Rundown (5/11/2025) Is Crossdressing TSF?

This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Is Crossdressing a Form of TSF?
• Rundown Preamble Ramble Append: Futanari is Sometimes TSF, But Mostly it’s Own Thing
• Gears of War Reloaded Announced (Natalie Rambles About Gears of War, I Guess)
• The Video Game Industry of Money-Making (And How It’s Broken!)
• AI vs Education (Natalie Rambles About School From Afar!)

The header image for this week’s Rundown was created by Vel. He drew this a few weeks ago, and it miffed me enough to dive into this topic. Why didn’t I do it two weeks ago? I dunno!

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Is Crossdressing a Form of TSF?

Woo boy, this is a topic that has been lingering in the background for about three years at this point.

TSF is a quintessential topic here on Natalie.TF, and a term I previously defined in my 2022 essay, Natalie Rambles About TSF.

“TSF is a genre of fiction wherein a character undergoes a change in sex through fictitious or fantastical means. With the ensuing narrative, assuming there is one beyond the initial transformation, following how they adapt to these changes. [The name] TSF is an abbreviation of Trans-Sexual Fiction or Trans-Sexual Fantasy, and the term has several different variants. This includes TG, Gender Bender, Gender Swap and so forth.”

In that essay, I then go on to describe the appeals and applications of various subsets of the genre. The ‘standard’ transformation, body swap, possession, and bodysuit/skinsuit. However, I did not touch upon one sector that some people consider to be a cornerstone of TSF, crossdressing. And the reason why I did not consider it to be TSF is quite simple. In real life, you can crossdress. Just go to a second-hand clothing shop, buy some clothes that match a gender expression you don’t publicly utilize, maybe pick up a wig, makeup, or a good razor for some intensive shaving. Then get dressed, get all gussied up, and bam. You’re crossdressing. And that’s going above and beyond.

Back in my crossdressing days as a 13-year-old in a post-Ranma fugue, I just raided my sister’s closet and filled up a bra with cotton balls. Then I stopped after almost getting caught, and spent seven years deliberating if I was trans while searching for TSF stuff every night. In case I don’t sound dense enough, I literally had to write a (bad) research paper on trans people before I could accept that I was trans.

Now, go back to how I defined TSF. “[A] genre of fiction wherein a character undergoes a change in sex through fictitious or fantastical means.” I was very particular with my wording here, and careful to exclude crossdressing from my definition, as I don’t think crossdressing belongs in the same category. I simply do not think wearing different types of clothes is in the same wheelhouse as a full-body transformation that changes someone at a cellular level. Or someone becoming a ghost to snag the body of someone else. Or wear the skin of someone to become them. Or fall down several flights of stairs to switch bodies.

Admittedly, I am not being the most generous with my arguments here. There are people who take crossdressing very seriously and have a robust routine involving specialized clothing, hair modifications, and makeup. Which is before getting into breast forms, hip pads, shapewear, even full bodysuits and masks nowadays. There is enough of a market and enough technical advancements for people to drastically change their appearance and take crossdressing to a whole new level. I think this is rad as hell, but by being real— by existing in reality— it creases to be a Trans-Sexual Fantasy.

Okay, okay, I have been focusing on real-life crossdressing up to this point, rather than fictional depictions of crossdressing. Crossdressing is a versatile storytelling tool that humans have been using for thousands of years, as people have always been fascinated by it. I won’t bother giving a primer on the spectrum of concepts crossdressing can cover. Its use as a disguise, as a source of humor, as a way to make someone seem devious or perverted, or a way to show off that someone is so hot that their hotness transcends gender. I trust that you readers already know that.

However, there is one type of fictional crossdressing that I consider to be a type of TSF. Crossdressing that is so effective and thorough it allows the subject to not only flawlessly pass as their presented gender. So successful that the story would be barely different if they underwent a full physical transformation, transforming their primary and secondary characteristics. My gold star example of this would be a 2005 anime that I watched with Cassie a few months back, Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru, or Otoboku.

Otoboku is the story of a male high school student, Mizuho Miyanokouji, attending an all-girls Japanese Catholic school, presenting himself as a girl and living the life of a girl for three years. During which, Mizuho achieves resounding popularity amongst the student body, makes friends with a bunch of girls there, and the fact that they are a boy is seldom ever brought up, or known by most characters. If the story began after Mizuho drank a magic potion to physically ‘become a girl’ permanently, or for a few years, barely anything would change.

The fact that Mizuho used to be a boy, and that being a girl is new to him is an important part of the story. But the fact they still have a dick is a non-factor. While it does not meet my literal definition of TSF by eschewing a physical transformation, it has the spiritual genre essence of TSF. So I would consider it to be TSF.

…But that only applies to the anime. The visual novel, which you can buy on MangaGamer, loves whipping out Mizuho’s dick. And when you emphasize the crossdressing as crossdressing, you lose the spiritual genre essence of TSF. …Maybe this wasn’t the best example to bring to this week’s Book Club.

As I said in the original 2022 essay, I am willing to make exceptions to my definition if something sufficiently feels like TSF. Under this criterion, I would absolutely say that crossdressing can be TSF, but only in specific instances. Instances where the crossdressing is so damn effective it is like a full physical transformation.

Am I out of line? Do you consider crossdressing to be unambiguously TSF? Am I using an inappropriate definition of crossdressing here? Do you have examples of crossdressing that you consider to be TSF?

This is your CALL TO ACTION!

So do your action and let me know in the comments below. Because without feedback, how the frick am I supposed to learn anything?

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Rundown Preamble Ramble Append:
Futanari is Sometimes TSF, But Mostly it’s Own Thing

Crud, I forgot that Vel included futanari in that image I wanted to use. Guess I need to open that kettle of fishy worms!

So, futanari is a term for a character with male and female features, but the general interpretation of it is just a female bodied person with a male genitalia, or in simpler terms, a girl with a dick. I have avoided talking about this subject for quite some time. Partially because I don’t really think about it all that much, but also because it can mean so many things to different people.

