Sexism and WoW... what about those outside the male/female "gender"?

     There has been a recent resurgence of discussion on various blogs that I follow (Troll Racials are Overpowered and The Pink Pigtail Inn being the ones I remember best.) pertaining to sexism. This is a good debate, and I am definitely firmly on the side of 'it might be an improvement to have more femininely-gendered characters (hereafter referred to as "women" for the sake of convenience) in the game'. However, this should not be done in the way that Jaina was reduced to a whiny, needy woman who is almost nothing like her original character. Nor should devs follow the example of whoever wrote the plot and dialog for Metroid: Other M. Yeah... Samus as a crying little girl and a bitch makes no sense. Granted, it could be possible for her to be outside of normal social conventions such as politeness - she is a bounty hunter, after all. But she should not be cowering in front of Ridley! She's fought and defeated him several times.

     Anyhow, to the meat of my post. Yes, there has been a great advancement in the characterization of women characters in scale of the history of gaming, but I can envision going beyond that binary some day. I have a dream where the choice of sex isn't labeled gender, and is properly a fill-in-the-blank. I would love for my Blood Elf to be a bit more androgynous, and not a bubble-pop blonde with large breasts. City of Heroes at least paid lip service to that with having sliders on various measurements. (Sadly, the 'breast size' slider doesn't go down past what looks like a C-cup, thus defeating the purpose for me.) Of course, the players and people on the side-lines would see this as pandering to the 'rainbow agenda'. (Yes, I have heard that term and think it humorously ridiculous.) This is a somewhat touchy debate because it really hasn't been brought up as more than a hand-wave except for some tabletop RPGs which have explicitly mentioned that your character doesn't have to be stereotypically strong, white, male, masculine, heterosexual, and a womanizer.

     Damn it, if I want to play a transsexual/gay/gender-variant character, I should damn well be able to. Unfortunately, this gets laughed at. Even in games like Exalted, where the Lunars have several abilities blending together the sexes and genders, my characters get laughed at quite a bit. That's right folks: even in the hardcore nerd sub-culture, gender variant people are looked askance. I do remember that I had once decided fuck it, i'm rolling up a masculine male character. The group I was gaming with kept making cracks to the tune of, oh, that's cute, she wants to be competent and have an impact on the story. (This was before I had really realized who I am and was still considered a 'girl' by everyone, so at least they weren't displaying a complete lack of tact, in addition to being rude.) I simply tried to explain that just because I was playing as a masculine male character, that I didn't necessarily not want to be a girl. The group was still confused, so I just went with, "fine, she's a girl, can we please keep playing?". I find it funny that if a masculinely-gendered person plays a woman, that he is not considered odd, but jokes are made about booty-calls and so on, while a woman playing a man is looked at funny and everyone one starts wondering if she's a lesbian or something equally silly that has nothing to do with the gender or sex of the character.

     So, TL;DR? Here you go: I'm happy that female women are getting more appropriate recognition in the gaming community, despite it being much more bad than good for the time being. Also, I really do hope someday that I can just be me or play a character outside the box without trying to shove myself/my character in with women because I happen to have XX chromosomes. Come on society, realize we have way more in common and that there are more than 2 choices.

Remember: gender is not sex, is not sexual orientation, and only sex can most of the time be a binary. Gender and sexual orientation are definitely fill-in-the-blank, not a choice of man/woman, male/female, or homosexual/bisexual/heterosexual.

The Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann

     I started a campaign last semester, more or less based on ancient Irish legends (though there is no real set time period - notably from the Iron Age up to the erasure of pre-christian Celtic religious culture that swiftly followed St. Patrick). I finally settled on making the over-arching goal of this campaign to be the adventurers acquiring the use of one or more of The Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann, which are:

• The Dagda's Cauldron
• The Spear of Lugh
• The Stone of Fál *
• The Sword of Light of Núadu

*Here it must be noted that I am substituting The Dagda's Club (The club was said to be able to kill nine men with one blow; but with the handle he could return the slain to life.) for The Stone of Fal, as it will probably not be featured in the campaign, given that I don't plan to make one of the characters into a king. 

     The main setting for the campaign is what is now County Kerry. The region is famous for it's beautiful scenery, and importantly to my campaign, covered with blanket bogs. The below map is the approximate area, with the (fictional) starting village of Tinuviel marked. 

 

     Thus far, the party has vanquished a covey of hags and is deliberating on whether or not to return the tribute from Tinuviel that the hags demanded. Said party currently consists of a Corpse-Crafter, a Duskblade, a Dragon Shaman, and a Bard (who is played by me as a quasi-DM-PC)

Note: I am using Ireland as the basis for, not the exact, setting. I am purposely putting in fictional places.

