Sunday 11 November 2001

Pic of the day: Female Khajjiit - cat person - from Daggerfall. I'd say she ought to wear clothes, but she pretty clinched it herself by shaving the center of her chest. (Not my idea. Daggerfall came with that body for catgirls. If it can be any comfort, the developer team from Daggerfall is gone from Bethsoft, and the next RPG in the series will have no nudity, presumably not even allowing the characters to undress to change into new clothes. Whether or not it will have catgirls is still not confirmed...)

Catgirl nudity

I really like the "marble mouse", the optical trackball. It is easier on my hand than conventional mouse, even though I still have this bad habit of pressing my wrist hard down while I operate the ball with my fingers. That's just plain wrong, and I stop as soon as I notice, but then suddenly I'm pressing my wrist again. Agh. But even so, my hand has been much better this last week. Even though typing is still typing. So the mouse does play a role, as suspected.

But when it comes to Daggerfall (and it does, every few days) there is only so long I can keep swinging my sword with my thumb. Come on! That's just so wrong. A sword (or dagger, or claw) should require the whole arm to move. So now my arm is a bit tired, but happy. Evil hath been stomped again!

In addition to playing the game, I have also fixed a broken Daggerfall quest using Donald Tipton's excellent quest compiler. If that thing had been released with the game (instead of a dedicated fan having to create it from fragments gleaned through several years) the game would have been even more of a cult hit than it was. Or is ... there are new players and old ones returning to alt.games.daggerfall all the time.

Oh, and as if that was not enough Daggerfall activity in one day, I have written on my latest Daggerfanfic. Werewolf bondage and catgirl nudity! Woohooooo!

***

This is one of the great mysteries, at least if you would believe the Acid Reflux chatroom: Are catgirls without clothes naked or not? Yes, it is a bit removed from actual acid reflux. But anyway, there is a big subset of fiction dealing with anthropomorphic animals. You may have seen them in the funnies, you may have seen them in cartoons. There is written excellent fiction about them, and they are particularly common in free online comics (such as those on Keenspot and several smaller portals.

There are various degrees of anthropomorphism. On one end of the scale, you have animals that look like animals, and outwardly act like animals, only they think and talk. They don't have hands, they don't use tools, they don't live in houses. On the other extreme, you have human-like creatures with a snout (sometimes a rather short one) and pointed ears. And a tail. The tail is the heart of animal identity, that and the ears. Apart from that, they look and act quite like humans. And then there are various degrees inbetween these two extremes.

Catgirls are supposedly upright in posture and generally humanoid in shape, but covered in fur all over. So, are they naked or not when they are only wearing their fur? Or in other words, should they wear clothes?

In my opinion (everybody has one) it depends on the fur. If it is long and fluffy, they need no other clothes. But if it is very short and downy, they should wear clothes. I mean, several human males are covered in fur, and we still wear clothes. OK, my fur it virtually skin colored (orange when sparse, reddish brown in aggregate) but even dark-furred men are supposed to wear clothes. Certainly the same should apply to catgirls?