#personal soapbox

[askagamedev]

G’day GameDev. I am in my late 30’s and considering returning to school to study Game Design. I currently have no applicable/transferable knowledge, skills or experience and I will be 40 years old when I have finished my studies and looking to find my first job in the industry. Am I too late? Will I be wasting my time (and money) trying to enter the industry at that age?

There's some major questions that you need to answer for yourself.

First and foremost, I think it really depends on what your own goals and responsibilities are. What is it you want to do with your life? Do you have any other major goals outside of your career? Is doing game design professionally what you really want, or would doing game design as an amateur hobbyist be enough? You need to be sure that this is something you want to commit to for years, not just the studying and learning, but also the doing. Remember, getting an entry-level job in the game industry isn't the end of the road but the beginning. Once you get hired, you don't just ride off into the sunset while the credits roll. There's a whole career after that first offer letter, and that kind of career really isn't for everyone.

The second major question you need to ask yourself is "Do I really need to go to school to study game design?" I'll tell you now that I never went to school for game design. The majority of designers I work with didn't go to school for game design. Game design is a field where being self-taught still works just fine, especially if you engage with the game dev community. You can build a game or mod yourself, get it out in front of people, learn from it, iterate on it, and use that as experience to get yourself a job doing it. It is fully possible to learn game design without significant school debt (which will have a large effect on your life as well).

I could go on, but I think this should be enough food for thought to chew on for a bit. Take some time to consider your answer to these questions and about your life. Consider the tradeoffs from making these choices - what you are giving up to move forward with this, especially if you have to take on several thousands of dollars in school debt. If you have further questions, my inbox is always open. I wish you good fortune.

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#game career advice #getting a job in the game industry #personal soapbox

[ao3commentoftheday]

I dearly love you, tumblr, but sometimes you're just absolutely exhausting. Not every statement is a personal challenge that needs to be countered aggressively. Sometimes I'm neither being bold nor assuming anything.

#there are plenty of times when I'm on my soapbox #and I totally understand responses that are counter to mine #but sometimes I'm just putting a thing out there #with no opinion at all attached to it #and people take it as a personal challenge or affront anyway #and those are the posts that make me feel tired

[studywithisabel]

i’m gonna be negative for a second so fair warning

the STEM obsession is literally a plague on the current academic world, especially the recent “women in stem” shit. of course people who are typically discouraged from male-dominated fields should receive encouragement from schools, recruiters, etc, but i am really sick of this being turned into “STEM is the only valuable career path and you are betraying your intelligence as a woman/poc/whatever by doing literally anything else.”

there are SO many non stem jobs that are essential to the proper functioning of society and are definitely NOT worth any less than being a doctor or engineer. i’m tired of there being zero scholarships, internships, encouragement in general for literally any other career path. it’s just disrespectful and honestly dangerous. we can’t let humanities-focused subjects and careers die because STEM is the current hot topic. and i just hate most of all the appropriation of feminism to do it.

#it just feels like conflating feminism into you can either be a stupid housewife or be a smart girlboss doctor #like no there are plenty of other fulfilling careers that require very high skill and intelligence #and you know what even careers that aren’t seen as prestigious are just as valid #so that’s me stepping off the soapbox #i hope no stemmies are offended by this it’s not about you personally #it’s about the complete systemic ignorance of all other subjects #negative #academia

[ober-affen-geil]

It’s ace week again and I want to start by saying I appreciate the constant and consistent rise of overt queer representation in media. I really, really do. This post is not about that, but I did want to start by recognizing that we are definitely seeing a positive trend of queer rep and I’m not begrudging anyone that.

On the other hand.

Why is it that Sex Education, a show lauded for its depictions of teenage sexualities of all kinds, only openly discusses asexuality in one Very Special Episode?

Why is it that Brooklyn Nine Nine, a show respected for its diversity, only mentioned asexuality once and it was clearly meant as an insult?

