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Penny (they/them)

@pennythegoblin.bsky.social

82 followers 120 following 170 posts

Gamer, Writer, Artist, Dork Fan of GW2, FFXIV, Furries, and too many other things to list Icon & Banner by catjest3r.tumblr.com https://ko-fi.com/pennythegoblin

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Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · Oct 18

I'll make a pinned post...

I'm Penny. Enby, 21+, Sapphic, Neurodivergent.

I primarily use tumblr ( @kaninchen-reblogs ) and I'll likely cross-post my stuff between accounts.

I'm an avid player of #guildwars2 and #ffxiv and I sometimes find the time to make #art as well.

Reposted by Penny (they/them)

Lizzylizumab @lizzylizumab.bsky.social · 7d

It’s Asexual Awareness Week

🖤 Oct 19 - 25, 2025
🩶 Celebrate identities
🤍 Build community
💜 Advocate for acceptance

I’m a proud 🖤A🩶C🤍E💜 with some info to share. Take a look ⤵️ and THANK YOU for your support!

AceWeek.org #Asexual #AsexualAwareness #AceAwarenessWeek

An infographic created by @BRIANNAVIEIRA & @THEQTHERAPIST for #ACEAWARENESSWEEK in asexual flag colors black, white, gray, and purple

Understanding Asexuality:

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE ASEXUAL?
(ALSO KNOWN AS "ACE" OR "ACES")
There are many different types of attraction including romantic, aesthetic and sexual. Asexuality refers to someone who experiences very little or no sexual attraction to people of any gender.

ACE INDIVIDUALS CAN STILL FEEL...

ROMANTIC ATTRACTION
Desire for a typically romantic relationship with another person

EMOTIONAL ATTRACTION
Wanting an emotional connection with another person

AESTHETIC ATTRACTION
Attraction to someone based on their general appearance

SENSUAL ATTRACTION
Wanting to touch, hold, or cuddle
someone

PHYSICAL ATTRACTION
Where a person finds another person's physique pleasing

PLATONIC ATTRACTION
Wanting to be friends with another person

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Reposted by Penny (they/them)

Joanna Blackhart [They/Them] @joannablackhart.com · 5d

I have worked on dozens of games. My work has been used by hundreds, maybe more.

Microsoft literally used my accessibility designs to write their internal rules on how to do accessibility.

I'm credited in 3 games.

Aftermath @aftermath.site · 7d

Everyone who worked on a video game needs to be in the credits:

aftermath.site/video-game-cre...

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Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

Posting a whole thread and seeing a typo in the second post is gonna turn me into the joker btw. Editing posts can’t come fast enough.

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Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

Sorry for this stupidly long thread-essay but my god it's been something sitting in the back of my head for a bit now.

We can't be fostering a space where we harass people for wanting to have fun, and helping people enjoy games is a sign of weakness.

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Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

If someone made a mod for Doom II that gave you a super shotgun that fired rockets like a machinegun, it wouldve gotten tons of downloads, and maybe even folks making dedicated levels full of monsters to gib, just for the lulz.

Now, if you mod Dark Souls to be a tiny bit easier, you get doxxed.

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Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

The mindset is pretty recent, all things considered.

Folks used to trade tips and secrets online, in message boards and forums. Games that were stupid hard would have folks eagerly sharing tips and tricks. Walkthroughs were works of art (sometimes literally, with ASCII art headers!)

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

Me? If someone needs mods or cheats to get past part of the game, I say let 'em. (So long as it's not multiplayer and thus affecting other players, of course)

How someone wants to play is up to them. Who gives a damn? I'd rather play easy mode than not at all. Here for a good time, not a long time.

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Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

Snap your hand away and slap their wrist, and tell them to git gud, and you're just gonna make them never want to play the game you enjoy so much.

Your obsession over the purity of difficulty, of the game you have turned into a personality, is just going to push people away.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

I'm sure some GGSI folks will argue about how some fake gamers are just whiny and want the game handed to them on a silver platter and aren't interested in actually trying at all.

