Take Me To Your Breeder: Letters from an Extraterrestrial Anthropologist

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Take Me To Your Breeder Angela White Kendra Sunderland Blake Blossom Angel Youngs Manuel Ferrara full video Cut to a public washroom. Angie is kneeling inside a closed stall, throwing up. She flushes and exits awkwardly as a co-worker enters, in gym clothes, and asks if she is ready to head to body pump. She smiles and says yes, reverting to her usual cheerful disposition, and they exit. Garrett explains in a patronizing tone that he's not feeling satisfied with their current arrangement. He wants another favor. Janice looks flabbergasted -- she's already paid him off twice, and she just colluded to get his company his second city contract at a way higher rate than market value. Garrett says yes, that's true, but that's really more to help his business, but now he's getting restless and he feels he wants to work on his personal brand, maybe even get into politics himself. He wants an endorsement from her to run for his own spot on the city council. Janice coldly says absolutely not -- she can't endorse a candidate with no political experience and dubious ties to criminal activity. It'll draw too much attention, and could be career suicide for her. Garrett tells her he thinks she's exaggerating, and feels he'd make a great candidate. He's even come up with the perfect campaign slogan, 'Make America Garrett Again' he jokes. The property manager explains that she can control the doors and thermostat, as already demonstrated, and she can also control the lights in the house. 'JOY, turn the lights off.' 'OK.' The lights turn off. Mrs. O also informs the couple that the home assistant can control most of the small appliances, such as the coffee maker and vacuum. 'Looks like I won't need a housewife after all, huh honey?' Dylan jokes as they keep moving. She can relay messages throughout the house, by automatically detecting where the homeowners are. 'JOY, where is Jessica?' She asks. 'Jessica is currently located in the living room.' 'JOY, tell Jessica that I like her dress.' 'Jessica, I like your dress!' Jessica smiles at Mrs. O as she encourages them to keep going.

