Oh no! Sympathies. That sucks.
I know fuckall about the game industry but if its anything like other creative gig economies this sounds par for the course, as will be hundreds of unpaid and barely-paid hours and assorted indignities…
Hope you’re dealing OK, take care
MC
Been in games for a bit over a decade. The vast majority of the game industry is an established tech industry. Layoffs are dramatic but fairly rare, paychecks are constant (but lower than other parts of tech), and work-life balance varies from studio to studio. It can be a lovely place to work, but you do have to remember that “indie studio” can sometimes be code for ‘A group of people who have no idea what they’re doing and no funding’ as opposed to most actual indie game studios, which are just small companies. Never work anywhere if they miss a single paycheck.
Condolences here, as it sounds like they wandered into the former as opposed to the latter.
Needfuldoer
Agreed, it sounds like they didn’t realize the legal and financial implications of “hiring an employee” vs “commissioning freelance work”. (Especially if said employee is outside the EU, which brings international laws into play IIRC.)
Please don’t take it personally or be too hard on yourself! You got that far through the interview process! That was an oversight on their part, not any fault of yours.
So, does this mean Booster leans femme-presenting more often than not, and that’s the reason Ethan won’t be into them, or is it because Booster is just not straight-up masculine, like Ethan presumably prefers?
Or it could be they want to be seen and aknowmeged as they and since Ethan is gay, not overall queer that the relationship wouldn’t go forward anyways because they are not a he.
Booster: Alright new friend, I have here some cards of suggested conversational topics. Tell me, what are your thoughts on…”FIRRIB”?! I don’t…what is that?
(Ethan launches into three hour explanation/rant. Booster shrugs and sits back to admire.)
I’m curious how this will go when they actually get to Ethan. He may not be in the mood to make a new friend. Ethan might already know who Booster is as well and know he is Walky’s new roommate, and thus know he is “Replacement Mike.”
I guess I’m ok with that name, given the alternative is Boothan, which is a little too close to Bothan for my liking (they die for information, so they probably die for entertainment too, and we don’t need that kind of carnage on our hands)
I was thinking that too. He was into Jocelyn too, who of course looked just like a man, but still. Booster is biologically male, I assume, given that they live in the men’s dorm, and their looks are (to me at least) those of a man who embraces certain feminine things, not those of a woman. Just because their gender is non-binary doesn’t necessarily mean a gay man won’t be into them based on their biological sex.
And I hope I didn’t unintentionally insult or hurt anyone with my words. Everyone deserves to be able to live as they identify, and find a nice partner of their preferred gender & sex, if they want to.
As someone who fairly recently learnt they were demi-sexual, I’d say your assessment is valid. Sometimes all you want is someone who makes decent Batman jokes and that ain’t restricted to one body type last I checked.
It would probably matter to booster that Ethan recognise they’re gender cause it doesn’t feel great when the person you’re with isn’t actually attracted to who you actually are. Booster probably wants to be with someone who is attracted to their non-binary self, not “I’m into you because I view you as a guy, but won’t say anything”
I could be way off base as I’m not attracted to people’s bodily arrangement but what I think Anna meant was that Ethan could find Booster physically attractive as they don’t have overt female characteristics aka boobs and a vagina. That doesn’t mean wouldn’t be attractive to who they actually are as sex and gender are two different things ( what you were born as vs what you identify as) so in theory you could be attracted to the physical package and the various cerebral quirks that make up a humanbeing. Does that sound fair?
Anna
That’s the other side of it, of course: even if Ethan is into Booster, does Booster want Ethan? B does think E is hot, so that would help. And who knows how Ethan feels about a non-binary person, for all we know he is into biologically male bodies with whatever gender. On the other hand, he backed right off from Jocelyn when Jocelyn told him she’s not a man, despite her looks.
Florence
That’s actually true, I’d forgotten he was actually good about that.
It would be an interesting avenue of queerness to explore, often it’s a seemingly cis het character discovering queerness, but a cis gay man going out with a queer person who isn’t strictly in the boxes is not something you see expired often
It would be a funny relationship considering booster is not that angsty and even if booster can resist their analysis brain, I don’t think they’d be able to stop themselves at least making helpful suggestions. Like the opposite of garbage roof type relationship. Does Ethan even want the good version of a relationship with booster considering how he currently is?
Nono
Did he actually back right off from Jocelyne because of that? He kinda tried to flirt with her, then she confronted him with ‘wait you’re gay, why are you dating my sister’ and he got enough second hand embarrassment to back off. The ‘finding out she’s not a man’ was pretty much after the dust had settled, and it was via text.
