PERSONAL

0

5,871

Male and Female Privileges and Limitations, and a Game Inspired By Them

6 years ago11,326 words

Are women oppressed by a patriarchal society, as feminism would have us believe? Or is it women who are privileged and men who are oppressed, as those who've taken the 'red pill' claim? Here's some ramblings about all that which have brought me a kind of peace, as well as a game concept that gender relations have inspired, based around the idea that the two sexes are playing different but overlapping games with dissimilar challenges, rather than one being absolutely more or less fortunate than the other in everything.

I've wondered before whether I have some kind of bipolar disorder, or at least ∞ cyclothymia ∞, which has periods of what's called ∞ hypomania ∞, which that linked-to Wikipedia article describes like this:



I wonder whether the increased gregariousness, confidence, hypersexuality etc tend to be expressed by people who are more naturally extroverted anyway, though; they don't happen to me. But I definitely have long periods of depression with these shorter explosions of rapid, inspired creativity. The last eleven days were such a period. I barely slept, as I spent almost every hour of every day madly giving form to creative ideas that were flowing freely and fluently into my mind. I wish I could be so productive all the time! It's wearing off now, sadly, but that gives me a chance to write about it.



In my previous post, I asked if people were interested in a long post about my past work, and I was pleasantly surprised by the response! So I feel bad that this post isn't that. It was however born of that, sort of. I shall explain!

That long post is in progress, but it's huge already and only about half done. It's just over 30,000 words so far, which is literally the length of a short novella, though if every image was literally worth a thousand words then the count would reach six digits. I've got through most of what I consider my 'early period', from my mid-teens to when I made MARDEK, though I'm wondering whether to just skim over MARDEK and devote a separate post to that, perhaps commenting on it as I play through it. Someone also suggested that I make it a section of the site instead of just another post, and I've been considering that for years, actually. Having some kind of 'my story' section on one of my sites, essentially an autobiography. It felt narcissistic since I'm not exactly notable enough to warrant a proper autobiography, but I felt that it might be interesting for other people to see my creative journey via music, visual art, games, etc. I always find such things interesting even if the artist who made them is a complete stranger to me. I'll probably return to that long post very soon, anyway, and think about what to do with it. Maybe I could at least release it in two halves. (I'd also make sure it was clearly linked to from the top of the page; I forgot those noteworthy post links were at the bottom on mobiles, because I usually look at this site on my PC.)

I spent most of the words in that post talking about my old creative work, and it was inspiring. Going through my pre-MARDEK stuff in particular reminded me of how it felt to just follow creative urges before I'd been beaten down by life failures and mental illness. But I felt that I should talk a bit about the life experiences that happened alongside the creative work, as they generally inspired that work at least to some degree. Even during this early period some common themes began to emerge.

The biggest was my lifelong failure with the opposite sex. I am and always have been one of those shy, nerdy losers; the 'beta males', the 'nice guys' who lack the looks and swagger that gets the girls. In my not-even-that-young days, I'd never even talked to any girls, not properly, so my unsubtle wish fulfillment stories would often involve some male protagonist with a female childhood friend by his side. Really tame stuff, neither sexual nor romantic; just the idea of platonic female company - willingly given - meant so much to me back then, but I could only explore it through fantasy. Sad, I know.

So I ended up writing about that in the post, but also about the single romantic relationship that I did end up having, and how it ended up 'toxic' (as people like to say these days), due to my own faults. I couldn't write about it without beating myself up, apologising to the universe, essentially, for being such a poor partner, a failure of a person, etc, etc. I blamed myself for everything and her for nothing. Surely a delightful thing to read between ramblings about shoddy old games about fighting goblins and such.

I'd also been cringing repeatedly each day since I left university - or since I came back from Korea a year ago, probably - about the female 'best friend' I had there, with whom things ended very badly. I blamed myself for that too, mentally flagellated myself for my failings without end. I couldn't overcome it because I felt like I didn't deserve to.

With that in mind, I stumbled by chance upon ∞ this meme ∞ somewhere. You've probably seen it before - I assume everyone else is more exposed to such things than I am in my bubble - but to me it was new.



I'd heard terms like 'Chad' before and was familiar with the whole alpha/beta male archetype things, though I'd not seen this particular incarnation of them (the Chad reminds me of Groose from Zelda: Skyward Sword; I see a Chad version of him shows up as on of the first google image results, amusingly).

I know this Chad is obviously a ridiculous exaggeration, but the 'virgin' one hit uncomfortably close to home, because every one of those things fits me accurately. I'm very much that sort of person. It was oddly comforting in that it helped me feel less uniquely alone for being the way that I am (as it's meant to be relatable), but that was short-lived, soon replaced by the crushing weight of the fact that I'm very much the kind of person women aren't interested in. That fact has been the biggest force behind my desire to die. I felt that being loved and accepted by a partner was the only thing truly worth living for, and to go the rest of my life without that would be meaningless; death would be easier.

Some things I've read over the past few days have challenged that belief, though, and I've actually felt more at ease than I have in a long time. Finally free, even. I no longer want to die.

I looked at a few of those Virgin vs Chad memes, and followed some to their source, which led me to a collection of places that are apparently collectively called the 'manosphere'. I'd heard the term before, and had a passing familiarity with groups such as Men's Rights Activists, pick-up artists, and incels, but it's only over these past few days that I've got a proper feel for what they're about.

Most of the media and communities that I'm familiar with have what I suppose would be considered a 'liberal' attitude and atmosphere; pro-'progressiveness', yay for women's, LGBTQ and minority rights, boo to anyone who says anything negative about those groups ever, etc, etc. I don't care for politics, and the American two-party "us vs them" system bothers me, but I suppose I was less irritated by the 'side' that at least seemed to be about compassion and consideration rather than hard-hearted traditionalism. Political attitudes seem to be largely related to (though surely not wholly determined by) one of the Big Five personality traits called ∞ Openness to Experience ∞, which is all about having an open mind towards intellectual or arty pursuits or novel ideas. To use totally real-world, relatable caricatures, someone high in openness might be a mystical wizard forever researching new spells to bend reality into new shapes, while someone low in it might be a stoic blacksmith continuing in his father's and his father's father's footsteps while teaching his son to do the same. My own openness is high - I am a ~creative intellectual~, after all - so I was more at ease with whatever attitudes seemed in favour of new ideas rather than stagnation in hoary 'tradition'.

