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"some vague shade of brown" are you kidding me? "SOME VAGUE SHADE OF BROWN"??? Ever hear complaints about "some vague shade of white"? White people's ethnicities don't matter because they're just normal people! I guess I'm "some vague shade of brown"! If only I could just make up my mind already! (seriously, Aliph's skin tone is similar to my brother's or what mine was like when I spent more time outside like Aliph does. And Aliph's facial features are more or less a similar shape as my own, exaggerated and simplified). What counts as a "specific--not vague" shade of brown? What the hell? Comics/animation/games theorists have long lauded the theory that pared down and simplified features allow people to project themselves into the emotions and actions of a character more fully, but apparently that stops working once the character is not white! Then we all feel cheated by the character's ambiguous ethnicity, because if we don't know if they're Mexican or Asian, how are we going to shoehorn them into the proper flat roles and gags???

Anyway, that is what I was trying to do with Aliph, make a fairly non-extreme player avatar. Aliph's personality is mild, because it's more about allowing the player to interact with more extreme characters/worlds/environments through Aliph than it is about creating a drama around Aliph as a character. Aliph is not supposed to be edgy. Lots of people have dyed hair... it's just a thing people do... I mean especially in video games, characters have colored hair. it's not about trying really hard to be edgy. It's just one of many ways people express themselves. Aliph is wearing pretty normal padded armor sort of construction-y clothing because she's a mechanic... maybe slightly anime inspired or whatever. Anyway who cares I don't need to explain myself point by point, but half the things on that list don't even apply to Aliph and basically Amos is taking issue with a female player avatar that is not white, not thin, and has dyed hair?

Here. I'll admit that superficially there are some similarities between that quick drawing I made of Aliph and that "generic animation cartoon person". I saw that and it did make me feel bad and defensive. But really think about it. Would I have gotten this response if Aliph was wearing similar stuff but was a simplified white dude or girl? Or would you just be like "cool whatever" because it just looks like a normal video game character? Or maybe I might have been given the benefit of the doubt that I had reasons for my design choices!?!?

That's what fucking gets to me. I spend my WHOLE FUCKING LIFE trying to make meaningful artistic decisions, trying to connect with people in ways that respect their intelligence, but I guess by accidentally using a couple "not-cliché cliché" whatever signifiers off a list of things some random person is tired of I automatically deserve to lose all benefit of the doubt, deserve to be accused of pandering, of jumping on a bandwagon that I didn't know existed, of being boring, uncreative, etc.

And don't get me wrong, this is not some abstract/random list of cliché qualities. This post is largely mocking visual markers that deviate from a thin white cishet male-dominated visual world. And it's mocking the people who desire this type of imagery. The author defends it as simply attacking boring artists, but the post just oozes that special resentment/disgust reserved for people who are really starved for representation and appreciate when (even imperfect) representation exists. Amos then does even worse than the post by applying it when the ONLY relevant visual markers are those that deviate from a thin white cishet male dominated visual world (e.g. Aliph is clearly wearing a functional uniform, not hipster thrift store clothing).

So where are all these chubby brown protagonists? I don't see them on Netflix! I don't see them on Steam! I don't see them at the movie theater! Where is this multitude, so strong in numbers as to become utterly trite and redundant? If I had ever in my life played a game with a character who looked like Aliph, maybe I'd have used a different design.

I take my first steps. The squishy ground forms footprints that gradually disappear. I value my tracks, for grounding me in my motion, especially in the sparser pink fields, and for allowing me to make a mark, however impermanent.

I find buildings, I find plants, I find people. Sometimes I don't know if a squiggle friend is sentient until I walk up and try to speak with them. We make small talk but I'm not sure if we understand each other at all. I assume the silent squiggles are foliage... rubble... but maybe they are simply silent people.

I overlap myself with everything in sight. Sometimes my overlapping builds. Sometimes my overlapping destroys. I gasp audibly when I am crystallized, or when my overlapping spawns a dozen tiny creatures in an enclosed space. Overlapping is intimate. I cannot stand at a distance and decide what to do. I can only overlap or not, and once I have overlapped, the damage is done and I am too close to ignore it. I cannot get away from the newly crumbling person fast enough to avoid the shards of their body, which stick in my hair. 

I can always overlap... but more than that, I can never not overlap. Every wall is permeable. Every place is penetrable. Everything is permissible. Gates and mounds may slow me down, crossing space-holes may make me a flailing, white creature, but there is no place where I am simply stopped. I am led by glimpses and intuition, not walled passageways. I may even walk off the edge of the world.