button masher the game is)

The gender neutral toilets near the diversity lounge were very well done, unlike GCAP the original signs weren't visible and "with stalls/urinals" was in small letters like an afterthought.

I didn't break anything on Day 3 but did break a mug the next morning. Also the cinema in the Crown Casino is surprisingly inaccessible.

Despite the various mishaps I had a great time and will definitely come again next time we can afford it.

Queer Coded: A History of LGBTQIA+ Gaming

I missed the second half of this to see David Gaider, feeling very annoyed at the programmer.

Anny Sims @ChattyAnny on twitter (I was too slow to get the others!) Keely Thirkell Hayley Williams Soap Pejovic

Most queer characters are just queer coded, with plausible deniability. "It's up to you".Tendency for queer characters to be villains. Indie games tend to be more queer friendly than AAA games.

Lesbians: First known queer character in games: 1986 Moonmist had side-character who was a lesbian murderer.

Other notable lesbian characters:

KOTOR 2003, Juhani, first queer Star Wars character

Gone Home 2013

Dragon Age Inquisition Sera (I thought Sam Traynor from Mass Effect 3 came first?)

Tracer from Overwatch 2016

Trans characters:

1988 Birdo from Super Mario Brothers 2 "A male who believes he is female"

Lots of others but all terrible. Jokes and villains. Trans women seen as threat. Poison from Final Fight 1989, "so you can hit a woman".

Krem DAI 2014 trans man, You can't go "Ok, cool".

Hainly Adams MEA 2017 trans woman. Tells you her deadname, this was patched.

Horizon: Zero Dawn 2017 trans man

Dream Daddy 2017 trans man. One throw away line about wearing a binder, had to be clarified by writers. Non binary people and cosplayers wear binders too!

How do you make it clear they're trans without them implausibly outing themselves or just having it be word of god?

Gay men:

1993 fmv Dracula Unleashed has speaking role

Tended to be background characters, jokes and villains again. No m/m relationships shown onscreen.

Dreamfall: the Longest Journey 2006 (not made super clear until 2015)

Steve Cortez Mass Effect 3 2012

Dorian DAI 2014

Dorian knew exactly what his sexuality was. Coming of age narratives get boring.

Bi Characters (no picture because they're invisible):

1993 Ultima 7 part 2 bi character propositions character regardless of gender.

"Slutty bisexuals". A lot of characters are playersexual and it never comes up outside the relationship.

Zevran DAO 2009

Borderlands 2009

Fable 2004 let player be bi, Fable 2 2008 added bi PCs

Playersexual:

Only queer in the context that they will date players of both genders, but you don't see that unless you play as both.

Dragon Age 2 2011, Anders only mentions his ex-boyfriend if you play as a male PC

Fallout 4 2015. Did have background queer characters.

Stardew Valley 2016

Non Binary:

1995 Chrono Trigger villain

Often robots, aliens or other non human

Frisk Undertale 2015

Life is Strange 2015

Zer0 Borderlands 2 2012

Turing Read Only Memories

Some games let you have gender neutral pronouns.

David Gaider Q&A

1999 Working on Balder's Gate 2, didn't talk about his sexuality at work. Figured he would always be writing stories for straight people.

He was shocked to hear Jade Empire was having same sex romance. Got to be lead writer on DAO after that. "So I can put same sex romances in, right?". More economical to have bi romances, but he would have been happier having some gay characters.

Feeling iffy about playersexuality after DA2, he asked for 2 straight, 2 bi, 2 gay for DAI. "Minority content" is weighed via the percentage of those who play it and those who appreciate it. Eg 5% play dwarves but most see it as a positive thing to be able to do.

Most of his time was spent on the actual plot but Dorian was the most personal writing.

He was targeted by Gamergate but it doesn't compare to, for example, how much Jennifer Helper was targeted.

10 years on Dragon Age was enough, his head would explode if he had to write another story about templars and mages.

