We can do this together.

Let's do a lil thread where we name drop games w black leads/take inspo from black culture/talk about black culture !

I wanna know more black games !

I'll start:

Relooted is a good one. Shout out Nyamakop for making this game, I think it it's an excellent way to start conversations around Repatriation among folks outside of my circle. Also !!! THE ART, MAN, THE ARTTTTTT

There's also Sword Of Symphony, though it's still in development (it's literally just one guy doing everything)

I like the way that game is literally just. Playing w music notations. It feels like a music conservatory theory exam final boss. Like great, you passed everything. Okay now play Sword Of Symphony. XD

We can't forget South Of Midnight, of course. Absolutely love that game for its world building (once again, the ARTTTTTT), the storytelling, the CHARACTER & COSTUME DESIGN OUGHHHHHHH

Aaaaaand off the top of my head (for now), Hell Clock !!

I'm not well versed in Brazilian history, and the only reason I discovered this game is bc I like roguelikes. And boom, this game throws historical events at you and throws some fantasy in there as well, with a side of black Brazilian hoodoo and EYE, for one, am a fan. If you liked Hades & its sequel you would like this too. Heck, if you liked Sinners and you dabble in games here n there you would like this too.

• "I can't afford any quality masks, they're too expensive!" → mask blocs around the world will give out free masks. Some will ship across the country, you don't even have to be a local. Go to maskbloc.org to find your nearest ones!

• "They're just too uncomfy!" → I promise you, being bed bound and highly immunocompromised with myalgic encephalomyelitis will be far more uncomfortable. You can practice wearing masks in low risk situations like your house. The fit of the mask you wear also impacts how comfy you feel. Again, contact a mask bloc that can offer you a few different mask styles to try out.

• "I don't like how they look!" → okay? Who cares? This is about not killing you and your community. If your aesthetic is ruined by a mask then I fear you outfit game is weak anyways. You can also get different colours and styles of masks. So. Suck it up. ????

• "I don't like being asked questions about why I'm masking! It's awkward!" → work on a short script that you can spit out anytime anyone asks you questions. It doesn't have to go into detail. It can be as short and sweet as "I'm tired of getting sick all the time". If people are rude, that's on them. Ignore and carry on with your life.

• "I don't like feeling like the odd one out!" → you are living a life of privilege where you can still go outside and experience settings outside of severe Disability. You are positioned well enough that you're more afraid of being viewed as "different" socially. The people who've already been disabled by COVID do not have this privilege. I think you can suck up feeling "odd" for the sake of Not Dying.

• "I just don't see the point!" → Are you fucking for real?? You are rawdogging a world with an active pandemic going on. Multiple pandemics, depending on where you are in the world. The point is not dying or killing the people you come into contact with. If that's not enough of a motivator, consider that you'll have less sick days if you don't breathe in pathogens every single day of your life.

• "But my government doesn't think it's an issue!" (Turtle Island and UK people) → oh, you mean the government that's committing democide and has spent the last few years openly funding and backing genocides abroad? The government that's openly killing Disabled citizens? That's the government you're trusting to have your best interests at heart? Yeah. Okay. Maybe you should reconsider that stance before your neck is on the chopping block with the rest of us.

New addition to the Trans Guy Archive!

Performative self-flagellation over being white is not a substitute for doing serious introspection about the ways you have been complicit in or rewarded by a white-supremacist society, nor doing the work to dismantle white supremacy.

Hello howdy hi! I’ve maybe mentioned it before, but I have congenital hyposmia! That means I have an extremely reduced ability to smell things (basically nonexistent except for once in a blue moon) and have been like this for as long as I can remember. For reference, having no sense of smell is called anosmia. Smell disorders gained some publicity during the height of the COVID 19 pandemic, but anosmic characters are still pretty rare. I reached out to @cripplecharacters and they encouraged me to write out some of my own experiences for folks interested in writing anosmic characters, so here we are!

As a caveat, I am but one person with one perspective and can only talk about my own experiences. For more information, you can also visit the r/anosmia community on reddit; though, as of writing, the latest post was published a year ago. If you have any other questions, feel free to shoot them my way, I'd be happy to take a crack at them (though I am in no way a medical expert, haha)!

"oh, that makes sense."

Serves 6 | 55 mins | One-pan recipe (under the cut)

X

if you've made replies on posts there is now a tab on your blog showing every post youve replied to and your reply.

if this is not what you want, either go to your blog and click comments and disable it from there or just go to your individual blogs setting pages. just change it from blue to grey if you dont want everyone to see your replies AND the post you're replying to

PLEASE BE ADVISED that it is set to disabled for blogs that have not made any replies but it will turn ON if you reply with that blog in the future.! i just tested it with my main, which was greyed out but it turned on the moment i left a test reply

so couple of clarifications. comments are disabled as default for primary blogs that have their likes disabled. they are seemingly enabled for all other blogs that have replied to posts

The Wretched of the Earth

Discourse On Colonialism

Making Space for Indigenous Feminism

Settlers: The Mythology Of The White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern

Red Skin, White Masks : Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition

Borderlands/La Frontera

As We Have Always Done

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Books I couldn't find on the archive but still recommend you purchase or check out at the library:

Theoretical goal of banning things you find uncomfortable as a CC:

Bad things you don't like will stop being made and existing about you/your character.

Actual outcomes of banning things you find uncomfortable as a CC:

Bad things you don't like will Still Exist.

