Captain Awesome and the Spacecapades

Magical Diary is available on Steam, I think.

Trudy linked me to the above review. It sounds like a really interesting game! More importantly, totally like the kind of thing Danny, Dustin and I would all gladly play.

Trudy: I don't mind combat, but I really-- I'm in it for the story
Dev: Yeah, basically I'm tired of games where combat is made necessary, but is still uninteresting.
Dev: There's a reason why I like the Zelda games so much.
Trudy: I sympathize.

Edit: Things I would also like to see more of in video games, from least difficult to incorporate to most difficult to incorporate:

-Cool secret passages like in Wolfenstein 3D
-Gadgets that can be used outside of battle, even if they can be used in battle (some Zeldas more than others)
-Cooperative minigames
-Even if your mount ends up being a car or other non-living thing, it'd be cool if the character talked to it like it was alive. Reasons: it's nice to have acknowledgement of the mount if it's a living thing. Also, it's kind of hilarious and awesome to have a character who talks to their car or motorcycle.
-Choice about who's in your party, about what you're riding or driving, and about whether you want to follow X plot or Y plot or just do minigames.
-Consequences based on your choices. So the plague doesn't just continue to suck until you get around to coming home-- people actually die off and the city is empty when you return, etc. The quickest way to create urgency in gameplay is to make threats (such as a plague or an invading force) actually real to the players.

Also, conditions for victory more meaningful than beating the final boss in an arbitrary fight, conditions for loss more interesting than 'well you're dead, end screen time.' (Like plotlines that require you to lose somewhere along the way so that you discover X; like villains who don't just want to kill you.)

Edit: In other news, another product I now want is Sold OUT because the Vatican foolishly condemned the book and made it more popular earlier this week. I'm interested in it because the author is a nun who suggests that women find great good in self-pleasuring and that it improves relationships. Additionally, she's inclusive and supportive of homosexual relationships, and remarriage after divorce (I suspect not to the person you were previously married to, even). Go you, Sister Farley!

This is more a note so I don't forget: there's an animated film called Twice Upon a Time. I saw it once, aired on the Cartoon Network, and I liked what I saw of it. Have never seen it since. It apparently is not available on DVD, only having a VHS release, and seems to have been produced by George Lucas. According to Amazon Reviews, there are actually two versions of the movie-- the 'adult' version, and the edited 'family friendly' version. I don't care which, but I'd like to see this again / show Danny. So, note to self. Find it.

WEBCOMICS

So, talking to Bubbles and thinking about it lately, I've decided it might be kind of fun to make a webcomics recommendation type post. Here it is. My insanely long list. The worst part is, I know this isn't all of them. I'll update and add as I remember. I've already been editing in links and a fix to my hilarious mistype of Randall Munroe as Murdock. I don't even know where that came from.

Rating system: G- Safe for all PG- Sometimes there's violence or innuendo, but nothing really NSFW. R- Totally NSFW, either because of violence/gore or sex.

Comics I check/follow regularly:

Sorcery 101
Rating: PG
How I found it: Danny's favorite comic. Soon became mine as well.
Summary: Danny, a blood-bound ex-prince trying to keep a low profile, is learning sorcery to try to help contribute to the protection of his friends. Trouble is, basic sorcery isn't always enough in this crazy, mixed-up world.
Recommend if: You like modern-day fantasy comics; you're interested in a complete, living setting that moves and feels like a real world; you like character-driven comics; you like story comics.

Hark! A Vagrant
Rating: PG
How I found it: Pure luck. Thank goodness I did!
Summary: History comics. Pokes fun at just about everything, but might teach you something while it does. Great style, great sense of humor.
Recommend if: You like non-story comics; you enjoy humorous comics; you like having reading recommendations to learn more about history with your comics.

Gunnerkrigg Court
Rating: PG
How I found it: Kristen's favorite comic. She was right!
Summary: Antimony Carver is a student at the mysterious Gunnerkrigg Court, a highly advanced technological compound that stretches almost beyond comprehension. Across a great divide, and the Annan waters, stands Gillitie Forest, a similarly vast expression of pure nature and wilderness. These places were once united, but something tore them apart. Perhaps Antimony can bring them back together-- only time will tell.*
Recommend if: You like technology vs. magic stories; you like story comics; you like mythology; you like technology and magic learn to get along stories; you like character-driven comics; you like serious stories that are also rife with humor.
*- I probably misspelled something in here to do with the setting!

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Rating: R
How I found it: I'm sure I followed a link sometime. Probably from S*P?
Summary: Updates daily with jokes on just about every subject. Not for the faint of heart, or the short tempered. Nothing is sacred; but, SMBC postulates, nothing should be! Also has SMBC Theater, which are video shorts put together and shared on Youtube.
Recommend if: You love humorous comics; you prefer non-story comics; you enjoy seeing everybody get equally ribbed for their shortcomings.

