eredien: Dancing Dragon (Default)
I don't play Dragon Age 2, but the gist of it is this: your player character can get hit on in-game by male or female NPCs. You, as a PC, can choose to turn down their advances and advance the plot some other way, or continue talking to them and advance the plot that way.

A straight white male gamer wrote to Bioware about how this made him cry.

A BioWare writer wrote back, basically saying, "check your privilege. Straight white guys aren't our only market and aren't the only gamers we care about, and homophobes definitely aren't."

Then there was a comments thread. A comments thread where people said sensible things like (paraphrased): "just turn them down politely if you aren't interested, just like you'd do in real life," or "I can't believe this is 2011 and we're still having this discussion," or "straight white guys see gay people in their games and get uncomfortable; gay people see straight white guys in real life and get killed. You're really lucky, straight white guys," or even, "so, you're homophobic. You recognize gay people make you uncomfortable. That's what that word means. Deal with it. Accept that people are going to call you that until such time as you're not uncomfortable anymore, because that's what you are. Deal with the consequences of having the fears you admit to having."

For the most part, it's a really inspiring comments thread. It makes me feel like anti-racism work and anti-homophobia work is really, actually, affecting real life.

Video gaming fans--just regular people who like to play games!--are talking about stuff like privilege and gender identity and joking about adding options for Kinsey scale sliders during character creation, then pointing out that wouldn't help anyway since it's not like your PC is walking around with a big sign over their head telling NPCs that they're straight. People were thanking each other for mounting eloquent defenses of multiple types of queer visibility in mass media platforms in the face of heterosexual normativity. It was pretty inspirational.
eredien: Dancing Dragon (Default)
I thought a lot of you might be interested in this just-beginning blog post series on women who play video games. It looks like it's going to be pretty neat.
eredien: Dancing Dragon (Default)
So, I just visited the Pokemon Black and White page.

Things that look really cool:
Alternate cities depending on which game you have
Video Chat
Pokemon Dream World (mostly this just looks adorable)
Seasons changing, with different pokemon in different seasons

I can't decide if I should (eventually) get Pokemon Black or White. Any thoughts?
Also, are there any benefits to pre-ordering I should know about?

Hopefully, by March I will have enough money to buy it.

Sadly, there is no game event in Boston (though there is one in Indianapolis, rax!). :(
eredien: Dancing Dragon (Default)
The recipe for Tropic Sunset Peach Bread Pudding is up.

The rest of this post consists of three questions, two of which are for Boston-area or potential Boston-area people, and one of which is about clothing. Boston-area questions first:

- Does anybody have a space where they could take in a cat for a month or two? I'm hoping to get at least a part-time job soon, and have had an interview lined up for two weeks now which I am really hopeful about, but due to crazy circumstances that interview has been rescheduled twice--instead of knowing if I'm going to get this job, I've been on tenterhooks. I don't know when I'm going to be able to get an apartment of my own, and the current situation with Oolong is temporary. I'd pay for food, litter, any vet bills, etc, and come by to see her every other week or so. I'd hoped to have an apartment by now, and I've been in talks with realtors and job people, but it's been slow going. There's no lack of non-paying volunteer opportunities, and there's no lack of administrative positions, but I know I'm no good at doing that particular task-set and need something else to be happy; I'm not really willing to compromise my job-related happiness at this point since it looks like my job is going to be the biggest part of my life for a good while, and it's important for me to get this right, and as soon as possible.

- Is anyone in the Boston area (or anyone interested in moving to the Boston area) interested in splitting an apartment with me? I don't drink at all right now but am generally a fan of liquor, don't smoke but don't care if you smoke outside, and am looking for a place where I can have my cat and a lizard. I'm not interested in living with dogs or other csts, and Oolong is probably not a safe bet for birds, but other pets would probably be fine. I am thinking maybe I would like to live in the Teele Sq area or up near Alewife, or maybe real close to the Camberville border in Arlington. I don't have a car and don't plan on getting one. I plan on setting up a mini artstudio space for making and selling my artwork, wherever I end up. I'm LGTBQ, poly, and generally alternative-lifestyle-friendly. I am interested in cooking and gardening and would be happy with a farmshare or actually growing some food outside or inside. I'm vegan. Another vegan or vegetarian roommate would be ideal, but I'm happy to live with meat-eaters. I'm hoping to find a kind of quiet place to relax most of the time, but the occasional loud and noisy party is great. I kind of hope to host a big friendly dinner/movie night once a week or maybe once a month, and enjoy actually knowing and liking my roommates instead of just kind of passing each other in the hallway.Video gaming, RPGing, anime, music, artistic creation, writing, cooking, general nerdliness, graduate school, etc. are also neat.

If interested, or have questions, please email me, call or text, or private message me on lj. Or you can just leave a comment here and I will get in touch with you.

- For genderqueer, queer, transgender, gender-head people, people who aren't satisfied with what "men's clothing" and "women's clothing" is, and other kinds of people who were interested in the clothing marketplace idea that I posted about a while back--it looks like the Genderplayful Marketplace is raising itself up by its black and purple pleather boostraps. I'd like to sell clothing and accessories there. I already have some ideas for shirts, pants, etc, maybe some accessories. I'd like to do a dress with a built-in tie/vest top, for instance. Does anybody have any suggestions of anything they'd really like to see in that space? I'd love to actually, you know, create what you want and what I want, and market it to you.

Pokemon

3/11/10 01:15
eredien: Dancing Dragon (Default)
So, I have been playing Pokemon lately in between reading and applying for jobs (I am trying to teach myself C++ on a Mac; does anyone know how to get a Mac OSX compiler? I thought I could use terminal and unix, but it turns out that Mac OSX doesn't like me giving its terminal Unix commands. I hear you can download something called the "Apple Developer Environment" which will give you a compiler, but then you have to apply to be an Official Apple Developer, which I really don't think I qualify for. So annoying).

I have beaten the elite four (it turns out you're supposed to do this at the end of the game, not 3/4 of the way through, but I am tops at resource management in-game).

I am currently raising a bunch of berries and trying to get extra-special event pokemon and legendary pokemon and stuff like that, and level up some of the lower-level higher-level characters I have (eg, my Steelix at level 53 and my level 42 Staraptor and my level 38 Haunter, but most of my other "basic" pokemon are in the high 50's or early-high 60's.

I don't understand how to get more money for things like pokeballs after beating the elite four. I'm trying to do a bunch of side battles and capture a bunch of pokemon, but I keep running out of money to buy pokeballs, which is kind of a ridiculous problem to have at this point in the game. This is a problem as I need a lot of expensive high-level pokeballs to catch Mesprit and Cressilia. :P

I am also trying to win a bunch of contests to do another side-quest, which is a pain in the butt.

I also got all 28 Unowns. Apparently the reason why people want all 28 is because you can then get seals for all 26 English letters plus ? and ! and seals on pokeballs up your awesomeness in contests somehow.

I somehow got Heatran and the Giratina with pretty much little trouble, and am having a devil of a time with Mesprit, who runs all around the map.

I am trying to get a bunch more legendaries, but some of them are hard to do without having been at a Pokemon event in Tokyo in 2007 or NYC in 2008...

I can also apparently wake up Regigias and battle him, but only if I have the other 3 legendary golems from another game which I don't have. Blech.