Bethany (Alina Lopez) is desperate to start a family of her own. She and her husband, Nathan (Tommy Pistol), have been doing EVERYTHING to try and get pregnant, but nothing's working. Tensions are high, especially since Bethany's not sure Nathan is giving it his all anymore... Filled with newfound confidence, Diana declares that one of the first things she's going to take control of is how things are done in the bedroom. In fact, she's going to go out today and get herself a vibrator! As Angela encourages her client to own her sexuality, Diana becomes bolder. You see, she's ALWAYS wanted to have a lesbian experience... and Angela is right there... Because of their unique limitations on player choice, games give us an alternate application for Gayle S. Rubin’s “charmed circle”. In her 1984 essay, Rubin uses a model for the sex hierarchy with an inner “charmed circle” of acceptable practices such as monogamy and heterosexuality and, surrounding the charmed circle, the “outer limits” of another circle containing unacceptable practices such as intergenerational sex or BDSM (153). The videogame can seal itself around its particular charmed circle entirely, removing the possibility of performing unacceptable activities. This makes the ‘unacceptable’ activities that we could still choose to practice in our everyday lives not a part of the game narrative at all, hence the compulsive heterosexuality of most games. While Rubin’s societal model can never entirely erase the unacceptable, but only push it to the circle’s periphery, the designed nature of the game can make an unacceptable act impossible. This is why it has never been possible outside of fan-creations for Mario to date and rescue Toad, or his brother Luigi, rather than Princess Peach. Rubin tells us that “consent is a privilege enjoyed only by those who engage in the highest-status sexual behavior” (168). Gaming goes even further: game designers decide player capacity to do things at all, completely prior to being able to consent or not. The privilege of consent is not the player’s to exercise, but the game designer’s to give in carefully selected instances. Bioware & RelationshipsThis commentary aims to raise questions about the mandatory performance and privileging of particular sexual identities in videogames, first through examining the explicitly heterosexual narratives of classic game series like Super Mario and then the more narratively and performatively diverse romantic side-quests in modern RPGs. In BioWare’s Mass Effect series in particular, the romantic side-quest has progressed, with some difficulty, beyond the compulsive heterosexuality of the classic videogame. Specifically, this compulsive heterosexuality is a particular iteration of Adrienne Rich’s “compulsory heterosexuality”; the key difference between the two is that while compulsory heterosexuality is a privileged societal norm than can be refused, the compulsive heterosexuality of the classic videogame demands that the player perform a heterosexual player-character or cease playing the game altogether. The scope of choice in a videogame literalizes and ultimately closes Gayle S. Rubin’s charmed circle of sexuality, rendering what falls outside the circle impossible for the player to enact, whatever their desires or intention. Compulsive Heterosexuality & The Charmed Circle Meghan Blythe Adams is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Ontario. Her main areas of interest in game studies are player death, difficulty settings, and the submissive elements of play. The series’ most recent installment and its DLC have expanded the charmed circle considerably, though again there are key differences between the options available for a female and male Shepard. 2012’s Mass Effect 3 includes both heterosexual and homosexual romance options for both male and female Shepards for the first time in the series’ history. Perhaps in a nod to the fact that wider romance options were often planned and even partially produced but ultimately not present in the final versions of the two previous Mass Effect titles, human character Kaiden Alenko’s romantic potential is expanded from a solely heterosexual option to a romantic option for either Shepard. However, the charmed circle still differs from one gendered Shepard to another: in the Mass Effect 3: Citadel DLC, a romantically unattached female Shepard can engage in casual sex with the alien Javik or the human James Vega, both male. A male Shepard simply cannot have similar encounters. Conclusions Ultimately, this commentary’s application of Adrienne Rich’s model of compulsory heterosexuality and Gayle S. Rubin’s charmed circle and outer limits of sexuality to the Mass Effect series and videogames more generally is intended to be a launching pad for further investigation and critical response regarding sexuality, choice and representation in games. What are the ethics of compulsive heterosexuality in gaming and how can designers balance narrative strength with player choice and identity? While it is unreasonable to expect game designers to program every possible sexual identity and act into their products even where such content is relevant, game consumers and critics should continue agitating for a widening of gaming’s charmed circles and reflect on their own biases and limits [foot]For three examples of critical engagement with the sexual limitations of particular game franchises, see Adrienne Shaw’s blog post “The Lost Queer Potential of Fable” , Todd Harper’s presentation “Dragon Gay-ge?: Same-sex Romance Options in Bioware Games” and Stephen Greer’s article “Playing Queer: Affordances for Sexuality in Fable and Dragon Age: Origins” in the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds[/foot]. Games that invite the player to experience and ask questions about the supposed outer limits of sexuality like Christine Love’s Analogue: A Hate Story and follow-up Hate Plus (AI/human relationships) and Merrit Kopas’ Consensual Torture Simulator (BDSM) expand the conversation bravely. It may be too late for Commander Shepard to have any new experiences now, but players have a lot to look forward to thinking about.

Angela and Silvia are confused as they are greeted by two brides-to-be, Serena Blair and Alix Lynx. As Serena and Alix get more excited and rowdy, Angela and Silvia step aside to talk about what's going on. Angela is delighted that the ladies think that they're strippers for the bachelorette party! Since it's the end of their shift, why not have a little fun and play along? Cut to several hours later. Angie comes home through the front door, still sweaty and in workout clothes. As soon as she puts down her gym bag, she begins to hear noises coming from the upstairs bedroom. She slowly creeps up the stairs, her expression falling as she realizes what she is hearing. However, a brief historical overview of BioWare’s original titles provides a sample of their uneven progress in terms of inclusivity and widening of player choices. Romantic choices have ranged from queer options to polyamourous options in previous game titles like 2005’s Jade Empire. Bioware’s Mass Effect franchise has been much more in line with traditional heterosexist gaming, however. In 2007’s Mass Effect, when playing a male or female Commander Shepard, players can pursue heterosexual romances with human crew members, but can only pursue a perceived homosexual romance as a female Shepard with an alien named Liara. Both human heterosexual relationships are typical charmed circle fare: they are characterized by monogamous, romantic love between partners in a similar age range, which Rubin notes is the gold standard of what falls within the charmed circle (253). These relationships are quite typical of videogame compulsive heterosexuality. The game’s set-up simply sidesteps any homosexual option for a male Shepard, rendering that particular queer performance beyond even the outer limits of Rubin’s circle, excluding it from the game entirely. Mass EffectDiana Grace is a trophy wife who was once contented with her lot in life but now having second thoughts. She brings these worries to a therapist, Angela White, in hopes of straightening herself out. It's just that, though her husband treats her well enough, life feels stagnant. That night, John comes home from work. He calls out to his wife as he enters the foyer. There is no response. Confused, he turns just as someone strikes him.