Sometimes a futanari is a woman who was born with a dick, and is still a girl, just with an inexplicable dick. Sometimes it is a woman who lived as a woman for years and years, until she suddenly grew a penis through some magical means. Sometimes it is a transformation that happens to a man, causing his body to feminize until he is left 100% female, except for his dick, balls, and presumably prostate, which either stayed the same, or got bigger.

I’ve seen some creators who prescribe to the idea of futanari as a fantasy puberty that happens to male people, turning them into busty, tall, strong women with baseball bat like dicks. I don’t know what’s that about. And when a male and female character merge, or fuse, through some fantastical means, the form they assume is often reminiscent to a futanari. Somebody with a mostly female body, including boobs, a pretty face, but also a dick.

This makes it difficult to quantify what someone is talking about when the subject is brought up… but I know that when people talk about futanaris, they are primarily using it as Japanese shorthand for girl with a dick. Is this a form of TSF? If the character transforms to get the dick, yes, by my own definition. It is literally someone’s sex, i.e., genitalia, changing to something else. If character is just born that way… no. there is no fantastical transformation, as some humans just end up with parts like that.

However, futanari also has way, way broader appeal than other forms of TSF, to the point where I consider it to be something different. No matter how a character achieves a futanari state, they are girls with dicks, and that is the central appeal. Seeing a girl with a dick. And there are far ore people who want to see that than those who want to see a TSF transformation of male/female body swap. My proof? Just do a quick search on purveyors of erotic delights.

On E-Hentai, there are over 158,000 results for futanari, but only about 52,000 results for ‘gender’, and 24,000 for body swap. And on the US government’s beloved PornHub… they don’t give me a good hard number when I search, but there are 100 pages of results for futanari, 20 for ‘gender’, and 11 for body swap. You know what that means! One of these things is not like the others! One of these things doesn’t belong! Can we tell which one of these things is not like the other by the time I finish this line?

Futanari is dramatically more popular and common than TSF, but why is that? Because people fucking love girls with dicks! They have for literal centuries! Maybe even longer! But why you might ask? Well, consider how this is not a plot device or genre as much as it is an archetype of a character, and think about the demographics that a girl with a dick would appeal to.

Maybe it’s because I’m into weird shit, but I have seen a lot of straight women voice great fascination with the idea of having a penis. In being able to experience what their male partners experience. The use of sexual aids is fairly common in the world of lesbian sex— at least I think so. Meaning the idea of just growing a penis for erotic play with one’s partner, as a means of spicing things up, is compelling for some. But the big demographic is straight men. Straight men love girls with dicks.

…Okay, that’s a bold accusation, but where’s my proof? How do I know this? Well, I’m not doing a research paper, chief. Most of this is from observations and vibes. However, I know that heterosexual men love dicks. They love their dick, they love the idea of a dick, and they love putting dicks on things. But straight men are terrified of the dicks of other men, and do not want to see it. Or, at least, not see the man’s face. Because if they see a full big bawdy man, with his big manly dick out, that’s fuckin’ gay, bro. The idea of getting close to a man when he’s naked, unless it’s to sexually slaughter eviscerate a woman, is some hella gay shit. It’s different in certain contexts, but that’s the general gist.

Futanaris though? These characters are a way for men to sexually engage with dicks without being gay. Because even if a girl has a dick, she’s still a girl, right? With a pretty face, nice titties, and a firm ass men can fuck with their dick, right? But, if they want to spice things up, they can let the futanari stick her dick in their butt, maybe suck hers, because it’s a feminine penis, right? …Or they just like watching a girl with a dick have sex with a dickless girl. That one… that one is probably more popular, as it lets them get the penetration— get to watch a girl get penis-fucked— without needing to think of another man.

Also, futanari characters are a lot easier for artists adept at drawing women to draw, and not difficult to make live action porn of. As I have said in the past, some hentai artists just do not like drawing men. And while there are no real futanaris, some trans women look pretty damn close. With the rise in trans visibility, with more people than ever transitioning, and porn becoming more accessible than ever, there’s a lot more porn of trans women. And a lot more trans women who turn to sex work, because that’s when you do when people hate you and want to legalize your out of existence. You sell them porn of yourself, because bigots love working their dicks to porn of the people they hate. It was true in the days of slavery, it was true across the 20th century, and you bet your dog-looking-ass it’s true today.

Just to make this explicitly clear. Trans women are not futanari, and they should never be referred to as such. Trans women just play futanari in porn. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Queer folks gotta make money some way, and some trans women, non-binary folks, and miscellaneous feminizing AMAB queers want to keep their dicks. Others want to invert that crap and get a pussy. Others just want an ambiguous pee hole. Why do they want that? Well, it should not be anyone else’s business what someone else does with their body. And if you want to be a mature, respectful, person, you should abide by that truism.

But to provide an answer, some trans women keep their dicks because while they don’t like being a man, they like having a dick. Dicks are cool, fun to play with, and while vaginoplasties have gotten pretty good, not every trans woman wants to go through something so intensive, and potentially risk losing something. These trans women still want to be seen as a woman, participate in society as a woman, and live openly and privately as women. But you know what people in polite society typically don’t do? Show off or talk about the shit they’ve got in their pants.

Akumako: “Hold up, what if a trans woman wants to be called a futanari?”

If a Black man wants you to call him a gorilla or an N-word, does that make it right to do so? No. The person requesting that is probably acting in bad faith or, worse, are a race traitor.

Okay, okay, conclusion time. Is Futanari TSF? Yes, technically, mostly, but it is also its own thing, separate from TSF. By being a transformation that only involves changing a person’s genitals, it has far less narrative utility and the overwhelming majority of implementations of this idea are inherently sexual. But, despite this, a lot of people find futanari porn enticing, as there is something about girls with dicks that gets millions upon millions of people all hot and bothered.

