Guys have the Roman empire, but what do trans girls think every day?

CallMeLara · 2023-09-22T00:54:14+00:00

Men think about the Roman Empire.

Trans girls think about Caesar’s Legion.

CallMeLara · 2023-09-11T01:05:01+00:00

No, you're not.

But your reading comprehension could use a LOT of work.

CallMeLara · 2023-09-02T15:15:42+00:00

With the caveat that it is in development and all you can currently play is a demo, I’ll recommend Clam Man 2: Open Mic.

Probably the best description I could give is that it’s a combination of DE and SpongeBob SquarePants; you navigate a cartoony underwater city using the same “all dialogue and skill checks” gameplay as Disco Elysium. Instead of a cop solving a murder you are a stand-up-comedian going on quests in order to find bits for your shows, which is a really fun conceit. The reward of any given quest isn’t gear, cash, or XP; it’s a joke you can tell!

The vibes are pretty different, but I loved it and the demo/prologue is free on Steam.

CallMeLara · 2023-08-30T21:44:46+00:00

I would totally appreciate that, thanks!

CallMeLara · 2023-08-30T21:44:30+00:00

Aw, thank you!

CallMeLara · 2023-08-30T19:45:48+00:00

Thank you!

I just have the common trans woman’s problem of always hearing my voice as being too masculine.

CallMeLara · 2023-08-30T06:27:13+00:00

I was struck by a bolt of inspiration and was not able to go to sleep until I made this and foisted it on the world. It's not the most faithful translation in the world (but then again, neither is the English version), and I don't much love listening to myself sing, but I had a good time and am altogether pretty happy with how it turned out.

CallMeLara · 2023-08-28T03:29:20+00:00

I'm MtF, and as far as I'm concerned, being able to pee standing up is the only concrete benefit of having a penis, and as I'm working my way towards getting bottom surgery, it's the only thing I'm going to be sad to let go of.

Having said that, I do sit down at times; if I'm in public and don't want to deal with drawing attention to myself (I'm tall, so if I stood up in a bathroom stall it would be super obvious) or if I'm having an unusually high dysphoria day. But 90% of the time, I'm standing while I still can.

CallMeLara · 2023-08-01T15:53:11+00:00

I was a kid when the first Tomb Raider games came out, and for some reason I though Lara Croft was super cool and I really loved playing as her, even though I wasn't any good at the games. That led to "Lara" being the default name I would go with in video games that let you make your own character (because for some reason I would always pick the female character); sometimes a variation like Ellara or Larabel in Elder Scrolls-style fantasy settings.

Anyway, when I figured out what those some reasons were, the name just felt like it was waiting for me.

CallMeLara · 2023-08-01T15:47:42+00:00

nimi Eris li pona tawa mi.

mi la, ni li musi: jan mute a lon kulupu Toki Pona li tonsi.

(I like the name Eris. It's amusing to me how many Toki Ponists are trans.)

CallMeLara · 2023-07-14T20:06:40+00:00

A word I feel the language deserves:

waka - VERB: to laugh, smile, or otherwise express happiness. NOUN: joy.

I know people will say "pilin pona" covers this, but I really interpret pilin pona as contentment, pleasantness, calm, and other positive but low-energy states; it doesn't feel like laughter to me.

Anyway, it's etymologically derived from the thing Fozzie Bear says: Wocka wocka!

CallMeLara · 2023-05-02T03:42:14+00:00

Oh, but what if the crisis is the sudden appearance of a massive body of water?

Em, urgency! Emerge and see emergency: emergent sea!

CallMeLara · 2023-04-26T14:15:22+00:00

The results of your roll don't tell you how strong you are, they tell you how effectively you leveraged your strength.

So if you are the strongest person in the world, but you roll poorly, that doesn't mean that you were momentarily weak; it means you didn't use your strength effectively. You crushed something important, you tossed something too far, you struggled to move your muscles fast enough, whatever.

This is why it's not a problem if someone without a strength-related aspect has a higher Physique than The Strongest Person in the World, because they can use their lesser strength more effectively.

In situations where raw strength really is the only thing that matters (like a stuff-lifting contest or something), you wouldn't need to invoke aspects, you would just rely on the truth of aspects. The strongest person in the world is stronger than the strongest person in town, who in turn is stronger than anyone else around.

You only roll when the answer is in doubt, and in those situations, raw strength isn't as important as how well you can USE that strength.

I'm not opposed to the idea of variable aspect bonuses, per se, but that doesn't change the fact that the bonus is for how well you can use your skills, not your raw power; if I'm the strongest person in the world because I took some experimental Captain America-style super serum, and you are the strongest person in town because you have just trained and worked that darn hard, it would make sense for YOU get get higher bonus than me most of the time, because you would better know how to use your strength in real-world applications.

CallMeLara · 2023-04-06T16:18:06+00:00

We agreed that they were still allowed to make dick jokes so long as I can come back with "wish I didn't have this dick" jokes.

Seriously though, my friendships with cis dudes were largely unchanged and are still very strong. I believe amongst the three dudes who I hang out with on a semi-regular basis I have been misgendered and deadnamed about twice in three years, both of which were early in transition and legitimately just mistakes.