I'd also never seen myself as on the 'side' of men, definitely not of masculinity. I never went as far as to seriously question my gender, but I suppose that's because I never thought I had to be either macho or feminine, as if it was a dichotomy; I saw myself as male because of the type of genitals I'd been born with, but not a man as such, and definitely not one of the lads. I didn't swill beer, watch the game, or repeatedly penetrate my expensive car with my vast array of power tools. As all normal men do all the time, all at once. I didn't even feel at ease around other nerdy, softer guys, who I felt valued cold logic over empathetic consideration - an attitude I developed during those Fig Hunter days, years ago - and I always felt that women were kinder, more compassionate; that a world run by women would be less oppressive, safer, more pleasant in general. As such, I tended towards making female characters in my stories, increasingly often playing as a female in games, and I was bothered by societal oppression of women which felt incredibly unfair.

I was also bothered, however, by the idea of the 'strong independent woman', or of female characters seen as praiseworthily progressive by being 'badasses' who could 'kick ass as well as the guys'. It seemed to be a victory for masculinity, not for women; they were just playing the men's game using their rules rather than rewriting those rules. I wished that men would become more feminine rather than women becoming more masculine, that everyone would cultivate soft compassion and consideration rather than hard assertiveness and dominance.

Incels came up in the news not too long ago - or at least they came up on my radar for whatever reason - and it caught my attention because it seemed relevant to me. I've never been a card-carrying member of the incel club, but I was definitely someone who was, due to genetic and social deficits, celibate against my desires. I read some articles about incels - not by them or from anyone involved in their communities, but by these 'liberal' types of communities and websites that I was more used to - and I was appalled by what I read. I wanted to write about it here, but never got around to it despite it being on my mind quite a bit. A shame, I know; me writing about it on my blog would have changed the world for sure.

Since one incel had murdered some people in a fit of desperate frustration, obviously the group as a whole was going to be demonised, and of course it was. But it bothered me a lot how they did this. They essentially mocked these guys for being unable to 'get laid', implied or outright said it was their fault for just being so undesirable, and they derided a suggestion that they be assigned sex bots or prostitutes to help appease their sexual frustrations as if the very idea was ludicrous on its face. "Incels aren't entitled to sex" seemed to be one of the main talking points, as if they were all scummy rapists-if-given-the-chance who meant to objectify and harm others; distancing oneself from them seemed to be portrayed as an act of strength. They were non-people, monsters.

There was one article in particular that irritated me (I wish I'd saved the link; as it is, I only have a hazy memory of the gist of it), because it spoke of "cisgendered straight white males" and how incels typically fall into this category and as such are privileged and should shut up because they already have everything. They're not disadvantaged like those poor trans black wheelchair-bound people who we all must support!! Maybe this is just being cynical, but it seems that such people generally only support categories of people if support for those categories will win them virtue points either in the eyes of others, or when assessing their own worth as a person (I doubt this is a conscious thing). Some categories become culturally 'trendy' to support, as things like LGBTQ - trans in particular - and women in general are at the moment. I don't mean to suggest that it's in any way bad to support such groups' rights and improve their lot in life - it'd be wonderful if we were all treated equally, whatever our quirks - but it bothers me how shallow and selective it seems, at least from my distant vantage point. They're quick to defend anyone who falls into their pet categories, but those who don't, such as young men who've been dealt a hand by genetics that's undesirable to women - no less genetic than, say, minorities' race - have only themselves to blame for their misfortunes, and as such are fair game for mockery. Just go out there and get laid, you losers! You know, become a whole different person! Oh, but don't you dare question a trans person's (probably also genetically-rooted) gender identity! They can be whoever they want to be!

Not everyone who ticks the category boxes for "cisgender", "white", "heterosexual", and "male" is equally accepted by others. There are traits that have no trendy category to support that affect social acceptance perhaps even moreso than race or sexuality. If you're a wimpy, anxious guy, then you're faced with all kinds of rejection all the time, and it's as much your fault as it is those minorities': it's genetic, it's just the way we were born. Just the way we are. As men, their bodies beg them to have sex all the time, and the frustration from being unable to do so because of how others act towards them isn't too different, I think, to trans people wanting others to change their behaviour towards them rather than suppressing their own feelings and desires. Trans people feel like another gender/sex and want others to treat them as such so then they don't have to feel the pain of trying to be what they feel they're not; you're a bigot if you don't. Incels feel the desire for sex and want others to give it to them, to ease their biologically-rooted pain, yet the socially acceptable response is apparently rejection and mockery.

(I know using someone's 'preferred pronouns' and having sex with them aren't quite the same thing, but still.)

A minority of incels might have committed atrocities, but it'd be small-minded to think that extreme outliers represent the group as a whole.

Much of women's value as a potential mate comes from their looks; it's how we've evolved, either biologically or culturally or both. But feminist movements are aiming to obliterate the obligation to maintain this aspect of oneself via body positivity etc; it's okay to be fat - or "plus size" or "curvy", rather - because ~everyone is beautiful~. It feels like men, however, are expected to be capable - to have confidence, resources, or both - in order to be desirable, and there's no movement to say that every man is attractive, even if he's broke, homeless, and has a face like a pug. If you tell a fat girl who's complaining about being unable to find a 'good man' that she just needs to "just be more beautiful", then you're an arsehole, perpetuating gender stereotypes and misogyny. She'll find Mr Right eventually who'll accept her for who she is! If you're a guy unlucky in love, you hear "just be more confident" (etc) all the time and that's fine. You're a loser, virgin; go and wank to anime in your mother's basement. And then of course there's women openly saying they're only looking for men over 6 feet tall...