Masie (Jay Taylor) is a suburban wife trapped in her own personal hell. She's been married to her husband for two years but the spark is already gone... and the more she thinks about it, the more she wonders if it was ever there to begin with. Emily Hunter (Scarlett Sage) is a young woman reeling from a bad breakup. Fortunately, she's been getting through it, one day at a time, with help from her therapist, Dr. Hannah Levy (Angela White). It's not just losing her girlfriend that Emily is upset about, but how Emily was shamed for her love of bondage, which ultimately led to the relationship crashing and burning. SCENE OPENS on a small city council private office where a councilwoman, Janice Monroe (Angela White), is hard at work. She appears confident, and sharply dressed in a chic but no-nonsense business suit. We watch her work for several seconds from a male gaze POV, until her concentration is broken by a telephone call on her office phone. Right away, Angela clues in that Diana's giving too much control to her husband, which is why Diana's world is so bland. She needs to be able to do her own thing, express her own individuality, so that she can live a more fulfilling life. Although Diana tries to deny there's anything wrong in her relationship with her husband, she soon sees the truth: she DOES need to be her own woman! After the latest disappointing news from yet another fertility doctor, it seems like all hope is lost. But when Bethany sees a sketchy flyer on the couple's car windshield, there is another spark: it's a flyer promising successful fertilization! While Bethany's ready to try it, Nathan is strongly against it -- Bethany has to be crazy to believe a shady note! The argument leads to yet another screaming match and plenty of tears... which finally pushes Bethany over the edge.

Overwhelmed with the need to feel SOMETHING, she tries experimenting with her sexuality in secret. Although she doesn't feel anything for her husband anymore, seeing a sexy woman stirs something deep down that terrifies and excites her. When she can spare a moment, she pops in her earbuds and listens to erotic lesbian audiobooks, but they're not enough... With each passing day, the loneliness and longing for another woman's sensual touch becomes all-consuming. The original Mass Effect’s sole queer romance is heavily annotated. Both female and male Shepards can have a romance with Liara. She is explicitly stated to be from a ‘monogendered’ race, the Asari, but she is clearly intended to be ultimately perceived as a blue woman. Liara has a female voice actor and model, and is consistently referred to by female pronouns. Additionally, the majority of Asari-partnered aliens we meet are male, reinscribing heterosexuality as the in-game standard. A lesbian relationship with Liara is literally othered by the fact that she is an alien, but the game verifies the romance’s place within the circle by focusing on romance and child-bearing. The Asari are specifically discouraged from mating with each other, placing such activity within the in-game outer limits of the circle; as we find out later, this is because children with two Asari parents have a higher likelihood of being an “Ardat-Yakshi”, a kind of Asari succubus that murders its partners through sex. At the same time, because all Asari look stereotypically female, this produces what looks like a taboo against lesbianism; if a player performs a male Shepard and romances Liara, the taboo remains in place, effectively making the compulsively heterosexual male Shepard rescue Liara from her lesbian heritage as the child of two Asari herself. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.'