Many thoughts, all incomprehensible

i was talking about this on my server earlier but i really think "cozy" is one of the worst genre labels out there in the gaming space. like people dunk on the terms "metroidvania" and "first person shooter" a lot for being uncreative or limiting but at least those are like... falsifiable descriptors. you can look at a game and go "yeah this game's mechanics and core gameplay loop generally operate like metroid/castlevania" or "yeah this game primarily uses a first person camera paired with some sort of projectile weapon" so i don't think they're completely useless. but "cozy" is just nonsense. fully subjective. i see a lot of games popularly labeled as "cozy" that share almost zero mechanical features between them and don't even always match in tone or aesthetic. hearing a game described as "cozy" doesn't tell you anything about what to expect as a player beyond maybe giving you a sort of forewarning about the fanbase and their discomfort tolerance. "cozy" is not a quantifiable metric. like imagine if someone offered to buy you takeout and asked you what kind of food you'd like and you told them fully unironically, and with no further elaboration, "i want to get yummy food." that's what hearing "cozy games" sounds like to me

i especially chafe at the way "cozy games" just seems like a "woke" way to say "girl games" and conflate certain game mechanics or aesthetics with a non-cis/het/male identity (to equally useless effect from a buyer's pov). gender stereotyping by any other name is still gender stereotyping. i'm not cis het or male, but i've spent decades enjoying pvp shooters and feel bored to tears by cutesy cottagecore farming sims. and i find those pvp shooters very "cozy" to play, too! @_@;

If anyone would like to read a thorough take down of Sparta as a state not worth emulating, then ive got just the series of articles for you!

Reblogging because pissing on Sparta is one of my hobbies. And yes, totally check out the link above. Brett has a lot of great discussion and scholarship on why Sparta was proto-fascist garbage, and he presents it with both snark and accessibility.

Holy shit. That’s… that’s worse than I thought it would be. Yikes.

Reblogging because more people should read the ACOUP Sparta takedown and fewer people should get their concept of history from fucking 300.

No one should get their concept of history from 300, and I say that as someone who enjoyed 300. 300 is a comicbookification of a legend, and legends are already exaggerations.

A Great Divorce has also done an audio version of the ACOUP Spart takedown if audio is easier for you!

check this out i'm playing bad apple in your imagination

reblog to play bad apple on your mutuals

i'm like a fujoshi but for dead people

It's interesting that talking about how transmascs are incentivized to participate in misogyny is "dividing the community" and a "CIA psyop", but them actually participating in that misogyny isn't.

"christian characters in movies are poorly written because the writers are atheist" "atheist characters in movies are poorly written because the writers are christian" stop fighting. all human experience is poorly written in movies because the writers are californian

getting an endo who reliably prescribes estrogen and prog is a godsent but it's always a little weird hearing him repeatedly describe my hormone levels as "beautiful."

no one cares that you shave your legs because of sensory issues shut the fuck up forever

really galling amount of people misinterpreting this post so i'd like to clarify. i'm saying that when discussions about patriarchal beauty standards and the way women are heavily shamed and coerced into eschewing their own natural state of being (hairy) are occurring, it is unhelpful (AT BEST) to interrupt and say that the reason YOU remove the hair from your body is because of sensory issues. that's not what we're talking about. stop asking for validation for doing something that society at large wants you to do. stop derailing the conversation because you feel uncomfortable about being made aware that you, for whatever reason it is, adhere to harmful, unfair and ridiculous beauty standards. you're stepping into the middle of an important conversation that needs to be had and making it all about you. shut the fuck up forever.

also quite frankly i think a lot less people would experience sensory issues if they let their hair grow out so that it isn't bristly and rough and irritating. and i cannot help but wonder why these sensory issues aren't as predominant in men. maybe you're uncomfortable with the hair on your body because you've been taught to be uncomfortable with it. just a thought.