It does seem that a lot of people in the 'manosphere' are very misogynistic though (understatement!), very toxic in their negative regard towards women. Either they see them as manipulable, expendable sex objects, or as horrible parasites deserving of violence or death. That's not a good thing (another understatement!), and I definitely don't want to come across as being anti-women myself! We're all people, and it's important to me to understand where everyone is coming from. But rather than just dismissively demonising these men as bigots, I can understand that that misogyny hasn't come from nowhere. It's not like they're big bullies beating up the weak for the thrill of it. Most have been hurt and oppressed by women, much as the outspoken, misandrist feminists feel they've been hurt and oppressed by men.

Men are, fundamentally and biological, driven by the desire to have sex, to pass on their genes. Libido is an important part of the male experience, and it's difficult to suppress. But culturally, it seems to be regarded as inherently awful, sinful, unacceptable. It's fair enough that things like rape would be considered atrocities - they are - but it seems as if men are demonised just for being sexual at all, especially if they're not the sort of rugged hunks that women would actually be naturally attracted to.

In this age of MeToo, it seems to be culturally 'trendy' to have been sexually assaulted. I know it sounds like I'm trivialising the discomfort women experience from men's unwanted sexual attention, but the lack of greyness in that term seems ridiculous to me. Pinning a girl down and penetrating her as she screams in terror is sexual assault. Touching her shoulder for a second is sexual assault too. Even words can be sexual assault. It seems utterly insane to me that such 'minor' things fall into such a serious category, that the overly friendly bum touchers are in the same loathed group as brutal sociopathic rapists.

I can understand women not wanting to be groped by random men all the time, and wanting that to stop. But it seems that in order to alleviate their own discomfort, they've made men in general wary and uncomfortable. ∞ It seems that men are becoming reluctant to have anything to do with women in the workplace ∞, so as to avoid being #MeToo'd. Is this a good thing?

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm suggesting that women should just let guys grab them and grin and bear it. It's just the idea that all men are rapists-to-be that just doesn't seem fair. A woman could cause a man a whole lot of emotional agony and that'd just be a part of being human, something he just has to 'get over', but if he makes her sexually uncomfortable even for a second, it's "ruined her life" and he's now a criminal. It all seems completely blown out of proportion, like women are encouraged to cultivate minor pain until it bloats into some all-consuming tumour rather than just shrugging it off like so much of the other forms of pain most of us have to deal with daily. What makes 'minor' sexual discomfort, such as being patted on the bum, worlds apart from being, say, verbally insulted? Both cause negative feelings, but one can ruin a career - a life - in a way that the other can't.

Or maybe that's not entirely accurate. Careers have been ruined by expressing the wrong thoughts, too. It's so easy to judge others, to put them through the kind of ravaging scrutiny we'd hate to be put through ourselves. My misdemeanour was 'just a joke', or I 'was in a bad mood'; their crime is monstrous, and they should be locked away.

It's the ∞ fundamental attribution error ∞; my mistakes are due to temporary external causes, theirs are due to fixed internal faults. Much of this men vs women stuff is essentially rooted in that mental quirk, it seems. Much of social behaviour is, really. It's the root of judgement.

Anyway. The 'liberal' media portrays the world as fundamentally patriarchal, with feminism as an admirable challenge to women's oppression. Men in the 'manosphere' use a red pill / blue pill metaphor to describe awakening from this delusion and realising that women are actually the ones with all the power and privilege, being granted all kinds of boons while men are often left in the cold.

And I can see where they're coming from. As one of the lower-tier males, I've always felt that girls had an easier time acquiring the things that I'd want from life - sexual attention, mostly - because of how society has conditioned us all to treat others and to be treated ourselves.

I've looked briefly through some subreddits that are considered part of this 'manosphere', and there are common themes between their content, but the attitudes and aims between them vary. The RedPill one sort of made me sick, since it's a bunch of guys boasting about how their calculated 'alpha' behaviour has successfully won them sex on many occasions, in a way that their old 'blue pilled' behaviour never did, sharing jargon-coded tips and tricks that read like the strategy sharing on a gaming subreddit. It's even called "game", the skills used in seduction. They use terms like "plate" to refer to multiple women they're sleeping around with at once (as in keeping many plates spinning), and seem coldly indifferent or oblivious to any of those women's feelings. They're just game pieces to be manipulated in the right way to eventually win sex, and that typically involves being some inconsiderate dominant arsehole, which seems to work even if the guy is the polar opposite of what the girl claims to want (I just read a thread about a guy who picked up a girl from an anti-Trump rally and took her virginity while wearing his Make America Great Again hat, to which she was psychologically conflicted but sexually excited; it's irritating). I wonder how many of the sexcapades they describe are actually true, but I've no good reason to believe that they aren't.

I've also read a bit of the subreddit for something called Men Going Their Own Way, or MGTOW, which has been more eye-opening, refreshing, liberating. There's some overlap with incels, who seem to complain about women's habits rather than strategising about how to win them over, but unlike them, many of these men have been in many relationships, and have grown tired of women from the experiences that they've had. They've decided to forego relationships entirely, to just go through life as a solitary man, and it seems to be bringing them great satisfaction.

I've considered suicide a lot because I didn't think that I'd be able to find a partner, and I couldn't bear the thought of losing the game of life in that sense. Reading their stories has - at least for now - removed that desire to die; instead, I feel like maybe I've dodged a bullet, that relationships aren't quite the answer to my problems that I thought they'd be, that I'm on the best path for me anyway, that I don't have to find a partner so it doesn't matter absolutely that I'm not the sort of man that any woman would want. There's a lot of comfort and relief there, and many of the mind-crushing, self-blaming thoughts that made me want to curl up into a ball and disappear have just... stopped. Mostly. It really does feel like I've broken out of some kind of destructive delusion, so I can understand why they use the Matrix metaphor even if I don't exactly like the taste of the medicine.

I wouldn't want to join the community surrounding this idea, though. A lot of the posts in the MGTOW subreddit are mockingly hostile towards women, and it's irritating how they talk a lot about women not wanting them for not being a 'Chad' in one breath, then tearing a fat girl to shreds in the next for not meeting their attractiveness standards.