Buttersafe
Rating: PG
How I found it: 4chan once linked it, providing the first Skeleton Harvester comic to sell it. I was immediately hooked.
Summary: Tuesday/Thursday comics, usually unconnected but sometimes story. Bizarre is the order of the day, sometimes with humor, sometimes with soul-searchy and weird nihilistic undertones instead. If you ever thought to yourself, "Would life be better if Robin Hood made up wild cusses instead of stealing from the rich?" Then this is the comic for you. It has the answers.
Recommend if: you like humorous comics; you prefer non-story comics; you enjoy weird, bizarre, or sometimes disturbing on a philosophical level comics.

Oglaf
Rating: R
How I found it: 4chan; someone posted the first several comics when the site was very new. I noticed the watermark in the bottom of the pages and went to bookmark the site. BEST DECISION OF MY LIFE.
Summary: In a world where magic, sex, and weirdness are all really really common, it can be tough to get by. Sometimes you're an innocent peasant being gnawed on by cock-bats. Sometimes you're an adventurer being seduced by a venomous tree. Sometimes you're just a lowly apprentice, being tricked into sucking cock for a pinecone. You never know what you're going to get; but rest assured, it will almost always be hilarious.
Recommend if: You love humorous comics; you enjoy comics that are comfortable with making fun of sex; you like a mix of story and non-story comics; you play D&D, and wish more people would make comics that reminded you of D&D.

Vattu
Rating: PG
How I found it: It is the newest comic being produced by Evan Dahm of Rice Boy; I picked it up after reading his other works.
Summary: Vattu, a young warrior of a dying tribe, has been given to the new conquerors of her land as a gift by her clan's young and feeble priest. But unlike the others, she does not intend to remain in servitude forever; and she might just liberate her friend, the war-man, to go with her.
Recommend if: You like story comics; you prefer comics with unusual and detailed art; you enjoy comics about alien or otherwise non-human races.

Moon over June
Rating: R
How I found it: Through Josh Lesnick's tumblr.
Summary: Summer is a gynecologist miser who loves corrupting the so-called innocent; Hatsuki is a porn-star and mathematical genius who loves tattoos; they live together, and might even like each other.
Recommend if: you like to see comics featuring lesbian protagonists; you like humor comics; you like porn comics; you are comfortable with misandry (on part of Summer).

Supernormal Step
Rating: PG
How I found it: Followed a link from another comic back in the day because the main character had blue hair.
Summary: Fiona has been transported to another universe, where magic is real, a dictator from her world has secret agents known as 'Hendersons' running things, and monsters try to live in peace with the rest of the population. There's just one problem; Fiona kind of wants to go home, and the technology that could help her has been outlawed.
Recommend if: You like superheroes; you like story comics.

Manly Guys Doing Manly Things
Rating: PG
How I found it: One of my flist linked to it somewhat recently. SCORE!
Summary: Commander Badass is here from the future to reform and help re-introduce the badasses of today into normal society. This is a comic about big, buff dudes doing the kinds of things big, buff dudes like to do. Ain't no shame in that.
Recommend if: You like a mix of story comics and non-story comics; you like humorous comics; you like manly guys; you enjoy video game references and occasionally poking fun at them.

The Oatmeal
Rating: PG
How I found it: Oh, how does anyone find the Oatmeal? but I think it was Dustin or Danny that linked me. Possibly Jenn.
Summary: Started off as a goofy joke-lists type site, but has since evolved to a sort of comic blog dealing with various subjects. Grammar, spicy food, airplane etiquette-- take your pick.
Recommend if: You like humorous comics; you prefer non-story comics.

Savage Chickens
Rating: PG
How I found it: I used to listen to SongsToWearPantsTo, and the guy there did a themesong for this comic. I started reading at once!
Summary: Office humor, cat humor, zombie humor, and chicken humor. Occasionally you will get the bonus of cool stopmotion animations, and your comics will always be drawn on yellow post-it notes (though no longer always of the same size).
Recommend if: You like humorous comics; you prefer non-story comics; you like alternative medium comics, and side art projects (such as the animations).

The Less-than-epic Adventures of TJ and Amal
Rating: R
How I found it: I think this is another one I heard about on 4chan; but I might also have found it through unrelated art posted on DA.
Summary: TJ is a vagabond with a secret history; Amal is a recently outed gay man who was just a few weeks away from potentially finishing medical school, but has been disowned by his family. They go on a road trip together, and become involved.
Recommend if: You like very detailed art; you prefer story comics; you like humor mixed liberally in with your serious comics; you like to see comics featuring gay protagonists.

