cassie 🐺

In the age of early access viral hits, optimization is just something no publisher wants to put resources into before they know the game’s a success or not.

True story, a game I worked on at my last job shipped on Xbox One and PS4, the PS4 version was not even built until a month before shipping.

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It’s a culture issue, it takes time and advocacy to improve…

It’s true! And one of the most effective forms of advocacy for this sort of thing is integration. Being in public spaces, doing the same things cis people do, respecting norms that ensure everyone’s safety there, is one of the most direct ways for us to be understood as pretty much like anyone else. Not an exception, but a peer and an equal member of a community. If you construct spaces to protect people from being uncomfortable at our mere presence, you deprive them of the exact experience that is most effective at alleviating their concerns.

“Bullshit” is shorthand for “bigoted, based on inaccurate assumptions, and very possible to overcome with exposure to the group these opinions are targeted at.” I say this with love and respect for my younger self that held many of the same “bullshit” opinions. And a mild frustration and willingness to draw clear lines in the sand now that I know better. Thanks for hearing me out while I vent a bit regardless. ✌️

I understand there’s no solution here that doesn’t result in discomfort for someone, it will always be a balance, but I’m pretty opposed to declaring spaces off limits for trans people for cis people’s comfort. That does nothing but push the discomfort off into the future and deny us access to public spaces simply due to the fact that people don’t feel like seeing our bodies. Would it be appropriate to enforce acceptable BMI ranges, or require patrons to have all their limbs, or require them to have a particular skin color? All these things make some uncomfortable too, for bullshit reasons, and we wouldn’t allow for discrimination on those grounds - why are trans bodies the exception?

Not going after you in particular, this is a pretty common hangup. But it just irks me given that going to a spa every now and then is extremely important to my health due to chronic pain. If this was the norm for spas within reasonable distance of me, I’d have nowhere to go to meet that need. Denying services in this manner is not trivial or harmless.

I guess I’m of the mind that if you’re showing up to be nude in a spa around other nude people, does it actually tangibly matter which genitals are present, so long as all other norms of the space are respected? Bodies are just bodies. The rules of engagement (read: “don’t”) are still the same. Trans women are not coming into women’s spaces to harass cis women, in fact we’re a lot more likely to be harassed ourselves if we’re required to use mens-only facilities instead.

This is a spa in with locations in Tacoma/Lynnwood WA, relatively near there is a nude beach that seems to handle this just fine.

for me I just… couldn’t stand either of the main characters and thought the reviving-their-dead-marriage arc was really trite. I didn’t believe these were people that “should” be together and around the time they dismembered that elephant (???) I was fully checked out.

The game was wonderful when we were actually playing, probably the most fun I’ve had in a coop puzzle game since Portal 2. I really wouldn’t need much in the way of story to convince me to keep playing, but there were so many goddamn cutscenes! I’m glad others enjoyed it more than me, and did enjoy a lot of the gameplay, but the characters really soured me on the game eventually.

I mean, are trans people who haven’t had bottom surgery not supposed to use gender-separated locker rooms? Which one should we use? I go to a spa where I can change in the women’s locker room and it’s just very normal. I’m not concerning anyone with my dick and nobody’s concerning themselves with mine. Granted, it seems patrons of this spa remain nude while using the facilities, but it’s still a comparable example. If harassment / unwanted sexual advances are one’s concern, then unfortunately that is just possible anyway and needs to be mitigated regardless of genital configuration. They could at least let her wear a swim skirt or something y’know?

This was one of the more baffling experiences in coming out - seeing some of the most scientifically minded, media literate people I know suddenly shut off all of those instincts when they encountered “the trans debate.” Like someone with a healthy amount of skepticism around statistics linking me bullshit “average number of sexual partners” figures from a conversion therapy lobbying group. Or someone with an active dislike of sports suddenly deciding that the sanctity of women’s sports is more important than their relationship with their daughter.

The best explanation I’ve been able to come up with is that gender is regimented by complex trauma, often when we are children, and these are the types of cognitive distortions that occur when we’re in fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses. Flashbacks are often thought of as vivid sensory experiences i.e. re-experiencing the traumatic event, but it’s a spectrum of responses. Many are more subtle and feel extremely normal in the moment, while our ability to reason is actually overtaken by our need to feel safe in the face of a perceived threat.

I think this kind of statistics vomit can sometimes be a “flight” response to a perceived threat of someone being trans in proximity to them. Flight responses are characterized as attempting to avoid a threat by throwing oneself into action not to overcome, but escape the threat. Perhaps a wall of text with nuanced-and-reasoned set dressing and lots of links and numbers feels like a wall between them and “the problem.”