Subsets of your community will harass & abuse other fans. Trolls will make upsetting bait content that devoted fans feel a duty to engage with & fight against. Well-intentioned fans who don't know the rules exist will break them and get yelled at. People will arbitrarily interpret rules to bludgeon other fans' headcanons & send hate campaigns after each other. This WILL happen, no matter how many times you caveat with 'but don't harass anyone': You have issued an edict whose only enforcement mechanism is harassment.

Some of the fans who are most viciously defensive of your rules will still create stuff you find uncomfortable. Life finds a way. If you ban peanut butter, the fandom will create a series of intricate excuses as to why ground peanuts with sugar added is totally a different thing, and moreover how dare you imply they would break boundaries. The stuff you dislike won't stop being made, it will just be mislabeled and harder to avoid.

Artists will inevitably make cool shit that technically breaks your boundaries but Is Cool. Engaging with it will get that artist harassed for ignoring your boundaries (even if you say this one is fine).

Less people will engage with your work. You will have a smaller audience and much more limited free advertisement.

Everyone following the rules will create a constant need for judgment about things at the edge of your comfort zone. 'Ask for permission' means you have given yourself a part-time job arbitrating to strangers on whether it's okay to draw you mad at another minecraft guy.

More earnestly: By and large the people who are most online, who take boundaries seriously and actually care about seeking permission, are teens and very young adults. That's who you're setting rules for and telling that they can't depict certain things. The kinksters and smut writers and grown-ass adults are generally going to be unaffected, because their self-esteem doesn't hinge on the approval of a Twitch streamer.

Genuine question: Do you want to have to stare at an ask on Tumblr and consider whether to give permission for some 14-year-old to write a fic about your character self-harming or having cancer or being sexually assaulted? To say yes or no, while knowing that this person is probably asking not out of prurient interest, but because it makes them feel a little less alone to imagine an older, stronger character going through what they are?

That is the actual effect of setting those rules.

(The better boundary, btw, is 'I don't want to see things that make me uncomfortable': it's still not perfectly enforceable unless you entirely abstain from the internet, but it is much more actionable than 'make that stuff stop existing'. Having a dedicated 'don't look' tag blocked solves a lot of problems. Another strategy would be letting friends/trusted fan-acquaintances vet the best work and send it to you to gush about, rather than scrolling your tags at random.)

Close, sustained contact.

That, health officials have repeatedly said, is the only way that the Andes hantavirus, which caused an outbreak on a cruise ship and has gripped the world’s attention, spreads among people.

“You have to be in close contact with someone who has a lot of symptoms,” Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview on Fox News.

But scientists who have studied hantaviruses for decades are far less certain about how the virus might behave.

They agree with health officials that the Andes virus is not particularly contagious and is unlikely to spur a bigger outbreak. But they said research has shown that under certain circumstances, the virus can be transmitted without direct contact.

“It’s important to be honest scientifically and communicate that, because otherwise you lose credibility,” said Steven Bradfute, a viral immunologist and hantavirus expert at the University of New Mexico.

In an interview, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, acknowledged that officials have emphasized close contact as the way the virus spreads to avoid panicking people over rarer possibilities.

I've tried to use product promotion or visualiser images where possible to avoid having photographs of any individual's chair; where that's not possible because visualisers don't have every option, I've tried to use photos from second-hand resellers. Image descriptions are in alt text.

Active chairs can have tall backrests.

They might be with or without lateral supports (at the sides to help keep the torso upright). Note that tall backrests often taper to free the shoulders more, so people may still push independently. Pictured: Quickie 5R with Spex Mantaray backrest, Motion Composites Apex with NXT X-Tend backrest. The Spex is much higher support than the NXT.

Active chairs can have headrests.

Nothing wrong with supporting the neck and head. Doesn't make anyone less of an independent active person if they need positioning support. Can even keep people active longer - being able to sit upright does wonders for daily activity compared to sliding into a melted puddle or not being able to hold your head and neck up. Pictured: Ki Mobility Rogue XP (blue) and Tilite Z (pink).

Active chairs can have armrests.

There's even different types, like tubular swing-away armrests and single-post armrests. They can be positioned to not interfere with propelling, or be removable. Pictured: Quickie Nitrum/Quickie Nitrum Hybrid; tubular armrest on blue chair, single-post armrest on orange chair.

Active chairs can have handles.

Sometimes they're attached to the top of the back canes (the posts the backrest is attached to), and sometimes they attach to the rigidiser bar (the horizontal bar between the back canes) or lower down the back canes to keep them out of the way of the user's shoulders. And not having handles does not prevent strangers pushing people. Pictured: Kuschall K-Series; integrated push handles on black and red chair, clamp on handles on pink chair.

Active chairs can have anti-tippers.

Yes, many active users choose not to use them because it makes wheelies easier, but they're very useful for saving you from unexpected falls, and there's nothing wrong with having them. Many are removable and some swing up out of the way to allow wheelies or going backwards down a kerb. Pictured: Tilite Z.

Active chairs can have different frame angles.

No, seriously, 90 degree frame angle can actually kind of suck. That's a really tight angle to have your knees at all day every day, and a lot of people find that painful or it can risk complications. 90 degrees is good for maneuverability, but it's too tight for most users. It's common to see angles from 90 degrees to 70 degrees. Pictured: Kuschall Champion; 90 degree angle on green chair, 70 degree angle on blue chair.

If you're wanting to understand the different parts that can make up an active manual chair, whether because you're a wheelchair user wanting to be informed ahead of a prescription appointment or someone designing a character, try tinkering with the options in Sunrise Medical's Quickie Nitrum visualiser or the several models in the Kuschall visualiser. Being able to see what the options are really helps.