Why is it that Faking It, a show inclusive of many teen sexualities and groundbreaking in its inclusion of a main intersex character, only references asexuality in a single throwaway line meant as a “we’ve collected them all” joke?

Why is it that Heatstopper, a show that gently yet explicitly includes all sorts of different identities in its main teen characters, doesn’t have a single reference to asexuality? And if Isaac or Tori were meant to be included as ace rep, why weren't they identified as such the way the rest of the characters were?

Why is it that Jughead, a character known in the entire run of comics going back to 1941 as having two defining characteristics: a disintrest in girls/dating and an obsession with food and who was made explicitly asexual in a 2016 run, was not made asexual in Riverdale when the opportunity presented itself?

Why is it that when fandom was presented with Good Omens they chose to call it “not queer enough” when the option to see Aziraphale and Crowley as ace or aro was very obviously there?

Why is it that I’ve seen BoJack Horseman, a show that has earned every Emmy it has won, praised as groundbreaking for having main reoccurring character Todd Chavez’s asexuality be a part of several different storylines only ever from asexual sources?

I know why. Do you?

Happy Asexual Awareness Week.

Edit: I did address this in a reblog but since a lot of recent people seem to be finding this through the tags and this is happening with enough frequency I will add it here.

To all the helpful people in the notes telling me that a) Alice Oseman is aroace or b) that there are plans for explicit ace representation in season 2 of Heartstopper or c) that there are other publications within the Heartstopper universe that examines aspec characters...thank you. I know. That is actually most of the reason Heartstopper made it onto this list.

Because what that means is, a creator that *has* explicit aspec rep in other works, *has* explicit aspec rep in the main work that is the subject of the adaptation, and *is* aspec themselves made the choice to relegate explicit aspec rep to a second season that had not yet been secured at the time of writing season 1.

Setting aside that I know fuckall about what the adaptation/creative process was like or what TPTB were like during said process, from my perspective that fucking sucked. A lot.

Happy Asexual Awareness Week.

#rant #personal #tw aphobia #asexual awareness week #ace week #asexuality #a riley special #continuing my grand tradition of soapboxing during this week

[nashaalya]

are people aware of how anal quebec is about english? making a hospital remove bilingual signage in a region with a large anglophone population? demanding a bilingual welcome sign remove the english version in a town that is one-third anglophone? citing a small business in chelsea, a municipality that is evenly split between anglophones and francophones w/ about 70% of all households using both languages interchangeably (x), replying in english to english comments on their own facebook page? utter insanity

#religious minorities and anglophone quebecois are my personal soapboxes. sry

[murderballadeer]

making fun of taylor swift is funny up to a point but i’m gonna be honest it’s not worth that much of your time there is no obligation to dedicate large amounts of time and energy to complaining about a pop star who makes mediocre music

#soapbox #also if i may say something. i don’t think it’s bad that she writes songs abt her personal life most songwriters do that #now. a lot of the songs are bad so that’s a different story #but idk where the take came from that’s like ‘ew that’s so tacky she’s writing about herself’

[theneighborhoodwatch]

i would be a fool to deny that wally has, as the kids like to say, a touch of the ‘tism, or that i find him an ultimately sympathetic character, but i must admit i dislike the implication i’ve seen from a few folks that either:

A) because wally is autistic, he cannot possibly be doing anything morally dubious

or

B) if he Is doing anything morally dubious, then we can no longer count him as an example of Good Representation™, and must instead rely on the other characters to pick up the slack

maybe i’m jumping to conclusions here, but like, i dunno, aside from the obvious fact that disability rep shouldn’t be treated like a competition between characters - i like wally in part because he’s given a level and a Type of moral complexity/ambiguity that i rarely see in visibly autistic characters, even in indie productions. i have a hard time imagining the kind of person for whom that’s a bug and not a feature.

