Carmen Bianca BAKKER

Spoilers Game of Thrones. I have been watching Game of Thrones with great interest the past few weeks. It has very strongly highlighted a struggle that has been gripping my mind for a while now: That between elitists and laypeople. And I find myself in a strange in-between. For those not in the know, the latest season of Game of Thrones is a bit controversial to say the least. If you skip past the internet vitriol, you’ll find a lot of people disliking the season for legitimate reasons: The battle tactics don’t make any sense, characters miraculously survive after the camera cuts away, time and distance stopped being an issue in a setting that used to take it slow, and there’s a weird, forced conflict that would go away entirely if these two characters that are already in love would simply marry. [Read More]

This is my late submission for transgender day of visibility. It comes almost a week late, but I suppose I’ll use this proverb that is popular among the trans community to justify myself: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Or: The best time to post about transgender day of visibility was 31st of March. The second best time is 5th of April. [Read More]

So there’s a thought I’ve been having lately. The idea that some people identify as neither male nor female has become more mainstream over the past few years. And I assume like a lot of people, I’ve struggled with giving those people a place within my own concept and experience of gender. So I’d taken the accepting-but-condescending view of “yeah whatever, do what makes you happy, I just don’t understand it”. [Read More]

Not long ago, I created an NPC for my level 3 D&D party to encounter. The NPC is a little kitty in a basement beneath an abandoned tower full of magical treasures. As soon as the party began to take any items from the basement, the cat turned on them, swiping its little claws at the ankles of the daring adventurers. Two floating weapons assaulted the party together with the cat to prevent the party from stealing anything. [Read More]

We will meet at three o’ clock GMT, the first of May. [sic] This is a subject on which I am extremely pigheaded. Often, when I am planning an online meeting with people who live in other timezones, they wish to choose a time and date using the GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) timezone. And often, that causes misunderstandings. The cause behind the misunderstanding is normally daylight saving time (henceforth called summer time). [Read More]