How did you get the job: His story is very specific. He was managing a hotel and a comic book artist in his spare time. A friend was a character artist at Bioware but Gaider wasn't really aware of the specifics. Bioware told their employees "If you know anyone who does game related writing let us know", the friend gave them Gaider's LARP rule book without asking. Got a call, gave the stories he wrote in highschool, got offered a job. He said no, it didn't pay enough, but then he got fired from the hotel. It felt like a sign.  

Who do you think will take the romance torch from Bioware: he’s not sure they're giving it up? EA treats romance fans as a reliable audience who don't need to be advertised to, even though it's why a lot of people play in his experience (though obviously those are the kinds of fans he will tend to meet). There is an underserved audience.

Most proud of: Lots of stuff he's not proud of. Wishes he'd been more involved in community discussions early on. Proud that the team tackled issues as they started arising. Proud of the company for standing by them. Most proud of Dragon Age 2 despite the mixed response. They had very little time to create it. It’s like a very big first draft. They had a plan but didn't get to compare notes once things were written, so he had to trust the team would stick to plan as much as they could despite things being cut on the fly. Team said they were happy in a post-game survey, didn't feel he was too dictatorial.

What does your writing look like, a screenplay? A cutscene does. But it’s generally structured like a tree that expands and then contracts back to the core path before expanding again. Flow charts.

Favourite relationship in a game? Morden in Mass Effect. Cried more than in a movie. Tali was his space girlfriend. Of the ones he's worked on, Morrigan will always be closest. She represents Dragon Age to him. Joyous time working with Claudia Black, first celebrity he'd worked with. Flemeth was originally Arabic, but that actress couldn't do it so they got Kate Mulgrew. They stopped looking for an Arabic actress for Morrigan and looked for someone who matched Kate Mulgrew. Claudia Black's audition tape was her reading Smack That like a beat poet. Gaider was very nervous, he'd never spoken to any actor before. First rule he was told was don't compare them to another celebrity, so naturally he said "I had Helena Bonham Carter in mind when I wrote Morrigan". Claudia Black said "So you're saying I'm a cheap Helena Bonham Carter ;D". She would say "Does he want me to do it more like Helena?" during recording.

Has being so closely associated with diversity had downsides? He may be gay but he's still white and a dude. He feels like it's all he talks about conventions sometimes. Teams need to sit down and look at what they've made. Lot of things made individually without concern for the bigger picture eg only 15% speaking roles in DAI were female until they stopped and looked at it and fixed it.  

"We didn't think about it" is no longer a defense. He wants to help with that, but we should be helping other marginalised voices get into the industry and amplifying their voices.

Wishes it could just be expected and we didn't have to discuss it.

He likes dating sim mechanics in the context of a larger story. But he does like the idea of romance not being as tertiary as it's been in Bioware games, romance as part of the adventure eg a romantic adventure. He's not really interested in social sims or day to day relationships. "My idea of a spicy relationship is to have my life threatened."

Why do you think most AAA companies try to avoid discussions of lgbt stuff, why is it taking so long? Because it's Pandora's Box. There is more being added casually. But if they do nothing they get lumped in with the rest of the industry. As soon as they do anything there are 2 sides: 1. why are you doing this, you're politicising your game. 2. Why aren't you doing more, whatever you did is wrong and not good enough.

Not that flawed attempts should be above criticism. But by mostly focusing criticism on the games that did anything rather than nothing, people have increased the feeling that it's Pandoras box. He understands that it feels like those developers might listen to criticism but the dynamic is sending the wrong lesson.

My question: How do you think inclusion of non binary player characters can work with including gay and lesbian love interests instead of just having playsexuality? “We've thought about it”. He defined playersexual for audience, like Shroedinger's sexuality. He doesn't like it when the only way to have something show up is to have the character talk about it. eg asexual: character would have to sit you down and explain what asexuality is. Is unsexy as a feature. Explaining nuances of sexuality is off putting. If there was more nuance across the industry that would mean no one game has to do everything. Any one game can have only so much within it.

(This doesn't actually answer my question. I discussed it with my husband afterwards and even he didn't understand what I was asking, so I may have garbled it in my nervousness)

Are some choices "canon"? One of the features of Mass Effect and Dragon Age was the continuity of choices. No "canon" but there is a default. A lot of people feel like they have to play the whole series to get the full experience, was off putting, and he found the Keep a nightmare as a writer.