Katawa Shoujo: My Two Copper

Katawa Shoujo is an erotic game in the making. Now if you want, keep reading.

     KS is an erotic (There will be an option to dis-include the erotic content once the game is finished and released. There is also no erotic content in Act 1.) Dating Sim (which is a very popular genre, closely related to Visual Novels) in which the main characters all share a common trait - that of being disabled in some way. Now, at this point, I just about stopped reading about it and didn't want to give it a chance, but I figured that I had read worse, so I steeled myself for what I thought would be horrifyingly written with no sensitivity on the part of the writers. This impression wasn't helped by the name. 'Katawa' translates into English as 'disabled', but it's meaning in Japanese is much closer to 'cripple' and isn't considered polite. I'm not sure if this was an accident or not on the part of the development team, because they seem to be English speakers.

     I was very wrong. This is still in development, but unless anything goes horribly wrong, it looks like the disabilities of the characters are being handled in a responsible, mature manner. It seeks to not stigmatize, but instead show that these characters are every bit as capable, just sometimes needing emotional support or a slight consideration. The dialog is well-written and there is a fairly long prologue which seeks to establish a connection between the player and the player-character. The only fault I find with some of the characterization is that some of them are a bit stereotypic, though more in the inspirational sense, such as Emi Ibarazaki, the track star who has artificial legs. The art style is typical of Japanese VNs and draws heavily from anime and manga. I do enjoy some of the painted backgrounds.

     I find one of the most amazing things about this game to be that the idea came from 4chan (an infamous image board that caters to everything imaginable), which is considered by nearly all internet citizens as the cesspool of the internet. (Seriously, don't go there unless you know exactly which threads you want to read.) 4 Leaf Studios was the official development team formed there and then moved so that it severed all ties other than the nod to 4chan and the person who posted the original idea. The development team has since lost and gained many different members, but this is a completely amateur work. It is under creative commons license and Act 1, version 4 (The game has no erotic content yet, so it's more or less SafeForWork.) has recently been released, which mostly featured translations in more languages and corrections to the Chinese version.

     I'm not necessarily recommending this to my readers (all one of you), but it is interesting and worthwhile to take a look at and read about, given that this looks like it might be setting a good precedent in the hentai/erotica/pornography industry to treat the characters with respect and to not objectify them, whether or not the subject matter is considered fetishistic.

Also, a very succinct description of Rule 34, which is what probably started this whole thing (Acrotomophilia and Dysmorphophilia -related content is common on 4chan)

Dear Insurance Companies:

     Please remove the stick that is apparently lodged in your ass. Trans-people would really, really like access to health care. I hate being denied treatment because I'm trans. (Exclusion #52 in my insurance's policy- Aetna Student Health: "Expense Incurred for, or related to, sex change surgery, or to any treatment of Gender Identity Disorder".) Also, I just love how the policy also makes sure not to allow any person with an affiliation with a trans-friendly medical provider be covered by your insurance. (Such as: Howard Brown Health Center and the Chicago Lake Shore Drive Hospital) Of course, this is common for insurance companies to do - just write off something that is a life-long condition as being trivial. Insurance will cover the purely cosmetic operation of plastic surgery,  including implants, for a female woman who underwent a mastectomy because of the great psychological harm of missing pieces. (It is important to note that this does not work for the cosmetic operation independent of a mastectomy.) But if you happened to be born with missing pieces, well too bad. This plan also covers psychiatric care. I'm certain that Gender Identity Disorder falls under psychiatric care. It is not actually a disorder other than the harm caused by other people - this is similar to the 'diagnosis' of homosexuality having been removed from the DSM. In fact, I happen to be sure of the reason that "Gender Identity Disorder" as a diagnosis exists: to make it easier for trans-people to have access to health care through insurance companies.  This obviously backfired because a trans-person used to have to work around the system, but it could be done. Now they have to be blocked within the healthcare system with no alternative other than illegal means to make these procedures affordable.

