Salvete Omnes

Link to the game is in the reblog so tumblr doesn’t eat the post

This fangame starts immediately after the ending of Halfway to Infinity and lets you lead both Taylor and T2 to some definition of home, hopefully, whatever you three define it to be.

Story by @pekasairroc and @sugar-splenda

Art by Sugar-Splenda

maybe they adopt other people’s practices as ~cool quirky aesthetics~ that come and go like fads. because they love sharing and expressing their own faith in personalized ways! they love trying new things! how could it possibly be disrespectful? things fall in and out of fashion. they have traditions and rituals and symbols but they’re never cemented in place as immutable fixtures of the faith. and that’s a sign of growth, flexibility, and individuality! it seems so strange to just do ONE THING forever, right??

but maybe things that are rich and meaningful in another culture/religion get swallowed up, stripped of the depth of their history and context, decoupled from their origins as they’re passed around, until they’re absorbed into the miasma of “different ways to express your faith in the Change God” that ~someone, somewhere~ came up with.

i think most Vaugardians would ACT like that’s the case. this can't be a REAL problem, can it? everyone is free to choose how and when they change! of course we support people who don't change in these specific ways, too :) isn't that obvious? oh dear, we thought that was obvious! thank you for telling us, so sorry for the misunderstanding, but well, now you know you have nothing to worry about (you were worrying about nothing)!

i think, always, about how Bonnie said they HAD to get their ears pierced when they were younger. how the Vaugardians in the party didn't even consider that earrings might be so standard in their cultural fashion norms BECAUSE earrings are directly linked to their bonding customs. which of course just about everyone does eventually, and even if they don't, it's just fashion, right? :) it doesn't really mean anything nasty or insidious. (if earrings were really just accessories, why wouldn't children be given the choice of what to do with their bodies? why would they have to get them?)

Mirabelle is neither sheltered nor naive. she has the biggest social network out of the entire party, she has taken over a hundred classes, she loves reading and studying and learning. but she didn't even know that other people like her existed. their voices aren't heard, their stories aren't known. that's pretty telling!!!

how many other customs, turns of phrase, story tropes, etc. are constantly and subtly reinforcing the pressures that Mirabelle was feeling, just in ways that are invisible to people who are raised into them? people who have the privilege to be supported and validated by them instead of minimized and dismissed?

i think Vaugardians would be plenty eager to change things and accommodate the Savior of Vaugarde on a surface level, but they would struggle to identify deeper structural causes that need addressing in the long term. the relaxed and lackadaisical attitude resulting in not taking people's concerns seriously, or seeing it as an individual problem rather than a collective issue that's worth spending the time and effort to thoroughly understand. (obviously people can just choose not to wear earrings anymore when they grow up! but isn't it still easier to just give everyone piercings when they're young?) even followers of a religion that prides itself on its capacity for Change aren't immune to stubbornness or being stuck in their limited worldview. we see that with how the party treats Siffrin and his beliefs, and that's certainly not resolved the second they become aware of a problem existing.

i think part of the dismissal is the idea that the Change Belief is shown as so accepting of other identities (they’re completely normalized, there aren’t even any specific labels being used to differentiate them), and in theory it SEEMS like it should be able to just Change to accommodate more, because that’s their whole thing, right? why would they fight Change of any kind, especially if it would make people’s lives better? they love doing that! easy! seems like the problem should be solved as soon as they know about it!

but if it were that simple it wouldn’t be a problem in the first place. if there weren’t SOME kind of culturally-ingrained resistance to the very concepts presented by asexuality & aromanticism, they wouldn’t be invisible within the culture. maybe it would just be another part of the bonding conversation, like the way they casually mention “if there are more than three partners, they all get a design.” something like “some people choose not to wear earrings to indicate they’re not interested in bonding,” or “some people exchange other accessories to show that the bond isn’t romantic in nature.” they'd have a PRESENCE even without a label, just like all the other queer identities we see in the game.

here's mickey, goofy, donald, and chip & dale. yeah they turned mickey & friends into anime boys. they're an idol unit or something. they're technically not anime boy versions of the source characters, they have different names. mickey's guy is "Neo Michel". not michael, michel, like he's french. chip & dale are "Ruska Moncrief" and "Ranka Monk", they have different last names, they're not brothers anymore so that they can be yaoibait instead, anyways this post isn't actually about these guys I'm just setting the stage for the actual humanizations I wanted to show you

They also did monsters inc. And. Well it's obvious from the designs who mike and sully are. but you will also notice. the blonde one on the left. with glasses. monsters inc is kind of famously about just the two guys so they didn't really have a lot of other non-villain characters to take anime boys inspiration from, I guess, so, well,

A cutieful witch

A Vampire's desire

The witch of the midwest, Tammy Harris by fellow Indie Showrunner Dana Terrace (Insta @ danaterrace)

The Three Tomes is a Queer YA coming of age series about a bi black teen witch fighting monsters and falling for vampires. Support The Three Tomes on Kickstarter.

NOT THE CRABS WE EXPECTED BUT STILL SOME CRABS WE DESERVE!!!