They had editors keeping track of which choices were incompatible. And that was just the third game. "Can you imagine for a fourth game? Phew! Not my problem :D"

Have you thought about the morals of gamifying romance, saying what people want to hear to get sex? Dragon Age didn't work that way, sex was not at the end. Some characters in DAI had no sex scenes, sex is optional for Dorian's romance. It's a game, everything is gamified, you can't simulate actual relationships. For proper reactivity you’d have to mark every response and keep track of inconsistency, but that’s too much work. Same with polyamory: too many variables!

Maybe get away from the approval system? Pay more attention to overall choices in major quests etc instead of individual lines.

Bi characters in DAI were bi from the start. Not the first thing that comes up during character creation eg Dorian started out as "the good Tevinter". Helps avoid too many assumptions based on sexuality. But once characters started solidifying they would think about who worked for what sexualities. There's no set way to write someone "as" bi, but the writer can have them talk about relevant things in other scenes. Sera's writer is a straight dude, he didn't want to write About The Lesbian Experience, and got lesbians in the company to check out what he was writing.

Have relationships gotten more or less complicated? In Balder's gate 2 there was a single sequence of romance scenes which you could get kicked off. Dragon Age had approval. If it gets complicated but the player can't see it or understand how reactions relate to their previous actions it just seems random or predetermined. Unless they say "I am angry at you because of X", but noone says that.

Brian Fairbanks Talks about Addressing Accessibility Through Game Design

lostandhound1 on twitter

His notes.

He's not blind himself, and while he obviously cares a lot about accessibility had an unfortunate tendency to treat disabled people as a separate, if respected, "Other" to himself and the audience, even though I was right there in a bright red mobility scooter. He advocated person first language, "a person with blindness" etc, but not all disabled people like it and it shouldn't be presented as unambiguous best practice. I'm building up the energy to talk to him about it.

He's a sound designer.

Audio games: designed for people with a vision disability.

Audio game jam: the games tended to be about blindness as a bad thing. It felt victimising.

How can we make people feel powerful?

He was inspired by his dog's amazing sense of smell. The mechanic is that you follow an invisible trail using sound cues, a humming noise that gets louder and quieter.

Sighted people struggle with extracting information from sound. The game is more difficult for sighted people.

He had to add fruit on the ground as an accessibility measure for sighted people.

All music is diegetic: happening inside the world of the game, eg characters are singing.

There's a lack of much budget for audio games, since they're never going to make much money.

In 30 years current 30-something gamers will need accessible games.

Accessibility tends to be added as an afterthought or accident.

For example Pokemon has unique sounds for materials, collisions, monsters that accidentally make it accessible.

Sony reader: US only

Microsoft narrator: good but hard to use as a developer

EA: Proactively adding blind accessibility

Fighting games are often in stereo, blind players can play and even win tournaments.

Demand more from your games.

Developers: find a consultant. Address accessibility early.

It's about empathy. People with disability deserve the same stories to take part in as everyone else.

gameaccessibilityguidelines.com

daisyalesoundworks

binaural sound is going to make a big difference

audiogames.net: where blind gamers go to play games. They're supportive if you ask for advice and feedback.

People don't mind if you don't do immersive, game specific voices and just rely on the screenreader

Sound designers need more love to make VR accessible.  

Braille games?? He doesn't know much about it.

Curb cut effect examples: curb cuts for wheelchairs but also useful for prams etc. Subtitles. Think about short term problems that benefit from accessibility as well eg the screen is broken, there's sunlight on the screen etc.  

Sounds of a blind person navigating their desktop. To me it sounds like a mangled garble of little bursts of cut off computer speech, here’s a description of what’s going on.

