Posts made by Cupcake

@Coin: You don't play with me anymore, so!

@Arkandel: Well, then you should know what happened at the end! I thought based on your question that you hadn't watched the last episode yet.

How 'bout them Butterflies?

@tek: My pleasure, though I can't take all the credit, @saosmash did the hero's portion of work.

Now we just need Mia, Thesarin, and Esoka...

Spoilers, sweetie!

But doesn't the setting SCREAM MUSHing though.

@Wretched: I concur. I have a hard time not rooting for the inappropriate pairing.

@Arkandel: I will talk about Into the Badlands to your heart's content, sir.

@Gingerlily Did you forget me? I am Offended.

@Admiral I don't even think you need to do that. I'm pretty sure that most of the people in the community who know me see me as completely different from who I used to be.

I'm super excited about this. It feels like collaborative storytelling brought to an amazing level.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zombieorpheus/strowlers-preludes-ireland-and-mongolia

I try not to think of it as guilt, but revelation. Why did people treat me this way? Why did I feel these things? Now you know. And yes, the initial relief makes you feel like a completely different person. And in a way, you are.

I remember saying something to my psychiatrist: I had spent so many years not really knowing at all who Cupcake was, but now I'm really excited to get to meet her. I hope the journey is as exciting for you.

@Olsson I admit option B gives me bodily autonomy squicks, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if you want to include that as a theme to explore. The concept of twins as two souls in one body has been explored by authors (Neal Shusterman and Tanya Huff come to mind) but only the latter explored the idea of bodily autonomy.

@Ghost:

1. Originally, the idea was that the goddess favors women in this specific venture because she is a feminine divine herself.
2. They're not "better at things", it's one particular task.
3. Men are not prevented from doing this, but by and large people tend to believe women are better at it because of a piece of folklore. If a family is starving and it's only the son that can do the diving to keep food on the table? You can damn bet he will. The culture is not all female-centric, there are other deities.

I've already stated that should I submit this org, I'll be removing the feminine element, but in the interim, boy you sure did out me for the rabid feminazi I am!

At this point, I probably will drop that element. And to be fair, I don't know when I will submit this County because there's still Riven on the roster.

@Glitch: You asked for a viable justification for why that would be the case and I provided you a reason from the inspiration.

Like I said, I'll put it through with the rest of my write up and if it gets nixed, that's fine. You're oddly vehement about this. If you're confident it won't pass muster anyway, why worry?

That being said, I didn't set this thread up just to have my idea analyzed (though we can continue talking about it if folks want) I wanted to talk about building cultures outside of our own norms. Kushiel's a good example for all that it's not an original world.

"In Japan, women were considered better suited to diving because they have an extra layer of fat to insulate them against lengthy periods in the water and they were thought to be able to hold their breath longer than men."

@Glitch It's not a deal-breaker element to my write-up so I think I'll keep it and see if it passes muster. If it doesn't, I won't cry.

@Glitch How so? There's justifiable folklore attached, and it is not a designation meant to be demeaning.

True, true.

For the record! This discussion is not me tossing shade at @Faceless, which he knows because I asked him if he was okay with me posting about this before doing so. I AM interested in a discussion about building cultures outside of our current cultural expectations and assumptions.

While this is applicable to Arx, I wanted to bring it up here in the general sense because there are lots of games where you can create subcultures.

I had an interesting exchange with a fellow player about an org I had written up. It's a county on Arx based on a coastal culture. I took some inspiration from the Ama, women in Japan who pearldive, and a little bit of Polynesian attitude and the like. In my write up, I mention pearls as an industry that mostly has women doing the diving, and tied it off by saying that since the ocean is the domain of a goddess, the local folklore is that women are the best at finding her offerings. So women, in majority do the pearl diving. Men are not forbidden from doing so, it would just get them funny looks and low expectations of success from others. Maybe some frowning.

I was asked what the men do that is exclusive to them and my answer was...nothing. I created a gender based task designed around being favored rather than demeaning, and didn't feel like it created a vacuum for men, or implied they were "lesser" as people. But I think I had a hard time conveying that aspect of it.

So. What are people's thoughts on culture building? Especially when you go outside of the norms of our contemporary modern life, or even humanity's past history?

@TNP: Naw, it was okay. I am, like @surreality, in wait and see mode. But Zack McGowan is now a regular castmember, so that seems like it is all to the good. It's just hard not to watch the show and be filled with a certain level of wistfulness for what could have been, gamewise.

Season 4 started last night.

This is just me, pouring a 40 for my homies. As Kevin Smith once said about Mallrats, before it went to shit, it was Camelot.