I'm gonna be honest, I rarely ever, if at all, see folks like that. More often, it's folks just needing a hand.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

One of my friends straight up said that they think the games are awesome but definitely wouldn't have gotten far without assistance, because the game is old and jank and teaches you very little. But having gotten *help*, they then GOT GOOD(!!!) and had a blast.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

Meanwhile, I get my friends to play it for the first time and I encourage them to play on the easiest difficulty, use walkthroughs if needed, and I'll even hop on Discord calls and watch them stream so I can give tips.

And they love it!

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

And then they act surprised when folks bounce off of the games (they also suffer from the Morrowind situation of having a great manual that teaches stuff but not teaching things well in-game). They complain that new players just want things handed on a silver platter.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

I never tell folks to play on Expert for their first run, though. Ever.

I see it a lot, though. Longtime fans will say "yeah just play on Expert so you get the True™ experience! It'll be hard but you just have to learn to..."

drumroll please!

"... get good! And then you'll love it!"

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

I love the Thief games, for example. Adore them to death. Playing on Expert difficulty gives you more objectives, more enemies to deal with, less equipment, and encourages you to explore around a ton. I thoroughly enjoy playing it this way, especially doing "ghost" challenge runs.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

Where that line lies is always up for debate, and will change for each game. But pretending it isn't there, or assuming where your line lies is where it should be for everyone, is a dangerous way to operate. Coercing other people to play how YOU want is risky as hell.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

And so now we end up in a situation where gamers have to git gud, but games themselves can't.

There is a line between charming jank and enjoyable clunkiness, and just plain lacking QoL or being too esoteric or poorly balanced or improperly designed.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

But it's when you have a purified vision of a game that cannot be tarnished in any way that you start seeing a GGSI mindset.

Admitting the game has faults would be an admission that your personality has faults. And we can't be having that, now can we?

(Dumb meme provided as a humorous example)

The Simpson meme of Principal Skinner wondering "Am I out of touch? No, it is the children who are wrong", but the text has been edited so the top panel reads "Does the game have actual issues that need to be addressed?" and the bottom panel reads "No, it is the #woke fake gamers who are the problem"

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

This is not to say you cannot derive joy from difficulty. Of course not. I've had some great fun playing hard games, or doing playthroughs where I intentionally nerf myself to make it harder. Ghost runs in stealth games, or playing weak factions in strategy games, for example.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

If players ask for QoL or accessibility or nerfs or tutorials or assistance, etc. etc., it's because they're weak and don't deserve to play the game.

If the devs provide any of those, it's because the devs don't understand what the players truly want and are catering to the whiny woke crowd.

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Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

It's because GGSI gamers do not see the games as games, but as a statement. Or, worse, a replacement for a personality.

Their worth is defined by the exclusivity of their achievements, not out of the joy derived from the actual media itself.

Nothing is allowed to threaten that worth, ever.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

We saw this recently with Silksong, of course. To an egregious extent, as well. *Anything* short of complete praise was seen as not understanding the dev's vision. When the devs admitted the game was a little too hard and tweaked a few fights just a little bit, the GGSI crowd *rioted*.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

The GGSI mindset is just used, nearly all the time, to shut down any discussion of actual complaints about a game. No matter how genuine the complaint, the response is GGSI. And any game that is GGSI then has its systems put up on a pedestal, with any problems just being "part of the experience".

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

How much of difficulty comes from games just... not explaining things to you properly. How much of it comes from older games not being packaged with incredibly-important manuals with key information as to how to play. How much of it comes from lack of reasonable QoL/accessibility features?

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

... A lil unrelated but I do find it hilarious that Morrowind diehards think MW is awesome cuz you "have to figure shit out on your own like a REAL gamer", meanwhile MW has one of the literal best wikis for any game I've ever played that can basically teach you anything you want.

Penny (they/them) @pennythegoblin.bsky.social · 6d

It really was not uncommon for games sold on disc to come with a beefy manual that explained a lot of the core systems or even had a few pages dedicated to walking you through the first few minutes of the game.

Nowadays? If a game did that? The GGSI crowd would think it's pandering to bad gamers.