[tumblunni]

Man its so weird to think back and see how many signs there were that I was transgender long before I realized it. I was SO fucking oblivious, I had no clue that being nonbinary was even an option, all I knew was 'well I don't wanna be the opposite gender but I don't wanna be the one I was assigned at birth'. (Except obviously I didn't even know the correct words to describe it) And like... I bought into A LOT of horrible transphobic bullshit, cos I was raised with a biased view of what being transgender even is. 'Trans-sexual people are turned on by wearing women's clothes'. Ugh. And I was completely disgusted by it, since I'm a sex repulsed asexual and everything about foreplay or whatever disgusts me. My parents and pop culture and stuff all treated it like trans people were the equivelant of someone into BDSM wearing nipple clamps out in public or something. 'Well in theory I have nothing against them having that kink, but why do they have to show it in public?' Being trans was ALWAYS only shown as 'oo kinky I like to crossdress in the bedroom', as if it was a fucking sexuality, as if there was NO OTHER REASON why someone would wanna wear the 'wrong' clothes and use the 'wrong' pronouns. I felt viscerally disgusted at myself whenever I didn't want to wear my birth gender's cliche outfits, I denied absolutely everything cos I didn't want people to think I was a pervert. I didn't even know it was POSSIBLE to be transgender and asexual, or even that being transgender wasn't the same as being gay! I said SO MUCH fucking horrible transphobic and homophobic stuff as a kid, just parroting what I was told, and overcompensating for hating myself by making it clear I hated everyone remotely similar to me. While being in huge denial that they were similar to me! And I'm gonna carry these regrets forever and always worry that I stopped someone else from feeling comfortable about theirself and just... GAHH! And I did all the same too about parroting stereotypes of 'crazy people' and 'r*tards' before I learned that this big ol stereotype about autism was bullshit and real autistic people look EXACTLY LIKE MYSELF It just makes me think a lot about how many other people out there might be trans and not have the ability to find out because they've been buried so utterly in this false, bigoted image of what a trans person actually is. Tho also I hate the dumb stereotype that 'all homophobes are secretly gay', like seriously wtf why u wanna escape all responsibility for your actions and say the only problem is gay people systemically oppressing THEMSELVES... ANYWAY I went off on a sad train of thought there but back to the point! I'm just remembering this one part of a school trip that was like one of my most treasured memories for no logical reason until I realised I was trans. I met a new classmate and he mistook me for the opposite gender, and I was like 'HOLY SHIT WHY AM I HAPPY' until someone else 'corrected' him. I mean.. I knew I wasn't that gender either, but it felt like a weight off my shoulders to at least be misgendered the opposite way for once. I felt inexplicably happy that I was looking ambiguous enough to even be in question! And this was when I was like 11, I had no clue what word to even assign to these feelings... And I mean, it was SO DUMB that I never noticed these signs! This is what internalized transphobia does to you! Like 'hey there's probably no reason at all why I always play as a different gender ever time I buy a pokemon game, and get this self hatey feeling in my gut when both options have very stereotypically gendered costumes'. And 'wow there sure is no reason why I got inexplicably attached to this genderless character and can't stop thinking about ways to prove they aren't real'. Seriously all that debate about 'quina is really a girl/boy' with weird evidence in stat builds and equip items and stuff! I got REALLY into that transphobic bullshit cos it was something that shook up my perception of the world and I felt like if not being either gender was ACTUALLY AN OPTION then id have to address painful things about myself. If I knew I could be that, I couldn't keep lying to myself. So I went in aggressive denial mode and missed this chance to come out of the closet at like 9 years old and save myself a damn lot of trouble! And then I just went through the same bullshit at 14 with Chrona from Soul Eater, and could not explain why on earth I was so upset that the English dub assigned them a random gender instead of translating it properly... And OH MAN how fucking dysphoric I was about puberty even before I knew that dysphoria was a thing! It was like 'hey look you're growing up!' 