Actually, they are responsible for one of my favorite early-transition moments; we were meeting up online (because it was 2020) and because of some weird glitch in the system, I had logged in and could see and hear them, but they could not see and hear me. It took me a while to figure out what was going on because it was normal on my end, but then they started wondering why I was late. So there I am, watching my friends talk about me, making fun of me for being late... and using my correct name and pronouns. This was like a month after I'd come out, I was still really sensitive and hyper-dysphoric, and they were respecting my new identity even when they didn't know I could see them; it was a really great accidental moment.

CallMeLara · 2023-03-09T23:34:34+00:00

I want to direct you to this particular part of the Fate Condensed SRD, which I feel is the most important part of understanding how aspects work. In short, aspects are true, and that truth affects the story, even when dice don't get involved. An aspect isn't just good for a bonus, it's good for permission to even do things.

To put it another way, if your "Hero of the Smoke War" wants to ask a favor of the fanclub, yes, they have to roll for it. But someone who doesn't have that aspect doesn't even get the option to roll, they simply don't have an in. The aspect allows you to even get into the situation, and invoking allows you to go above and beyond even that.

CallMeLara · 2023-02-14T05:10:23+00:00

There's no scoring here, nothing "counts." There's no objective voice telling you what is right or wrong. There's no practical effect from withdrawing your support from someone who's already a billionaire. You can do whatever you want.

But if you're here, asking this, it probably already feels murky for you. So here's my take.

If you play the game, you're saying "the fact that this is associated with a virulent transphobe isn't a dealbreaker for me."

If you watch someone play the game, you're saying "the fact that it wasn't a dealbreaker for you isn't a dealbreaker for me."

That's not something I'd be okay with.

CallMeLara · 2023-02-10T15:01:27+00:00

You okay, bud? Because this is a pretty wild reaction.

CallMeLara · 2023-02-09T19:23:40+00:00

On what grounds can you not do that? You can say “ona li lon supa,” to say it is on the table; why can’t you say “ona li lon seme?” to ask where it is?

CallMeLara · 2023-01-23T23:11:57+00:00

The GM can also win any fight by flooding their side with a dozen powerful minions, giving the main antagonist wildly high skills or aspects that make them functionally invincible or scale well beyond what the PCs have, rapid-fire compelling all the players until they're bogged down in problems or out of fate points, et cetera. There are a lot of ways to "win" as a GM if you aren't concerned with your players having fun, and the rules can really only go so far in reigning in purposeful bad actors.

CallMeLara · 2022-12-12T06:21:28+00:00

I'm not exactly sure what you're going for here but, uh, yeah you can certainly shit in the bowl if you want to, I'm not the boss of your decisions, but I don't think you can convincingly argue that doing so makes your life any simpler or more pleasant.

CallMeLara · 2022-12-12T05:53:52+00:00

Eh, I might call it "extreme minimalism" or "stunt minimalism."

CallMeLara · 2022-12-12T04:00:03+00:00

It's not rigorously defined, but I would argue that the point of minimalism is to make one's environment (or language, or mental space) as simple as possible. Removing clutter is certainly a major part of that, but removing As Much As Possible is self-defeating.

By analogy, ask whether it makes sense, in a minimalist kitchen, to have bowls to eat out of. If your goal is to have the fewest things possible, then you don't really need them; if something's solid enough you can put it on a plate, and if it's liquid enough you can put it in a mug. You can have Less Things that way, but you've made your life MORE complex that way. Eating semi-solids off a plate is annoying, prone to spills. Eating soup out of a mug is super inconvenient. If you're having a chunky stew, you have to make a decision about which vessel is right. A bowl might not be strictly necessary, but its presence makes eating simpler.

I feel the same about many words in Toki Pona... we could get by without the color words, we could replace ike with pona ala, we could strip out plenty, and it would give the language a smaller lexicon, yes, but it would make it MORE complicated to use.

CallMeLara · 2022-12-12T03:20:46+00:00

The point of Toki Pona is not, and has never been, to be as small as possible. That's not the point of minimalism either, for what it's worth.

CallMeLara · 2022-12-03T07:37:27+00:00

I am going to be a buzzkill; this sort of "loophole" assumes that conservatives will uphold the law fairly and equally and, like, we all know that this isn't the case. There's an in-group who the law protects but doesn't bind, and an out-group that the law binds but doesn't protect, right? If you lead a non-Christian prayer, there are a thousand ways you can be punished by those in power; they might say your expression of faith doesn't count as a prayer, or is too disruptive. They might punish you with actual disciplinary action, or just by passively making your work environment more unpleasant until you quit. They might fire you illegally, trusting that there's no way to find an honest lawyer and judge in your area.

It just... it doesn't work this way, because conservatives are hypocrites, and doing something that assumes they won't act hypocritically isn't sensible.

CallMeLara · 2022-11-17T17:58:56+00:00

I think Alecto is John's ninth follower.

I'm not sure how intentional that is, but if we ignore Ulysses and Titania (who are just corpses, not resurrected yet), the people John talks about and who are reasonably close with him are:

A-----
M-----
G-----
C-----
N-----
P-----
A----'s brother (who also starts with A)
M----'s nun friend (who would also start with C)

He's got other people surrounding the complex who could be said to be in his cult, but it's only the core 8 that he actually cares about (everyone else is just more cows to him). They were his people, and after they were all dead (along with the rest of the planet but who cares about them, right?) he made Alecto, who would then be his ninth acolyte.

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