Now, do I use futanaris in my stuff? …Kind of? But the penis functions as a retractable tail-like appendage, which is mostly the result of 17-year-old me me thinking that the Saiyan tails in Dragon Ball would be a great sexual appendage, misunderstanding how dolphin dicks work and… You know what? Topic’s over. TOPIC IS OVER!

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Gears of War Reloaded Announced
(Natalie Rambles About Gears of War, I Guess)

With the Microsoft’s semi-recent pivot to putting their games on every platform— in turning everything into an Xbox— there have been plentiful rumors that they would be doing something with their legacy titles. Namely, the Halo and Gears of War series. Personally, I thought that releasing a version of The Master Chief Collection for Switch 2 and PS5 would make all the sense in the world. That game went from a poorly optimized dump on the series’ legacy at launch into being the definitive way to play some of the best shooters of 2001 to 2010. While I’d imagine that a Gear of War Trilogy pack would be sensible, along with a subsequent release of parts 4 and 5.

Akumako: “What about Judgment?”

What does the Like A Dragon series have to do with Gears?

Akumako: “No, I meant— oh, I get it. It’s so forgettable, and such a flop, it’s not worth mentioning?”

Correct, my darling dæmonic daughter!

Akumako: “…Our relationship changes every bloody week at this point…”

My suggestion on bringing back the series to the masses would be primo logical. However, logic died in 20XX, when [REDACTED]. So instead of porting over these old games in big girthy bulk bundles for the frugal and nostalgic, Microsoft has other plans.

Akumako: “Are they having Saber fully remake Halo, this time in Unreal 5?”

Uh… not yet. Try again next month. Instead, they are starting this expansion by remastering the 2006 industry shaking banger that was Epic Games’ Gears of War. One of the first big hits of the Xbox 360 library, and a game whose impact on that whole generation, and modern gaming as a whole, has been analyzed and noted time and time again. I’d even put it up above Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007).

Akumako: “Uh… what? Didn’t they already remaster Gears of War back in 2015 with Gears of War: Ultimate Edition?”

They did! But now they’re doing it again in the form of Gears of War: Reloaded, launching on August 26 for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC. But not Switch 2, because that would make too much sense. Or maybe Microsoft doesn’t have dev kits yet.

Akumako: “…What is the point of a new remaster? The last one was fine as far as I could tell, and it’s already on PC and Xbox, so can’t they just patch in better frame rates and resolutions?”

You’re not wrong to say that, but think about this from Microsoft’s perspective. They want to do a soft reboot of Gears of War for a new and lapsed audience, priming them with a straightforward remaster that they can get out quickly and, presumably, cheaply. It’s newer, and is built for things that the 2015 remaster just wasn’t. Like cross-platform multiplayer, native 4K support, 120 fps multiplayer modes, and no load screens, as the Xbox One still used a mechanical hard drive. Plus, this one looks slightly better than the last release. The original Gears of War was a deliberately dismal game, filled with oppressive grays and desaturated browns, meant to evoke the imagery and sense of a dying world that has lost its humanity at the hands of a destructive scourge.

This was subsequently changed in the 2015 remaster, which redid the coloring across the board, giving the world a modicum of color, though still retaining the dismal look. The 2025 remaster looks to be a continuation of that, but with seemingly brighter lighting— which is good, as the 2015 remaster darkened far too much. They also updated some effects to be more vibrant, made the image clearer in general, and even made the sky bluer! Admittedly, this is just based on some comparison videos I found from a decade ago, and publisher provided screenshots. But this does appear to be, at the very least, a slightly better remaster.

I still think it’s bizarre to sell it on its own without the rest of the original trilogy, but for a $40 re-release… I guess that’s fine. It should probably only be $30, but $40 does make it a half-priced video game in the modern day, and it is a free upgrade to everybody who bought the Ultimate Edition digitally. a game that was consistently $5 to $10 for the past 5 years.

Akumako: “So, we’re done here? Another day, another remaster, and all that jizz?”

I think you mean jazz.

Akumako: “I know what I mean!”

Well, I’m not done yet, as now is an excellent time to reflect on the series. Gears of War significantly shaped the 7th console generation, or The PS360 Wii Era. This was my formative era, the era where I went from being a kid who liked Nintendo and Pokémon into a devout enthusiast of video games. All thanks to Let’s Players, ScrewAttack, Channel Awesome, GameTrailers, Destructoid, and a scattering of other influences, most of which have fallen off and transformed into something I’d rather not associate with. …Huh. Maybe that’s why I am determined to preserve so many things! Because so much of what I loved as a teenager has been tainted by the annals of time.

This was the era where I was learning more about video games every day. Playing a wide spectrum of games on my DS, Wii, and 360. Learning about gaming history as men a decade older than me rejoiced about their favorites from a bygone year. With the power of online video, they showed what games of yore looked like, espousing their virtues… or in some cases, their lack of virtues. It is an era that I look back on fondly, as video games were an escape for me, and a way to ignore my many, many issues back then.

Namely gender troubles, social troubles, general emotional troubles, a hatred of puberty that I attributed as being normal, and being so concerned over school I would inflict physical harm on myself. I was also committed to killing myself shortly after high school back then, as a plump little cherry on top, so I was trying to joymax my way through high school before killing myself. …But then I just didn’t do that.

However, this was also the era where I became actively aware of the myriad bad business practices assaulting the world of video games. The predatory DLC models. The rise and decline of the Online Pass. The shoehorning of multiplayer modes in single-player games. And most egregiously, a palpable decline in the variety of AAA games as they sought to appeal to the broadest, most focus-tested, audience possible. This was the era of the grim and gritty, adolescent aesthetics made to appeal to teenage boys and dudes who wished they were still teenagers. (And not just because they wanted to legally impregrape 15-year-olds.) Cinematic campaigns that fumbled at being both of those things. Art direction muddled in browns and grays, and a general lack of creativity. An era where shooters were seen as the first and second most important genres, and publishers wanted Call of Duty money by any means possible.

