#establishing a OM->NDM pipeline if it's the last thing I do

[luckykittysshowerthoughts]

Pssst... if anyone's looking for an actually inclusive dating sim, Na Daoine Maithe's great.

You can choose your own pronouns! The game also lets you put in custom neopronouns if you want, and lets you have multiple sets of pronouns.

Gender diversity in love interests! There's 2 male LIs, 2 female LIs, and two nonbinary LIs. They're all treated with equal respect and attention, and the game isn't weird about it if you go for a same-sex LI. In fact, in the devs' words: You can not only be gay, but arguably must be gay, for the sake of us all.

Actually handling their POC characters well. I think. I'm white so admittedly I'm not the best sensitivity tester for this, but so far I haven't seen anything horrendous. No whitewashing in the art, no weird skin-tone changes between forms for characters that can change form, generally just not being weird about it. Also bonus points for giving Maeve texture to her hair instead of slapping the same generic emo white boy haircut on all the POC characters.

Aspec + Arospec representation! One of the LIs is canonically ace, two of the LIs are canonically arospec, and the devs are completely unapologetic about it. A few obnoxious fans flipped out over it a while back and the devs quickly doubled down and said they weren't changing it lol. Their identities aren't just slapped on for diversity points either; the devs have hinted that the intimacy mechanics for the arospec characters' routes will actually be different and it will change how their relationships with MC develop over the course of their routes. For aros in the player base, playing the routes platonically is also an option!

Actual cultural appreciation. Granted, the only cultures really presented in the game is Irish+Scottish, but the way they went out of their way to de-colonialize it is pretty admirable. They avoid portraying things through a white lens (there are many, many jabs at the British Empire, and ample acknowledgement of the harms colonialism did to Ireland) and they were clearly very thorough with their understanding of these cultures. They even hired a Gaeilge speaker to translate things into Gaeilge and incorporating that into the game, which I found super cool. The dev team's statement on this was very admirable.

All around definitely recommend checking Na Daoine Maithe out, especially if you're looking for something to fill the void after the recent news. It also has a lot of similar themes to Obey Me, but like, executed with actual plot and lore consistency.

really sad that despite obey me being a nice dating sim for queer folk with the gender ambiguous MC, it still fails at being inclusive multiple times