SG

35 - They/It

[andalite-apologist]

colored the doodlesssss!    inspired by Ax slamming into people on dome ships

[once-a-monarch]

Cute animation for the like button for pride month!!

[morallygay]

I could write 20 pages against exclusionist arguments but nothing I could say would be as efficient as this

[ID: a reddit comment by tomohawk12345 that reads:

"this sexual minority isn't part of the sexual minority group" 🤓🤓

/end ID]

[maxknightley]

I think what really bothers me about video game difficulty discourse is the way that it equates "inaccessibility" with "artistic choices that may alienate certain disabled players."

[maxknightley]

like, okay, speaking as a musician and an autistic woman: there are certain sounds that I am simply not going to enjoy, right? I don't like music that's too heavy on the high end, because it sounds shrill. I've listened to music that had so much Stuff Going On at once that is literally made me feel sick from overstimulation. But that doesn't mean that music shouldn't exist, or that the creators should make a hypothetical pared-down remix just so I specifically can enjoy it. There's other music out there which I like! It's fine! I'll listen to that instead!!

and, idk, it bothers me because there are a lot of legitimate accessibility features that I think every game should have. there's no reason for a puzzle game to be inaccessible to colorblind people. there's no reason that an execution-heavy game shouldn't allow you to set up alternate control schemes. but the solution is not "make the puzzles easier" or "make the bosses do less damage" any more than the "solution" to a complicated piece of writing is "create a version where everything is written using simpler language." idk! it just feels like a refusal to engage with art as art and not Product.

[tisorridalamor]

I used to agree with this sentiment until I realized that games are a medium containing multitudes. Visual art, audio art, storytelling, etc. “Gameplay” is only one aspect of the whole, and yes it’s an important aspect, but I believe giving the option of a “reduced” experience is better than no experience at all. A famous example of this is Celeste, a game about overcoming challenges that still has several settings to make these challenges easier (in many customizable ways) that can be toggled at any time. The devs of Celeste trust the player to understand their own needs and approach the game accordingly. This means that so many more people, regardless of skill level / skill ceiling, can have the intended experience of Celeste without having to resort to external mods/glitches or disengaging from the game entirely.

No one making the case for “accessibility options” or “difficulty options” or any sort of customizable options in general are in favor of “dumbing down” all games as this reblog implies. They’re instead asking that devs to consider players of different capabilities and make design choices accordingly. And who would be better to make those decisions than the devs themselves to preserve their vision for their work?

[just-sg]

I think these sentiments fully can and should coexist and very much depend on context.

Because I've seen other people talk about how sometimes the "accessibility" options entail just... not playing the game. Just removing the gameplay aspect almost entirely. Which IS a valid option to have! If games want to have a "cinematic mode" where people can just sit back and enjoy the art and music and story, sure, that's great! But if it's the only option, it isn't making the game more accessible. It's making you choose between playing on a level/in a way you can't do and just not playing.

I don't think OP was implying ALL difficulty changes are "dumbing down" so much as saying that an easy mode shouldn't be the only option either. Making bosses deal less damage or increasing/removing time limits on certain things, etc, can be one way to help some players. But there are also a lot of players who would enjoy a challenge if they could, for example, remap controls, add additional indicators to color-based puzzles if they're colorblind, add visual cues alongside what would normally be just audio cues, etc. Sometimes, just making it broadly "easier" with number changes still doesn't make it accessible, you know?

And it sucks that no one could possibly account for every possible thing people might need, but there are quite a few features that would be really broadly beneficial. In the same way subtitles can help not only Deaf/HoH folks, but people with audio processing problems or who are just playing in a noisy environment or prefer to keep the sound low/off (maybe because the music of that game hurts their ears!) or just retain it better when or like having both audio and text, adding a few different ways to approach the same thing at the same overall difficulty could help a lot of people have a better experience that really fits them. (And on the note of subtitles. Options to make the text bigger/different, and to toggle on a "press button to proceed" in games that by default just run in real time would be nice standard features. Options to adjust the UI in general are always nice.)