#public notice #welcome home #wally darling #soapboxing #im not vagueposting about any one person #mostly bc i either dont remember their names or bc theyre young. usually both

[nanatsuyu]

saying kandrew wouldn't work romantically because they have a habit of snapping their teeth at each other about their potentials and that kevin wouldn't respect andrews no's in a sexual context because he pushes his buttons on court is such a bad faith argument that misses nearly all of their canon relationship development

#i have my own Personal reasons why kandreil probably wouldnt work in the long go of it #but thats not the argument i see most days which is mostly #“kevin cant take no for an answer about anything ever” which js incredibly not true #always just sounds like an argument to raise neil up by putting kevin down in a “youll never be him” way which lol #anyways soapbox kicked out #aftg text

[benbamboozled]

INFURIATING that for like the entirety of Jason’s time being dead IRL the only person invested in giving him and Dick an actual relationship was…

CHUCK DIXON.

I MEAN.

“Little Wing”?

Dick Grayson kills the Joker?

Spirit guide/hallucination?

JEEZ.

INFURIATING.

Sources are Nightwing (1996) #106, Joker: Last Laugh #6, and Nightwing Secret Files #1.

(Technically Scott Beatty also worked on Nightwing: Year One and Joker: Last Laugh but ISN’T credited on Nightwing Secret Files #1 so I’m inclined to think that Reminding Everyone That Jason Todd Existed was one of Chuck Dixon’s babies until Judd Winick came in with his Under the Hood plans.)

#Jason Todd #Dick Grayson #Robin #Nightwing #…Discowing #Joker was there too. #side tangent but one of my favorite and least favorite things about DC is the thing where one person clearly has one thing… #…they really care about…not necessarily a soapbox but a character or event that they always want to reference... #or a piece of continuity they want to address. #on the one hand—you can get champions of characters who didn’t get a lot of love…or reminders of interesting continuity. #on the OTHER hand—if their fave thing is something you don’t like or wish would be forgotten you’re stuck in reminder-hell. #comic panels #i am begging some other writer to use Little Wing again PLEASE.

[inthegloomglow]

“The Sullys didn’t owe Spider anything, they didn’t adopt him.” It is basic decency to not leave a child with the murderers that kidnapped him. Much less a child you knew since infancy, much less a child who at least two of your children love like he’s their own brother.

#spider socorro #spider soccoro sully #miles socorro #avatar #i'm probably done harping on this now i'll get off my soapbox #look i don't hate the sullys #i think it's weak writing that causes this issue honestly #they didn't have time to flesh out every main #and they needed him kidnapped to further the plot #and neytiri is (i believe) blatantly set up to have an arc wherein she accepts him as his own person #though who knows #maybe they'll make him go bad and botch it or something #he doesn't deserve that #BUT in terms of what happened it is deeply fucked up how the adults around him regarded him #i don't think they WROTE it to be that way #but i cannot ignore the child neglecting elephant in the room #why does fandom always inevitably demonize children over adults??? #like kids have any trauma or bad emotion and fandom wants to crucify them #and the adults around them can do ANYTHING and it's okay #i saw it with harrison morgan from dexter #the vitriol toward that pooor child #who went through multiple traumas #is baffling to me #or travis and shauna from yellowjackets #constantly demonized and blamed for not handling a horrific situation perfectly well

[askagamedev]

I understand that your posts about Pokemon are to explain why the games are in the direction they are in, but I find that they don't address the legitimate complaints and frustrations people have about the game. Mainly the lack of polish and the amount of bugs that are in the recent games. Don't you think fans are right to air their grievances and expecting something better in terms of quality out of a large IP like Pokemon? Don't you think at least the way Pokemon Company is scheduling new generations needs to change in some way to give Game Freak devs more time to work? The complaints that many fans are having are real and genuine.