     This wouldn't be so big of an issue if surgery was the only thing that this exclusion effected. The exclusion also excludes a person under their plan from seeking a mental health worker's or an endocrinologist's help. Many trans people die because of accidents involving self-administration of illegal steroids and silicone. I am really hoping that the new healthcare laws will get rid of this kind of ridiculous exclusion. This is a serious problem, even if non-trans people ignore it.  The suicide attempt rate is as high as 50% with most of those people being between 7 and 20 years of age. I know I'm in that statistic. I'm also pretty sure that if there was just someone who I could have felt safe to talk with when I was going through puberty that I probably wouldn't have tried to kill myself because then I wouldn't have felt so alone. Of course I knew that other transsexuals existed. They existed as a joke and something to avoid, so I kept my feelings to myself. That didn't work out very well - it never does. The suicide rate among trans people is nearly 10%. For reference, the suicide rate among war veterans was at 2% when it suddenly became a big issue, yet no one cares that people are dying easily preventable deaths. Deaths that are preventable with psychological help and some basic medical treatment. Just try to get a gynecologist to take you as a patient when you pass as male. Good luck - unless they are trans-friendly, you'll be turned away at the door because it looks like a joke to them. It's all fun and games till you have cancer or need a surgery for something like appendicitis and can't be treated for it because the doctor is prejudiced.

P.S. In-community report Outsider's Report

Visual Novel Creation, Round 2

     I occasionally try my hand at various crafts, because I have free time and want to find a rewarding hobby. This week/month's contender is Creating Visual Novels. I seem to gravitate towards this every summer. I know that most OELVNs ('Original English Language Visual Novel's) suck in comparison to their often much more polished productions from Japan, but I'm going to try anyways.

     Well, you can't really make a game without an engine to work with. I decided to completely scrap the engine I was using last year, Novelty, because it promised a very easy to use GUI with minimal coding. Well, this is only partially true. It is heavily based on its GUI, but it doesn't really make a powerful or flexible engine and it requires quite a few 3rd party programs to do basic editing (such as creating a custom visible text box!). I'm currently using Ren'Py and I must say that so far I am satisfied with the engine. The help files are actually useful and fully localized, while the python-based programming language is high level and I am picking it up fairly quickly.

     On to the next problem - media. I'm a fairly decent writer and I'm a mediocre programmer, so that isn't really an issue. However... I can't draw my way out of a paper bag and despite being a classically trained musician, I don't really know how to record myself or create music on the computer. (Besides, I don't plan on having Jazz be the main music style. (I'm a saxophonist)) Enter Royalty Free Music and Sound Effects from Partners In Rhyme. I will probably be relying rather heavily on this since its free, and more importantly, legal to use. I still haven't solved the art problem, which is rather important to a Visual Novel. Best idea I've had is to grab some pictures from DeviantArt for reference and digitally draw something based on it. Now I think I know how editors for a manga feel - I have to take many sources and make them all look like they were drawn by the same person, which is hard even when I am the only artist.

Thoughts on Transhumanism

     Tonight's Internet Binge started out with checking to see if Dresden Codak had updated. Things went rather quickly from there. He had a link to a lecture on Prosthetic Culture - watched the nearly forty-minute long lecture with rapt attention. Started to think about my own particular desire for a prosthetic. Realized I'm using a prosthetic right now (the Internet). We're all Cyborgs. Read up on current Utility Fog theory and was glad to see we are making progress. Saw it was related to chemical computing and holograms. Remembered hearing about the blood powered cell phone tattoo. ... An hour later I was back to thinking about transhumanism. So, if we had chemical computers and Utility Fog, why would we need clothes anymore? It would certainly be great for me to be able to change my physical appearance at the speed of thought. Even a rather thin Utility Fog covering me would be able to successfully project a holographic image of me in a different body. Hell, I could program it to make me look like a robot or even a squid if I wanted.

     Let's take it a step further (or maybe many steps). Chemical computing would theoretically make it possible to upload my consciousness into the particular Fog that makes up what used to be me. Delete body. Maintain a physical presence purely through being a Fog. It's like having every super-power you can think of: shape changing, flight, invisibility, super-strength, you name it. Who needs virtual reality if you are a machine and all of reality superimposes virtual and real reality? Reality would be even more subjective then. I would be a collection of molecules that makes up a complex machine that has a consciousness, which can take actions on its environment. Wait just a second... that's right where I am now. Just, you know, without the superpowers.

     Transhumanism is exactly that. Its the metaphysical and philosophical equivalent of pulling ourselves up a mountain. We have to extend that first tenuous grasp and then pull ourselves up, or over, as the case may be. I don't think that Transhumanism is necessarily becoming a 'higher' version of humans, because once we reach that point, we won't become any more or less human. Our definition will change right along with us. We may solve many problems, but there will always be predicaments. The difference is that problems have solutions; predicaments are all about how you deal with reality. The way each person consciously their predicaments is what defines us and makes us human.