They paint all women as being the same, all being 'thots' (a word I hadn't heard until a couple of weeks ago but have since been seeing everywhere) who'll surely cheat, who'll 'monkey-branch' their way to new partners once someone more valuable than their current one comes along. Then they talk about women they've had heartless "pump and dump" (their charming term) encounters with, where nothing but the sex mattered. They don't respect women at all, but are frustrated that women don't respect them.

And it's the same from the other side. "Men only want one thing! ...But I want many specific things, and if you don't have them all, then I'm going to reject you, teehee!"

(The girls they talk about seem to be the 'normal' ones, whereas my interest has always been towards oddballs; the weird introverts who make art at their computer, who - like me - are towards the middle on the gendered behaviour spectrum. As such, at least some of the few I've known haven't exactly fit into the mould they describe, much as I'm not a laddish guy. I'm also aware of many studies that show that married couples are happier than single people, though I wonder how much of that is due to attitude; if you think your singleness is a curse - as society tells you it is - then of course you're going to be unhappy. Either way, I recognise that I don't have what women in my age range would be looking for, and it's a relief to know that I don't have to bother with the dating game at all, that there's not some perfect prize I'll be missing out on, that my current way of life is adequate as it is. It really has been bringing me a lot of mental comfort, and has been encouraging me to improve my lot in life for myself whereas thinking of changing for some hypothetical judging woman was just overwhelming.)

Did you know that male ducks have a penis shaped like a corkscrew, and that the females have a vagina with a corkscrew shape in the opposite direction to thwart males' attempts to impregnate them?

Humans are animals, and just like other animals, we've evolved different sexual strategies that work best for us, which are in some ways in opposition. The sexes don't have the same needs, so their attitudes towards relationships aren't going to be the same. It's in males' best interests to impregnate as many women as possible so as to increase the chances of his genes surviving to the next generation; he doesn't have to look after the offspring directly for this to happen, so there's no strong biological drive to do so. Women, on the other hand, need to put time and care into raising the babies that grow inside them, so it's in their best interests to ensure that those babies have the best genes possible - from the best mates - and to keep those mates around so they'll protect and provide for them and their children while they're vulnerable.

There's a whole lot more to it than that, of course, but the fundamental idea is that our conscious minds exist on top of these primitive drives, and frustration arises from the clash between the very modern beliefs that we're civilised and should suppress our urges, that the sexes are equals in every way, and the biological fact that we don't actually want the same things.

There's loads more that could be said about all this - I've only scratched the surface of what's been going on in my mind over the last couple of weeks, and not as coherently as I'd like - and it's a hot topic at the moment, very politically-charged. I'm sure you have opinions about it; maybe they clash with what I've written here and you're shaking your head in exasperation or something. I'm very much still figuring things out, playing with ideas that I was previously aware of, but which I'd not given as much mental attention to before. So I'm sorry if I'm coming across as naive or something.

The reason I mention all this though is because a game idea formed out of it, and that's what I'll talk about now.



It's based on some ideas I've had floating around in my mind half-formed for quite a while now. Early last year, while feeling cursed by the genetic hand I'd been dealt and frustrated by the differences between me and my first ever female best friend, I thought about making a game where you'd play as a creature which had various social and physical stats that were completely randomly-determined. You'd have to get by in the game world with whatever stats you had, with the point being that it's tougher if you've not been blessed by chance, by factors entirely out of your control. There wasn't anything more to it than just a faint idea, though.

Shortly after, I elaborated on it a bit; here's a page of sketches from last May:



They were for a game idea where you'd start life as an immobile blob in a hole high in a tree (well, a big mushroom, but I'll call it a tree), and colourful, light-emitting beetles would randomly wander in beside you. They'd shine their coloured light on you, and you'd absorb it and gradually grow. The number and colour of beetles would be up to chance - you could get loads, or none - and would be entirely out of your control. Over time, you'd harden into a sort of cocoon, with a size and shell colour determined by all the light you'd absorbed from the beetles. It was meant to represent how some people have fortunate beginnings while others don't; they're already way ahead before the game even properly starts.

You'd fall from the tree trunk to the ground far below, and assume another form, which was sort of like a teardrop or a seed with one eye, one flat side, and a single appendage, sort of like a leaf (some of these earlier designs had more). There'd be others of your kind wandering around (they'd move by using the leaf to hop), and you'd be able to interact with them via singing, fighting, etc. They'd all be different shapes, sizes, and colours; the biggest, brightest ones would have the highest stats, and as such would perform best in every action they attempted.

Your aim would be to reach the top of the tree to reproduce, but to do this, you needed to fly. You couldn't alone though, with your single appendage. If however you charmed another individual enough - any individual; there were no sexes - you'd be able to bind together with them to form a single entity with two eyes and two wings, which it could use to flutter up to the tree's top to breed.



It appealed to me as an idea because I clung to the concept of a 'soulmate', someone who'd 'complete you', without whom you were only half as capable, forever prevented from reaching your true potential. It was masochistic, too; some plays through the game, you'd just watch others being desirable enough to bond while your own attempts were met with rejection, and ultimately you died alone in the dirt. Surely an experience any gamer would wish to virtually have!

A while later - in March of this year, apparently - the idea bubbled up again, in a different form. I'd been playing around with VR for a few months (I've been meaning to talk about that, too, since I still use my Oculus Rift quite often), trying to make my own stuff, and I wondered whether I could make an app that might encourage greater empathy for the opposite sex's motivations, more forgiveness and understanding for their behaviour rather than blame and demonisation. I'd read some studies that found that male criminals who played as a female being assaulted in a VR program showed considerably more empathy for females afterwards, as they had - in a sense - lived through the horror of what they might inflict upon them. It seemed an excellent way to encourage seeing from another's perspective, since you literally would be.



In this idea, you would have played as either a male or female, randomly chosen for you. I don't remember why, but I imagined the characters as these amoeba-like things, swimming around in a kind of ooze, meaning that you could travel 3-dimensionally. If you were female, you'd have an egg in your chest, and you'd need to have it penetrated by a male to produce a child, which you'd then play as. The aim was to carry on producing offspring as long as possible; it'd be game over if you failed to reproduce. Males would have a 'sword' for each VR hand, which they'd have to use to penetrate the female's chest... but females would have shield hands instead of swords, which they could use to block the swords (though they couldn't attack back).

