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Well, I said Winston and Anenome were queer, not gay. Anenome seems pretty clearly nonbinary, at least to me. But if Anenome isn't offering answers, I'm not asking. Yes, there are some script issues with the handing of nonbinary characters in Tales. I could make up headcanons to excuse the writing, or I can just say the script writers didn't know how to write nonbinary characters. Its a 14 year old game, they can cop it. Tales could and should have done better. But the merfolk are ultimately likeable and funny characters. They're pretty good, could have been better. There are also representation issues, with only nonhuman characters being nonbinary. Tales is also a part of this trend. Individual examples aren't inheriently the problem, its a problem with the sum of media. I just wanted to point this criticism out, I have no big solution. I have one solution. Cool nonbinary human character in RTMI. or I will CANCEL Rob Gilbert ok this sentence is a joke. (seriously: since I'm describing a broad trend across all media here, one game can never be THE solution, but it can be a part of it) hell yeah You're also right about queer coded villains. I think its more fun to speculate in the here and now. But if MI had only one queer character for seventeen years and it was a cruel little minor villain, it wouldn't have been great. Tales kinda gets away with De Singe, because it has more queer coded characters than just him. If De Singe was the only queer character in Tales, it would have been really bad. Its really interesting seeing the dress get a critical reassessment in current times. The content of the game hasn't changed, but society has around it.

That’s such a fun detail! The Legend of MI site has done such an incredible job showcasing details and Easter eggs that I never knew existed that I’ve been wanting to seek out details in the other Lucasarts games. The only one that comes to mind right now is in Fate of Atlantis whenever Indy is in a pitch-black room, the room brightens slowly, as both Indy and the player get to adjust to the darkness.

It was felt to be a cheap joke back then that they didn't try to squeeze as many laughs out of as they could have. A throwaway joke. Now the chance cross dresser who doesn't at all feel queasy to cross dress feels progressive, I guess. But society will keep on changing and in thirteen years' time, who knows how those scenes will hold up. Every Monkey Island got it wrong a little, and not just in a "product of its time" kind of way. Creators are human beings with the best intentions – Gilbert didn't call Anita Sarkeesian his personal hero for no reason at all – but you can not do everything right just because you try to. Already the choice to use the same voice actress for Carla and the Voodoo Lady ("vaguely black coded female voice actress") feels not ideal to me. Sometimes I feel like we should rate the best intentions higher than the fuckups in the final narrative. It's certainly something I do when e. g. watching John Hughes movies. Another can of worms is of course that if the creator turns out to be a sack of shit, do you condemn his entire work of art, or not? I know I've made vastly differing choices in that respect. Thankfully, I don't see Ron Gilbert or Dave Grossman ever letting me down in that respect.

Yeah, the best part of this joke is how it just happens basically without comment. That's part of what I talked about before of how I felt like guybrush's comic style (and the game in general) has changed a bit over the years. In EMI and Tales I definitely feel like he'd have had something to say about that, and it prooobably would have aged even worse than this version of the joke from 1991.

I think more than anything the bra joke was just “it’s an unexpected garment to show up on the slowly revealing clothesline,” a surprising payoff to a multiple step puzzle where you know at the end you’ll get “something of the thread” belonging to Largo. In lite mode it’s something just sitting there, because the lite puzzle is “look for an obvious garment in his room,” and in that context a shirt is a very generic and comprehensible object. You can’t hang much more on it because there aren’t any other puzzle steps in place on which you can build anticipation and context so it’s generic. If guybrush just found a bra there, players wouldn’t assume it was largos, thered have to be an extra step there, which is inappropriate for lite mode. Instead Guybrush can say “it’s largos shirt,” and that passes player credulity because it looks enough like the one we’ve seen him wear. Agreed the bra as a punchline hasn’t aged great, but at least it’s mostly an innocuous moment of eyebrow-raising surprise and doesn’t get harped on. Apologies that some of this is just repeating what others said above. I missed a few posts