@Anna
Disclaimer: none of this is intended as a criticism. I saw your comment and thought you might find this helpful!
I am no expert myself, but if I remember correctly (my memory is poor and accepted terminology varies greatly!) a better term for Booster would be “assigned male at birth” (AMAB) rather than “biologically male.” As many people educated in biology have pointed out, there are *tons* of biological indicators of sex, and a human being can have some very interesting combinations that defy sorting into a gender binary even on a purely biological basis. (For example, most people have no reason to know what their chromosomal sex actually is, so some people that were assigned male at birth, have presented and identified as male their entire lives, and have considered-male sex characteristics including deep voice, lots of body hair, etc. are actually chromosomally XX.) So, since the sex/gender assigned at birth is based on simple straightforward visual cues (“does the baby have a D or a V,” and of course this is why assigning gender at birth is so flawed) it’s typically a better shorthand for the kind of thing you’re referring to here about Booster 🙂 People will understand what you mean either way, though.
Also, Booster still has a good point; sexual orientation/attraction is so varied and unique from person to person, Ethan being gay doesn’t tell us much about whether or not he’d be into Booster. Danny is not exactly the most masculine dude ever, but he is still a conventionally masculine presenting dude, and everyone else Ethan’s slept with is either the same amount of or more masculine than Danny. We really have nothing we can point to in determining whether Ethan is into gender-nonconforming dudes. I wouldn’t count Jocelyn because, as a result of her being closeted for safety, she probably looks even *less* femme than Booster. She seemed to think Ethan wouldn’t be interested in pursuing her after learning she’s trans, but I think that’s because Jocelyne does hope to transition someday
Anna
@Myth, I appreciate it! I know the term assigned male at birth/AMAB and how it is useful, and I know sex is a spectrum, both when it comes to chromosomes and in what a person has between their legs. All this is interesting and in my view everyone should be able to live a life that matches their gender, and only have operations on their sexual characteristics if they want that themselves.
But when it comes to this specific person Booster and whether or not Ethan would be attracted to them, I think it matters not so much that Booster is presumably AMAB but that they (probably) have the physical features of a man. A trans woman can have a vagina and boobs, and I think we can safely assume that Ethan would not be attracted to her, even if she was exactly as AMAB as Ethan himself or Booster or Mike or etc.
Hence my choice of the term ‘biologically male’; perhaps ‘with the physical features of a man’ or ‘physically male’ would have been a better choice.
@Psi Baka Onna: Yes, that is what I meant.
@Nono: maybe you’re right, I might misremember exactly how and when Ethan backed off from Jocelyn.
he was a smaller legends class toy, and like that line’s shockwave and a couple others, he could be turned into a gun for a bigger figure. box art canon had him as superion’s weapon.
Likewise, Had one in my race car for years. Mainly because it was lightweight and gave me a trans that would survive hard launches and had a reverse gear.
The concept of “domestic labour” was developed by 2nd-wave Marxist feminists precisely to name the unpaid value produced by women’s work in the house. The phrase “emotional labour” follows the same template, as do further elaborations such as “sexual labour”.
I believe in typical marxist terminology ” labour” is the value-producing effort itself, with or without compensation. The word for the commodification of that labour is “service”. See “domestic service workers”, “sexual services” etc.
Anyway, for further reading I highly recommend Jess Zimmerman’s riotous and whip-smart essay, Where’s My Cut?
I don’t know from combiner wars or Firefight, but I know F4s are powerful planes. I was on Nellis when the Thunderbirds flew F4s. If they got some speed up, they could fly straight up clear out of sight. If you ducked under one, though, you’d better be wearing a helmet. All kinds of things sticking down to cut your head open.
I’ve heard both the F4 and the Shuttle offered as proof that – with sufficient power, and some minimal streamlining and control surfaces – you can make a brick fly.
Bicycle Bill
I think that same logic is what gave us that breed of watercraft called the “bass boat”.
Roborat
My dad was a fighter pilot, and that was how he described the F-4.
Since Go-Bots have been part of Transformers for longer than these characters have been alive, probably more confusion than anything else.