Do not get me wrong. This generation was gushing with quality games, creatively rich experiences, and titles that I dearly love to this day. However, it was also a generation where it was easy to be a pessimist. And that’s before getting into the concerns felt as casual fronts for gaming were growing, the core audience was shunned by publishers, and every week there was another person talking about how ‘consoles are dying and mobile is the future.’ I mean… they were half-right, mobile is the dominant force in gaming thanks to Robnite and Forkbonks, but I’m getting off-topic.

Akumako: “No kidding. …The fuck’s this got to do with Gears of War?”

Back when I was a teenage, I viewed Gears of War as a simulacrum of everything wrong with gaming. I viewed it as a distillation of everything wrong with AAA action games, and the progenitor of many of the worst traits of this generation. Every gray/brown action game took cues from Gears of War, directly or indirectly. Every shooter with slow, procedural, cover-based shooting was following in the footsteps of Gears of War. Any game that featured these overly muscled-up pseudo humans in power armor and shitty haircuts was trying to be like Gears of War. Hell, any game with no visible health bar and regenerative health took that idea from Gears of War.

The co-op campaign that dictated how the game had to be designed. The pseudo cutscenes where you walk around while the protagonist jams a finger in their ear. The dour and depressing story that does not really say anything. The fixation on cinematic set pieces over real game design. The generic looking enemies who are barely given prominence just being blobbish mooks. The Unreal Engine 3 sheen. The gratuitously fetishistic yet un-sexy violence. The overly masculine aesthetic that looked to appeal to men with no identity beyond their status as a man and the superficial commodified elements that came with it. Also known as culturally abused shitheads. Also also known as Gramers. …A term that I’m pretty sure was coined by Jared “ProJared” Knabenbauer, back when he was doing Nametags for ScrewAttack.

Akumako: “Callback!”

I hated Gears of War when I was a teenager. Hated everything it stood for. And viewed it as something unworthy of respect, for it was killing gaming. same with Call of Duty, Madden, and even Halo, because they were all sort of lumped together back in the day. It’s what Gramer encompassed! In retrospect, I was just a trans woman who did not think she could possibly be trans, yet hated all of this overtly masculine bullshit that was being thrown my way, and anything enjoyed by wannabe-masculine shitbags. I viewed Gears of War as a manifestation of toxic masculinity, and something directly responsible for not only masculinizing my innocent gender-neutral hobby, but limiting what was seen as acceptable, let alone desired. (Side note, but gaming was never gender-neutral, I was just an dumb White child who thought racism ended in 1968.)

In fact, I hated Gears so much that, when working on my first ‘serious’ writing project, Intertoids, I actually created a world that was directly inspired by Gears of War. Or at least my superficial surface-level understanding of it. It was an alternate future where humanity had been led astray in a wild way and there was a four-prong gender/class dichotomy. Traditional powerful men who controlled the world and whose forms conformed to early 2010s ideals for high power executives. Exclusively male concubines whose forms conformed to whatever their Masters desired, often being extravagantly gay. These two represented just 1% of the population though, and the remaining portion of the population was divided into two castes, segregated by virtue of masculinity.

Those who were deemed sufficiently masculine were transformed into Bricks, tall, overly muscled, and armored-up humanoid creatures that were the embodiment of ‘everything a soldier should be.’ People were transformed into Bricks through a chemical forced masculinization process known as Marsification, and those who were deemed insufficiently masculine were transformed into Tires. As the name implies, they were tires made of flesh, but they also had giant vaginas instead of axles that were designed to accommodate the monster cocks of Bricks, and collect every last drop of their cum. They would travel around battlefields, allowing Bricks to relieve themselves during fire fights, and carry unborn Bricks inside them before birthing them some hours later.

…So basically a manosphere erotic fantasy, where men are men and engage in the only two masculine arts— murder and fucking— on a daily basis, never knowing complex feelings. And women are just tools for fucking and birthing, literally incapable of speech or complex thought, with a mental capacity more comparable to a rabbit than a human. …Except I also made it ‘woke’ by having some AFABs be turned into Bricks and some Tires were AMAB. Because ever since I was 13 and started getting into TSF, I knew that sometimes men make the best women, and sometimes women make the best men. I figured that much out thanks to DeviantArt and Fictionmania… and trans YouTube vloggers I would watch in my secret second browser.

Gosh, Intertoids was so fuckin’ weird. I had (pre-transition) James Stephanie Sterling shit out a baby version of themself, transform into Jonathan Holmes, and become the “Doctor President” of this world. A Nazi-coded ruler who would oversee the Marsification of all their political opponents and the genocide of hundreds of millions. Also, JonTron got turned into his bird and his bird turned into him. Then the former bird JonTron shoved the real JonTron into an oven and ate him. So in case you’re wondering if I’ve always been so fuckin’ weird, the answer is yes.

Akumako: “…So, uh, do you still hate Gears of War? You were specifically using past tense. Or are you just gonna—”

Nah, Gears of War is aight. I have no qualms with it now, and I can respect it for what it was trying to do.

Akumako: “…What? How the hell does that add up? How did you go from thinking ‘this is a sin that encapsulate all of society’s ills’ to ‘it’s aight, fam?'”

It’s called personal growth, developing a more mature and nuanced perspective, and recognizing how wrong it is to blame one thing, a new IP with a creative vision, as the cause for trends. Gears of War was the subject of a cultural shift in the American zeitgeist caused by 9/11, and while I can directly blame it for popularizing these trends, it was not the origin point for them. Dismal and gritty depictions of warfare were en vogue during that Kill All Sand N*ers Arc are in American history. (An arc that still hasn’t ended.) Gratuitous ultra-violence has been a fascination of young American men of all colors for decades due to a deluge of reasons I’d rather not shake my noggin to list.

Gears of War is a product of culture, rather than a progenitor of culture. The militaristic toxic masculinity that it expresses with its aesthetics and elements of its story has a lot you could criticize, but the same could be said about a deluge of media/culture across decades, including the 2000s. Also, the series made many contributions its game design, campaign structure, and generation defining concepts. It was a bold and innovative title during its heyday. Gears of War 2 (2008) is the quintessential video game of the Xbox 360 in my mind, despite having never played it. And to dismiss it outright is to be anti-intellectual and downright rude to the hundreds of skilled people who made these titles and the millions who love it.

