ayyy what up it's me

Would this count as a Tally HO moment or something more along the lines of a Yeehaw moment?

by the way you can be a girl, a boy, AND gender neutral, all at the same time

by the way you can be EVERY gender, all at the same time, just identifying as all of them

by the way you can be NO gender, yep, if you want; not even "nonbinary" if you don't want to

by the way you can be COMPLETELY a boy PLUS something else

by the way you can be COMPLETELY a girl PLUS something else

by the way you can be a gender themed after something that means a lot to you

by the way you can be a gender related to your neurodivergency

by the way you can be a gender related to your species (for alterhumans)

by the way you can be fluid between VERY specific genders

by the way you can be flux between one gender or another only

by the way you be completely one of the options above WHILE having a gender that fully contradicts it

by the way you can have a gender SPLIT between two or way more genders

by the way you can have your gender set to "just whatever I feel convenient to call myself" without being genderfluid

by the way you can have no label at all

by the way you can make up labels or just completely frankenstein genders together until somethings make you comfortable

You hate it.

It looks terrible on you and you've always thought that. When you were really young, you thought that's just what everyone thought about their hair colour. When you were a teenager, people chalked it up to hormones and wanting to be unique and follow the trends of dying your hair. It wasn't.

You've seen people with brown hair. It looks so good. You start imagining yourself with beautiful brunette hair. What if you could be that? And then you hear someone talk about you, call you 'that blonde over there' or someone telling you, 'your blonde hair looks so good!' and you're reminded all over again.

Your parents talk about something. Something you've never heard of before. "All those young kids, dying hair everywhere," they say. You ask them what it means. "Oh, that's when someone with one hair colour thinks they're better off with another hair colour." Your heart lights up. There's more people like you. You're not insane. And then- "Fucking insane. They just want to feel special. All this ridiculousness over trends." It hits you in the heart. You say nothing, just mumble an 'okay' and turn your attention back to your food.

That night, you're scrolling on your phone, and one video pops out. It's talking about dyed hair. You see people not just with natural-coloured dyed hair, but blues and greens and so many other colours. It looks beautiful. You remember your blonde hair. Could it finally be brown? These people are like you. They might be able to help.

You do research. You reach out to people online. And finally, you have your hands on a box dye from a store. it's not the highest quality, but you have it. At midnight the next weekend, you do it. You dye it brown. It's messy and tricky, but your heart is swelling with joy the entire time.

You expect people at school to be happy. Your hair is beautiful. You're beautiful. You finally feel comfort in your hair, confident in the way you look. Instead, you get side-eyes. People whisper and glare. One of your friends pulls you aside. "What happened to your hair?" You tell her you dyed it. Asks her if it looks nice. She grimaces. "Yeah... it looks fine.... but your blonde hair was your natural hair colour and it looked fine as well." You tell her the truth. How you've always hated it on you. Found brown to be so, so much prettier. Looked so much more amazing on you, and felt it too. "Yeah... but blonde is still your natural hair colour, right? No amount of dye is going to change that." Your confidence starts to sink. Will everyone think this?

Turns out, they will. You hear people still refer to you as "that blonde there". New people express confusion. "But her hair's brown? It's very clearly brown." "Well, yeah, but she dyed it. Her natural hair colour is blonde." "Oh... okay."

Your parents don't like it. "Your blonde hair was so beautiful," your mother sobs through her tears. "Why did you have to ruin it? My beautiful blonde child is gone! Gone forever! Why did you do it?" And you tell her that her child is not gone, her child is right here, just with different hair. She doesn't listen to a single word. Your father is mad. He yells at you to get out of his house, that you're a fucking disgrace, that you're mentally ill and brainwashed by trends and so many other hurtful things. You can only leave.

You try to go to another friend's place. She answers the door with a scowl. "Why are you here?" she seethes. She's angry. Why? You tell her about your situation. "Serves you right," she spits. "You're incredibly offensive to everyone with blonde hair." You ask her why, puzzled. "You clearly hate blonde hair. Why else would you dye it? Do you find blonde people disgusting?" No, no, that's not it. Blonde people are fine, you try saying. It just didn't suit me. I wish it did, but it didn't, so I changed it. "Stop twisting everything," she says. "I don't want to see your face." The door closes and you're left there on the steps.

You don't know what else to do. Were you truly lying? No, blonde hair has never suited you. Brown looks better. Brown makes you feel secure. You feel it's what makes you feel like yourself. But why can no one grasp that?

You search up more on your phone, and you find a community for similar people. People thrown out, disowned, abused for dying their hair or expressing wants to. When you get there, you find that they accept you with the warmest smiles and the coziest hugs. You find people that bleached their brown hair to blonde and dyed their blonde hair to brown, just like you, and they look so amazing. You find people with all sorts of coloured hair too, red, blue, yellow, purple, multicoloured and hair that gets redyed differently depending on the day. They all have similar stories. You've finally found a place you belong.