(In their lifetime, I believe it’s been pretty much always the pre-school-aimed lines, except for when it was the characters from the original brought into a G1ish Transformers universe.)
dunno how receptive ethan would be to being approached, even with just friendship esp if he knows they’re a psych major. depends on how organic the meeting is versus ethan just sulking in a public space like teh cafeteria/common area and booster just asking if he’s alright versus them approaching him and saying “amber said you could use a new friend” or so
132 thoughts on “Masc”
The Wellerman
*insert Homestuck meme about stack data structures*
Clif
Say what?
Pylgrim
FIFO, obviously
Taffy
Meme inserted and found excellent.
The Wellerman
Thanks Taffy, that means a lot.
Especially since the indie game studio just informed me that they had to lay me off because of budget reasons and stupid European laws
??? ???
Spriteless Aunty
Crap. If your interview project was useful you might want to try to get paid for that much.
milu
Oh no! Sympathies. That sucks.
I know fuckall about the game industry but if its anything like other creative gig economies this sounds par for the course, as will be hundreds of unpaid and barely-paid hours and assorted indignities…
Hope you’re dealing OK, take care
MC
Been in games for a bit over a decade. The vast majority of the game industry is an established tech industry. Layoffs are dramatic but fairly rare, paychecks are constant (but lower than other parts of tech), and work-life balance varies from studio to studio. It can be a lovely place to work, but you do have to remember that “indie studio” can sometimes be code for ‘A group of people who have no idea what they’re doing and no funding’ as opposed to most actual indie game studios, which are just small companies. Never work anywhere if they miss a single paycheck.
Condolences here, as it sounds like they wandered into the former as opposed to the latter.
Needfuldoer
Agreed, it sounds like they didn’t realize the legal and financial implications of “hiring an employee” vs “commissioning freelance work”. (Especially if said employee is outside the EU, which brings international laws into play IIRC.)
Please don’t take it personally or be too hard on yourself! You got that far through the interview process! That was an oversight on their part, not any fault of yours.
The Wellerman
Thanks ?
davidbreslin101
Further down the corridor, someone goes “OW! Who threw this Fireflight at me?”
Ana Chronistic
…are we sure ETHAN won’t start calling Booster “Replacement Mike”?
chuckroast
Only in bed.
ThunderNight
depends which transformer facts he would need to forget
Bryy
Booster’ll make him forget all of them.
Kamino Neko
That requires Ethan to think Mike can be replaced.
Mike Usurper seems more likely.
Twitcher
So, does this mean Booster leans femme-presenting more often than not, and that’s the reason Ethan won’t be into them, or is it because Booster is just not straight-up masculine, like Ethan presumably prefers?
Opus the Poet
I would think the former, that Booster is more femme-presenting what with the lipstick and everything.
Seregiel
Or it could be they want to be seen and aknowmeged as they and since Ethan is gay, not overall queer that the relationship wouldn’t go forward anyways because they are not a he.
Doctor_Who
Booster: Alright new friend, I have here some cards of suggested conversational topics. Tell me, what are your thoughts on…”FIRRIB”?! I don’t…what is that?
(Ethan launches into three hour explanation/rant. Booster shrugs and sits back to admire.)
John
I’ll tell you what firrib is: the correct answer!
The Other Mike
Um, I think you meant RIRFIB.
EvilMidnightLurker
RIFRIB!
Freezer
“Okay, let’s try… ‘TRUK NOT MUNKEY?’ Seriously what the hell?”
BBCC
Huh, actually, not as bad a train wreck as I thought it’d be.
I guess the day is young but that didn’t go too badly.
Kyrik Michalowski
I’m curious how this will go when they actually get to Ethan. He may not be in the mood to make a new friend. Ethan might already know who Booster is as well and know he is Walky’s new roommate, and thus know he is “Replacement Mike.”
anon
well if they’re in the same dorm area they’d run into each other eventually but ambers just speeding up the project
Clif
You have to admire her sales technique.
Well, I have to.
Opus the Poet
Looking forward to Ethster sometime next week.
PirateTawnee
I guess I’m ok with that name, given the alternative is Boothan, which is a little too close to Bothan for my liking (they die for information, so they probably die for entertainment too, and we don’t need that kind of carnage on our hands)
Ana Chronistic
Ether
Nono
Okay, friendshipping. That’s… better.
Also I don’t know if Ethan is strictly masc-for-masc. Danny’s not exactly a paragon of hulkitude.
He seems to have a decently varied taste, going between Danny/Mike/Thad/Drew.
