Wednesday is supposed to be gripe day, and this week my gripe is simple: I hate Build-a-Bear. Anyone who’s confused by my seemingly irrational hatred of a company that assembles adorable stuffed animals is referred to my own personal tale of stuffed-with-love, capitalist horror. