Thor in EndGame
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Is this a scene where A.S.L. allows communication in the presence of an audio-sensitive person? Either way, you have my attention.
Is there a way to word the mere fact that an interrogative is being directed toward Mira? As much as we try to act like written English is a Turing complete system of phonetics, that isn’t true. We’re not just spitting out a series of sounds. We use quotation marks, represent numbers using numerals vs. words, add parentheticals & semicolons, & we have the capability to exploit “proper spelling” to interesting effect. The spoken & the written are very close, but different. We can use the same skills to address the question of how to communicate within the Deaf community & avoid exclusion thereof, versus Spanish speaking persons & avoiding exclusion thereof, versus any other language-related barrier. We start with a working knowledge of any differences & look for what kind of situations would let us explore those seeming gaps. For example: The word “butterfly” has a host of connotations in Mexico’s Spanish that don’t exist in American English. Idiomatic use has to be aware of that but writing lets us having things go on in a character’s mind, & lets us operate atemporally. What if we intentionally discuss this difference in narrative prose, explore the meaning, then proceed? Nothing is really being lost; quite the opposite in fact.
I think if you are using ASL or communicating nonverbally, then using italics rather than " " usually helps to imply it isn’t verbal speech but that is just my own personal opinion, I guess. My own reasoning comes from that being what I use for thoughts, so others may disagree.
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It’s used that way for a character who’s mute in the book EVE: The Empyrean Age, so evidently it works for other authors as well.
The character in question is a young boy who was a former slave and lost his voice from a nasty blow to the windpipe by his asshole overseer, then he narrowly survived an incident that saw him picked up by a salvage team that he now works for. The sister of the twin brother-sister duo who make up 50% of the team (there’s literally only four people including the kid) taught him a sort of jury rigged sign language so that they could communicate.
Playing a parent. Or ROs with children. Kills every bit of interest instantly and 100%. Could be the greatest RO otherwise, if they have a kid, I’m out.
I can tolerate taking care of a child in a story as a sudden, unplanned thing in the context of a post-apocalyptic game (think The Last of Us or the Walking Dead Telltale Game with Clementine) or some classic fantasy world scenario, where you’re looking after an orphan for a while or something like that, but even then I’m not a fan.
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I don’t remember if it’s already said before…
I really don’t like when a game, where normally you play just one character, force you to change player character. Why? Because said character is usually a locked nerfed version of the main one… Often resulting in a fake difficulty that make the mission much more frustrating than actually difficult
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The only game that springs to mind for me on that one is Champion of the Gods, where, for really no good reason, you suddenly play as the one demigod your character has been comrades with for most of the game.
I mean, okay, sure, she was technically going after an important thing needed for their mission, but still, I don’t see why we needed a perspective change for that when it could’ve just been its own scene and the players could have had some downtime from the gameplay to just chill and read for a bit.
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I cannot help but feel as though this is somehow tied to my interest check post lmao.
I honestly can’t blame you though, particularly because most of the time children are written extremely poorly, as little more than a plot device, and aren’t given much actual personality beyond being ‘cute’ and ‘stupid’. I find myself curious about what makes you dislike it though personally, if you don’t mind sharing? (I’m not trying to chide you for the opinion, I relate, and if anything am just curious for your insight! :> )
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Not really. I checked out the “When life gives you lemons” thread to see if that could be a game for me, and to maybe form a bond with that BDSM RO in the main story, before I play his side story, but I immediately noped out when I read that you have a child.
Then I saw HannahPS mention that they’d like to see more parent ROs.
I’m just not a kid-person. They don’t like me, I don’t like them (in general, not the individual child when it stands before me, I’m not that much of an asshole). I can’t connect with them, I don’t know how to talk to them, act around them, I get overwhelmed by the screaming and running around… And there’s also the issue that everything relating to biological children and birth makes extremely uncomfortable at best and dysphoric at worst.
And back before I transitioned I’ve been told too many times that I would definitely change my mind about kids, because when you have a uterus, that’s apparently still considered your destiny. So it’s a touchy subject.
With regards to IF in particular, the reason is mostly selfish: I play for the ROs, I want them for myself, I don’t want to share them or their attention, and in case of a biological child, I don’t want a walking, talking constant reminder of their ex.
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That is fair! Thanks for taking the time to respond, as a fellow trans I totally understand the dysphoria and minimization of your own autonomy 
. I don’t know why in Lemons the child can’t be adopted, now that I think of it?
I can also relate to the opinion of children IRL ngl haha. I think that IF is just one of those things where I can disconnect myself from it, and enjoy things that I normally realistically would not, children and being responsible for their care is one of those things. Anyway, I didn’t mean to be presumptive I just thought it was funny because the post was recent.
Also, in Lemons, the child you care for can be your parents, so it doesn’t need to be your bio kid, but I understand that the knowledge of that alone won’t necessarily make playing a game with a kid you care for suddenly appealing.
Response to @Cingulum_diaboli :
This is something I address in my story, actually, you can be almost resentful even of the babe, and unsure of why you didn’t leave it to die. I will say that over time though I don’t think you can just remain resentful, but you are given autonomy in your initial reaction and thoughts about it in the first few years. (The relationship you form with the child being the central reason for the story, afterall)
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Oh, speaking of children, I don’t like when MC is forced to play the role of a parent (but they’re not biological parent) and the player has no options to choose what to think about it. Just MC is set to be protective of the kid. Fortunately, I haven’t seen this in many IFs.
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Lemons doesn’t specify if the kid is adopted or not, it’s left for players to headcanon. I wouldn’t want to have biological child in a game too, so the option of adoption is very important to me if the game has any kid-related content.
Yeah, bottom line it doesn’t make that much of a difference for me, but that’s fine. Not every game has to cater to my personal preferences, and there’s probably people out there who love to take care of a child this way, some of them presumably also for very personal reasons.
It’s just bad luck for me personally when this one game contains a BDSM RO lol
Lemons kid can even be MC’s sibling. It’s still a parent-child relationship but they don’t have to be tied to an ex-partner.
Either way, I’ll follow with a disliked element:
Playing as a child. It usually correlates with the author pulling punches, having less agency (obviously) or the author giving more spotlight to the adult characters instead (with KAE being an exception).
I’m also way past my YA years so unless you give me a very gritty school setting I’m out 
I’ve had enough idealized school settings when I was growing up.
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character image, why you ask? In short, my imagination in the depiction of characters becomes strange. (I’m sure I’m not the only one who has this problem)
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I actually like character images too. If authors want my mental image of their characters to fit their mental image, they have two choices: give me a character image, or describe them to me before they actually do something. Otherwise, there’s no guarantee what will end up sticking, and they need to be ok with that
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I don’t know if it was in this thread or another one, but there was a small discussion between me and a couple other folks about how, even with a proper description of a character, sometimes our brains just rebel and go, “NO THEY LOOK LIKE THIS” instead.
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That’s what I mean when the story describes the character, my imagination thinks “I guarantee that the character looks like this” but if they add a picture of the character i am sure we will think “Why is the character different from my description??”
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People have different tastes, so there are people who like it and there are those who hate it
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Now wouldn’t that be something. I’m not sure it’d be even possible to make a picture that matches my mental images of my charaxters…
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