Zebragirl
Rating: PG
How I found it: Zazie, or possibly Varnia, linked me years ago.
Summary: Once upon a time, Sandra's friends were playing with a magic book and accidentally turned her into a demon. Things went downhill from there.
Recommend if: You like comics that start out humorous, but become very serious and later surreal; you prefer story comics; you like wildly complex settings with multiple parallel dimensions.

El Goonish Shive
Rating: PG/R depending on your feelings re: transformations
How I found it: Ages ago, I don't remember exactly how!
Summary: In a place called Moperville, there are some strange things going on. Some of it has to do with magic; some of it is the fault of alternate realities, and immortal beings; and some of it is the fault of young boy genius Tedd, who loves alien technology and transforming himself and his friends into various things.
Recommend if: You like story comics; you like character-driven comics; you enjoy transformation as a concept (cross-gender and cross-species alike); you like a mixture of humor and seriousness in your comics, erring on the side of humor, usually.

Order of the Stick
Rating: PG
How I found it: Some years back; people talked about it, so I looked it up.
Summary: The Order of the Stick are a group of high-level adventurers. They are working to prevent the opening of extra-dimensional gates that will allow some terrifying evil god to come forth and destroy existence as they know it, but getting there is no easy matter.
Recommend if: you like stick-figure comics; you like D&D humor; you like humorous comics with the occasional serious one thrown in there; you don't mind an irregular update schedule; you aren't intimidated by an enormous archive.

Snowflakes
Rating: G
How I found it: This is a side project done by the guys who did Captain Excelsior Stupendous and still do SMBC.
Summary: What if a bunch of cute little orphans in a snowy, remote orphanage started to fight over classroom politics? What if some of them thought they were vikings? Well, this is all about that.
Recommend if: you like goofy kids-with-big-imaginations stories; you prefer story comics; you like humorous comics; you have no reverence for nuns.

The Comics Curmudgeon
Rating: PG
How I found it: Pure chance!
Summary: The Comics Curmudgeon reviews various newspaper comics and either lightly teases them, ramps them up to hilariously ridiculous proportions by assuming they will get far more dramatic than newspaper comics ever actually are, or flat out mocks them. Thanks to this guy, I read Apartment 3-G sometimes. He's pretty rad.
Recommend if: you like newspaper comics, but not too much; you like humor; you want to make fun of Family Circus.

Goblins
Rating: R
How I found it: Looking for D&D comics years ago.
Summary: A group of Goblins from a small goblin village decide to become adventurers, but that's harder than they thought. Quickly escalates from a light-hearted, somewhat carefree adventure about the Goblins becoming heroes to their people against adversity and fate itself, and into a depressing epic about the suffering of the Goblins that ought to become more than they were, and various others that know of them in the setting.
Recommend if: You like humorous comics that become ridiculously dark; you like non-standard webcomic designs; you like D&D humor; you like goblins.

Wondermark
Rating: PG
How I found it: Through Dinosaur Comics
Summary: Usually non-sequitur but sometimes sequential comics made using wood-block prints and often completely random, moderately philosophical dialogue added to the often quasi-Victorian scenes. Features the occasional appearances of shapeshifting alien Gax, and madness.
Recommend if: you like humor; you like philosophy; you enjoy woodblocks and alternative webcomic media; you prefer non-story comics but don't mind the occasional story comic in the midst of the rest.

Dinosaur Comics
Rating: PG
How I found it: Probably thanks to Skye, actually!
Summary: Every day, T-Rex and his fellow dinosaurs go about their business. They do almost the same thing during those days, but they talk about anything and everything under the sun.
Recommend if: You like dinosaurs; you like philosophy; you like random medical facts; you like humor comics; you prefer non-story comics.

Questionable Content
Rating: PG
How I found it: Jen, back in the day
Summary: Marten and his friends live out their every day lives in a pseudo-futuristic setting where PCs are AIs, and can be put into various shells that allow them to walk around as humans do.
Recommend if: you like character-driven plots; you like romance as a central comic element; you like humor and drama in about equal parts; you think robots are pretty neat; you like story comics with the occasional non-sequitur.

Darths and Droids
Rating: PG
How I found it: The guys were reading it, so I picked it up too.
Summary: Using screenshots from the Star Wars films as art, the comic covers a long-standing tabletop RPG campaign wherein the players are playing the characters in the movies. Makes extensive light of the prequel trilogy; has just recently gotten to A New Hope.
Recommend if: You like Star Wars; you like humor comics; you like D&D humor; you don't mind making fun of D&D or Star Wars; you think it's entirely plausible that Jar Jar Binks was made up by a twelve year old girl.

