One fun thing about the mod is that it doesn’t disable crawling on the walls/ceiling or descending from a web, so sometimes you’ll wander into a cave and a massive bear will just roar at you as it slowly floats down from the ceiling before it can charge at you properly. All the cobweb/spiders’ eggs items were replaced with “Cave Bear Honeycomb,” too.
Definitely it doesn’t need to exist for every phobia or in every game, but for phobias that really are only present audio-visually (blood splatters, certain noises, monster models, etc) and not narratively (quest-lines and dialogue), I think it is simple enough to have a model-swap setting or similar. I don’t mind the ludo-narrative dissonance of an NPC telling me to go fix their spider infestation in their cellar and then finding a den of cob-web surrounded werebadgers or whatever. Games like Don’t Starve already let the player fully customize the spawn rates of difference monsters, while other games let the player disable their character drowning or burning, for example.
Phobia-friendly settings/modes. There are so many games that I can’t play or have to find a mod for because the fantasy genre is obsessed with giant spiders. The only way I could ever play Skyrim was with the Arachnophobia mod that replaced all spiders with bears. I haven’t played Grounded, but I know it has an arachnophobia setting that can simplify/cartoonify the spiders or replaces them with floating orbs. I’d love to see these types of settings in more games, and ideally similar settings available for other common phobias/triggers besides spiders and blood.
I subscribed to Dropout earlier this year after I exhausted the free episodes on their YouTube channel. Definitely a fan of GameChanger and Make Some Noise! I recently started watching Um, Actually as well. One of these days I’ll have to get into the DnD side of things; I know I’ll like them, it just feels like more of an undertaking to watch, you know?
Finished up a refreshingly boring week at work and this Sunday I will be traveling to Manhattan for employee training! I visited Manhattan last month and did all the classic NYC tourist stuff but I feel I missed out on the food side of NYC; the recommendations I got at the time were subpar. If anyone has tips for worthwhile food spots to check out nearish to Moynihan/Penn Station, lemme know!
Apparently your comment really got to them, because the blogpost now contains a direct quote of you and a response.
The whole transphobic claim of being seen as our AGAB by future archeologists is especially ridiculous considering that modern ones are already saying things like this:
While the skeleton’s biological sex is not in dispute, Gowland cautioned that nothing is known about the Ivory Lady’s gender identity, and scholars shouldn’t impose modern gender norms onto past populations.
Weekdays: Approx. 100g of fresh or thawed berries and peaches mixed with 200g whole milk Greek yogurt, sweetened with stevia and drizzled with local honey.
Weekends: whatever leftover lunch/dinner type foods are in the fridge.
I also have a homemade latte everyday.
I’m not part of a specific denomination atm, having come from a vaguely evangelical background*, and my childhood religious education was woefully lacking in explanation of the different denominations and schisms. I want to try attending a variety of affirming, universalist churches to broaden my experience and figure out where I belong. I’ve heard good things online about Episcopal churches but I’ve never attended one.
*My parents were a Catholic/Protestant couple and made some odd decisions, like explicitly telling me we were attending such and such church but we’re not members of it, but then never really educating me in any other denomination’s teachings.
Yes, I’m Christian. I am also queer and staunchly opposed to American bible fascism. An unfortunate number of people seem to believe that these traits can’t coexist in one person without hypocrisy or denial.
Myself, I enjoy how my religious beliefs and my queer identity support and bolster one another. 😁
My parents are in their 50s and do not view video games as an unusual hobby. My father regularly plays games with his friends (aged 30s to 50s) on Friday nights and the weekend.
The only person I’ve met who viewed video games like what you describe was a mid-60s gentleman who struggled to believe that I played video games regularly and had a good GPA in college. His hobbies were golf and walking, though, so he wasn’t about to call anyone else’s hobby “boring.”
There is no age or demographic for whom video games are an unacceptable pastime. There are merely individuals who have their own weird hangups regarding the hobbies of others.
Edit: wanted to add that I love to hear of parents gaming together with their kids! Some of my favorite childhood memories are playing games with my family and we still sometimes get together to play a co-op game.
I celebrated Juneteenth with a friend by going to the city, visiting a cool history exhibit, getting sandwiches and boba, and walking 11k steps!
Also played in a DnD session and GMed for another one, which was fun.
Following that concept, a platform called Ripple where individual posts are called Pebbles and responses/reshares are called Waves wouldn’t be half-bad, branding-wise.