So yeah, I 100% think difficulty options should be part of the equation, at least a lot of the time, like with RPG boss fights. I also think it's okay when not every game is suited to every potential player. I love Pokémon. Pokémon Go has increasingly become a money pit but that aside, I still enjoy it from time to time with other people and would have loved to get super into it when it was brand new. I'm agoraphobic and live in an area that makes it especially hard to walk anyway. Anyone with mobility struggles might have similar issues. It's disheartening but still a good thing that people who could do so were being encouraged to get out and exercise more!

Accessibility in broad terms just shouldn't be as rare as it is, or limited to only one or two things. Reducing or removing difficulty can't be the only thing developers consider, and doesn't always equate to accessibility either way. We need options and more ability to customize experiences to suit our needs.

[incorrectpasswordip]

i want her to be free

[sunspotpony]

Hey. Queer folks who don’t fit any other label easily—Folks who don’t fit comfortably on the binary. Folks with complicated sexualities. Folks with very simple sexualities that everyone seems to shockingly get wrong somehow anyway. Folks whose romantic attraction is not often discussed.

This is me, giving you a big fucking hug and telling you I love you. I see you. I know nobody ever talks about you. I see how often your identity is completely ignored in favor of easier discourse, easier drama, or forgotten by others in their bliss of finally feeling included.

I love you and I’m proud of you. I am sorry you do not get your flowers as often as you should.

So this is me giving you your flowers. For those of you who have to sit in queer spaces and feel like an outsider always, because almost everyone forgets that their experience is not universal:

I love you, I am proud of you, and I am sorry that our community has left you out in the rain and so often leaves you forgotten. You deserve better. You are splendid and you are loved.

[crabussy]

I'm always very adamant about referring to aotearoa as part of polynesia. because it is!!!

[crabussy]

I feel like the harder that fact is to ignore, the harder it is to see aotearoa as some kind of "england: the sequel" bullshit. the endless farmland where native forest should be. the overwhelmingly pākehā/white population. the constant erasure of māori history and knowledge and values and language. this isn't taking place in "new zealand". it's taking place in aotearoa. it's happening in polynesia.

[talleryn]

Found family is such a good trope but it’s objectively funnier when the found family fucking sucks

[depsidase]

[theroguefeminist]

i haven’t heard the word “cyberstalking” in a long time but it used to be a recognizably bad thing to stalk someone online, to try to dig up everything you can on them, follow their every move online, obsessively post about them, barrage them with messages, block evade, etc - but now it’s just normalized and seen as something totally “ok” to do if the person in question is “problematic” in some way - like the same people who say “if your partner does this run” will turn around and do the same thing to a stranger online they dont even know and they don’t even think twice - it’s abuse, it’s harassment… just stop it

[prokopetz]

The funniest thing in superhero comics is not, in fact, when an outgoing writer on a title decides to break their toys by killing off the lead, and the next writer has to figure out how to bring them back.

The actual funniest thing in superhero comics is when a new writer decides to kill off the lead's entire supporting cast because they wanted to "go in a different direction", and the writer after that has to resurrect like half a dozen random people because that new direction sucked.

[thiscatdraws]

WELCOME TO THE TADC MLP CIRCUS ‼️🎪

[notreallyx78]

OMG CAINE HERE IS SO COOL AND HIS DESIGN IS SO CREATIVE!!!!!

[coffeeismyboyfriend]

"Other artists making boring OCs--"

"Other artists giving their characters regular trauma--"

"Other artists giving their characters excessive trauma--"

Putting down other artists and writers for how they make their characters doesn't make yours more special. It just makes you mean.

[nylarac]

[nathanheadphotography]

Lazy River

[fearowkenya]

once again i am shaking hands with whichever freak on the beatbreak team who is obviously having so much fun showing us how digimon interact with the human world. im so genuinely charmed by how they have panjyamon figuring out how to hold this normal-sized mug for humans with their fucking stupid huge claws

[fearowkenya]

OHHHHHHH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[convelocity]

Fangs out for another ride around the sun

Grab prints here or here