Bay 12 Games Forum

Yeah, join, I suppose. Can feed her children to the research gnomes later, spread out among several cities. Gnomes gotta' eat somethin', might as well be elves.

http://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/index.php?title=Magnum_Shot#Obtaining_the_Skill

http://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/index.php?title=Counterattack#Human

The game's pretty sandboxy, yeah. Outside of following the storyline junk, there doesn't seem to be much direction other than 'wander around, check junk out, get stronger.' Little things like the homestead or trading, but it's mostly just go-where-you-need-to-go-to-get-stronger, insofar as direction goes, at least from what I've seen so far.

It could stand to be a lil'more clear on exactly where that place to go is, though

Feed the elf to the research gnomes we've enslaved to create new weapons of war and wealth for us. Her pointy-eared flesh will fuel their endeavors.

Then the attraction isn't to anything that's actually there, in any meaningful sense. Or at least not anything that has to do with biological gender or "maleness". So-called masculine behavior doesn't have anything to do with genitalia, nor does it really have anything to with being classified or self-identifying as male; it's just a particular set of behavioral patterns.

There's nothing preventing someone that just happens to have female reproductive organs from manifesting those patterns. What about a pre-op FtM, ferex? What about men who are very "feminine," but happened to have all the other behavioral nuances you're looking for?

Point being that it's either the physical aspect that you're fixating on or a set of behavior patterns, because there's no necessary connection between the two. Basically, it's either the cock or it's not the cock; in the case of the former, it's purely physical (and the pre-op MtF would be fine, if everything else was in order, though post-op wouldn't be.), in the latter, not actually anything to do with your intended being male. It's just that it happens that males have tended to express the behavioral patterns you find attractive up to this point. Which is fine either way, really. Most of our species has managed all throughout time to get by with even less of a consideration of an issue than that.

Or at least that's more or less how I see it. I'm mostly attracted to women because I've got a greater aesthetic fondness for the female form than male more than anything else, because both the major behavioral manifestations of so-called "masculine" and "feminine" behavioral patterns just get on my nerves. If a bloke happened to 'ave th'mounds an'cleft o'Venus along with th'wedding tackle and was able to avoid most of the violently annoying cultural artifacts attached to gender, I'd be as attracted to them as I would to a lady. A futa is okay too~

Hell, just the latter half of that qualifier is sufficient, really. Gender is only tangential to that, not integral, though. That's part of the whole "Human before man or woman" thing.

Anyway tl;dr [/ramble] version: Male isn't actually a thing that exists outside the biological. Neither is female, really.

I can sorta' see where Glyph's coming from here, I think. What you said, Tru, can be rephrased very vulgarly as, "The thing that really matters is that they've got a dick." The rest of it? "Well, it'd be great if they've got all those, yanno', behaviorally perfect things, but no dick, no go. Just friends, because deyz ain't got no cock." Genitalia and some minor hormonal differences being the only genuine differences between genders. The rest is behavioral, which can manifest in either gender.

Which isn't exactly an unusual stance to take, really. The majority of the human race is exactly like that. It's very normal. Hell, I am too, mostly (Though that's more because of the misandry than anything else). It's just hard to get that position to "link," conceptually, with someone that really deep-down doesn't care what gender the person is so long as the behavioral aspects sync.

So... Bram Stoker is the Brahman to your Shiva, so to speak?

That'd be pretty interesting, actually.

I've heard the argument that without the government we'd be all slaves to companies before, and my simplest response is, do you really think that little of your boss, and yourself?

I think both history and current events lead me to say yes, I think that little of corporations and companies. The issue is only sometimes with "my" boss; the problem usually lies in theirs. And that boss's boss, and so on. Nadaka put this point even more clearly.

I'm also very much aware that if there weren't hard, enforced, limits on how far all companies can push their workers, there wouldn't be any other option for me. It's not a matter of "I'm not going to take this" when every other choice leads to the same thing. The choice between starvation and drastically reduced lifespan/vicious medical issues isn't a choice people need to be forced to make. If corporations had their way, that would be exact choice most people would be staring at. It's also the choice far too many people are forced to make right now.

It's really hard to drum up moral support for deregulation, t'be frank. The human species has had many, many, years and plenty of current examples to demonstrate exactly what we do in that situation, and it's very much not pretty.