HawlSera

This is a bit of a rant, but please try to stick with me through the whole thing

So recently OSRS (Old School Runescape) has joined a list of games that have replaced "Male or Female" with "Body Type A or Body Type B" with you selecting your pronouns secondary.

And it made me furious, but I had to sit down and ask why such a small meaningless thing that I only see during the character creator pisses me off. After all, isn't this giving a seat at the table for Gender Non-Conforming/Non-Binary individuals?

So I tried thinking about this issue from the perspective of a Non-Binary individual. See I myself am female (Transgender MTF for what it's worth), so the only thing I'm ever going to pick is the female option unless I'm doing a challenge run where I try to roleplay Guybrush Threepywood (Mighty Pirate!) while playing Fallout 3...

That's when I realized why I absolutely hate Body Type A/Body Type B

This is not a solution to a problem, this is highlighting the issue.

As a woman, I look at "Body Type A or Body Type B" and think "Well, I'm a woman, not a Body Type B, and isn't it kinda misogynistic that the secondary option is the female one? Like A+ for Men, B- for Women?"

As someone is very much not cisgender, I look at it and go "Well, isn't every FTM going to pick Body Type A with male pronouns while MTFs like myself go with Body Type B with female pronouns? Who outside of a Far Right Troll trying and failing to be funny is gonna pick the buff bearded dude and select the she/her pronouns?"

It was only when I went "Let's pretend I don't exist in a male/female binary and see how I feel about it." that I realized why I absolutely DESPISE Body Type A/Body Type B

Because when I look at it from that angle, I realize that if I am a non-binary individual, my options are to look like an overly buff dude but occasionally NPCs will refer to me as a They/Them, or like an overly curvy chick who again sometimes gets called They/Them....

That's when I realized why Body Type A/Body Type B doesn't do it for me.

Games that do this aren't being progressive or inclusive, they're changing the color of the cup that my drink comes in and pretending it's an entirely new beverage.

I realized that if the choices in Body Type were something like

A - Buff Dude

B - Slim Dude

C - Fat Dude

D - Skinny Androgynous Individual who doesn't need a bra/binder

E - Fat Androgynous Individual who doesn't need a bra/binder

F - Skinny Androgynous Individual who requires bra/binder

G - Fat Androgynous Individual who requires bra/binder

I - Curvy Chick

J - Buff Chick

K - Fat Chick

L - Slim Chick

Maybe have also an option for a big buff masculine dude who has big tits, because that's just how he rolls, I dunno just thinking aloud here....

My point is that gaming could abandon "A/B" in favor of something more like an actual spectrum of Height, Weight, and Gender Presentation instead of just awkwardly renaming the binary? I wouldn't get so up in arms about gender replacing body type.

I don't know what more I have to say on this. I guess it's just a revelation I had about something in gaming that bothers me..

So, wider gaming community. What do you think? Am I onto something or is this all crazy talk?

I played a little of it when I first got it, but then I heard that it's better to patch it. So I joined the discord for it and figured I'd look into that later. Well later turned into years, eventually I left the discord server to make space for other servers and never did wind up going back to Arcanum.

Now I'm really getting into Fallout thanks to the show, and I've heard many people say that if I like Fallout to try Arcanum.

So I tried to get back into the Discord, however I found I've been banned. Which is odd, it's not like I got into a bad situation with an admin or anything. I pretty much never interacted with anyone. So I can only assume they saw that I was there for so long and assumed I was a bot (Or maybe someone got a DM from me back when my account was hacked), and I can't get a hold of anyone to get back in.

I've heard that if I want to enjoy the game to find the multiverse edition, but apparently that's hosted on the Discord I can't get into.

Is it worth trying to track down an alternative means of playing that patch? And is the game really as good as they say?

Thanks in advance.

Yours Truly, Queen HawlSera

So a couple months back I was randomly approached on Steam from someone claimed to be someone from a company called Maple Leaf Studio looking for playtesters for a game of theirs, and that because I had so many hours in Hades and Cult of the Lamb I'd be perfect for it.

I at first thought this was some kind of scam like those "Bro, join my TF2 team, sign up through this website, we can win so much money bro! Totally not stealing your account information!" (Especially since they kept flipflopping to being from Leap Studio to Maple Leaf Studio, wasn't clear which they were from)

But I heard them out and saw they were legit, so they had me sign an NDA and I got a Steam Key for an early build of their game Realm of Ink. It's pretty cool, not much I can say because of how early the build I played was... but I would say it plays a lot like Hades.

