Something Positive for Once...

The Greenlight logo, which is, y'know, green

...although it's a tiny bit bittersweet, in a my-baby-is-growing-up sense.

I can't believe I didn't include Greenlight in any of my Best Purchases of the Covidpocalypse posts, because it absolutely was one of the best purchases we made.

We started with Greenlight as a new way to give Lizzy (then 13?) her allowance. Because we live in a semi-rural area (so no public transportation to speak of, and it's too far to walk to a store except a local convenience store with no sidewalks), if I gave Lizzy her allowance in cash as we had done previously, she really had no way to spend it.

I don't even remember how we found Greenlight, because it was before my bank started advertising it. 

It's essentially a prepaid debit card, with parental controls on where the kiddos can shop. I sent a monthly allowance to her, and if she got, say, birthday money, or good-grades money, or weeded-grandma's-garden money, that could be sent to her card, with me vetting all deposits so she wasn't getting money from god-knows-who (safety first!). So she had the kid version of the app on her phone, and I had the adult version on mine. If she wanted to buy something from a store (or online) that wasn't already added by me, her app could request permission to add that seller to her approved list.

It was great, and it gave her some freedom she otherwise wouldn't have had. And when I decided I needed to cancel it (she's had her own checking account for a while now, so I didn't want to pay the $5.99 a month anymore), the company was really chill about it. They did ask why, but as one of the choices was "my kid has outgrown it," this was clearly something they had prepared for.

Decent, and in this world, basic decency is not to be discounted!

Realities in Games

A screenshot of the village view of the
game My Tribe by Big Fish Games

I'm going to try not to rant about the state of the world right now, because the people who should read what I often write about Being Kind to Others and Have You Tried Not Being a Hypocritical Asshole? and Maybe We Should Protect The Actual Living and Breathing Children aren't listening anyway.

What I want to talk about today is related, insofar as it touches on topics such as gaming culture and unrealistic beauty expectations, and even on the leave-the-poor-woman-alone-until-she-has-recovered-from-giving-birth.

I play a lot of different types of games - I have done so since the mid-1970s - from tabletop RPGs (and a LARP once or twice) to card/board/tile games to computer/phone/console games, and there's a lot to unpack here. And I've touched on my gaming before, most notably in this article over on Vocal.

In general, as technology has improved, especially in the videogame space, games have become increasingly complex, with deeper themes and more beautiful visuals. We can talk all day about the problematic issues that can come with that last, even in some of my favorite games, like Genshin Impact's skimpy costumes and lack of skin-tone variation, or the similar skimpy costumes and cultural stereotypes in the Final Fantasy franchise. As I said, I love these games, and they're some of my favorites of all time. 

And some of the potential issues in them are by the standards of the American culture in which I grew up (where we are finding more and more each day that they are even worse than we thought).

But I digress, again.

Anyway...

I keep going back to Big Fish Games.

They're a local (to me) company specializing in desktop games of various types since 2001. I've been downloading games from them since 2010, mostly Hidden Object games (complete with those that scared Abby back in the day, what with stone angel statues and all), with forays into other genres.

My favorite of these is My Tribe. It's a city (or at least village) builder, resource management type of game, that I can run in the background much of the time.

I think it's my favorite because, compared to a lot of others, especially in light of recent revelations in my country, it's just wholesome.

Infants (0-1 years) and Toddlers (2-3 years) just hang out, doing baby things. They toddle, babble, coo, giggle, etc. They are safe, in spite of village campfires and deep sea nearby, and the only way in which they can be hurt or killed is if you run out of food (or wood for a fire on which to cook the food) for long enough that the whole tribe starves. In fact, only old age or starvation can kill any of the Tribespeople.

Young Children (4-5 years) and Children (6-13 years) can do minor chores, like picking up potion ingredients.

Young Adults (14-17 years) can do the same chores, plus work by chopping wood, finding stone, constructing buildings, fishing, tending a garden, researching science, and making new clothes.

Adults (Women 18-45 years and Men 18-50(?) years) can do all that, plus Call the Stork with each other. Now, as Calling the Stork is specifically for reproduction, it's all very binary, and here's an important thing... Women can only Call the Stork every two years (that is, their most recent offspring must reach the Toddler stage before they can Call the Stork again). I find this to be a decent representation of a reasonable time between kids.

