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[felis_ultharus]

Beltane

Happy Beltaine/Bealtaine/Beltane to those who celebrate it. I hope it's a good one for you all ^_^

Video Games

On a completely different note, I yanked this Salon.com article entitled Why can't gay dwarves get married in Middle-earth?" from jenjoou. Probably only of interest to people into gamer culture, which is about one-third of my friends-list.

Among other things, it's about the growing number of gay and bi male and women gamers playing video games, and how the people who write these things are responding.

I have to be reminded that gay and women gamers are a small demographic. All the passionate video gamers I hang out with these days are women, and I was *involved with* all but one of the guys I was hanging out with at the arcades, during my teenage years (and that one guy was the boyfriend of one of my closest male friends).

Video games have gotten a lot queerer since then -- I think Final Fantasy VII was a big turning point there. Any game where playing the passive role in sex with a guy not only restores your life and mana, but also gets you the lingerie you need to complete your drag outfit so you can seduce a mafioso, has to be among the queerest games ever made.

Even after all these years, I think Final fantasy VII still gives Shadowhearts and its man-festival a run for its money ^_^

Comments

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

Happy Beltaine!

Glad you liked the article.

And I unfortunately don't have to be reminded that girl gamers are still considered a minority in the community, people will still occasionally gape and ask stupid questions like "is that for your boyfriend?" (yes, I'm still very bitter about that incident at CompuSmart some time ago). It's not as bad as it was mind you. And yet I do know a lot of girls who play video games so it's strange.

Ah, but in FFVII you don't have to give gay porn to a tailor so he'll make dresses for your dolls. ^_^

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

yeah, but I understand he's a minor character. Cloud's the main character, and even outside of the drag sequence and the date with Barret, the dialogue is pretty slashy. Like how he tells Jessie she "looks great -- just like a man," when she's in drag.

I also like how seems to suggest a threesome with a Shinra grunt at one point. Or how kissing the king in the play destroys the dragon with the power of true love.

When they made Advent Children, I heard the game creators were nervous, because everyone had their own ideas of who cloud wound up with. Thus, Cloud is with no one in Advent Children. He and Tifa have separate beds, Aeris has a boyfriend in the afterlife, and barret and Yuffie are on the other side of the world.

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. ^_^

I think they handled it well in Advent Children. I didn't feel it was missing something because Cloud didn't have a great romance in the movie; contrary to what Hollywood seems to tell us sometimes, not all movies need to end with a happy couple. Incidentaly that's one of the things the americans did when they occupied Japan after the war, they required all movies to have romance in them (or a kiss scene or something silly like that). I like that just like in the game, at the end of the movie it could still go any way with the romance; there are little hints to all possibilities but nothing concrete for any of them. ^_^

[sugar-spun.livejournal.com]

Happy Beltane!

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

How is Beltane celebrated in Ireland? I know the way we celebrate it in Wicca has more to do with Germanic may Day customs than with Celtic ones, and I've always wondered how it's actually celebrated in Ireland today?

[sugar-spun.livejournal.com]

Fires! It's celebrated mostly in the West from what I understand; there's a massive solstice festival at Tara but I'm not sure if they light fires there at Beltane.

People also go out at dawn and wash themselves in the dew on the grass. But not in the cities because what little grass there is has been previously anointed by dogs.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

That sounds like fun ^_^

It's The Beards

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

The dork is amused that the title uses gay dwarves as an example. Given the fun various authors--from Tolkien to Pterry--have messing with dwarven gender identity, in some worlds "gay dwarves" means that first you'd have to find some cultural distinction between males and females. Not always easy.

Re: It's The Beards

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I don't think a female dwarf was ever mentioned in the original myths. Wikipedia has some interesting comments on Tolkien's and C.S. Lewis's versions of the dwarven reproduction ^_^

But true -- if there Dwarves same-sex marrying, how would anyone know?

Re: It's The Beards

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Have you read any Discworld novels? The dwarfs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarfs_%28Discworld%29#Biology_and_psychology) there are an extension of the Tolkien concept of indistinguishability.

I found this doubly hilarious because once my roommate and I were watching Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and we decided that Dopey was partially explicable if he was a girl. Dopey is, in fact, the other dwarfs' crazy sister.

... Well, WE found it amusing.

Re: It's The Beards

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I never read Discworld. I like the C.S. Lewis version of the dwarves better, because it seems more consistent with the old stories, which I like.

A little off-topic, but have you read "Snow, Apples, Glass" by Neil Gaiman. It's a wonderfully primal retelling of Snow White, where Snow White is a monstrous horror, and only the good queen recognizes her for what she is and tries to stop her.

Re: It's The Beards

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

See, I'm the sort of person who prefers Sensible explanations, so I like the way people make folkloric beings cohesive. I have a whole novel in the works (probably permanently so) about how "hybrid" people like mermaids and centaurs came about. And I worked out a biology for merpeople. But I can understand how someone would prefer the Old Stories. I always like to know the originals, too.

The Snow White retelling sounds cool. I'll look into it.