     "There are Three Great Immensities that everyone faces: Death, Nature, and Other People. Everyone dies - it is a predicament that we all face individually. Nature is what surrounds us and truly seeing the immensity of nature means having true perspective of yourself. Everything is both insurmountably important and completely insignificant in the overall picture. Other People are an immensity. It really is an amazing concept that every person we meet has their own, unique, history, thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Their own world. There may be people very similar to you, but there is never another person who is exactly you." 

-- Professor Keith Green (Paraphrased from a lecture in History of Middle Earth)

Well, now for dreams about becoming a different sort of machine. I hope this inspires you to have an Internet Binge.

I Just Had to Post This

     I don't know why, but I find this inexplicably adorable.

Facing Matters, or, When Immersion Fails

     Facing matters. I'm not talking about subjective alignments or the players themselves, but their characters' position relative to other creatures on the table. I find that it makes sense for Sneak Attack to work if a character sneaks up from behind, and not just from flanking or being first in the initiative order.

     The first complaint that I usually get about this house-rule is that it makes 3.5 seem like a tactics game. This, by the way, is coming from people who prefer 4th ed. and shouldn't throw stones at other peoples' glass houses. Anyways, I'm not exactly talking about implementing a full on tactics game into 3.5, but I really do like to have a tiny bit more internal realism in my games than most of the players want or expect. (Yes, I did, in fact, test to be almost completely an Explorer on the Bartle Test.) I think that if someone stabs you in the back, it should count as a backstab. I'm personally rather uncomfortable with the mental image the 'rules as written' gives of a creature constantly spinning around in place. Now, it would surprise you to know at this point that I run many combats without the use of miniatures or a grid when I use this house rule. "How do the players manage to remember where they were?", you ask. It just comes down to the people at the table paying attention to the game. I just want the player to know and to tell me where they are in relation to everything else.

     I used to always take the time to describe the environment in great detail to the players so that they weren't in a featureless 10x10 room. Then my players stopped being new to the game, and didn't care what was in the room anymore because they seemed to have forgotten that the environment affects them, even when it is not a trap or hazard. If I don't setup a room, it's probably for a reason such as the characters aren't supposed to know yet or I'm not feeling up to it. That means you can ask away for something to be in there, it will probably 'have always been there'. I appreciate the help, and have only occasionally gotten requests that I denied. For example, if I do setup a room complete with lavish description and the characters and creatures involved can see everything, I see no reason for a player to suddenly ask if there is an oak tree in the middle of the castle dungeon because they forgot to grab an acorn or something five minutes ago.

     I like my players to say, "Hey, Erik, are there boxes or something tall enough to take cover behind?" or, "I think that this room could use/would likely have _". That's just good logic on part of the players and it makes me feel that they care enough about my game that they pay attention to which side of the room that dresser was on without having to have a picture of a dresser in a room with diagrams of every little thing in it, because if they forget it was there in the first place, they can't pick up the gems that the Count put in his underwear drawer for safekeeping. Not that I always stash valuables in every hiding place, but I do want to reward my players for actually role-playing by exploring and interacting within the world I set up. This is something I do because I want the reward to be the story itself, but sometimes it takes a bit of role-playing XP to keep them coming back to the table so we can get to the thick of the plot.

     The second complaint is a much easier one to resolve. This being that the house-rule works for everyone, not just the PCs. Usually a good "Because I'm the DM." is appropriate and reasonable enough.

New, Improved Name

     Just letting my readers know that I have decided to change from Twin Faced Gamer Style to something a bit more explanatory and that doesn't depend on someone getting a reference to the Lunars from Exalted. I feel that this is a much better definition of my blog, and you can all thank Stonefist for the advice. (The URL will remain unchanged, so I recommend that if the change bothers or confuses you, just bookmark the page.)

Another Day, Another Septim

     Lately it has seemed like I'm turning more towards video games and a bit away from tabletop games. For example, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a great game. So good that I am sometimes tempted to skip a D&D session to keep playing. While I am tired to the point of ad nauseum of being told to stop because I have violated the law and hearing the NPCs talk about mudcrabs; this game is a fairly good substitute for D&D. There is an incredibly immersive story (Though, by this I mean the sheer number of side quests and places to explore.) that has a high replay value. The alchemy system tends to not make sense some of the time. It is worth note that this is pretty much a single-player MMO, with all the drawbacks and benefits of such a mixture.

The Guided Tour

     Well readers, I'm here with my new blog. This will, of course, be the usual vent for ranting and frustration that every blogger has. However, this is the blog is about trying to keep on grinding through life, WoW, and D&D (among some other great games like Exalted and other White Wolf Games). So I imagine this will get interesting.