I only answer the questions that people ask me, not the questions that others might wish someone asked me. If you want me to answer questions about the legitimate complaints fans have, you can always ask. Here are my answers to your questions:

Fans always retain the right to complain about what they do and do not like about the games they play. They can say whatever it is they want and I will always respect their right to ask for whatever they want. Fans do not have the right to expect that the developer or publisher do what they ask - it always remains the decision of the publisher and developer to gather the feedback and decide how to act on it. What the fans get is a value proposition - the publisher offers this game at a certain price and the fans decide whether they feel the game is worth the price. If certain fans do not feel there is sufficient value in the game, they are by no means obligated to buy the game or play the game. In fact, I encourage any player who feels dissatisfied with a game franchise to spend their time and money elsewhere. There are far too many good games out there that don't get enough attention to waste time on a game that isn't meeting my needs.

I think that Game Freak, being joint owner of the Pokemon Company alongside Creatures and Nintendo, generally has plenty of control over their own schedule and destiny. I don't think they are being forced to do this against their will, I think they set what they believe is a reasonable schedule.

I think that player expectation that each successive generation Pokemon game support every pokemon ever made is unfeasible in the long term.

I think that every game release, Pokemon or no, is a delicate balancing act between adding enough new and engaging content and polishing the experience enough to reduce overall player frustration to manageable levels.

I think that players should offer their feedback (especially about the things they dislike), but should not have the expectation their demands will be met.

I think that players always retain the right to walk away from the franchise if they don't feel their needs are being met. I wish more players would exercise that right, rather than continuing to buy the game they dislike. I don't think that's healthy.

I think that the company has the right to make what decisions they want, as long as they are ok with accepting the consequences (financial, social, and otherwise) of those decisions. Most of the time, they are ok with it. I don't recall seeing the Pokemon Company or Game Freak issue an apology for something they did.

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Frequent Questions: The FAQ

#personal soapbox #dealing with community #value proposition

[updatebug]

You just can't rig a quiz any more. Time was you wanted to find out what animal you reincarnated as you'd get options like 'hmm what food do you eat 'meat' 'i'm not fussy' 'grass' and if you were angling for tiger you knew damn well which option you were going to click. I can't do that with a list of ten obscure song lyrics! How does Hayley Kiyoko know what my Daemon should be?

#quiz #quizes #personal #ramblings #update bug soapbox

[sunshine-in-a-bottle]

Briefly got very mad grumbly again about the feminization of Dream and how it was so cool and fun and gender until it started being inherently because of his abuse. Because of course being violated is Feminine. Of course abuse is Woman-Coded. Dream has to be Womanly Female Girly to be a victim, small and delicate and pretty. He can't be taller than most characters or masculine or a man when he's being abused. Sam has to be Masculine and Muscular and Taller and Traditionally Male Coded to be an abuser, and of course when he's abusing Dream he has to feminize him. So often Quackity will ignore Dream's transness and Make Him A Girl, or ignore Dream's cismanness and call him a girl. And I get the dehumanization aspect of taking away someones identity and the prevalence of dehumanization in cDream's canon narrative, but I'm not super comfy with the idea of associating subservience with Femininity. Dream is such a girly girl, didn't you know? Such a wife, so subby and subservient.

And I love Dream wearing dresses and being feminine and getting to engage in feminine things!!! But I don't want it to be about his abuse. I don't want feminine behavior Forced Upon Him as a result of being a victim. And I don't want his masculinity entirely removed. He deserves to be tall and muscular and have facial hair while also having ribbons in his hair and a princess dress.

And it's ok to make him a twink of course! I'm not saying that Dream Needs To Absolutely Only Abide By One Body Type And You Must Give Him A Full Beard. It's just really telling to see him only get to be feminine when he's depicted as a twink. A sad abused twink with long Rapunzel hair and no body hair or this really overt sweetness. It reminds me of exile, where they often make Tommy Shorter Softer Cuter Babier to try to emphasize his Victimhood, while Dream becomes Taller Creepier More Masc. As if this is the only way a dynamic can be. A soft, femme victim, and a hard, masc abuser.

