Bamboo Biscotti

So apropos of nothin' in particular, I got a PM from a guy I've known for ages out on a certain gaming forum.  In brief, he wrote something along the lines of "have you heard of this?  It seems to be relevant to your interests" and tagged on a URL.   This URL, to be precise. Well, no, I hadn't, and I spent part of my lunch hour looking up the site over at Evil Hat.  And then my feminine side, who you may have gathered is a frisky little Anthro at the calmest of times, imaginarily grabbed my collar, gave me a vaguely predatory grin, and in my mind's ear said, more or less, "do it for Steph!" And that , dear readers, is how I volunteered to help playtest something called Thirsty Sword Lesbians, once again finding myself looking over a game that my dear friend would have enjoyed quite thoroughly.  Because yes, it is more or less what it says on the tin: Lesbians, with swords, thirsting for relationships and romance and all that shojo-ai cuddly goodn...

So of course while I'm working on my in-house adaptation of the world of Barsoom for a certain project involving blue Martians (cough*asari*cough), returning oceans, and a much older Carthoris and Tara (played in my mind's eye by Anthony Hopkins and Rene Russo, reprising their roles as Odin and Frigga) I found the need for a proper cameo for my old friend. I'm not really happy with the choice of flaw--too many good options that would work--but for all her swashbuckling bravado, Bish's characters always had a good dose of devotion to social justice in their outlook, so I'm going with the 'anti-bully loadout'. So here she is. Give her a good ship in need of a steady hand at the controls, would you? Stafi Ruk Dashing Red Martian Airship Pilot Stats Cunning 4 Daring 8 Empathy 5 Might 4 Passion 5 Reason 6 Talents Lords of the Air (Grade 4) Your people are the undisputed masters of flight and you are among their most elite fliers. You can...

I've held off on opening my mouth about this mostly because there's been enough Angry White Guys opening their yaps and sounding off without much thought as it is...but a couple of years back, I wrote something about an argument that was going on in the overall gaming community at the time (and has flared up now and again since) that left me scratching my head.  Thanks to certain recent revelations, I now kind of get what was going on behind all the fuss, the person who had kicked things off into a  state of high dudgeon, and a few other things that were involved.  (I'm not naming names because That Guy has already had his ego stroked by bad publicity.) My feelings on the utter absurdity of the entire exercise haven't changed.  For the sake of some self- important jerk's ego, an entire community threw itself under the proverbial bus.  Not the first time we've ended up living down to our worse reputation.  Our track record on this is not something in which...