Mostly Void.

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

image: tags. #most of them aren't even cozy they're just marketable. end ID.

sorry but demanding strong opening lines is forced idc idc. "you need to HOOK the reader with the first line otherwise they wont keep reading" idk as a normal person who is naturally curious, its the premise that gets me to consider reading a book. i dont fully form my opinion of a book until 1/3 of the way through at least. hello? yall dont like to read.

out of all of the amazing books that ive read, i remember exactly one (1) opening line, and it wasnt the opening line itself, it was the general vibe of the first page, and THAT was because id just finished a book that was bland as shit and i was happy to see prose again. and that book? ended up being mid as hell too LAKJSHKLDFJHASKLJF

okay you got a good hook. is the story good or are you just opening a performance with fireworks?

i think i don't really vibe with most other fans of my favorite male characters is because they usually depict them too much of a man, and i am not interested in men, i am interested in The Character. and i am not saying that they should depict them as women, or nonbinary, or should depict them as feminine, no, not at all. but there's like, you know, you can depict a male character as The Character, and you can depict them as The Man. do you get me? like, i go to the fandom looking for art and fics, and it's just, regardless of his actual characterization, it's all just fantasizing about some kind of an abstract dominant patriarch, wearing my favorite character's face. it may be the most totally-wouldnt-have-normal-relationships (and sometimes even would-literally-abuse-you) kind of guy, and you join a dedicated space for his fans, and all they talk about is how they want to marry and start a tradcore 50s style nuclear family with him. it can be a guy who's arrogance and attempts of domination are explicitly shown to be a facade that hide the fact that he's actually kind of a massive pathetic wet loser, and you go to his fics, and they're all depicting him as a caricaturish daddy dom. at this point it's like, do you even like the character at all, or do you just like The Man, and project this man onto whatever character you find visually attractive? and these people kind of, really really poison actual discussion of the character, who is kind of a fucked up evil person (i only like *those* types, so im talking about them) because they see analysis of the actual character as an attack on their fantasized daddy dom husband, who is actually isn't The Character at all, and is simply a face of the day for The Man

the place I work at remodeled these split gendered restrooms into “inclusive restrooms” and never told us what they meant while construction was ongoing. I need you to know every atom of potential criticism or whining that could’ve happened disappeared when people found out this meant we got 10 fully separate private bathrooms with sinks inside. I’ve not heard a single person crack a joke about the inclusive signage. this is the world TERFs are trying to steal from you

I have a friend who was strongly against inclusive bathrooms because he felt that “bathroom stalls are already really exposed due to how they’re constructed, so no wonder women don’t want men in the same bathrooms as them” and when I pointed out that we could just… build better bathrooms… with less exposed stalls, he got really quiet and then said “honestly that sounds so much better, but there must be some problem with building them like that, because otherwise wouldn’t we already be doing it?” BESTIE we are. WE ARE. Old-style bathrooms are cheaply made, poorly designed, and all around bad. Haven’t you noticed that men’s restrooms rooms get weirdly sticky? Haven’t you noticed that women’s restrooms end up with giant lines? This is because these rooms are architecturally awful. And we can do better now, because we know more! And we are!!! People are actively designing better bathrooms that address known problems, and guess what: those bathrooms are “inclusive” in the same way that curb-cuts are inclusive. It doesn’t matter if the ramp was built for a wheelchair or a stroller; it doesn’t matter if the bathrooms were designed specifically for gender inclusivity or just because fall-apart-if-you-sneeze-on-them metal stall dividers with giant ass peek gaps suck. We can in fact improve our built environment to better meet our needs. Stop cutting off your nose to spite your face; stop settling for less just because someone else might also enjoy it.

Seattle's SEA-TAC airport has an all gender restroom that's a row of about a dozen fully enclosed separated little rooms that lock, with a shared bank of sinks and it's great. Love it. Lot of very strange encounters at the sinks, feels odd the first few times! But people laugh it off almost instantly. Because it's not actually a big deal to share a sink.

You really start to understand that the “angry black woman” and “mean lesbian” stereotype only exists to shame us for the fact we get reasonably upset about people wanting to horrifically abuse us indiscriminately. Let’s get meaner !

teenagers aren’t the vanguards of the pro-censorship movement. the closest thing that happens to this is that bad actors who are adults exploit teenagers’ age-appropriate discomfort with violent and sexual art to incite internet stochastic terrorism campaigns. but even this happens far less often than adults just silencing children and pretending to be speaking for them by proxy.

[ID from alt: A traditional gouache painting depicting Laguna Beach at sunset. Many palm trees are prominently featured in shadow. End ID]

it really is annoying as hell how someone will talk about how poor people can't avoid ethically dubious products because of how being poor works and then someone with a two story house in the suburbs will take that to mean they can order harry potter books through a drone delivery from amazon and if you criticize that you're a bigot

i hate how suicide is framed as selfish. lets deem the people struggling the most as self centered assholes for daring to be pushed to a point where death feels like their only option. you cant be serious

[wanting to say frogs in a boiling pot of water but knowing they were lobotomized in the original experiment and it's findings weren't reproduced]: we're experiencing quantitative change and if we wait to act until a quality shift in the dominant aspect of the dialectic occurs it will be too late

very telling that even if you’re not allowed to view content related to self harm/suicide/eating disorders due to not giving up your ID on the uk internet you will still be shown relentless ads for weight loss drugs and fad diets showing unrealistic/AI generated bodies and unhealthy methods and time frames for weight loss that can only be achieved by starvation. oh and also so so many gambling ads. relentless ads for gacha and gambling services. almost like it’s not actually about protecting kids at all or something

my take on the "can trans men be lesbians?" thing is that i would never ever comment on a stranger's identity and i would never tell someone i don't know what they can or can't do but also like. come on. if you're explicitly choosing to be a man you can get mad when women don't want to date you.

if you're going into a space where there are women explicitly saying "I do not want men involved in my romance" and you are actively identifying as a man you cannot get upset when they don't want to date you or are uncomfortable with you being there

i also deeply empathize with every trans femme lesbian who has had to watch her existence debated and been seen as a pervert for loving women see most of the lesbian community go "oh yeah you have a vagina, you have the Unbreakable Woman Bond that means we are connected forever" and get a little frustrated about that

Also: do you think a cis man could be a lesbian without identifying as a woman? if not, and you think trans men can, i think you're just speaking from bioesstentialism and maybe don't really think trans men are fully men in the way cis men are

i'm remembering that trans man/lesbian i knew who was mad the girl he was seeing ID'd as straight its like damn maybe you don't really see yourself as a man.