Older Adults (45 (or 50)-64) just keep helping out in the village. If you have Fountain of Youth Water and sufficient research knowledge, they can be rejuvenated back to 36 anytime after their hair turns grey at 65. I don't know the algorithm for when they die of old age if not rejuvenated.

Anyway, I find this sort of game - especially this one, which is relatively simple - to be... soothing, I guess? I mean, it's a little quirky on Windows 10 or 11, and I generally turn off the special effects. It'll crash if there's a power outage or the computer restarts while it's running, but them's the breaks.  

I realize this is kind of silly of me to make a big long post about. But sometimes you just have to acknowledge the good (or calming or soothing or regulating) stuff around you when the world is <gestures vaguely> All That Out There™. And if even one person finds it to be any of those things, then I've accomplished my goal of spreading even a tiny bit of cheer for the day.

The Hits Just Keep Coming...

Teal Ribbon for Anxiety

...and I'm not even in the crosshairs (yet).

Note: euphemisms and pronouns without referents used below are to keep myself from being shadowbanned by the algo.

I'm having a very high-anxiety day, and I would say it's for no particular reason, but the reasons (or triggers) are so obvious as to be laughable.

That is, they'd be laughable if they weren't also fucking terrifying.

"If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about," say the sycophantic bootlickers. Except that "nothing wrong" changes on a whim, usually daily, sometimes hourly. I imagine they'd consider this post to be "something wrong," since I'm not fawning over the batshit lunacy coming out of The Other Washington through Truth Social or Twitter. Excuse me, "through X." I'm pretty good with preferred names and pronouns, but that one I struggle with.

And those who "finally see what he is" because of a single racist post, what in the actual fuck? Sanctioned killings weren't enough for you? How about all the atrocities on That One Island™? Grabbing another country's oil and selling it for personal gain? No? I mean, I guess I'm glad you finally get it, at least to some extent. But for fuck's sake, people.

"But Obummer deported..." or "But Obama bombed..." Yes. He did. That was bad, too. But he's not the one in power now, and he was subject to ridiculous amounts of scrutiny over things like a tan suit or his wife's bare shoulders. And he doesn't, even now, have the kind of fan club that forgives all - or declares there's nothing to forgive - no matter how outrageous.

Andplusalso, the "oh, but he didn't make it, he just reposted it" folks can take a flying leap. That's not actually better, you know, that the putative leader of the country/"free world" (it's clearly not) didn't make a racist meme; he just shared it.

Not.

Better.

This person has the power to obliterate most of the life on the planet, is clearly losing his marbles (whether due to age or illness or whatever is immaterial), and that's on top of his already massive, petulant, and racist egomania. But y'all are okay with that? Because he hates all the right people, is that correct?

Just checking.

I would also like to smack all the people I see smugly saying things like, "Of course the kids are protesting, anything to get out of school!" or "Yeah, they're only protesting because their teachers have indoctrinated them into woke ideology. You wouldn't see our kids protesting!"

My dude, you guys tried to get one of our high school principals fired because he stated on his personal Instagram that common sense gun laws could've saved Charlie Kirk. Your kids were out there protesting every damn day because you feared a professional might treat them differently if he knew their parents were gun nuts proponents of the Second Amendment. Which he would not have, because he is, in fact, a professional who just wants to keep students safe. But maybe that's because - after a famous MN murder - you think the 2A  (and the first) only applies to you.

Those kids out there protesting? Yeah, I imagine a few are seeing it as a Get Out of School Free Card, because they're humans. But from what I have seen, most of them are just teenagers who have been encouraged to actually think rather than parrot. Shocking, I know. But some of them - most of them, I hope - have that pesky condition known as Empathy for People Not Just Like Them. Maybe they see more clearly than some of their elders.

Because y'know what? I know people who are afraid to go to the grocery store. Not because they have done anything wrong. Not because they are undocumented. But simply because they might be perceived as such, due to darker skin or an accent. 

As stated above, I'm not in the crosshairs (yet). Because I am a cishet, white, native-born, English-speaking person. Of course, I'm also fat, female, politically progressive, neurodivergent, ethnically Jewish, a single parent, work with disenfranchised people, try to behave decently with everyone (regardless of their gender, sexuality, color, national origin, etc.), and so very tired of the firehose of awfulness. 

So that could change.

Writing this out usually makes me feel better, except for that time almost a year ago. And today, evidently, though it could still happen.