If you were male, any time a female got close, an alert would flash in your face telling you she was there and that you should mate with her. These alerts would be annoying and very difficult to ignore, urging you towards penetration constantly. They'd be your quests, your game goals to tick off. If you were female, males' genetic value would be made clear by the vibrancy of their bodies; brighter blue meant better genes, which meant that the next child would have higher stats, more health, that kind of thing. Males would be approaching you a lot - the game required them to do so, after all - but it'd be up to you to block all but the one that you decided had the best genes. You needed to breed, but you had a choice about who to breed with.

It wasn't particularly fleshed-out or anything; I only thought about it for a couple of days, between or during Evolutionary Psychology classes where we covered all of this sort of mate selection stuff.

This recent possibly hypomanic episode, and the stuff I'd written about in my long autobiographical post, seemed to revive the idea, and over the past 11 days it's turned into the beginnings of a working game. That's what I'll spend the rest of this post describing.



Perhaps you're aware of exceptions, but every game that I can think of where you're given the option to play as either a male or a female makes them equally capable in every way, with the differences being entirely aesthetic (exceptions such as characters with specific abilities who happen to be of a particular sex, or single-sex races, don't count). This is fair enough since it'd be decried as sexist otherwise.

This game, however, is based around the idea that males and females are essentially playing different, overlapping games in the same world. Each has privileges, opportunities, and limitations that the other doesn't. Neither sex can have it all, and each has legitimate gripes about areas of life where the other sex doesn't face the same challenges that they do.

At first I just intended to do a few sketches, to play with the idea in my head without really intending to go anywhere with it, like with the VR thing I mentioned earlier. Originally I considered using humans in a modern setting, but felt that might be both boring and too political, so I thought that perhaps I could use some animal-people that were human enough to be relatable (unlike the leaf-seed things in the other idea), but alien enough to allow for dramatic differences in their world and culture.

I started with this page of sketches:



At first they were just fairly generic wolf-people; I'd been playing Deliverance and looking at my old art while writing that long post, where wolves featured prominently, so I must have been subconsciously inspired by all that (the drawing in the upper left looks like a varnyn from Alora Fane, actually). I felt it wasn't particularly original though, so I explored a more humanoid variant of the can-join-together-to-fly idea, though that didn't look especially appealing and would have gone against what I was trying to say anyway. I played around with using the Alora Fane aster (the six-petal flower thing) as an aesthetic motif, as I have done in a lot of stuff recently; the thing in the bottom right is the most obvious example of that.

They also have these target-looking things on their heads, which are an idea that I came up with a few days before this, for the ∞ herbal daemons ∞ thing that I was working on. In that, I wanted to explore the idea of people being socially rejected for reasons beyond their control, and one way of doing that was by using the 'runes' personality system that I came up with for Taming Dreams. Each person would have three runes (Abstract (A) or Realistic (R), Feeling (F) or Tough (T), Jolly (J) or Grave (G)), and these would determine their personality, and would be fixed from birth. Since that project wasn't meant to be a game, I wanted a way to make these runes visually clear somehow, so I came up with this:



It actually worked out astoundingly well, I think; I'm really pleased with it, though I can easily imagine that I'm the only one who would be! It's quite abstract, but basically the outer circle represents the first rune (shaped very vaguely like an A or an r), the middle one is the second rune (like an F or a T), and the middle is the third rune (a spiral resembling the flowing direction of a J or a G). My only issues are that the F one looks more like an E than an F and the A one looks more like an n than an A, but other than that I was surprised and impressed that the shapes matched the essential components of the rune letters by only rotating or flipping them. I think it's really elegant, but I can imagine the reasons why people might not share my passion for such things.



The humans in the herbal daemons thing would have had theirs on their navel, because that's where the umbilical cord connects and so it was bound to the concept of their birth (and could also be covered up easily; I imagined that in their culture, being open about who you were would have meant wearing belly-baring tops). I decided to put them on the foreheads of these new creatures though because that way they're more linked to the brain, the mind, plus these creatures don't have belly buttons because of how they're born, which I'll get to in a minute.

Also, these creatures are currently called sindrels, which was the name of one of the Alora Fane races that I came up with a few years ago. Those sindrels were blue-skinned reptilians, mostly unlike these, so I don't know if I'll stick with the name. Maybe I'll come up with something that has some meaning behind it. I went with sindrels because in Deliverance, there's a village of reptoids, which I also used in MARDEK. I planned to use a derived idea in Taming Dreams too - as it was the Alora Fane remake of MARDEK - but the reptoids would have been sindrels... or rather red-skinned sindrels that were called kendrels. It's something I would have liked to have been able to explore, had I got deep enough into that story.

This page of sketches followed that other one:



After playing around a little bit with the idea of them having masks for faces (which felt too impersonal), I felt fairly happy with these designs for the males and females. They felt cute enough to be appealing and human enough to be relatable, and they used the aster motif in their design, which I liked. The three feathers on their heads had variable designs between individuals, and it was this that was passed down between generations, like a family name.

As in the previous VR idea, the males had swords and the females had shields, both of which are made of energy that emerges from the gems on their hands at will. I wanted to avoid genitals or familiar depictions of sex because of the (annoying) taboos surrounding it; by using something representative of sex without it actually being sex, I hoped to get around those. I'm not sure if it'll work, but that's what I was thinking. As such, the females have a single gem where human women would have a pair of breasts, and it's this that the males need to penetrate with their swords to produce offspring. It's always bothered me how non-mammalian female humanoids have breasts despite not needing them for milk, just to appeal to our aesthetic idea of what women look like. I like this chest gem idea because it creates a similar silhouette to breasts while being distinctly alien and serving a clear purpose. Breasts are also considered sexual organs (in certain cultures, at least) despite not being used for sex, so I liked that this 'breast' organ actually is involved in the reproductive act. It's also where the heart is in humans, so charging a female would involve energising her heart, sort of. I can imagine people calling it a 'uniboob' or something, if anyone ever sees or comments on any of this at all!

