From Twitter 03-28-2011

( Tweets. Scintillating, innit. )

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My Love Letter to Bioware

Dear Bioware,

I've been meaning to write you this letter since before I finished my first play-through of Dragon Age: Origins. Which has, er, been a while. I get distracted. Sometimes by, er, Dragon Age: Origins.

It's possible you all do your job too well.

I haven't played Dragon Age 2 yet. I've got a friend in Canada who's withholding it from me until sometime in April because I've got a couple of deadlines that I really can't afford to miss. You know how it is, I'm sure. But I've been hearing some things that made me think of why I kept meaning to write this all down in the first place, and so here it goes.

Thank you.

Thank you for making a game -- well, two games now -- that makes me feel like I might exist, and that contains characters whose lives and loves (barring the whole fantasy setting and the party-based combat thing and so on) actually kind of look like mine. Almost no games do this, and fewer still with any kind of real sensitivity. It makes me glad to see people I recognize and can identify with in stories. This means a hell of a lot to me.

Also thank you David Gaider, for your clear and thoughtful (and, frankly, badass) defense of the choices you all made in creating and scripting DA2 so that everybody could have a better chance of feeling like they belong when they play. You are a big damn hero, and my heart grew three sizes reading this.

Please keep making games like this. I will gladly continue to buy your stuff. And, if you're ever in town, a drink. Or a pie. Whatever you're into.

Best,
Christian

P.S. If you guys have time and ever want to patch Alistair into being a little bit bi-curious, my birthday's in February. Just saying.

~*~

Oh look! An assortment of totally unrelated links.

- I did enough laundry this weekend to know that I probably own too many t-shirts, but I can't help but feel this belongs in my closet somehow.

- Avocado pie: good idea or bad idea?

- Andre Cooley, a sheriff's deputy fired when his bosses discovered he was gay because he called 911 when his boyfriend got violent, has been reinstated. Go ACLU!

- An argument in favor of the traditional retweet. Not entirely sure you can call anything this new "traditional" per se, but it's interesting and I'm trying the Firefox plug-in.

- Academic blackmail in the UK: study the 'big society' -- a conservative campaign idea -- or lose funds.

- Women in South Dakota are now required to wait three days and visit a crisis pregnancy center if they are considering an abortion. If you're unaware of what they are, crisis pregnancy centers are non-profits run by anti-choice groups, are largely unregulated, and have been documented as using misinformation and intimidation to frighten and mislead women. According to NARAL, things are epically ugly out there right now, with over 300 anti-choice measures being considered in state legislatures this year.

- I'm a fan of It Gets Better generally. Getting out of high school, getting into the world, and so on did definitely help me stay alive. But as this article points out, life doesn't automatically go all snowcones and puppies for grown-up LGBTQ folks. Bullying leaves scars, and our communities aren't magic, perfect safe spaces. Sometimes these things are still hard.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com