Akumako: “So, do you like Gears of War?

…I just said I never played any games in the series, and I’ve made it clear that its aesthetics do not appeal to me. But Gears is something that I respect and, while I do not like many of the things that it popularized, it did not ravage, assault, or irreparably harm the medium, like I would have said as a teenager.

Akumako: “Pretty sure you would have said ‘fucked in the ass, no sodomy.'”

Yes, yes, not that I understood what that meant.

Akumako: “Don’t act like you understand what it means nowadays.”

Anyway, after just existing in the same space as the games industry for over half of my life, there are certain things I have just had to accept. Such as how the games industry is a deeply flawed confluence of capitalist influences, has been used as a tool to exploit people out of their cash, and has ruined the lives of thousands upon thousands of people. However, even if art that is designed around appealing to a low common denominator, designed as a tool for capitalist pursuit, it’s still art. Even spiritually malicious gacha games are the result of skilled and passionate creators. Even US Army endorsed military shooters are the creation of designers, artists of all trades, and creatives à la carte.

Akumako: “So, you learned to hate the system, and not the games?”

Nailed it. Hate the system, hate those who abuse power, and eschew supporting them if you feel like it. Love art, respect art, because that’s what we’re all here for. In this dark world of gray and black, love is power. The weak do not know respect, to care is to have strength, et cetera, et cetera.

Also, Microsoft develops tools that enabled the American-Israeli genocide of the indigenous people of Palestine, so maybe don’t support anything that they are doing nowadays.

Just don’t support anything from big whatever. Break ’em if you can.

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The Video Game Industry of Money-Making
(And How It’s Broken!)

Let’s see, topics, topics— oh, here’s one! Earlier this week, Eurogamer released an article reflecting on the GTA 6 delay and the current troubles in the games industry, concluding that the industry is dead. But in a hyperbolic deliberately provocative way, where death refers to an ‘end of an era’ or transformation. While the industry underwent a boom during COVID, when people were locked up and decided to play games with their friends, it began stagnating over the past two years. Not growing, but not undergoing a significant drop.

I’d say that, on its face, is somewhat healthy— as infinite growth is impossible— but this has led to a decline of investment across the industry. And if this is starting to remind you of that Matthew Ball article I discussed in January— which is required reading by the way— that’s because it pretty much is.

The industry has matured, is no longer seen as a growth sector by the Investor Class, and has, in terms of people employed and making a living from games, shrunk considerably. The Investor Class has moved their money into AI, not really knowing what will happen, but hoping that if enough of them invest, it will become a daily essential. And it has, in some respects. The 60-something-year-olds I talk to nearly every day will trust whatever Google tells them as Jesus Abraham Marduk Mohammed-Christ’s (His) Honest Truth. I told ’em it’s bullshit, but they will still eat it up because it’s shoved in their faces.

There is precious little road to pave for video games, and the hook of gaming is being loosened by the rise of Social Video, mostly meaning TikTok and its ilk. Short-form content, delivered to people as an endless algorithmic stream, meant to compel and pacify them, keep them in a loop of endless engagement while steadily transforming their brain. And it’s all free, meaning people can just turn on their phone, open The App, and have that be what they do for an entire evening of reprieve. Not watch a movie, not watch a TV show, not read, not watch a livestream, not play a game, not engage with other people, not make something.

I don’t want to be a future pessimist and call this troubling for humanity’s future, if not dystopian. Though, I will say that this shift in how people engage with things is a bad thing. It means people are not engaging with things created by professional creatives, and this lack of eyes, this decline in viewership, will affect creative industries. In games particular, Eurogamer goes on to state how this shift makes big AAA games a far less attractive endeavor, and has led many investors to put their money into smaller projects.

Which might sound good, but developing a game for a million Euros is far harder than one would assume. And any game released these days will need to compete with the super games that are thriving off of user-generated content made for a pittance, nothing, or off the backs of abusive working practices. A lot of people just play the likes of Roblox and Fortnite, as they have truly endless streams of content made by users all over the world.

This is, ultimately, and from my personal interpretation of reality, is a shitty fucking situation for the industry, and has led many investors, analysts, and creatives to cling onto hope. A hope that the Switch 2 becomes the biggest gaming launch and people start buying/playing Traditional/Real Video Games (not live services) again. Because vibes, man. A hope that Grand Theft Auto VI causes a spike in PS5 sales, and that people who buy a console for GTA will buy more games other than GTA. …Which is not how things worked with GTA V. And a hope that the industry, both in terms of press and developers, will continue to rebuild itself and pull itself up by its bootstraps in a new form.

When, realistically, that won’t happen. While recession has a number of different meanings, the games industry has been objectively receding with rampant layoffs, cancelations, and press outlets being turned into little more than AI-powered clickbait slop houses. The majority of games released are overshadowed and struggle to make back their budget. A life working in games is one marred by uncertainty. And people who want to work in games will, likely, be forced to find work elsewhere. Or, worse yet, they will be unable to find any job, as so many companies are against hiring, against expanding. Partially because of AI, partially because corporate culture places profits above people in nearly every instances, but also because a fascist moron is running the United States into the shitter.

The games industry is currently in the midst of a metamorphosis, and nobody knows what it is going to look like when it molds into its next stage. But with the confluence of myriad factors all wafting throughout the air, there is plenty reason to be pessimistic. ‘Things are bad and are going to get worse’ is going to be a motto for anything heavily concentrated in America for the next few years. Well, unless you are an ICE contractor (this will be a thing in a few months if it isn’t already) or slavery detention center owner.

The best bit of solace I can find with this idea is that… the games industry has always been in flux. Has always been shifting. And has never been one stable thing in its entire existence. It has always moved in accordance with new trends, hardware innovations, employee abuse, and expanding markets. And the games industry is so big that it can never go away. People will always make games, always love games, and always desire games. Could there be a crash? Sure. But it would not even be on the scale of the— consistently overstated— Crash of 1983, which only affected the console market in America.