Badly Drawn Kitties
Rating: R
How I found it: Years ago, this comic was taken down and removed. But it seems to have been recently reborn and is updating again! I found it after noting that I'd read it before and that it was gone, earlier today. Happily reunited! Ahh.
Summary: Slice-of-life, joke-a-day comic about Lydia and Lucy, two cat-ladies who are sassy roommates.
Recommend if: You like humor; you prefer non-story comics with some minor continuity.

( Comics I still check sporadically, even though they are not on my list: )


( Comics I no longer read, but read once: )

This is so long my shoulder hurts. Argh.

The difficulty with being someone who is denied a right that is treated like a privilege is, the people doing the denying will not want to admit that they are doing or believing something wrong. They will so violently work to deny that THEY are responsible that the issue becomes totally obscured by their attempts to lash out at the people who would dare point out to them that something unfair is being done.

Right now, I'm talking about sexism specifically; but this applies for all of it. It's far easier to get defensive and deny that you, personally, are responsible for even the tiniest part of a problem than it is to gracefully accept that there is a problem, and to resolve to work as hard as possible not to be a part of the problem in the future.

Number one important thing: This story pretty much identifies my number one problem with the anti-birth-control legislations going around lately:

"I was forced to be pregnant" on Tumblr
"I was forced to be pregnant" on Livejournal

(Same story, two different places in case you prefer one over the other as a blogging media.)

Pregnancy should always be the choice of the person who actually has to deal with it. Men get ridiculously entitled about women, sex, and children. Society indoctrinates them to believe that yes, they Deserve To Win the Woman-- that Woman is a prize-- and that if they don't, it's just because they didn't try hard enough to earn it. And worse, society also indoctrinates men and women alike to treat women as never fully achieving adulthood. Is it acceptable for someone to call a man 'boy' to dress him down? No. But any time anyone wants to assert their superiority over a woman, they can and will call her 'girl' (or go straight to cursing, if that's their preference), and it's not even considered weird.

This has been on my mind for a while. It's difficult to listen to the radio, because if I do, nine times out of ten the songs are about how the woman in an imaginary relationship needs to take back her cheating / abusive / negligent / otherwise cruel boyfriend because, really truly, he actually loves her.

How about 'Pina Colada'? The set of the story is that the man was looking through the classifieds for some new woman to fuck because he was bored of the old one. But, silly me! It's ALL OKAY because the ad he answers turns out to be hers, so they deserve each other and it all works out. How about Cat Stevens' 'Wild World'? I want to like Cat Stevens, but I just can't when the whole purpose of that song is to tell someone he is addressing as 'girl' that she shouldn't go out into the world and away from him because she'll be sorry, it's way dangerous. It's also present in multiple Beatles songs, and much as I love the Beatles, I always felt especially uncomfortable about the following two songs for related reasons:

Better all the time
I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her
and kept her apart from the things that she loves
Man, I was mean, but I'm changing my scene
and I'm doing the best that I can

Run for your life
Well, I'd rather see you dead, little girl
than to catch you with another man
You better keep your head, little girl
or I won't know where I am

You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand, little girl
Catch you with another man, that's the end, little girl

Now, what really bothers me about all this-- the lyrics in the music, the general refusal to accept women as equals and the intentional separation of them by use of diminutive pet names and terminology-- is that it's abusive all the way down to the core. It's manipulative, and it's ugly, and the worst part of it all is that nobody wants to acknowledge it.

If I talk about these issues, I get labeled an "angry feminist" by my coworkers or friends. If I point out that some of these coworkers and friends ARE in and of themselves sexist (especially those that are female, because it freaks me out to have other women telling me that I should do all these societal standard things because it's pretty unladylike not to), not only do they become outraged, they become immediately defensive. Beyond that point, NOTHING I SAY will get through. It doesn't matter if I have proof of the sexism or not. The response I get is not "what? I don't want to be sexist! How am I sexist?"-- it's "How DARE you infer that I could possibly be sexist, little girl!"

Another recent example that seriously depresses me caught my attention late last night, before I went to bed. Tarol Hunt, that guy who does that comic called Goblins, got into another internet fight with someone accusing him of being a rape sympathizer.

Here's the rundown:

-Goblins and Gunnerkrigg Court are being pitted against each other in a relatively meaningless internet competition to vote for your favorite webcomic. They're in the final round, and unfortunately, it's an internet contest, so lots of people are badmouthing both comics back and forth.

-A presumably female commenter commented claiming that Goblins' most recent page had some nasty rape implied on it, and that she was offended, and that the comic was misogynistic.

-Predictably, the fans exploded over it. Some hate Goblins for being misogynistic now, while others hate this woman and are trying to send her death threats for criticizing their beloved comic.

-Worst of all, Tarol Hunt's response was to Very Maturely insist that no way, he totally isn't a rape sympathizer or a misogynist! And how dare she call him that! He's very, VERY offended that she hasn't offered him an apology for her totally unfounded statement.

