23. A “Wow” moment of awe

2 - Cozy Grove on the Switch!

28. Favorite ice cream?

57. Have you ever played dress up? (I'll specify cosplay or related)

Sorry this took forever to answer. I rarely take selfies anymore so I waited until i took a decent one 🤣

2. me

28. Favorite ice cream is Birthday Cake Remix from Cold Stone and I add caramel, golden oreo, and graham crackers to it... It's my go-all-out treat-myself ice cream, otherwise basic cookie dough ice cream is fine :p

57. Ive only ever dressed up for halloween and usually kinda half-assed, no real decent cosplays but it would be super cool someday!

Regarding the tropes: I think that (including Bioware's BS) comes from a piece of really bad advice that writers follow, but have stopped overtly talking about. "Minority characters need story reasons to exist." This means they force themselves to find reasons to include gay characters, when hetero characters aren't held to that standard. This inevitably requires them to write based on stereotypes and caricatures based on their perceptions of who we are.

If they can't reduce us to traits people recognize, then they can't find a reason for us to exist in their story. Getting good representation means destroying that absolutely shit advice that caused this problem in the first place.

Yeah, that business of “justifying” characters being queer is the big stumbling block. And it’s sad when actual queer people fall into this trap (re: Dorian).

Like, I’m a firm believer that tropes are tools and can be used well or poorly, depending on how the writer uses them. The problem is that straight people will NEVER be experts in the use of queer story tools, because it’s not their experience. And they fall back on the things THEY know, which loses context.

It’s like Gil’s story - I’d have been... If not fine then “more accepting” of that story if it had been written by a gay person who understood what makes this whole concept WORK. Because as is, it’s just the gay guy getting pressured by an overbearing straight woman who is demanding his sperm to satisfy HER baby rabies, with no acknowledgement of how much he might ACTUALLY want to go through with reproducing. He’s a prop in his own storyline, there to get to the result wanted, without considering how he might actually handle matters.

And the problem with Kerry, beyond ALL of that other stuff, is that the first time he’s even seen in the game, it’s in a scene that gives the impression that he’s got some kind of feelings for Johnny, so it turns the one gay male romance in this game into something that plays as Kerry loving a ghost and transferring his attraction to this person who literally has Johnny in his head and taking over who he is. It just... It hits a nerve when you factor in that “appropriating queer culture mid-AIDS crisis thing,” that this plays as treating gay love as interchangeable.

Hell, come to think of it, you can see shades of this with Judy for female V as well, considering the intensity of her connection and attachment to Evelyn, who ALSO is dead before the romance begins (worse, even, considering that Evelyn dies in the course of the game, so Judy’s still grieving when that romance begins...).

And, to balance out all this criticism somewhat... I genuinely do feel that none of this is intentional - strictly speaking, I don’t think that Kerry or Judy are characters who are defined by their sexualities, which, let’s make sure it’s on the record, I think is a plus. But I DO think that the writing leans in to old tropes about queer people for the both of them in terms of their portrayal and use within the narrative, particularly on the “queer narratives are inherently tragic” angle, even acknowledging that the relationship with V, regardless of orientation, has that tragic angle, since they’ve got a ticking time bomb in their head.

Like, they’re still three dimensional characters with arcs that don’t come back around to their sexualities, which IS a plus, again, I do want to stress that for the record. But... comparing Judy and Kerry to Panam and River still shows a distinct difference is HOW their stories are approached - Panam and River both get to come in to things without the baggage of prior relationships or attractions within their narratives. It’s... There’s good and bad in how this is handled, and the bad leans in the direction of issues I have elsewhere.

And, before anyone asks, no, I can’t tell you what “perfect” representation would look like, because it’s something that I’m only going to feel exists when we don’t need to have these conversations, when we reach a point where queer characters are not seen as “bonuses,” as additions, as things added as a bone to the queer community, but as a natural part of the story that doesn’t NEED to be explained for existing in significant numbers.

3: Best game you've ever played?

Has to be Chrono Trigger, the DS port specifically. I picked it up a little bit into Chuggaaconroy's playthrough, because it engrossed me and I wanted to try it for myself before spoling myself with the playthough, and by God I see why it had such a massive impact. I genuinely teared up when I got the True Ending, and the twist midway through the game absolutely floored me, because that *doesn't happen* in video games - except it *did* and now we have to deal with the *consequences* and- ugh, it's great. If you've never played Chrono Trigger, you're doing yourself a disservice.

4: Worst game you’ve ever played?

I feel like if I play a bad game, it's either a) an amateur hour game made by an amateur dev rather than a full commercial product, or b) buried in my subconscious immediately, so I don't know that I can answer this question, though I'm sure I'll think of an answer hours from now and then forget to update this post.

26: Handheld or console?

*laughs in Switch*

The hate you're getting demonstrates why the original anon even made the initial request. The toxic, cult-like reaction is the norm for that point of view, not the exception.

hi!! I appreciate this!! I saw u pop up in my notifs yesterday and I figured it was bc of the post aha :]

8: What would you say is your best quality?

Answered in another ask

12: What do you think about the most?

How dissatisfied I am with every aspect of my life and how I’m too damaged to change it

42: Favorite type of movie