How can this be avoided? Well, it can’t without complete control of an industry. But, if I were Queen of Gamindustri, I would immediately cease all live services from operating, bringing an end to the era of the supergame, undoubtedly harm the livelihoods of thousands, and cause millions to turn away from video games as a whole. I would do this due to an ideological difference, and due to a belief that this would cause more wealth to be distributed amongst a wider range of developers, even if the likes of Roblox and Epic would be primo fucked.

Also, bring an end to social video. I admittedly don’t understand the appeal, but I mostly just watch video essays on games and politics, so I am not the target audience. It’s just that everything I’ve heard about it makes it sound like a bad addictive time.

Also, also, the games industry is poised to be extra screwed when the tariffs fully kick in. I do not want to buy things I don’t need, but this has me thinking I should grab a new phone and an emergency backup laptop. I got my phone three years ago, and it works just fine, so I don’t want to replace it all willy-nilly. And I do not like using laptops. But I did buy a spare keyboard that was marked up to $40, so there’s that.

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AI vs Education
(Natalie Rambles About School From Afar!)

Here’s something of a current concern of mine. The children. Specifically, how the school-aged child-to-adult demographic of people aged 6 to 22 are getting on with this post COVID education climate where the very concept of education, at least in America, is under attack. We have AI that promises to help you cheat on exams and write essays in seconds, rather than allow students to learn or grow. Government officials who want to shut down all the public schools, use public funds on private schools, and open up child factories for the poor and illiterate. And idiot parents who think they have the skills needed to homeschool their children, mostly because they want to teach their children all their bigoted beliefs. But let’s talk about the first one, since I stumbled across some articles on the subject. And when I read something I like, I sometimes think ‘I wanna tray! I wanna try!’

To offer a preface, I am a 30-year-old who has not had any material IRL contact with an aforementioned school-aged child-to-adult in… years. I graduated with a Master’s in Accounting in December 2019, and while I have pursued continued education by becoming an IRS Enrolled Agent, my school days are behind me. For better or for worse. While I had my own assorted troubles with school, I was a good and diligent student who got plain old good grades. (A 3.5/4.0 GPA or better from seventh grade to graduation.)

As someone who… care about the world, I naturally value a good education, and view any attacks on it as inherently wrongheaded, if not morally repugnant. But with the rise in accessible generative AI, I have become very concerned over how it is affecting a generation of students. Both in primary and secondary education. The concern over AI in education is pretty simple. If AI does the work for students, writes for them, does their homework, then the students are not thinking or developing their skills. They are merely relying on an external force that is able to complete tasks faster than they could ever hope to.

They do not develop the mental muscles that they are supposed to gain through education, and the muscles they had before using AI will likely atrophy and diminish from a lack of use. They will lack the general, diverse, problem-solving skills that people are supposed to develop during their school years, and will be unable to meet the expectations of the workplace. Which meets neither the industrialist goal of molding children for labor, or the academic goal of expanding the minds of students.

This is all the latest extension of a problem that I have been aware of since… I was maybe 12. This idea that schools do not teach someone the skills or mindsets that they should, and the established, generalized, process of education is no longer achieving the same goals it supposedly used to. There have been arguments thrown out as to why this was the case, blaming technology, diets, cartoons, video games, Feeeemales, ‘Blacks,’ the No Child Left Behind Act, or whatever. However, the argument that I developed as a student, and have since seen echoed by educators, is that the problem lies in the transactional nature of school. How the systems encourage students to only care about grades. Not knowledge.

Good grades give access to scholarships, i.e., anti-debt, and better colleges. Better colleges give access to more clout and opportunities to get a job, at least that’s how the story goes. If one wants to start working, start making money, they need to get good grades. So that is what they focus on. It leads them to only study material for the exam, not to learn. To look for shortcuts to guarantee good grades. To cheat on their tests. To search up correct answers to homework questions they do not give a fuck about. To do bad research in order to meet the requirements of a paper, even if they have nothing to say for its entire duration.

And I know students do these things, as I did all of these things when I was a student. I entered formulas and notes in my graphing calculator for my Honors’ math tests, including the AP test for Calculus, because fuck memorizing a dozen formulas. I definitely looked up answers for homework I had on Chegg or wherever, because I did not want to do the tedious work. Especially when I wasn’t sure if I’d get marked down for not doing it exactly as intended. And my final paper for my statistics class was a ripe piece of shit. I had nothing meaningful to say, no material findings, because I did not have a good idea for a topic! I just fumbled my way through the page requirements, turned it in, and snagged a snug B. ‘Cos B’s get degrees!

I was by no means a perfect cherub of a student. But I did well and tried when I thought a course was interesting, like my mythology and art courses, or was directly relevant to my major, like all my ACTG classes. And not just ‘cos they had TG in the name.

Akumako: “Another callback, bay-bee!”

I knew from math classes that everything builds on what came before. And I am under no illusion that I was a typical student. I know I was, at least, in the top 30% of my schools, that the average student was not getting the material as well as I was, and was probably bullshitting their work more than me, just trying to pass. Because they were not really here for the knowledge, they were here for the credentials. They probably were juggling classes they don’t care about, and who knows what other personal crap they had going on as well.

These issues all existed well beforehand the modern day, yet the rise of AI as a tool to get through school has exasperated them. Because now students don’t even need to think about way to bullshit their way through an assignment, and learn something in the process. They can just enter the question, copy and paste the answer, and move onto the next one, never even reading it. They aren’t even learning how to discern good from bad by searching for the right test bank and how to get around free preview limitations! And I get it. I’ve used AI to answer questions that weren’t covered in the fucking text of some CPE I took, and it’s so, so tempting to just have an AI walk you through the question and explain the answer to you.