Another page immediately followed:



Playing Deliverance gave me the desire to make something where your character could equip clothes that actually affected their appearance, so I definitely wanted to incorporate that. I also felt that variable attractiveness between individuals was crucial for the game to work, and that it needed to be easily visible and unambiguous; if they were humans, it'd be harder to depict attractiveness or ugliness and it'd be subjective anyway so some people would say "these 'attractive' people aren't!" or vice versa. A common (hypothetical, illustrative) example of the communication of sexual mate value and genetic quality used in the Evolutionary Psychology classes that I attended was that of birds whose feathers varied in vibrancy; bright blue males won mates and reproduced while dull brown ones didn't, that kind of thing. So I decided to use skin colour as a way of showing an individual's attractiveness, which I like because it's relatively obvious who's attractive and who's not, it makes the males and females more distinct from one another, and it also has some parallels to racism, where people are socially shunned due to the colour of their skin, which is beyond their control.

Normally I'd sit on an idea for a few days, letting it crystallise a bit before ultimately deciding not to do anything with it because I'm already working on other things that I should really finish. As I was perhaps hypomanic, though, I immediately followed that page of sketches with an attempt at making a 3D model from them:



I think it's strange how the drawing version looks quite cute and relatively proportional, but this thing turned out looking like some kind of bobble-headed gangling-armed goblin or something. Maybe it's the relative narrowness of the limbs, the bigness of the hands.

The next day, I had another look at it and tried to see whether I could make the proportions more appealing. I ended up with this:



Maybe it was just my mildly manic mind making muddled decisions, but I was really pleased with it! Coming up with pleasing proportions has consistently been an irritation for me - I've written about that several times before - so it was nice to end up with a body I didn't feel constantly compelled to tweak, without too much effort or frustration.

I quickly rigged it, and was glad that it was easy enough to pose relatively expressively. I learned (through experimentation) some new things about weight painting, rigging, topology, and other technical stuff that I won't bother to go into, but which make this, in my opinion, the best 3D model I've made so far, so I want to include a few images of it just because I'm so happy with it!





Obviously it's not as good as what a professional might make, but it's nice knowing that I have the ability to give form to my own ideas in this way.

At the risk of coming across as a pervert, something specific that I want to comment on is the bum, which I think turned out particularly nice! I've never much cared for bums and I don't have any sexual interest in them, but the hips region - the buttocks in particular - is an annoyingly tricky one to model just right, especially in regards to deformations, and that's been bothering me for a long time (the same is true of the shoulders, which are only mediocre in this model; I'm still learning with those). I've got a folder with a bunch of images of wireframes of other people's models, especially if the bum is visible, to study them and hopefully better understand how to do it myself. In the interest of sharing how I achieved it in this model, I present this:



There are definitely way better examples out there, but I wanted to minimise the number of polygons while achieving an appealing shape, and other low-poly models that I've seen - or tried to make - often have blocky buttocks that just sort of extend out of the back of the pelvis without any topological coherence. I wish I could explain this better, and how much of a challenge getting this area right has been across the models that I've made! As it is, it just seems like I'm saying "phwoah dudes, check out the sweet booty on this chick, bros! Dudes!". Which I totally am. Check out that hot vertex with those six edges connecting at it on the side there! Phwoah! (Actually, that fits with the aster motif too; interesting.)

I like the economic use of polygons throughout the model, actually. It's pleasing to me to achieve a lot with little.



These are 'naked', and I've been wondering whether they'd be objected to - seen as inappropriate - because of cultural prudishness, despite a lack of scary, eye-melting, child-scarring genitals or nipples. Maybe having a visible bum is enough to make it too 'adult'? It irritates me how people interpret these things. But I won't rant about that here.

I did the female first because I'm more used to modelling females and find them more aesthetically appealing for biological reasons, and decided to put off making the male to ensure I was happy with the style so then I wouldn't have to edit them both if I changed my mind.

I learned while writing the long autobiographical post that I've been attempting 3D modelling sporadically since my pre-MARDEK days, which surprised me. It only feels that I've properly got into it relatively recently though, and I'm quite enjoying the learning process! I know it's probably not as interesting to other people as it is to me, but maybe you get something out of seeing this model and how it was made anyway!

I immediately dived into building a game around the model, without as much planning as I probably should have done. One of the biggest things I want to talk about in that long post is how I never used to plan things before starting - I'd just make them up as I went along - but now I've changed, now I do plan... Perhaps going over all my oldest stuff revived the improvisational design mentality, though, and inspired me to do that with this. I started by making procedural variation:



The one in the middle is the most attractive here (though the left one is only subtly different), the one on the right is the least attractive. There's variation in eye colour, and the head feathers have their textures generated by code.

I made a whole bunch of screenshots as I went along since I really like looking back on the earliest parts of a project to see how things gradually came together, and I meant to share a bunch here, but they're not all that interesting, really. I'll show a handful anyway, in case you're curious.

I started the game on the 10th of this month (so exactly a week and a day ago, as I write this), and here's a screenshot from day one:



What a hideous monster! Ugh, I can't even look at it without vomiting!

I wanted there to be some kind of helper creature which would provide commentary and assistance, and at first I imagined it as some kind of floating fish-like thing that'd follow you like the fairies the kokiri have in Ocarina of Time. Here's an amazing, beautiful digital sketchbook page with some design work for them:



(I imagine Proper Artists have much prettier pages of sketches, but since there's nobody I'm aiming to impress, I generally don't bother trying to make things look nice.)

The fish thing uses the aster motif, of course, but while making a simple 3D model of it, I decided to base it on a neuron as well, with myelin sheaths and everything:



I intended for these fish things to have a symbiotic relationship with the sindrels, providing them with wisdom (so then they didn't need to have a childhood) in exchange for... something. There were issues with it, though, such as coding the AI to have them smoothly and unobtrusively follow their associated sindrel; the feeling of being constantly hounded by them was annoying. I also considered having some sindrels saddled with a dark-coloured fish that gave bad advice, representing mental illness, a broken mind, but it seemed like too much on top of everything else so I abandoned the idea.