Anna
I was thinking that too. He was into Jocelyn too, who of course looked just like a man, but still. Booster is biologically male, I assume, given that they live in the men’s dorm, and their looks are (to me at least) those of a man who embraces certain feminine things, not those of a woman. Just because their gender is non-binary doesn’t necessarily mean a gay man won’t be into them based on their biological sex.
And I hope I didn’t unintentionally insult or hurt anyone with my words. Everyone deserves to be able to live as they identify, and find a nice partner of their preferred gender & sex, if they want to.
Psi Baka Onna
As someone who fairly recently learnt they were demi-sexual, I’d say your assessment is valid. Sometimes all you want is someone who makes decent Batman jokes and that ain’t restricted to one body type last I checked.
Florence
It would probably matter to booster that Ethan recognise they’re gender cause it doesn’t feel great when the person you’re with isn’t actually attracted to who you actually are. Booster probably wants to be with someone who is attracted to their non-binary self, not “I’m into you because I view you as a guy, but won’t say anything”
Psi Baka Onna
I could be way off base as I’m not attracted to people’s bodily arrangement but what I think Anna meant was that Ethan could find Booster physically attractive as they don’t have overt female characteristics aka boobs and a vagina. That doesn’t mean wouldn’t be attractive to who they actually are as sex and gender are two different things ( what you were born as vs what you identify as) so in theory you could be attracted to the physical package and the various cerebral quirks that make up a humanbeing. Does that sound fair?
Anna
That’s the other side of it, of course: even if Ethan is into Booster, does Booster want Ethan? B does think E is hot, so that would help. And who knows how Ethan feels about a non-binary person, for all we know he is into biologically male bodies with whatever gender. On the other hand, he backed right off from Jocelyn when Jocelyn told him she’s not a man, despite her looks.
Florence
That’s actually true, I’d forgotten he was actually good about that.
It would be an interesting avenue of queerness to explore, often it’s a seemingly cis het character discovering queerness, but a cis gay man going out with a queer person who isn’t strictly in the boxes is not something you see expired often
It would be a funny relationship considering booster is not that angsty and even if booster can resist their analysis brain, I don’t think they’d be able to stop themselves at least making helpful suggestions. Like the opposite of garbage roof type relationship. Does Ethan even want the good version of a relationship with booster considering how he currently is?
Nono
Did he actually back right off from Jocelyne because of that? He kinda tried to flirt with her, then she confronted him with ‘wait you’re gay, why are you dating my sister’ and he got enough second hand embarrassment to back off. The ‘finding out she’s not a man’ was pretty much after the dust had settled, and it was via text.
Myth
@Anna
Disclaimer: none of this is intended as a criticism. I saw your comment and thought you might find this helpful!
I am no expert myself, but if I remember correctly (my memory is poor and accepted terminology varies greatly!) a better term for Booster would be “assigned male at birth” (AMAB) rather than “biologically male.” As many people educated in biology have pointed out, there are *tons* of biological indicators of sex, and a human being can have some very interesting combinations that defy sorting into a gender binary even on a purely biological basis. (For example, most people have no reason to know what their chromosomal sex actually is, so some people that were assigned male at birth, have presented and identified as male their entire lives, and have considered-male sex characteristics including deep voice, lots of body hair, etc. are actually chromosomally XX.) So, since the sex/gender assigned at birth is based on simple straightforward visual cues (“does the baby have a D or a V,” and of course this is why assigning gender at birth is so flawed) it’s typically a better shorthand for the kind of thing you’re referring to here about Booster 🙂 People will understand what you mean either way, though.
Also, Booster still has a good point; sexual orientation/attraction is so varied and unique from person to person, Ethan being gay doesn’t tell us much about whether or not he’d be into Booster. Danny is not exactly the most masculine dude ever, but he is still a conventionally masculine presenting dude, and everyone else Ethan’s slept with is either the same amount of or more masculine than Danny. We really have nothing we can point to in determining whether Ethan is into gender-nonconforming dudes. I wouldn’t count Jocelyn because, as a result of her being closeted for safety, she probably looks even *less* femme than Booster. She seemed to think Ethan wouldn’t be interested in pursuing her after learning she’s trans, but I think that’s because Jocelyne does hope to transition someday
Anna
@Myth, I appreciate it! I know the term assigned male at birth/AMAB and how it is useful, and I know sex is a spectrum, both when it comes to chromosomes and in what a person has between their legs. All this is interesting and in my view everyone should be able to live a life that matches their gender, and only have operations on their sexual characteristics if they want that themselves.