This is a problem with all types of homework that could be assigned, but I want to specifically hone in on two of the big R’s. Reading and wRiting. Reading is a subject that has been on the decline since the advent of the home computer era, and teachers have been struggling with ever since. There are countless discussions about the reasons for this, and this is a book worthy topic in and of itself. Instead, I would like to present some of the reasons I wasn’t much of a reader back in my youth, as I don’t see these reasons cited all too often.

As a kid, I did not like reading for three reasons. One, I did not know how to select a book from a boundless expanse of options, and I did not want to be judged for my choice. Libraries have no algorithms to push books toward people, it is very difficult to gauge the quality of a book from a glance, and without ready recommendations, the sheer volume of them creates decision paralysis. Libraries are labyrinths of decision paralysis! And if people see you reading a book, they will intuitively try to suss out what kind of book it is in order to judge you. I only got over this when my school library started promoting works, and I started spending more time in crawl spaces, away from judgmental gazes as I read about children with schizophrenia killing themselves, or children surviving the Holocaust.

Two, I hated the way books looked. And I still kind of do. The pages that yellow and brown with age, the typewriter-like serif fonts you need to tolerate if you want to read anything. The lack of spaces in paragraphs, the justified margins that mingle with overly long paragraphs sentences, and a font size that can make each page seem like a hurdle. You know why people use bookmarks? It’s not so they can remember their place. It’s so they can read a book line by line without getting lost! Compare this to the font on a semi-modern website, like Natalie.TF, with its left-aligned text and sizable breaks in each block of text, and the reading experience is just better. Well, if you are a child of the internet.

Now, there are legitimate reasons why these fonts and stylings were used. Just like how there are reasons to break up a page into three columns to better maximize page space. But if I am going to read a book, I want it to be in a 21st century format, and it to be in an electronic format. That way, I don’t need to clear a space, crane my neck, and hold something open as I read it. I can just sit back in my chair, pop on some tunes, and scroll through things at my own pace.

Am I crazy to prefer this? …No! But I think I am at least onto something in highlighting these issues. Young people are used to reading things electronically, but if you give them something that is not electronic, is this hefty brick of wood, and present it as work, then it’s easy for them to just put it off. You need to give them text in a more digestible manner, look at how text-based news sites format articles and mimic that. Make your textbooks look like Wikipedia and the children will have an easier time reading them! Sure, it may be going against the sanctity and hundreds-years traditions of the art of the book. …But if this gets more people to read things in school, that’s a W!

Was I doing a list or something? …Yes, so let’s go on with number three. A lot of books students are assigned are things the typical student won’t give a crap about. This is mostly pertaining to middle school and high school, where I recall being told to read a spectrum of books that I just did not understand or find interesting. Works like 1984, Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, Kindred, Shakespeare and probably a bunch I have blacked out. These are not bad books by any stretch, but what about them is going to appeal or capture the mind of a child of the 21st Century? These books are decades upon decades old, take place in the long, long ago, feature adult protagonists, and while they have themes well worth delving into, they are not something that appeals to a modern zeitgeist.

I am not necessarily saying that they should instead focus on popular YA fiction with more overt themes, but… the reading comprehension levels on assigned reading would go up. I know I liked reading Hatchet, Among the Hidden, Catcher in the Rye, and Touching Spirit Bear a whole lot more than To Kill a Mockingbird when I was a teeny. Did that make me stupid? No, I was a teen and I related to teens being in fucked up situations. I did not care about a 1930s legal period piece about racism in the Deep South during The Great Depression. And why the hell would someone read about a subject they do not care about? Appeal to your general audience, and if you push books they don’t care about on them, don’t be surprised when they don’t read ’em!

For a more pointed example, one of the articles I linked above mentioned students being assigned The Overstory, a 2018 novel that involves a multi-generational environmentalist narrative that dates back to the 1800s. Back before environmentalism was the issue it is today. It’s a Pulitzer winning story with strong environmental themes, but a 600-page chunker of a book that may as well date back to the Stone Age to a modern teenager. Compare that to Bewilderment, a 2021 novel from the same author set in the near future, about a decaying planet, a topic very relevant to young people, and a widowed parent of a child with a sloshy series of neurodivergent diagnoses. And TikTok teens looooove them some neruodivergences. Plus, it’s only 288 pages. Less than half as long! Know your audience and cater to them.

If you don’t give them something they want to read, they won’t read it. They will look up a summary and infer out the necessary information based on what an AI spits out for them.

This same principle applies to why students use AI to write about things they don’t care about. Because they do not care about the topic, they just want the points, and think they can outsmart the system. Which begs the question of how do you make them better at writing. Well, let them write about whatever they want to write about is the most intuitive answer that comes to mind, as that’s worked for me.

When I started Natalie.TF in 2012, I was not a good writer, and struggled with a lot of things. But by writing more, and more, and even more, I got better. And that is the best way to get better at writing. Write more. …And read more, I guess. Give them a prompt, a premise, and either have them write on paper or type in a closed environment. Have them do that once a week for an academic year, give them feedback, maybe a grammar editor, and they will get better over time. At least up to a high school level, which is where I peaked! Never getting up to no stinkin’ college level, because writing like that just ain’t no funsies. I write neither for grades nor glory, I write for FUN! And FULFILLMENT!

However, this approach does not work for more academic writing, which is where it becomes far harder to get people motivated. Again, letting them choose the premise helps a lot. I know I liked being able to do my own topics for my English classes in college. But the best way to remove any chance of them to use AI to get information on that is to have them go to a computer lab where AI is prohibited. And… that is honestly the simplest way to get around AI use. Put them in an anti-AI environment where they cannot cheat.

This is something universities, and high schools, have already begun addressing by establishing testing centers where students cannot bring anything but themselves, their clothes, a provided pencil, and some blank scratch paper. …Maybe a calculator or note sheet if the teacher allows it. This is how tests for professional credentials are conducted, and how I took most of my tests in college— because I had autism benefits!