Now, here's the thing. I've been reading Goblins for ages. And the most recent page DID briefly confuse me. Because of the paneling and the choice of words on part of the demon, even though I was fully aware that the demon should be addressing the AU MinMax (the blonde bald guy), and not Kin (the naga), I wasn't immediately sure. I was confused, and had to reread the comic, wondering why he'd called her a bitch after she did what he wanted, let alone threatened her with being attacked by demons in the afterlife.

Now, for the record, I didn't assume rape; I assumed violence. But it wasn't completely clear, and I knew what SHOULD be happening. So some of that is poor word choice. I think having a demon call a guy 'bitch' isn't necessarily the most obvious choice when there's a woman right there, especially to someone who might just be looking at the front page of the comic, and not reading through the archives. So, while I think the woman totally overreacted, I also think Tarol Hunt seriously overreacted.

He also has gotten into arguments about this sort of thing before, and to be quite honest, I was disappointed with the level of his maturity handling it then. The fact of the matter is, he's really sensitive about this issue. There are only three or four female characters in his comic, and one of them is an in-joke about a man playing a sex-object female character in a D&D game.

Kin's backstory? Is that she was enslaved for years, which she spent being beaten daily and then raped while she was still injured.

So regardless of his personal feelings with regard to this woman's misunderstanding of the latest page's intended effect, Tarol Hunt ought to know better than to complain loudly and angrily that he is being unfairly persecuted for having a potentially misogynistic comic. My guess? He feels really uncomfortable about such accusations, because they have some basis in reality. When you only have four female characters, and two of them are embarrassing stereotypes, I think it's easy for an intelligent person to connect the dots and worry 'oh, geez; this doesn't reflect well on me. One of my characters is a slutty bimbo stereotype, and the other is a rape-survivor who fell in love with the first guy she saw after she was freed from her torturer.'

There is reason for Tarol Hunt to be concerned that his comic might be construed as misogynistic because it is definitely sexist, and it has a dearth of background female characters just chilling out and being female characters, not having any tragic sexual violence visited upon them. Is it misogynistic? Well, I'd like to say it isn't. But I'm biased-- I clearly don't have much of a problem with it because I continue to read the comic, despite any gender imbalances going on.

But is Tarol Hunt an adult who should know better than to start a shitstorm over a moderately valid complaint? Yes, he is.

Stuff like this IS male privilege realized. Instead of just quietly clarifying, "I hope this page is clear; this is what's happening in the page, and if multiple people feel that it's not clear, I can redo it", he goes and starts shit on the internet. Am I supposed to believe it's sincere when he then belatedly posts in his blog, "Guys, REALLY, please stop threatening this woman on my account"?

It'd feel a lot more genuine if he wouldn't start the shitstorms in the first place.

But it's all because I want to share moments like this:



Maaaan that episode. That. Episode.

Here's the number one reason I'm not interested in getting into computer programming.

Disappointingly, I still have to deal with it in my work life occasionally. For me, this is when people will re-explain a problem using terminology specific to their profession ad nauseum in an attempt to make it clear that you're wasting their time, and actually it's all on you. This is the number one behavior of COWORKERS that I dislike about my job. The handling of the upper management is bad for other reasons, but I like my coworkers, with this one exception. What's worse, I sometimes do this to other people. So what can I take away from that?

-Some of it is discrimination
-Some of it is just that it's really hard to communicate with people. As the person explaining, you may have no frame of reference by which to actually explain to the person you're addressing. As the person being explained to, you may have no means to successfully convey what the problem is in a way that the first person will actually understand. (This is the biggest problem: we have HOUR LONG DISCUSSIONS sometimes when someone can't figure out what the heck I mean because having it described out loud is too confusing; this is nothing on them, and everything on how stupid our processes are. When you SHOW someone the problem, the process is infinitely faster.)

I mostly deal with the exact thing mentioned in the article in my personal life; people online will comment telling me to "lighten up" when I post about an issue I find important, which is hardly friendly and certainly not helpful. But I do it too! "Lighten up" is such a useless piece of advice, but we all think it's useful at one time or another, when we're worried and don't know how to help our friends out with something stressful. It SEEMS like a useful thing to say at the time, but that's a place where you have to put yourself in your friend's shoes. They're stressed out. They would probably like NOT to be stressed out. Saying 'lighten up' is the same as saying 'walk it off'. Utterly unhelpful, callous, and unsympathetic. And man, guys, I don't want to associate with people who are like that.

I definitely can't stand a society that is based around demeaning and demoralizing other people like this. The worst of it, to me, though, is when women buy into it.