I decided instead to change them into a symbiote which lives inside sindrel skulls, and which usually just looks like a flower ornament in their hair (but which actually looks sort of like a bacteriophage virus, which I've always been fascinated by).



It seemed an elegant way to go about it, since I often give characters hair flowers anyway (I'm not sure why; I think Elwyen from MARDEK was the first?), I could base them directly on the aster motif, they seem intriguingly alien, they don't need to follow their sindrels because they're attached to them, you'll normally forget they're there so they're less likely to get annoying, they live in the skull so it's more obvious how they're affecting the sindrel's mental abilities and what they're getting out of the deal, and it adds this darkly curious element to the world's lore that might make you wonder why their lives are as they are, and whether there's something more insidious to their arrangement than they let on. Plus it's a literal voice in the character's head, which I'm conceptually intrigued by as evidenced by that being a big part of MARDEK, and because of my experiences with mental illness which sort of is like that at times.



That screenshot is from the 12th, and I'd already added simple clothes, wandering NPCs, a GUI, and a conversation system. I'm quite happy with the conversation system actually, again for technical reasons I can't be bothered to go into (basically it's really easy for me to add new dialogue to the game or to edit existing dialogue, unlike in previous projects where I handled conversation mechanics far less elegantly). Deliverance allowed you to choose options in conversation, and it feels like it's been a long time since I made something with such a thing, but it felt necessary for this.



You can choose from up to four conversation options, like I've seen in some other games that I've never actually played but which you, O reader, probably have.

Dialogue would be influenced by stats, and by runes. Most female sindrels would have RFJ runes (Realistic-Feeling-Jolly), and most males would have RTJ ones (Realistic-Tough-Jolly). There'd be a 1 in 6 chance for each rune to be different to these usual ones, and sindrels with unusual runes would be received more poorly by others in conversation (unless the other had the same aberrant rune). This would be a way to represent the effects of having an unconventional personality - or things like mental illness - in the real world.

The Abstract/Realistic dichotomy is essentially Openness to Experience, which I described much earlier, so Abstract sindrels would wonder about the workings of the world and imaginary ones, whereas Realistic ones would typically take things at face value and feel threatened by Abstract ones (who'd be bored and irritated by Realistic ones).

Feeling/Tough is related to the Agreeable/Egocentric Big Five Trait, which relates to whether someone puts others or themselves first. The 'manosphere' seems especially high in egocentrism; I've seen several posts essentially boasting about disregard for others' feelings as if it's a strength. F/T isn't nice vs nasty as such (the Empathy stat is used for that); it's more like either valuing subjective feelings and considering others' experiences as valid, or only accepting the objective and putting oneself - the only thing that can be directly known - first.

Jolly/Grave is sort of like extroverted+optimistic vs introverted+pessimistic. You might say that not all extroverts are optimists and not all introverts are pessimists, but there does seem to be correlation between these pairs of traits, from the research I did about the Big Five while getting my psychology degree (and I got all A+ or above grades in that module, wow!!!). It's just a simplification for the purposes of not overcomplicating making or playing the game anyway, though; obviously human personalities are more complicated than just three letters could encapsulate.

...I didn't mean to ramble about those runes so much, but I suppose it's something of particular interest to me, and it'll play a notable part in the social interactions in this game.



There's not much reason to show any more screenshots from the development process, so I'll just skip to how it is currently, and explain how it all works.



The game is set in a world (tentatively called Carna) which experiences harsh 'winters' every six days, where all complex life dies off entirely. As such, sindrels only live for six days, and have to achieve their reproductive and personal goals within that time. Each generation is born at the same time, so they never meet their parents or ancestors. Nobody has any time to build structures or a society, to develop a culture.

So they have symbiotic relationships with these large plants, which they live inside like houses. In the centre of the house is a pool of 'nectar', which is restorative to sindrels (I had in mind pitcher plants, though the liquid they contain definitely isn't restorative!). They're born in this pool, so it's their first experience of the world.

Each house also produces a certain flavour of fruit, which can be harvested one at a time from the coloured flower that you can see there. Houses have a number of what are called 'sprouts' around their edges, which are sort of like the plant's 'heads'. They require fruit to eat, to sustain the plant, and it's the sindrel's job - specifically the female sindrel's job - to gather this fruit and look after them. Symbiosis!



The sprouts are sort of like a virtual pet mechanic, inspired by my love of virtual pets from when I was younger (which I also wrote about in the long post). You can name them, feed them, and play with them. Each one desires a certain flavour of fruit which changes every time it's fed, and different flavours of fruit can only be acquired from other houses. While you can feed them your own house's fruit - essentially recycling its nutrients - often this isn't enough, or you irritate the sprouts by not giving them what they wanted. Females from other houses have different flavours of fruit, so you can acquire those different flavours by trading with them, which requires social interactions.

Sprouts have a happiness meter, which you can increase by singing to them. I envision this as a kind of melody-based minigame thing. The sprout would sing a melody, and you'd have to press buttons mimicking that melody, or something. I've not added this yet though.

They also have a growth meter, which increases when they're fed. If it reaches the max amount, they evolve into a different form. The form you get is determined by how well you looked after them. I've not added this yet, either.

(Originally there were six sprouts to look after, to keep up the recurring motif, but that was way too overwhelming in practice! Two seems more reasonable.)

Ultimately, you need to use the pool of nectar to reproduce, and you need to keep the house plant alive for that. Letting the sprouts die kills the plant, meaning game over. Evolving them into good forms improves the quality of your offspring.

Sindrels have an energy meter, which is replenished either by eating food or by standing in the nectar pool of their house (they can't enter other sindrels' houses). They also have a mood meter, which determines the quality of their actions as well as their movement speed (if mood is low, they can't run). Mood is enhanced differently for each sex. For females, your mood increases by chatting with other females, so it's important to make friends with local females so then you have a way to replenish your own mood.

This isn't a direct parallel to human society, but I felt that having females focus on nurturing childlike things and socialising with others as the primary gameplay mechanics was fitting. They'd probably spend most of their time in or around the house, which is probably offensively out of line with modern progressive feminism, but it was sort of emergent from these gameplay mechanics rather than a deliberate choice as such.