'NO IM NOT DEAR GOD NEVER SAY THAT AGAIN'. And that led to this stupid thing of me just saying 'well I have the mental age of a seven year old LOL' to excuse whenever I acted 'weird'. My forum avatar and stuff was a doodle of myself in chibi form, etc. (Even literally wearing chest binding... I only knee at the time that it was 'a martial arts thing' tho.) Like, I'd got all these messages that not wanting sex was 'childish' and not wanting my body to change was obviously 'immature', and when I was undiagnosed with mental illness and trying yo make up excuses for how I TOTALKY didn't have a mental illness, all I could say was 'ha ha I'm totally uhh... Doing it on purpose? Cos I'm so... Quirky?' I got obsessed with overacting as a class clown, cos I mean you can also excuse cross dressing as a thing that 'the comic relief character' does... And OH MAN, like my big Special Interest throughout all of high school was Norse myth, more specifically Loki. I was FASCINATED with the idea of a shape shifter who could be either gender, and was completely unashamed about it. And, of course, I used to play it off as 'ha ha isn't it so funny he turned into a girl', when I seriously did not have any clue WHY it was funny, I just thought I had to say it. It HAD to be the reason I was so sympathetic yo this character, right? Because he's A FUNNY JOKE?? And man then I got so obsessed with researching non gendered English pronouns from the 18th century and championing how they should totally come back into modern language and EVEN THEN I was in denial! It took until I played Magical Diary to realise 'well fuck I'm trans'. It took a game outright saying that these genderless pronouns arent just 'to be inclusive of both genders' but can be used for A THIRD GENDER, A GENDERLESS GENDER, A BOTH AND/OR NEITHER GENDER!! A game saying that this gender does exist in human beings, and EVEN THEN I took ages to be sure that it was really real and not just a fantasy thing that the game made up. I mean, quina was totally only genderless cos they're a magical creature, right? (Completely ignoring the fact that the other two members of that magical creature town are both male...) And just.... AAAAAAA I feel like I'm the human personification of that 'no Patrick, put it on the lid' meme No, you're trans. No, TRANS. Trans, bunni! TRANS!! This is what societal prejudices do to people. Even LGBTQ people usually grow up within homophobic, transphobic society, absorbing all the same messages. It destroys our ability to be okay with being ourselves... Its so fucking sad that this happened to me, and it hurts even more to think of all the times I said insensitive offensive stuff to other LGBTQ people back when I thought I was cis and straight... Gahhhh... ALSO, it makes me extra sad that Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2 never got released in Europe. There's a character there called Arno who's NB and very out about it, and the English translators didn't make a mess of it, or anything. People actually call Arno 'they', and literally their catchphrase is 'Are you a boy or a girl?' 'I'm just a child of the wind~' Like seriously NO ambiguity, character actually getting to dish out sick burns when being misgendered, absolutely NO room for the ol 'well they just don't MENTION a gender, it doesn't mean they were intended to be nonbinary' excuse. Arno outright stating 'I am not a boy, and I an not a girl'. And your protagonist respecting it! Arno is still my absolute fave best handled nonbinary character in all of games. And the summon night series is very inclusive with a lot of gay romance options! Its a shame tho that the only other game with a nonbinary character was never dubbed even in america. But apparently the protags of previous games get a cameo in the upcoming Summon Night 6 which finally will be released in Europe! I just hope they handle Corlal's pronouns respectfully, considering how they managed to do it so well a decade ago with Arno. But then again the Swordcraft Story series is a spinoff so the main games might have different translators? Anyway, let me hug my tiny enby dragon child! Also I'm sad the cellphone app trading card game never got dubbed either, cos Corlal got some cute cards for the valentine's day event. All three dragon kids just got adorable scenes making platonic family chocolate for their siblings cos they're too young to really participate. And they thankfully got super cute totally non-lolicon maid and butler outfits like SERIOUSLY THANK GOD FOR THAT! Just cute ten year olds playing dressup like normal kids. Corlal got two cards for that one! Them being nonbinary continues to be 100% canon, they got a version with both a dress and a tuxedo. AND ITS SO FUCKING CUTE MY GOD ...man I'm sorry this just went off topic into how great that series is But anyway! If I've ever said anything that offends you, please message me about it! I'm still unlearning a lot of internalized prejudice. Also if you want a quality nonbinary werewolf in a cool side scrolling GBA jrpg, look for Arno! Im on mobile rite now so I can't send links n stuff, but as soon as I finish moving my PC desk to the other room I shall spam you all with my obscure fandom's!!!