But this is all dancing around a larger, more existential problem. Bigger than the purpose of school and education in a commodified, capitalistic world. How do you stop people from just using AI instead of doing things on their own? This is a problem in schooling, definitely, but it is also a problem with… everything. People are putting their trust in something that lies, is often confidentially wrong, and ‘hallucinates’ on the reg. They are not trusting curation or an organization that can be held accountable for their actions. They are trusting a complex model where the creators can hand-wave away all responsibility. They are trusting it to do all their thinking for them, and… that’s a problem.

Now, there are ways to use AI effectively and in a responsible manner. I personally use it to help find verifiable information that may be obscure or poorly formatted. It’s how I troubleshooted things when getting Obsidian set up, as the documentation is a bit all over the place. It can be a useful tool for things like machine translations, which are often decently readable. And I know that plenty of professionals have found ways to have AI help them work smarter, instead of harder. Hell, I was genuinely excited when Microsoft was talking about Copilot for Excel, as I don’t want to clean up any more messy exports or fuss around with specific formatting. I want a machine to do this repetitive grunt work for me!

…And if schools are just handing repetitive grunt work to students who have been there for a decade then, well, it’s no wonder that they are using AI for it. And once they start using it, they simply lack a reason to stop. Because for many students, their goal is not to learn, or get skills. It’s to get good grades to get a good job to make money. This is just a chore, an obligation, and after spending so much of their life at school, it’s too tempting to just look for an easy way out while they engage with whatever else they want to do.

Akumako: “Are you going to go on a tirade about school being a bad place to learn due to its rigid structure and adherence to established systems?”

Nah, I’m not an educator, and do not actually have a better solution other than…. after they are primed for a few years, once they have some general understanding of school, get rid of grading. Try to foster a lifelong love of learning in students. Stop making school about the numbers. Stop giving them homework. Give them more choice in what they want to learn about. Some people might not engage in this new system, and that’s alright. Some people are just dumb, want to be dumb, and will forever be dumb. And that’s okay.

If anything, I think the US should be like a lot of civilized countries— like the UK, Germany, Australia, and parts of Canada— and let people bail out of primary school at 16. School is not for everybody, some people just want to start making money at some minimum wage job, or get started learning a trade. And I’d rather people do that, do they want, than be forced to take classes they don’t care about. Because if someone doesn’t want to learn, they won’t.

However, it’s not okay when a large portion of the population chooses to give up, give into the easy way out, and accept being dumb, with no desire to grow or improve. And from everything I hear about modern schooling from outside of the world of education, I worry that might be happening.

…I was going to try and spin this into a tangent about smartphones being primarily recreational devices while PCs are primarily productivity devices, but this segment has already gone on for long enough.

So instead I’ll end this with another…

CALL TO ACTION!

Any students reading this— specifically Skillet “The Scrumptious” Caso and Rain “The Moist” Liquidation— what do YOU think about AI being used by students to complete their assignments? Do you use it? If so, how? How has the introduction and influence of AI affected your school life?

Because I trust college kids’ perspective on this more than professors’. Unfortunately, I don’t know any college kids IRL, and they won’t let me hang out at the local community college after THE INCIDENT.

Akumako: “…Natalie, don’t lie about shit like that. You’ve only been inside the community college once in the past 5 years, and that was just to drop off your ballot.”

Thanks for ruining the mood, wife.

Akumako: “I thought I was your daughter!”

Those two things are not mutually exclusive in 2025’s America!

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Progress Report 2025-05-11

Uh… this kind of surprised me by being 10k words, and I do not have much more to add to this week’s piece, and I am going to spend a good chunk of this weekend earning CPE. Then I will need to finally get back to work on TSF Showcase 2025-06. It should not be too hard to do a write-up on it, but… boy did my mind just diminish in interest after working on the Body Swap Story review and two TSF Showcases back-to-back like I did. I wish I just had one firm interest, but I do not. I have many interests, and I am always running short on time… Also, this was a pain in the ass to edit, and I don’t really know why.

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2025-05-04: Wrote up a review for Body Swap Story – Aunty Yui and Yuto. Wound up being 2,300 words, including background. Which is weirdly lower than the TSF Showcase, but that was a scene-by-scene and general analysis of basically the first fourth of the game. With a review, I don’t want to walk people through scenes unless I have a good reason to, and for a 4 hour VN like this, I think that’s plenty. Then I watched the Super Mario Bros. Movie with Cassie and Shiba. It was actually really good! Gorgeous, funny, filled with a lot of spectacle, and true to the spirit of the game series, while knowing when to make some creative deviations. Sure, it was a safe film in many respects, and I could nitpick it, but Cassie and I were consistently delighted. Especially with the nihilistic luma character, who is just one of Cassie’s main four moods. Then I played like six hours of Hundred Line. Hundred Line is going to need route specific reviews at this rate. It’s gonna be like a Student Transfer or Press-Switch review.

2025-05-05: Wrote 2000 words for the Gears of War segment. Played another 3 hours of Hundred Line. I am at 75 hours and still have 90 endings to get. WTF?

2025-05-06: Wrapped up the Gears of War bit with 650 more words. Wrote 1,000 word preamble on crossdressing. Edited Body Swap Story review, but will NOT release it until it comes out on Steam. Because I wanna help boost its sales. If I net 12 sales for the dev, I did my past! Like two hours of Hundred Line today.

2025-05-07: Wrote 1.200 word bit on the current state of Gamindustri. Then wrote 2,700 word school bit. Then another 2-ish hours of Hundred Line.

2025-05-08: Wrote 1,500 word Futanari bit, then largely rewrote it as I did not know what I was doing the first draft. I probably added a couple hundred words some places while editing this bitch.

2025-05-09: Oops! I forgot that I tentatively scheduled the Body Swap Story review for today. Guess it’s up now, with a Steam release still MIA. Played more Hundred Line, but mostly spend the day doing CPE for my job.

2025-05-10: Did chores, played Hundred Line, went out to dinner with the paternal end of the family and ate a bunch of chicken. Then went home and played more Hundred Line. Riveting!

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