Sindrels live in these little villages made up of several houses, and the females would congregate in the middle to talk to one another (it's night in these screenshots - I've already added a primitive day/night cycle mechanic).



In each little village, there's one of these white monoliths, which the sindrels refer to as a 'shrine of the gods', where they go to give 'offerings' and to receive 'blessings' in return.





That is, it's essentially a shop. 'Offering' items accumulates 'fortune' (money), which you can then spend on 'blessings'. It's how you get clothes and food, which makes sense from a lore standpoint because a six-day-long life and no access to ancestors wouldn't exactly be enough to develop agriculture or tailoring.

I find this monolith intriguing as a concept because it's obviously alien technology, but why's it there? Why do they clothe the sindrels, and use religious terminology? It adds an element of mystery to the world, especially since the sindrels just take it for granted. It's partly inspired by the monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but also by smartphones, specifically iPhones. Sindrels need the monolith in this world as much as we need smartphones in ours.



But why?!?



Each sindrel has five primary stats (shouldn't there be six?!), which are genetically determined and fixed throughout life. Strength and nimbleness would mostly be used during male gameplay, which I'll get to in a minute. Intelligence and empathy would be used in conversations, both to woo potential mates and to make friends with the same sex.

As I described previously, there's a clear visual difference between sindrels with high and low beauty.





It's interesting how my mind adapted to this concept while making this. At first I found all sindrels aesthetically appealing because I liked their shape (which doesn't differ between individuals) and the colour of their bodies was irrelevant. But as I delved more into the mentality of the world, I started thinking of the less-pink ones as 'ugly' and expecting less from them in conversations. Hmm.

I haven't added males yet, but they would essentially be hunters. They'd have no obligation to look after sprouts - they might not even be allowed to own houses - and would instead be expected to venture out of the village to fight with wildlife, to gather items that they'd offer for money at the shrine.

The combat system would likely be rudimentary, but I'm wondering whether to make it a parallel to the female's sprout raising by having it rhythm-based; singing to sprouts would require mimicking a melody, but combat would require matching an opponent's rhythm to dodge attacks and make your own. Maybe.

Males would use their energy swords to fight, and would also desire to use them to charge females' gems. Like females, they'd have a mood meter, but unlike them, it wouldn't be charged by social contact. Instead, it'd be fully replenished whenever they charged a female's gem, but no other way. They might also require nectar, as females do, to restore their energy and their health (which would be depleted in combat), but since they don't own houses, they need to be invited into a female's, which requires wooing her socially.

Females would be very willing to invite in and be charged by the males with the highest attractiveness, since their offspring would benefit from his genes. It'd take little - if any - convincing for such a desirable male to get her to say yes. Less attractive males would have to somehow make it worth her while, though, perhaps by offering valuable resources that he'd got from the shrine in return for his various hunting trophies.

Males, like females, keep track of how many mates they've had, but unlike females, who need to get 6 (and can't get any more than that), males have no limit. Those with the highest mate counts are the most highly regarded by other males, and it's something they can brag about in conversation to get respect.

Some creatures you'd hunt would be too tough to take down alone, so males could team up to fight together. This would require making friends socially with other males, but it wouldn't be too tricky.

Again, this doesn't exactly parallel real human behaviour, but having males focus on accumulating and offering resources (especially if they're not genetically blessed), goal-oriented socialising, and 'sex' as a requirement for wellbeing, it provides a different gameplay experience to the females which is neither better nor worse, just different.


To summarise, females are stuck in the village looking after sprouts and chatting with other females, and have to attract desirable males while rebuffing the advances of less desirable ones. If she meets a great male and wants to keep him for all six of the charges that she needs to reproduce, she needs to give him a reason to stay, like a place to recuperate freely and a guarantee of 'sex' when she's ready recharging. Males are homeless vagabonds who have the freedom to roam and fight outside the village, but they need to impress women to replenish their always-depleting mood and to win a place to rest, using accumulated resources acquired with difficulty and effort unless he's genetically blessed.


Ultimately, gameplay would involve being born as a random male or female, living for six game days, then dying... and if you'd succeeded in producing offspring, you'd then begin playing as them. If not, game over. The aim would be to survive for as many generations as possible.



I really like this as an idea, and I've been enjoying myself a lot working on it these past few days (though maybe that was at least partly because I was possibly hypomanic). I'm unsure how well it'd work as an appealing game, however; that'll take time to see. I understand that what's cognitive stimulating in theory might not translate well to a practical experience that someone would want to spend hours in. But we'll see.

I was going to upload a playable version of what I've got so far, but I think I'll refrain from doing that for now. I'll post it if there's interest though, probably as an exe file so you'll need to be on a PC to play it.

I know that this isn't exactly the post that people might have been wanting to see, and that it ties into potentially problematic political problems rather than warmly fuzzy escapist nostalgia, so I can understand feelings of wariness or disappointment. Hopefully you got something out of reading this post though!

I'm definitely feeling a lot better about sex and relationships than I have in a long time, even if the reason for that isn't the best. I've accepted that I'm never going to find a partner, and based on the horror stories that so many men have of their time with women, I feel relief - like I've dodged a bullet, almost - rather than the negative feelings that consumed me before. It's interesting seeing how many men in the various 'manosphere' subreddits talk about VR porn and sex dolls. As 'creepy' as such things are, that's probably what I'll end up using to appease my own biological needs in the future, as the technology advances (I've actually briefly tried VR porn, as I'm sure you're glad to know, but I wasn't particularly impressed; if anything, it was unnerving, though I only tried VR video things with these unattractive, haggard-looking actors and it all just felt so uncomfortable because it seemed like they were; maybe interactive games would be different, though I've had no motivation to seek any out, if they even exist, which they surely do).

Oh! Also! My brain surgery has been delayed by a couple of weeks; it was going to be on the 4th of next month, now it's on the 18th. That's a relief to me, though I don't have any more to say about it, really!

But yes. I have no delusions about something like this changin