I hate women that work really hard to "blend in" to the male-oriented culture by putting down the rest of their gender to try to seem cool. You know the kind-- "nerd" girls who are quick to remind you, "haha, WOMEN, right? They're so crazy and ruled by emotion! Not like ME though, I'm one of the guys"; or "normal" girls who will say, "Oh, well, it was that time of the month! you know how crazy girls get then!" to try to exempt themselves from responsibility for their actions. Or the worst-- "nerd but still totes normal, guys" girls, who will be quick to e-peen with you over some stupid trivia, and just as quick to remind you 'But my favorite color is PINK! I'm so CUTE!'.

Come on, fellow ladies. Let's be cool about this. And let's be cool about our own gender, okay? We're actually pretty dang awesome.

This was already on my mind, obviously, because we recently watched Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, which while interesting films are still the kind of romance that exemplifies the idolization of the girl that the man is in love with, without treating her as an actual equal. You know, romantic comedy; where the guy's awkwardness is somehow supposed to be adorable, and make up for the fact that he doesn't actually care about the girl, about her life, about what she does or wants to do; that he doesn't see her as an equal, but a prize.

Sometimes, you just need a hug.

I seriously want the last panel of this page as a poster. (I wonder if pestering Kel for that possibility would be a good idea? I am sorely tempted to ask.) Ally and Danny's friendship is just absolutely gorgeous. They are the best friends that ever were.

Earlier, Danny mentioned to me that Zak S of playing D&D with porn stars had posted in response to a poorly drawn, sexist comic marginalizing gamer girls as either fake (sexy gamer girls) or disgusting (smelly gamer girls obsessed with their games; ie, the lady nerd). Unrelated to my feelings on the comic in question (which summarily end at 'Oh, stereotyping. You know nothing, but you think you know everything!'), this got me to thinking about the Golarion RPG setting, past games I've played with the guys, and the way female characters get portrayed in general.

I recently made a footnote to a post explaining why I rarely play female characters in tabletop. The ugly reason is: I feel more comfortable playing dudes. I'm a lady myself, but I like the challenge of playing a dude. Am I buying into the social fallacy that unless I'm a dude I can have no agency? Maybe, which is what bugs me. So, I'm making the effort to play girls in upcoming games (Scarpur, the foul-tempered lady kobold; and then Aigua, the whimsical adventuring lady monk) who are specifically not the genre standard. They're not ugly, but they're not pretty. They're not young. I play old guys, why not play old girls? I figure I need to make an effort to change that, because I have a problem with it, which means I have a problem with me.

But I'm not the only one who has trouble portraying non-standard girls! So I think about it a lot. For example, let's talk about Golarion. I think the setting is pretty awesome. It's based around science and pseudoscience, with liberal borrowing from awesome speculative thought in the late 1800's and early 1900's; there's all sorts of neato nations and histories in the setting. I bought setting books for Pathfinder before the game was even out because I was curious about it.

There are also NPCs in this setting, with plot hooks just begging to be used. Danny recently started reading up on Golarion (which is awesome) and was telling me about some of the stuff he'd read last night, including an NPC with a very interesting backstory. She was brought back as an undead leader for a region, meant to control it; however, her organs were removed before she was revived, and anyone who's holding one of her organs can control her. Pretty creepy and awesome, right? Nothing about this is gender specific.

Oh, but also, she was a prostitute before she died.

Now it's certainly not Danny's fault, and I wouldn't be surprised if he just omitted that detail anyway, should he decide to run in Golarion and use this character, but really? She was brought back to life to run nations and she couldn't have been...a thief who was murdered for stealing? A mercenary who people respected and revered? A political leader? A poor farmer? A nobody seamstress or something? She's a prostitute. Really.

This is the first place that female NPCs get dragged, in a lot of situations, and it's not always the same people calling the shots, but it's treated like an acceptable job function that is just a natural part of being female by a lot of people in the tabletop world, and I don't really like it. If you say 'okay, so where are the male prostitutes?', most people laugh and think you're joking. Or hey, if you were to play a male prostitute, you'd still be a joke character by their definition, even if you played it seriously. Because men don't get defaulted to prostitution. Apparently, women don't come with marketable skills beyond 'sex for cash'. Men do, but women don't.

And that is bullshit.

I can think of plenty of situations where this has come up in games where I was playing alongside someone who thought it was totally reasonable to want to play a lady prostitute. Did it ever occur to them that they could have played a lady...something else? Or a male prostitute once in a while to even things out? I don't know. I assume that they didn't know or mean any harm because in most cases these are people I consider to be my friends and companions. I like them.

The one time I did play in a game with someone playing a male prostitute, he was a cat-boy ex-sex-slave, and he was played by a fellow lady at the table. He also was in a homoerotic relationship with the male leader of the party; that game was silly and fun, and I have really fond memories of it.

