#outoftheflame

But seriously, there is a problem here. I mean, okay, I picked up Infamous: Second Son today. In it, you play as a Native American male. He's clearly Native, too, him and his brother, and the early game is nicely done: the tribal stuff is background noise to the important stuff going on.

I'm Native American - Lumbee, to be specific. I'm pretty heavy into my own culture, too. Here's the thing: Delsin Rowe is nothing like me. He has a similar background, and he's male, but he's nothing like me. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but he doesn't react to his situations like I would. I can't relate to his behaviors.

So--does it make me weird? I can relate more to Lara Croft in Tomb Raider than I can to Delsin Rowe. It's not a fault of the writing--Second Son's writing is spot on so far--it's that Lara reacts to situations more the way I would than Delsin does. She does what I would likely do, whereas Delsin acts differently.

This is my problem: by yelling about how a character looks, their gender, their sexuality, we reveal those as the most important things about a person to us. This is directly counterpoint to what I'm told should matter: a person's choices, their achievements, their actions and behavior. The important stuff. The stuff unique to each individual personality.

So, go ahead, I guess? I'll never understand why we need someone to look like us to relate to them, but then again, that's obviously not how I relate to people (otherwise I'd only relate to overweight, slightly tan dudes with nappy facial hair and weird eyes.) Either way, I suppose it's fruitless to try and complain about how people enjoy their vidya games. 

Action/adventure type stuff (fighting, exploration together, etc.)

Friendship/interaction

Angst (of all sorts, primarily existential stuff)

Shenanigans and comedic antics

Non-sexual intimacy

Sexual intimacy

Here are the things I'm not interested in RPing:

Infidelity (not the biggest fan of relationship angst in general, but infidelity in particular)

Rape (in which my characters are somehow involved)

I'm posting this in order to be clear: I don't expect anything that we haven't already plotted ahead of time when I RP with somebody. Unless you've spoken to me OOC about what you'd like to see, then as far as I'm concerned anything outside of those two limits can be explored.

Example: if smut happens, it happens. If it doesn't, if you're not comfortable with it, if you don't ship the characters, if for ANY REASON AT ALL you don't care to RP smut, then we won't RP smut. That doesn't mean I'm going to drop the thread or treat your interactions with these characters with any less respect and value; it means we don't RP smut. In fact, honestly, unless someone moves it in that direction I tend to assume smut is off the table, so.

I just wanted everyone--especially new followers who weren't following through-fire-and-flame before--to know that. 

Gonna do some gaming, maybe take a nap.