noé

I've been posting about Younès Rabii's open letter to The Game Awards this week (which you can still sign if you work in or close to games in any way!) and I've had a few replies, quote-tweets or seen discourse asking questions like: why should the games industry say anything about this? What's the point? Why can't we just Stick To Games.

Something broke in me this year - probably a result of arguing at extreme length with people I don't want to ever have to argue with ever again - and I am enjoying muting people on Twitter and basically forgetting they exist. So instead I've compiled some answers here, and maybe you can send this to people or I dunno, at least I'll have written them out for my own gratification, eh?

So: why would the games industry need to say anything about Palestine?

Senior full stack engineer! React, python, databases! I make games too! I’m charming and funny! Lmk! Send me a ask with inquiries/contact info!

He did most of the programming for Divinuet and taught me how to use GitHub without breaking everything

man its been like 5 years and i still get such euphoria seeing people write my name out :) like hey i picked that!! it looks nice to see and i can hear it in your voice in my head when i read it and that feels like understanding and connection!

extra nice is the different ways people say it and write it! it's a pretty even split between people pronouncing it NO-ay vs no-AY and sometimes individual people will say it differently depending on where it is in the sentence or what part of the sentence is being emphasized!

and for writing too, it gets a bit of someone's personal style which feels like a fun combination of two people's personalities; mine for choosing the name, and the person who's writing it with the way that they write names! i typically always write entirely lowercase so i write it noé, but depending on whether people capitalize it or use the accent, it becomes Noé or Noe or noe. it also really means a lot to me when i see people use the é cause it's just not an easy thing to type?? like when im on my windows laptop i just go into whatever social profile is closest and copy paste the é cause i dont have a numpad and the international keyboard layout confuses me. i think in the last year especially its meant a lot more to me to see cause ive met a lot more francophone people in montréal who mishear/misunderstand my name to be Noah, cause Noe is a lot more common than Noé, and Noe is like the french version of Noah. which in itself has a whole lotta gender implications. apparently it's the case that "Noe" with w/e accent variations is mostly gendered masculine for basically everywhere all around the world, except for switzerland where "Noé" is entirely femininely gendered. which checks out cause coincidentally the person i got the name from was born in switzerland and now i understand why she didn't like her name lmao. but for me being genderfluid and living in a very francophone part of montréal that kinda masculine feminine ambiguity feels kinda good!! cause Noé is definitely distinct from the name Noe in both how it's spelled and pronounced, but Noé with the é is just a lot less common

anyways i think it's a nice name that feels really good for me and im glad i legally changed my name a second time to have it as my first name and i love seeing people use it in the ways that they do

Cause one of my pet peeves is that every time a strike happens you always see some high-follower-count chucklefuck making a viral post about how we all need to boycott the company, even in cases where the relevant union has actually asked people to continue using their product. It's clout chasing. It's crying wolf. It's deeply irresponsible. But this time the request that nobody visit the Washington Post website today is legit, because it comes from the union itself.

Bottom line: pay attention to reliable sources when it comes to making boycott decisions. Fact check all claims you see in viral posts, especially if those posts contain emotionally loaded, guilt-trippy language. Don't be some influencer's pawn, be a true ally to the unions.