In a one-shot Vampire game, one of our players played a "business woman" Malkavian vampire who used her talents to make herself look sexy and human so she could fuck her way to the top. On top of this, she was subject to the Malkavian problem "generally clinically insane", so she wore a business suit but was actually just a prostitute who didn't know it.

In another game, one player who we ended up not inviting to the game wanted to play a Pathfinder Gnome lady. Except, he wanted her to be a prostitute after having been The Shit in her hometown (where here, 'The Shit' means 'Original Character Fiction levels of awesome'). Why? Because when she left her hometown, she left behind her fabulous wealth and friends, and needed to make money and get by somehow, so she fell back on her "talents". (For the record, one of the reasons he was not included in the game proper was this bad character concept; but it wasn't the only reason.)

In yet another game, the same player with the gnome decided he wanted to play a young woman who was extremely sexualized. He regularly informed us that his character had scratches all over again from having wild sex with her werewolf boyfriend, who was still in werewolf form when they did it. The worst of this character showed up when, during a dream sequence where we had to awaken to our true identities from pseudo-selves the dream had assigned us based on what it thought would make us happy, he informed us that his now-schoolgirl character 'just fucked the teachers when they called her to task at school' in the dream. When called on this, he informed us that he did so because that was just how girls get through high school. You can imagine how awkward it was for us all to be at the table with that statement hanging in the air.

I wish I could say that this player was always a jerk and write him off, but he is only this bad sometimes, and he does have other problems that exacerbate his issues. One of them, as you might imagine, is misogyny. As my friend, I do want to defend him, and to believe that he can improve. I know he's been better lately; in the current game he has even gracefully accepted being transformed (by accident!) into an ogre woman without making any nasty remarks. Still, as a woman, I'd like to see more positive female characters in tabletop, not less. These are all examples of players who I still play with by my own volition, so what I'm saying is, these aren't the worst: these are just 'the bad'. This idea that women, at the base of 'what do women do to get by', are prostitutes, bothers me a lot. Not least of all because I like sex, and think that liking sex shouldn't be something people consider remarkable anymore than they consider liking special kinds of foods remarkable.

So lady characters in general. I'm trying to take myself to task over playing male characters most of the time. For example, here's every female character I've ever actually played.

I started with Liz. She was stupid, but not sexualized. The joke was, she had once been a dog, but a magical accident turned her into a half human. She hated that, and wanted to become a dog again, to go back to when life had been simpler. The caveat was, she could only become more human and smarter.

Several years later, there was Mirzam. Finally, another girl! Mirzam was a young magician and favored daughter of a horsebreeding family in the Anima setting, with adoration for her stunted-growth friend Ariadne and her heart in the right place. How can I best describe Mirzam? She barely had any character at all. She was air-headed, and an air-themed magician. Literally.

Then Matachin. Matachin was a rude elf-druid from Sigil who didn't bathe and talked a foul streak a mile wide. Oh, and a pathological liar. The game was so short I unfortunately didn't have time to do much else with her.

Most recently, there was Sri, an ex-sailor turned slave Barbarian who was bought as a bodyguard by another PC at the start of the game, and ended up constantly bossing her mistress around. Sri was the oldest member of the party at thirty, and not particularly remarkable for her physical appearance. I feel like she was a step in the right direction for me with female character variety.

Now, I don't want to seem like I'm saying it's bad to play characters that are sexual ladies. Would it have been okay to be porny with these characters? Totally, yes. There's no reason I couldn't get porny about ANY of my characters. Even the old men. Or the weird little gnome things. Or my old lady kobold. Hawt hawt kobold on kobold action!

So long as it actually made sense for the character, I would be willing to mention their sexual proclivities and even have them come up. The whys and hows are simple: It's fun to play a guy or girl who sees a sexy vision, and totally falls for it. A large percentage of the monsters in D&D, for example, figure heavily around "seduce people to trick them: now eat them". Thus, should sexy funtimes be mentioned in D&D? Sure, if you and your players are comfortable with it. I just want to see sexy funtimes be an option, not an assumption, for what's part and parcel with a lady character. I'd like to think that a lot of folks out there agree.

Edit: Associated icon for this post now 15% more appropriate?

I need Sorcery 101 to update faster! *sob* ARGH BLARGH I love everything about this comiiiiic.

1. This article about tax policies pretty handily summarized my concerns with the proposed policies of the Republican candidates still considered to be part of the race.

TL;DR: The reason the US is currently in an economic downturn, with a high unemployment rate, is heavily related to the fact that taxes are at a 60-year low. Further lowering them increases the risk of poor job security AND will benefit the rich, not the poor.

2. Play A Tale in the Desert! Holy crap! It is so awesome! Patrick picked it up (apparently after a ten-year break from it) after I spazzed to him that Danny and I were playing it last night, and he has a very accurate summary:

Patrick: It has all my favourite bits of an MMO (crafting) without all the pointless background (everything except crafting)!