The gimmick seems to be that you have this pet made of ink that changes to a different animal with a different fighting style depending on what power-ups you grab, and other than that seems to play a lot like Hades if you're into that. It was pretty fun and kind of exciting, I had never done anything like this before since I'm not some big youtuber.

The graphics are pretty cool too, there's this Eastern theme, and the whole game looks like it was drawn on an old Chinese scroll of some kind.

Anyway, one of the members of the dev team I'd been reporting bugs and suggesting ideas for (I suggested an easter egg where you could light campfires that were strewn about the stages by using a fire based attack, I don't know if they added that in), told me that I was free from the NDA and was allowed to openly talk about it, so I figured I'd make a post here and signal boost the game... Especially since an updated version of the demo I played is now public and can be downloaded from their Steam page (link here - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2597080/Realm_of_Ink/)

For the record don't ask me questions about future plans for the game or its development history, I do not work for them, I make no money off of the game, the game isn't even out yet, and I don't know if there's a release date, I just wanted to talk about my first experience playtesting a game intended for commericial release and share the demo now that it's public

Basically one year after the game was said to be never updated again, this giant bug fix and balance update just drops without any warning. And this happens just as the Microsoft deal is finalized and Bobby is leaving Activision at the end of the year.

This left many fans wondering if the MOBA would be returning, as Microsoft hinted at wanting to possibly explore or Revitalize old intellectual properties after the blizzard deal went through.

So since I can't find a dedicated Heroes of the Storm bored on lemmy, I figured I would just make this post and see if anyone else believes we may truly be going back to the Nexus.

The one based on the anime, the developers sounded very passionate about it and very optimistic about it doing well enough for a sequel. But a lot of the early reviewers have panned it pretty hard.

So I was wondering if anyone here had played it and could give me an account of their own experiences with the title.

Infinity Stash Dragon Quest Dai is the name of the game.

I got it expecting to hate it, but as I kept playing, I found myself legitimately enjoying it. Not begrudgingly enjoying it, not enjoying it outside of one or two small details, but actually being engaged in the story and gameplay. Which leads me to wondering why people had a problem with this game in the first place again?

I only knew Us for a tutorial I kept reloading until I was sure what was up with the brain, but if anything ever happened to him (I'm guessing he's a he?) I would kill everyone in the Forgotten Realms, and then myself.

So I am an avid watcher of Tubi, the last remaining ethical streaming service.

Lately it has been recommending me sitcoms of the 1960s, and so far I've really been finding myself surprisingly enjoying this look into the past. Gilligan's island, The Jetsons, and bewitched.

I was watching The Jetsons today before work just to have Some Noise playing whilst I ingested my ramen noodles before work. Given that this is a sitcom about the future and how American society as pictured in the 1960s would adapt if the Space Age Promises of Tomorrow held true.

Not that kind of got me thinking, the Jetsons is very much in the ballpark of flintstones, it's a modern family, in a time period that people of the 1960s would not consider modern. Now Flintstones doesn't really need to be updated, because it's set in a fictionalized stone age. You would not have to do much to update it if you wanted to do a modern take on that setting.

But what about the Jetsons? Now let's say you were put in charge of making this reboot happen? How would you do it?

Would you be overly self aware and make jokes about a lot of future predictions that didn't come true? Would you try to make it a sitcom version of Star Trek, like lower decks, but featuring a family instead of the D Squad?

Or maybe do something a bit more serious?

I want to hear from you, this is a message board for movies and TV shows, so let's Flex those creative muscles, how would you make a new movie or TV show about the Jetsons?

I got excited until I realized they meant the reboot and not the first game in the series....

I bought Mega Man X Dive Offline, really hyped for it, but then when I double checked my VPN, I realized it was set for the Netherlands.... Not good, I thought I had it set for the US as per usual.

Now it still showed the price in USD, but now I'm paranoid, I put in a refund explaining the situation and promising I'd buy it with the VPN turned off this time..

How fucked am I?

Recently got a VPN because I've become increasingly paranoid (It's getting crazy out there), but.... is it a bannable offense to use it while on Steam?

I'm finding mixed answers, and I wanna be safe, so I figured the Fediverse might know.

So here is the issue, I use Google Drive because I am a writer who does a lot of writing. And I thought the cloud was a reliable way to store my writing, however now Google is looking through it's to train their ai. And I'm worried about that, especially since I have written a lot of questionable content, porn and the like. What if Google Now arbitrarily decides that I'm not using Google Drive properly and bans me from the Google, that's not good. What should I do and what alternatives can I use? Will these Alternatives still be around in like 10 years?