Outside, people are still outraged. They scream at the community that they're brainwashing their kids, that they're grooming every kid to dye their hair until there's no natural hair kids left. You don't feel hurt anymore. You know now they make no sense. They push out their own children, and this is the result. They don't want people with dyed hair banding up together.

Brown hair has always suited you. You're rather tired of people trying to pretend it doesn't.

Minors can be polyamorous. Minors can have polyamorous parents or other relatives. Minors are not harmed in any way by exposure of polyamory. I knew I was polyamorous by the age of 12. I felt extraordinarily othered by the lack of representation.

Polyamory isn't inherently some super explicit NSFW thing.

It's literally no different from the "don't let same-gender relationships exist in video games!" argument.

People act like group sex, swinging, and sexual open relationships are all that exist. But polyamory can occur in non-sexual manners (romantic, queerplatonic, etc), and monogamy can occur in purely sexual manners. Neither are "inherently" sexual.

How great would it be to have characters tell you "I want to pursue [insert character]. Should I talk to [current partners] about it?" and then you can encourage or discourage them, and if you encourage them, then you get a little cutscene of them talking to their current partners about wanting to add a new member to the relationship?

It would teach children and uneducated people SO MUCH about consent and communication in polyamory.

"Well, I wouldn't want my miis to be polyamorous" then make them monogamous? In a hypothetical like this, the options would be:

-Closed monogamous (wants a monogamous partner)

-Open monogamous (doesn't mind having a polyamorous partner)

-Ambiamorous (fine with polyamory or monogamy. Add a partner amount or a "no limit" option for the possibility of polyamory occuring.)

-Polyamorous (and then you'd select how many partners the character is interested in having, or a "no limit" option.)

Its literally no different from having the "what genders will they date" option.

"But I like the cutscenes of them fighting over the person!" That could still happen, if the miis dislike each other, or one of them has the "closed monogamy" setting on.

(Also, it would be nice if the game had a "don't date this person" option in the "real life connection" settings, so you wouldn't have to make everyone you don't want to date into "family" and play mind games with the system to try and avoid unwanted partnering.)

And before you get on my ass about how this would be hard to program in the game now - I know. I'm talking about FUTURE representation. I'm talking about how nice it would be if games started to actually think about us! I know it's likely not even possible in the game with how it was programmed, but it would be WONDERFUL to be thought of in the future.

Other queer issues with the game:

1- You can only have a character be nonbinary in the creation menu. None of the babies of miis are nonbinary unless you edit their profiles - they reinforce the idea that everyone is born either a "girl" or "boy", and that non-binary is something that comes "later." And while that may be true for some enben, a lot of enben also feel they were *born* nonbinary!

2- All babies are born straight and gender conforming, unless edited in their mii menu.

3- When you select a mii as "male" it automatically selects their dating preferences as female, and vice versa for when you select a mii as female. When you select a mii as nonbinary, it leaves their dating preferences blank. Yes, you can change their dating preferences, but it's weird of them to have a heteronormative "default." Same thing happens with pronouns and clothes worn during events.

4- There's no ability to select multiple sets of pronouns. There's no it/its pronouns. And worst of all, there's no customizable pronouns! That especially pisses me off, because they literally have customizable sentences throughout the game! Its not unfounded for the games programming! How hard would it be to have a menu where you type three words (ie; xe/xem/xers) and it inputs the pronouns in the correct places? The game is so close already with the customized phrases!

5- You cannot select multiple genders for a character. You cannot make a character female and nonbinary, male and nonbinary, female & male & nonbinary, etc. I get that they probably did this because they wanted an easier time determining what characters would be attracted to who, but I pose that if a character is attracted to women, and another character has "woman" as one of their genders, let them get a crush! (Or if you're so worried about it, have it where only people attracted to both women & enben can get a crush on someone with both those options selected.)

So it's definitely doable, and while I get the whold 'but if they're multigender how will the game know who they can be with', I really dont feel like it's that big an issue? Like, it reminds me of a conversation I had tried to explain that agender people could indeed date, and not having a gender doesnt mean no one can date them. As far as I know, tomodachi also lets you as the player decide to encourage or snuff ouf crushes right? So a character getting a crush on a character you dont want shouldn't be a big deal if you can simply tell them not to? But I genuinely dont know so feel free to correct me on this one.

Also about polyamoury, Paralives, which is a game in early access on steam did this well. They let you decide if the character is jealous if their significant other dates someone else or not. You could probably combine that with a max amount of partners the mii wants to be with, and you already got all the possible combinations op discussed + the not date anyone option.

Additionally, if a character can randomly be born a girl or a boy, then they can also randomly be born non binary. I was very much always non binary and I know others who experienced that as well. I assume they dont make a sex and gender distinction, which Id like to bring up, leaves intersex people in the dust.

Also, the idea of a type of relationship being inherently sexual is one of the main arguments against gay couples in public, because it's historically been seen as inherently sexual, so. And there are very much gay minors playing the game, so there are polyamorous ones.