(also very minor bristle that is partially squick is how trans man Dream is always the "Mom" of his kids. He's always the more Femme coded parent, the "woman" in the relationship, which feels really fucked up sometimes when combined with his transness. Being feminized and using feminine terms is dysphoric for him until suddenly Its Ok Now Because He's A Parent. His pregnancy doesn't need to inherently feminize him. He can give birth and still be Dad. There can be "Dad" and "Papa" and "Daddy" and "Father" or even just "Parent," but he's always Mom, and the other parent never is.)

#suds soapbox #something something the Eroticism of Feminization and Helplessness #also to be clear: this is not about a specific person. If you think its about you You Are Wrong Do Not Activate Your Fight Flight Response #This is me complaining into the void about a General Problem That Annoys Me Personally #because I'm a trans person who talks to other trans people and Likes To Talk About Gender

[bandtrees]

Annoying fandom people when you tell them characters do things based on writers’ decisions and biases and are not fully autonomous sapient beings they’re watching in a terrarium

#babbles #this is in general an ideal i hold very close in fandom stuff but like especially abt wc cuz that fandom sucks with this #i hate warriors fans so much it’s unreal. it’s not ‘these writers have weird ideas about what is romantic’ but ‘this character is toxic!!1’ #boiling down what can be a meaningful discussion about abuse and patriarchal standards into a purely blorbobrained character argument #about in universe traits like these characters are real and we need to give them counseling #because having the 500th soapbox about bramblestar or nightheart or whoever being abusive makes you feel progressive #like. i'd love to discuss for instance the misogynistic standards that the erins have as writers and how that affects their work. #i dont however care to discuss which Fictional Cat For Ten Year Olds is the most Problematic. bc that does nothing #reminds me of that tweet abt like the fatphobic trope of chars being depressed or hitting a low point and being fat slobs #and ppl came in waves like 'no it makes sense because he was depressed and xyz etc etc' like we're discussing a real person #and not constructs made by writers that show fatphobic ideologies. missed the point so hard dude. #less 'character does this' more 'writer made the character do this'. not even in criticism but in discussing themes etc etc

[landwriter]

2!

Hounds of Love by The Futureheads. Oh! What a gem!! I first loved this song when I was a wee bab and rediscovered it this past summer. It, along with all my top songs, was on a summer driving playlist which is why it is so insanely high haha. There's a sort of lovely pastoral wildness to this and I think that suits our lads so well.

An outdoorsy AU with competence kink out the wazoo, where Dream is a bird specialist at a wildlife rehabilitative centre, who becomes a minor TikTok celebrity (much to his enormous apathy) when the centre starts doing interpretive meet-birds events and the internet falls in love with this dour hottie who only smiles when he's talking about birds (Matthew, naturally, runs the account). Hob is a hunter - bow, mostly - who is regrettably very on TikTok, very on all social media - he hates the term but he is unquestionably an 'influencer'. He just likes sharing his knowledge and passion, alright? And the gear sponsorships are nice.

He sees Dream, and sees, mostly, a really great collab opportunity, so he messages him, and Dream (who is Matthew, and just shouted HOB FUCKING GADLING? IN MY DMs? at his phone when he got the message, immediately sets up a meeting at the centre. Then he breaks the news to Dream, specifically when Dream is holding Jessamy, so he can't be murdered.)

Dream, of course, expects Hob to be some like, swaggering font of red-blooded machismo talking points, and suspects Hob is only popular because he looks like an advertisement in Outdoor Living. (Matthew showed him pictures.) He disregards Matthew, who says Hob is actually super cool, because Matthew has terrible taste and would be the first to admit it. But his interest is piqued when Lucienne also knows who Hob is. It turns out Hob is deeply involved in nature and wildlife conservancy. Gives talks at schools. Gets involved with land protection initiatives. Teaches orienteering to youth. But everyone seems to expect him to hate Hob, which he would find faintly insulting except that he also expects himself to hate Hob. He doesn't. Not that much. Even when he shows up in a plaid shirt that is made of 'technical' fabric, because he's smart and excited to talk to Dream about birds, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of falconry, and most importantly, Jessamy takes to him immediately.