Hmm, let's see what I can come up with off the top of my head (please correct any faulty rememberings!) Maniac Mansion/Zak McKracken Both games have one item each that would only be of any use if you could somehow cross gameworlds and combine them - a chainsaw and some chainsaw fuel. Day Of The Tentacle I can't think of much here that's likely to go unnoticed, except maybe... Peter Chan's trademark of hiding his kid's name Zach in the artwork, here as the licence plate of the Wash Me car. If you have the flag in your inventory when you change the design for it in the past, you get a snazzy morphing animation. Sam And Max Hit The Road This is jam-packed with stuff but again it's all pretty much in front of you. Uh... You can go back and check the answering machine in their office to get new messages. Once you learn how Trixie and Bruno escaped, you can go back to Flambe and ask him about it. Full Throttle The hood ornament on the limo is a caricature of Tim Schafer If you hassle Emmet for long enough he'll let you have a go at his knifey-handy-stabby game If you hold onto any fluffy bunnies you can put them through the fan on the front of the truck in the end sequence At least one of the bikers is a Maniac Mansion character - Razor (I think there's one more?) The Dig I think if you show a photo to another character, Robert Patrick does his T2 "Have you seen this boy?" line. I dunno, it's The Dig, whatever. Grim Fandango If you ask Glottis about the Rusty Anchor, he'll sing you a song. Despite it serving no purpose, it's been fully written, performed and manually lip-synced!

🍰 👕 I beat #Mojole #152 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 2/6 🖤💛💛🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I wonder why the bra was changed to a "clean, white shirt" in the MI2 Lite mode? You can just find it on his bed instead of having to get it from Mad Marty but it's strange they bothered to add a whole different item instead of just using the bra. Having said that, perhaps players finding a bra in his messy room might assume it belonged to a woman he was with.

I hope you two don't mind if I join the conversation here. I'll keep it going, unfortunately. 🙂 1. I might have some feelings on Guybrush headcanons, . skip 2. I love the merfolk. I think they're great characters. But also, if there was a Skunkape Tales remaster or something, there's some lines of dialogue around them that I would like to see changed. I think the jokes where Guybrush's uncertainty around their gender identities are the punchline, are the worst bit. The bit I would want changed. I get it about the flirting stuff and agree - but I also think a lot of it is extremely cute and endearing. It is dated, but it makes me smile. Is Winslow and Anenome the first queer couple between main NPCs in Monkey Island? I really don't know, I very much could be forgetting some characters. Either way, I think they're a great couple. I love them. 3. Largo LeGrande. Trying to justify the bra joke in retrospect wouldn't be great, imo. It just seems embarrassing to go back on it like that. "Oh, you thought the bra joke was queerphobic? We were just trying to tell you he was actually queer all along" or something. Eugh. To be clear, I'm not opposed to Largo being canonically trans. Or somebody having a headcanon based on the bra. Its only the specific combination that I mentioned which would be a problem.

I know this wasn't an ultimatum and was only a half-joke. But that was my point in the Largo example: how would you illustrate it? Maybe the most natural way would be to have characters familiar with them start out in "they" pronouning. If you try anything else in visual terms, I doubt it would land well. (In that sense it would be easier to depict nonbinary than trans in this type of game. It's not like Undertale/Deltarune, where a lion has a mane that could be tied up.)

And don’t forget that several dimensions are intersecting exactly where Melee town sits.

I've noticed that Low Street has turned from a U-turn (with a fascade where the map dealer stands in MI1) to a 90 degree corner (or an L-turn) in RtMI. The U-turn looked like it was directly taken from the Rothenburg "reference", whereas the RtMI version makes the background look more like a 90 degree camera pan.

Edit: ARGH that counts as a double post. Didn't read Staple Remover's and added the same detail. At least it's an incredible detail! 😊

👕 I beat #Mojole #152 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 3/6 🖤🖤🖤💛🖤 🖤🖤💛🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

The bra joke was very confusing to me as a kid, and I’m not even sure it’s funny now. I think it would be interesting if Largo was trans*, but in my head canon that joke isn’t even in the game. 😌 (*I mean, sort of interesting, I guess … the queer evil sidekick is such an exhausting trope.)

I guess I meant it in the sense of, if they felt like that's what they wanted to do with the character, AND if they had a trans voice on the writing team to treat it properly, then I think that would be a viable way to go. I'm not necessarily saying that this is an angle I think they should go for. I'd just like to say briefly that even if I think we shouldn't dwell too long, how much I appreciate that we can have this conversation in here and it not turn immediately into hell.

with love

Nooo! Eep ook ack! I failed at #Mojole #151. 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤💛🖤🖤 🖤💚🖤💛🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/