I think it’s really important to think of sexuality as a vast array of different activities, each of which you can separately consent to and define your own rules around. “Asexuality” as a label doesn’t mean being a completely nonsexual being, and it doesn’t have to be a permanent label either. I think of it as a kind of asterisk - something in here needs clarification, please ask! So things like not enjoying penetrative sex, enjoying close physicality more than intercourse, all that stuff can be asexuality if that’s a useful term for you to communicate your needs. But also like any label there’s shades to it and it never means exactly the same thing to two different people.

I’m disabled and while I definitely enjoy sex, being an active partner is often pretty difficult and oftentimes I’m too out of my body to enjoy it much anyway. And some of the time I’m gonna be best at meeting my own needs. But even in that case, I still enjoy intimacy, being perceived as sexy, etc. people that care enough to ask will be able to find ways to engage, people that don’t care enough to have a real conversation about it aren’t a good fit for me anyhow. It’s been very helpful!

I feel there’s some parallels here with fat shaming. (and addiction shaming in general) People exposed to judgemental attitudes about their weight are measurably more likely to become obese, no matter their initial weight. Shaming can make one more fixated on their desire for food, and when that desire is in the front of one’s mind, it raises the psychological effort required to resist the urge for comfort in food. That effort is not infinite and will eventually run out, which is why white-knuckling through a diet tends to not lead to permanent results.

Misinformed sex education teaches us to feel shame for sexual urges most everyone has, and in a similar capacity could make one more fixated on that urge. If one instead has a positive view toward their sexuality, they do not have to cope with insecurities that remind them of temptation toward something they’re not supposed to do but would be immensely pleasurable. They just do it from time to time and it doesn’t bleed into the rest of their life.

idk a bit personal but, I find accepting all parts of my sexuality (especially the parts that make me feel icky) has made me much less prone to risky behavior. shame makes it difficult to make good decisions. I’m a lot more clearheaded now and can just enjoy physical affection with someone I love. I can communicate what I’d enjoy and set appropriate boundaries. fantasy and reality are more well separated now. importantly, I am more satisfied at a baseline and therefore seeking out sex less on the whole.

Body and sex positivity works extremely well as a means of coping with primal urges, not only because it makes us feel better about parts of us that will never go away, but also because accepting them actually leads to better self-control and decisionmaking.

bark-to-text, of course!

For the person being executed, firing squads are among the most “humane” methods. It’s fast, reliable, and simple. It’s not common because the brutality of painting someone’s brains on the wall is too clear for onlookers.

God. I’m so sorry. Every story I’ve heard about the VA is absolutely fucked.

I’ve never dealt with the VA and my knowledge of it is limited, but someone I care a lot about was in the Navy. She’s been suffering constant flashbacks and slowly losing touch with reality over the past couple weeks, she can’t really be on her own, we’ve been trying to get her any form of inpatient care or even just meds. She was sent home from the clinic several times when we brought her because technically my partner is around to take care of her. She wasn’t lucid enough during appointments to talk to a doctor, so they kinda just shrugged their shoulders, scheduled another appointment in 4 weeks, and let her go. We knew we were in way over our heads taking care of her, but we weren’t given any other option and she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Fast forward a week, she’s in a hypochondriac panic, had to be restrained in order to keep her from consuming poison, she breaks free and attacks my partner and a few cops, now she’s in jail when she should have been in a hospital weeks ago. I am still wrapping my head around how badly the system failed her, and I can only imagine how many stories like yours and hers there are.

RedLetterMedia on YouTube. They’re great! I recommend starting with one of their Wheel of the Worst episodes, those are always fun

some great tunes left in alt-country too. Big Thief has been making waves lately, their last album was phenomenal

If you haven’t already heard it, I highly recommend Pyre’s OST! I’m a little biased, it’s one of my favorite games of all time, but I feel the OST especially improves on elements of Bastion/Transistor’s soundtracks but with a style all its own.

also yasssss frozen synapse rules

the singular use is so old, when it was first introduced, “they” was still spelled with a fucking thorn!

My GF loves One Piece, she started me at just one episode quite a ways in - the one with Bink’s Sake - basically just to say “hey look, this story is actually going somewhere”. Then we started at like episode 60 or so and kept watching from there - it’s definitely a lot rougher, but I’m hooked enough now to watch it with her!

Sticks and stones may break my bones, and single words here and there won’t hurt me, but en masse they normalize an attitude of supremacy and derision toward folks that super don’t need any more. No snowflake thinks they caused the avalanche, but lots of us have to live with the consequences of this in daily life regardless. Shock value slurs are also just… tired and played out at this point. Whatever humor they had at one point doesn’t really land in the same way anymore.

me n the trans catgirl polycule reading lambda calculus whitepapers like :3