The Garage Annex

feels good to see other people talking about boycotts in light of nintendo's continued outrageous business practices regarding pricing and piracy. i personally never bought a switch and am honestly kinda proud of myself for putting my foot down and keeping it there for what will shortly be the entire lifespan of the console. anyway just making this post to encourage anyone else to stick with a boycott if they're toying with the idea. i promise it's not going to kill you to miss out on a couple overpriced cultural zeitgeists, even if the fomo does feel absolutely overwhelming sometimes x_x

when it comes to boycotts, the big takeaway i want people to understand— not just with games and their consoles but any transaction— is that a company does not see nuance in sales numbers. if you're not completely happy with a product but you buy it anyway, your money doesn't enter their bank account with a little note flagging your purchase as "begrudging" instead of "enthusiastic". it just shows up as a fully successful sale. all companies care about is the bottom line, and to that end, a sale is a stamp of approval on their product and their business practices surrounding it. there is no middle ground when you vote with your wallet— there's only a yes or a no.

do not go gentle into that good night

be a bit of a bitch about it

I love headcanon that snake is shorter than otacon (otacon is skinny and tall)

"male loneliness epidemic" is misleading because it implies that men are suffering because they can't get girls when I feel like the actual problem is that pretty much any online content that's aimed specifically at men conceptualizes the masculine ideal as what I call the Buff Scammer. there are only two things in this world that matter, says the Buff Scammer: being jacked and making money. how you get to either of those things doesn't matter, you just need to be as rich and as buff as possible or you have failed as a man. Get into drop shipping. Eat nothing but raw meat. Rugpull a memecoin. Remove seasonings from your diet. Sell an online course. Go to the gym daily. Starve yourself so your body will achieve ketosis and start burning fat. Attend a seminar on real estate investing. Work 80 hours a week. Take steroids but don't let anyone know about that part. Flip a YouTube channel after 10xing the subs. Sell AI art on Etsy and AI audiobooks on Amazon. What's that? You're trying to do this to get girls? Why would you care about women? Women are all stupid whores who don't help you get richer or buffer. The only people you should be paying attention to are other rich, buff men. If you do hang out with women you should be pimping them out on Chaturbate so you can at least get an ROI off your time spent not thinking about men. Male friends? You don't have time for friends. You should be hustling and grinding 24/7 365. And if you absolutely do need to spend time around other men you should only be spending time with other buff scammers so you can collaborate on entrepreneurial ventures. Like Jesus Christ even writing this is exhausting I feel like trying to be this dude would be fucking miserable like not only did you turn yourself into a friendless, materialist, misogynistic asshole who can only conceptualize the world in terms of value extracted but you're NOT EVEN HAVING FUN DOING IT!!!!!!

At some point in my transition, the "hate yourself, get an eating disorder, buy product" messaging I get switched from woman flavor to man flavor, and omfg. What the hell is this shit!

The "woman" version would often disguise itself as self care. There's this facade of softness and gentleness. ("indulge yourself: buy skincare! do what's right for YOU: starve yourself and smile emptily at zucchini noodles! this is empowering. your body is a temple, divine feminine chakra mother!!!") In the man version, no such thing. Self compassion is not allowed. You've got to brutally grind yourself into the shape of a Real Man or die trying, but you don't get to *enjoy* being the Real Man because comfort is for girrrrrrlllssss.

My dangerous trans gender ideology is that being a man should be enjoyable. If there's nothing fun about it, change your approach or stop being a man.

someone ordered our new limoncello cocktail, took one sip, and sent it back, and when the bartender saw it he just whimpered "they didn't like it...?" and looked at the waitress like

i'm sorry for this

There's also this Gamer Behavior (derogatory) where I see these folks going off the rails about having a meltdown because of something that is 100% optional.

Taash exists as a nonbinary romance option. They have optional side quests regarding their exploration of their nonbinary identity. You 100% do not have to do any of this and can in fact ignore Taash 99% of the time and the worst that will happen is MAYBE not getting the exact ending you wanted from the final battle. Maybe. Because you don't have to send Taash at all if you make other character choices.

But cue freak out over the game forcing you to gender them correctly and forcing them as a romance onto you etc etc. I did not romance Taash and found it quite easy to not pursue that option actually. I did do their character side quests but only because if I'm paying that much money for a game I'm doing alllllll the things including the optional stuff.

You have the option of top surgery scars and colored hair and more in the character creator. You can just as easily not have these things on your character and instead look like something else. You do not need to put any character traits on your character that you don't want to.

But cue freak out about normalizing mental illness and transgender traits and SJW aesthetic. It's woke now. Top surgery scars are by default turned off and you have to locate it within the menu and then press buttons to turn them on. Somehow that is seen as forcing them onto the player.

You have the option of romancing a man and a nonbinary character as Yasuke. To be entirely clear there are also women available for Yasuke and in order to romance the other two you have to like, deliberately put forth effort into chasing them. This is not a Gale BG3 situation where being mildly nice to him turns him into an incel that refuses to leave you alone- it very clearly lays out that if you choose these options this character will take it as pursuit of a romance. The easiest option is to simply not do that.

But cue freak out about how Ubisoft is forcing the gay agenda on you and making you be gay and witness gay things. You literally do not have to do this. There's even a setting which you can turn off romance options entirely. If it bothers you that much, you can skip over it completely, or go kiss a different person besides either of the queer romances.

Within the game itself you don't really have to play as Yasuke outside of a very limited number of quests. You can actually play entirely as Naoe and ignore that Yasuke exists for the bulk of the game. Naoe is the much more Assassin's Creed style character as she relies heavily on stealth tactics and does poorly when outnumbered and surrounded (ask me how I know lmao) compared to Yasuke who is much more an Eivor situation of a wrecking ball in combat but sucks at parkour and stealth.

But cue freak out about how these guys think it's stupid that a 6ft tall black dude built like a wall of muscle would be in a stealth game. Yeah uh the game actually tells you straight up that if you want to do stealth you need to be Naoe because Yasuke kinda doesn't blend in. "How is this guy standing on rooftops not being seen" he actually goes get spotted and quite readily on every difficulty except the easiest because the man is 6 feet tall with nearly jet black skin and that sort of is a bit out of place in a setting like idk feudal Japan. You can switch between them- so once the game opens up and gives you the option you genuinely can just ignore Yasuke if you want to play as the series-typical assassin instead of the RPG tank.

Really the problem is that these Gamers (derogatory) have a difficult time with "other people besides you like playing these games" because they already have what they are asking for but they're mad that there is the option to do something they specifically dislike.

Enemies-to-lovers situationship where both parties are genuinely unclear on whether they're actually trying to kill each other or whether it's just a mutual bit they're doing and at this point they're afraid to ask.

Bad: fear of clarity because you're a coward.

Good: fear of clarity because if you guess wrong, the other party might falsely claim it's just a bit in order to get you to let your guard down, then kill you.

"nobody likes a complainer" you say, like an idiot, as if thriving ecosystems of friendships aren't blossoming every day based solely on people vocally disliking the same things in similar ways

Quick what are you doing RIGHT now (besides scrolling Tumblr)

at least there's gay people

and sadomasochism

stop reblogging this without the sadomasochism this one is for perverts ONLY!!!!

lesbian wivesssss 🐺🩷🦊✨

(she/her for both characters)

i also love their duality

hot girls

lil chibis...