They run into each other again at a renaissance fair, another thing Dream hates but has been strong-armed into doing, and so they are both dressed in very silly clothes when it happens: the first time Hob watches Dream demonstrate falconry, the first time Dream watches Hob use a longbow made from a yew tree he fell himself, the first time they go from a wary sort of respect for one another to a wanting.

Dream, who has a recurring fantasy about running away from it all, listens to Hob tell tracking stories and thinks, If I went into the woods, you would find me. But he doesn't want to run from Hob - except sometimes, when he sees Hob chew on his lip consideringly before giving a thoughtful answer about the guiding industry, or when Hob grins wildly at the crowd after his archery demonstration, and most of all, when Hob phones him out of the blue one day - he doesn't text, he phones - sounding a little breathless with excitement, and asks Dream if he wants to come with him for a week in the mountains, on "probably a wild goose chase" and promises "all sorts of birds if nothing else." (Hob had meant to only share the news with Dream. Fuck, he thinks. I am so fucked.)

He says yes, for the birds, of course, and tells Matthew the next time he's at the centre.

"So what's the wild goose chase?" asks Matthew.

Dream plumbs his memory of the phone call and says, "Hob told me he received a bighorn sheep tag." Matthew gapes at him.

"Holy shit," says Matthew. "He's in love with you."

"He is certainly not."

"Uh, no, respectfully boss, he 'certainly' is. Lucienne!" he shouts, "Hob invited Dream to come out on his Dall sheep tag. What the fuck, right?"

Lucienne comes in and raises her eyebrows. "Oh dear," she says. She's smiling.

"What," says Dream. "It's a sheep. I don't understand."

Lucienne and Matthew exchange a glance.

"Him. I cannot believe Hob chose him," says Matthew.

"Love works in mysterious ways," says Lucienne.

"I am right here," says Dream.

Matthew turns to him, "Have fun in Alberta," he says.

this would ft. nights of wild stars, rugged terrain, type ii fun, sexual tension around a campfire, homoerotic form checks, tent sharing, dream glassing beautiful birds with hob's $3000 binoculars while hob stares at him in abject adoration, dream watching hob strip off his clothes and jump into an alpine lake, and refusing to join him out of pretended prudishness when it's really because he's suddenly so hard it hurts, camp coffee, confessions about themselves instead of confessions about their feelings for each other, sore muscles for a VARIETY of reasons, and lots of allegories about wildness and taming and running away from things, and SO MUCH COMPETENCE KINK, friends. so much. i would probably write it like - act one them leading their separate lives, their desires and aches etc., act two - meetcute and circling one another, act three - The Trip. this one has a very happy ending i can tell

#the sandman #dreamling #'this one won't be more than a few paragraphs' i say #stopping myself NOW ha ha #another AU I Would Write for suuuure #luring you in with the promise brokeback mountain style pastoral yearning #then leaping onto my soapbox and waxing poetic abt our relationship with meat and nature and nonhuman life #about hunting trips and multiday outdoor trips in general as a way of enriching relationships with others #about connecting in profound ways that feel only accessible in a place where humans are exceptions and not the rule #where our endemically lonely society and all the guardedness is stripped away before the beauty and the ache of the suck #wild spaces making room for wild emotions #for humanity #in a way cities and towns do not #ANYWAYS #shout out to the person reading this who understands the significance of a bighorn sheep tag as a feelings confession lol #(hucks this post onto my teetering want-to-make-this-a-WIP pile) #spotify wrapped prompt #my writing

[murderballadeer]

#soapbox #personally it's seven. every province from quebec on west + pei #and no territories as yet :(