But when it comes to this specific person Booster and whether or not Ethan would be attracted to them, I think it matters not so much that Booster is presumably AMAB but that they (probably) have the physical features of a man. A trans woman can have a vagina and boobs, and I think we can safely assume that Ethan would not be attracted to her, even if she was exactly as AMAB as Ethan himself or Booster or Mike or etc.
Hence my choice of the term ‘biologically male’; perhaps ‘with the physical features of a man’ or ‘physically male’ would have been a better choice.
@Psi Baka Onna: Yes, that is what I meant.
@Nono: maybe you’re right, I might misremember exactly how and when Ethan backed off from Jocelyn.
Cattleprod
The red ONE? I thought there were several who were at least partially red. I’ll never work this out.
Dave Van Domelen
From memory, I think Fireflight is the one with the most red, but Slingshot is the only one I had as a “kid” (teenager).
Opus the Poet
Feeling called out by the alt-text.
John
he was a smaller legends class toy, and like that line’s shockwave and a couple others, he could be turned into a gun for a bigger figure. box art canon had him as superion’s weapon.
The Other Mike
Amusingly enough, he can be wielded in gun mode by his larger 2008 toy.
Liquid Len
IM so called out bu the alt-text – my first thought of Powerglide was a GM automatic transmission!
Opus the Poet
Likewise, Had one in my race car for years. Mainly because it was lightweight and gave me a trans that would survive hard launches and had a reverse gear.
Johan
Ha! Got ’em.
Thag Simmons
Don’t worry, it’s not emotional labour, you aren’t getting paid
Thag Simmons
“You wouldn’t be doing my emotional labour, you’re not getting paid anything for this” would have been a better sentence than this. Oh well
anon
1 dollar for a kind/sympathetic smile, 5 dollars for a hug
Kamino Neko
That would be an emotional job.
Labour doesn’t necessarily mean payment.
Clif
Ask anyone who was never paid for their labor.
milu
The concept of “domestic labour” was developed by 2nd-wave Marxist feminists precisely to name the unpaid value produced by women’s work in the house. The phrase “emotional labour” follows the same template, as do further elaborations such as “sexual labour”.
I believe in typical marxist terminology ” labour” is the value-producing effort itself, with or without compensation. The word for the commodification of that labour is “service”. See “domestic service workers”, “sexual services” etc.
Anyway, for further reading I highly recommend Jess Zimmerman’s riotous and whip-smart essay, Where’s My Cut?
Joy
Good comment!
Oh and don’t forget gestational labor/reproductive labor. :3
Dafydd
Fuck combiner wars. The red one’s Fireflight. (And his alt mode is an F4 Phantom II.)
BarerMender
I don’t know from combiner wars or Firefight, but I know F4s are powerful planes. I was on Nellis when the Thunderbirds flew F4s. If they got some speed up, they could fly straight up clear out of sight. If you ducked under one, though, you’d better be wearing a helmet. All kinds of things sticking down to cut your head open.
StClair
I’ve heard both the F4 and the Shuttle offered as proof that – with sufficient power, and some minimal streamlining and control surfaces – you can make a brick fly.
Bicycle Bill
I think that same logic is what gave us that breed of watercraft called the “bass boat”.
Roborat
My dad was a fighter pilot, and that was how he described the F-4.
UrsulaDavina
How much is Booster into transformers? Or at least willing to feign intrest in transformers?
C.T. Phipps
“I’m sorry, I’m into Go-Bots.”
*Ethan dies of apoplexy*
Kamino Neko
Since Go-Bots have been part of Transformers for longer than these characters have been alive, probably more confusion than anything else.
(In their lifetime, I believe it’s been pretty much always the pre-school-aimed lines, except for when it was the characters from the original brought into a G1ish Transformers universe.)
Dragonfire
But ‘the red one’ could be any of them except for, what… Barrel Roll? The others have all got red on them, anyway.
Kyrik Michalowski
That went… surprisingly well.
I don’t trust it, when is Willis going to pull the rug out from underneath us?
anon
dunno how receptive ethan would be to being approached, even with just friendship esp if he knows they’re a psych major. depends on how organic the meeting is versus ethan just sulking in a public space like teh cafeteria/common area and booster just asking if he’s alright versus them approaching him and saying “amber said you could use a new friend” or so
milu
OK I’ve decided this “psych major” nonsense has wrapped round from irritating to funny now
I mean, i’m not sure you mean it as a joke, which might mean I’m laughing *at* you now, but oh well
Masumi
First he’s got to slide the rug back under us