Hey you look like me!

So as a chick I've often been sad when games don't bother to have a female character to play. Today I started playing Alice Madness Returns and was describing it to a friend.

ME: I'm playing as Alice but she has a big ass knife for killing
MOSTLY ASIAN FRIEND: So she's basically me
ME: No, she's a honkie
MOSTLY ASIAN FRIEND: So half me
ME: yes.

I'm not being racist, just accurate. I don't think it's bad to have characters that are white or male, I just think there should be more variety. I want to be able to play as a girl which is often not easy. Luckily I'm white so most female characters when they exist look like me. And you know most people relate better to characters that look like them.

Personally I'm not nearly as pale as Alice but I'm sure I'm as crazy as she is. Although I tend to wash the blood out of my clothes.

Many video games have a range of genders, races and sexualities but those are as rare as a stripper with a Ph.D in Mathematics. The first two inclusive games that come to mind are Mass Effect and Borderlands. Much has been written around the interwebs about Mass Effect and its gender and sexual inclusivity so onto Borderlands 2.

I played Borderlands 2 with my boyfriend and his friend(basically his non-sexual life partner) and they played as the commando and the siren so I was left with either a husky short male or a non gender specific assassin. The choice was easy. Zero, the assassin has a male voice but for the most part is gender neutral. Zero is fun to play but when Gearbox released a second female character I switched teams. Both the female characters are white and one is too young to have a sexual identity but the siren is mainly appears to be heterosexual. The non player characters are generally white and also heterosexual. I should note that the gunzerker appears as latino or hispanic, basically not white.

Here's a picture of Gaige to break up this wall of text. 

Overall the game is heterocentric which is going to be common in video games/entertainment for many more years to come. On the bright side the game is not heteronormative, the female characters have as many responsibilities, skills and talents as their male counterparts. There are fewer females in the game than men but I think it's closer to 1/3 females than the typical 1/4 ratio. Also many of the females are very strong and well developed. I found Tiny Tina and Moxxi to be more developed in the personality realm than some of the comparable male NPCs. There is also a remarkable amount of discussion about sexual pasts and it generally does not come off as the typical slut/stud dynamic.

In Borderlands the female characters are most often in overly sexualized outfits but in all fairness the male characters are also on display and their physical traits are nowhere near realistic either. The entire game is very sexual, one of the characters skill trees is sexual tyrannosaurus, I've seen pornos that are less sexually charged.

Clearly Borderlands is not a polite conversation sort of game but the raunchiness does go both ways along with a fair variety of characters.

Anyway back to my main point, damn am I lucky that I'm not trying to find a character that is female and hispanic and a lesbian.

Diamonds are forever and expensive and non transferrable

There are just so many problems with diamonds. Perhaps I should list them? Should I list what I view as most important first and so on or from production to purchase to death? Or should I list them reverse alphabetically? So I was really going to write about diamonds but now I'm wondering why there are so many ways, relevant and not, to listing ideas or whatnot. Hmmm. How about whatever order they come to mind in.

A bunch of reasons that Diamonds suck:

• Diamonds cost roughly 2 months salary

• They also cost the lives of innocent miners trying to feed their family

• Diamonds are a pain in the rectum to shop for

• They serve literally no purpose

• Diamonds are like dicks for women, bigger is better but shape still matters

• One cannot easily sell a diamond or regift it

• They are easy to misplace and therefore cause minor heart attacks without need

• Diamonds get caught on random things or scratch people

• They create the impression that women are like small children; look shiny!

Of course marriage and often love requires the gifting of diamonds. The dark under belly of all of this is that women end up with a small box of jewelry that they cannot wear anymore because it was a gift from a past lover; they cannot sell it because parting with a necklace that symbolizes your life with someone for 3 years for $75 just doesn't seem right. 

After three years of hiding a promise ring at a friend's house and keeping it tucked away in a box inside a box in my bedroom I finally found a person that I could reasonably give the ring to. After I gave this ring away for good it seemed like a burden was lifted from my shoulders and I could finally put so many things in the past where they belong. Other pieces of jewelry have not come to such an end yet and I have no idea how or when that may even happen. 

All of the above still being true, I want more shiny jewelry. Now.

Brillant tattoo ideas that would be Cosmo approved

In a recent issue of Cosmo they did a wonderful flowchart of whether or not you should get a tattoo. One of the cases they listed that you should in fact get a tattoo would be when you desire to permanently scar yourself with a meaningful song lyric. 

So I've come up with a list of great song lyrics that I think would make amazing tattoos!

On your wrist:

"I wanna hold your hand"
"You bleed just to know you're alive"
"And I feel fine"
"I got a feeling"

On your lower back(tramp stamps):

"I don't think you're ready for this jelly"
"I said what, what"
"Do you feel like a man?"
"I hope you had the time of your life"
"Rude boy, can you get it up?"
"What you gonna do with all that junk?"
"Dumps like a truck"
"Please tell mom this is not her fault"
"Heaven aint close in a place like this"
"I hope my boyfriend don't mind it"

On your ankle:

"walk this way"
"help I'm alive"

On the back of your neck:

"The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had"
"I'll be watching you"

Anywhere:

"Bury me in memory"
"This shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S"
"So what, I'm still a rock star"
"Never gonna give you up"

To be fair, I find everything better when tattoo'd above someone's ass.