3. It is Danny's birthday later this week! Birthday shenanigans are a must.

And most importantly, 4: Really looking forward to D&D tomorrow! We shall learn dream mastery from the mysterious old woman, if we can find her!

I was pointed to this site, and have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I've been subjected to a lot of these tactics/arguments when talking with people not even on the internet, but real life. And it's infuriating, and hurtful, and reading through almost exact examples of what was said in response to what I was saying leaves me agitated.

On the other hand, I sincerely doubt that the people I was having these conversations with-- often my friends-- were doing any of these things with the sole intent to hurt my feelings. Well, unless it was already an argument, at which point I know they were probably justifying the cruelty of saying these things to me with 'but SHE said xyz to me, and that was really mean!'

Basically, I can take from that site two things.

One: I really want my friends to know and avoid these "tactics" in conversation, because they are hurtful and offensive, and designed to shut down conversation. Not cool.

Two: I don't like the site's inherent suggestion that, because people sometimes DO employ these tactics, it's okay for us to shirk the responsibility of making an effort to communicate, because it's hopeless since everyone who disagrees with us is cruelly and intentionally trying to derail us anyway. Also not cool.

( BORING STUFF )

In other news, it sounds like Wizards is releasing the 1st edition D&D books (plus a new cover) in April and I am very excited!

Also my back is incredibly sore because I pulled a muscle!

I think that's everything.

EDIT: Fixed! now only interesting things are not cut. Woo!

So now let me ramble about TOR! I know few of you care but I'm doing it anyway.

GUSS TUNO IS SO COOL. So cool you guys. SO cool. Oh yes. Oh VERY yes. Double-double crossed, and then we ran the best con ever about Hothian Ice Fever, which made me grin like an idiot and clap with glee! Then I hit on a Pirate Queen!

I am very much enjoying the smuggler storyline, and Soldat continues to look exactly as badass as I want him to. Just wish I had cool-looking boots and gloves! I like his wacky shirt.

Edit: Today's Manly Guys Doing Manly Things has taught me to never assume I know what I want. I thought I wanted Commander Badass to never change. Apparently, I wanted to LAUGH LIKE MAD at Suddenly Stylin' Commander Badass, and then for him to change back at once!

I'm working on getting decent at drawing faces, just as much as bodies.

The challenge with that meme was more or less "Hey, self. Can you actually draw each of the five main characters showing six different emotions? Prove it." So, on the surface, there was the temptation to do things like only draw Eberk once and copy-paste it for comedic effect. But much more insidious and difficult to subdue is the desire not to draw something "ugly", even if it makes sense.

What I learned: Getting over the idiotic belief that characters must always look 'pretty' makes them prettier/cuter/more attractive overall. I've always found Gwenn to be adorable, but that "panic" expression where she's clawing at her own face and making with the big ugly melodrama? I love it.

I have trouble acknowledging these things. I've noted before that I'm uncomfortable with my own fascination with violence in fiction, and to some degree that extends to a discomfort or dissatisfaction with the glorification of violence, madness, mayhem, destruction and chaos in fiction by other authors, even authors I'm actually friends with. Rather than get to the heart of my discomfort I sometimes find myself making judgmental statements to myself like "there's that childish obsession with social dysfunction again" or "pfft; they only like it because it's 'cool', I bet" and other things that are stupid for me to think of other people since I'm sure I'm no better. Drawing stuff like Faure's 'panic' expression, however, really pushes me to acknowledge what it is that intrigues me about violence in fiction: it's often portrayed in a way that carefully avoids letting the character look ugly. A character who's being tortured in a visually pleasing way is a lot less unsettling than a character who is actually being tortured.

If I'm going to put these things in, I want to treat them realistically-- as much to remind myself that it is mindless and self-indulgent to torment my poor characters for NO reason other than my own curiosity about the human psyche, or something. A story that is all about how much the characters suffer is just as boring as a story that is all about how perfect and idyllic the characters' romance is. The in-between is what makes me like the stories I read, so I really ought to make the effort to remember my characters will not be pretty 100% of the time-- and that's okay, I'll still find them to be adorable, or attractive, or cool, or funny. More than anything, I feel like I need to get the hang of letting go that "but it doesn't look perfect!" mentality that makes me erase my doofy expressions, sometimes.

Those doofy expressions just brought these characters to life. And also, I'm really, really glad I went to the trouble of drawing all of Eberk's expressions, because some of them came out far better than I'd have anticipated!

Happy New Year in the style of Ok Go, I think!

I am very very tired. Also, my neck is...sore? Well, anyway, hopefully everyone has a lovely new year and we can all tackle the adventure of 2012 together. It will be fun, I think!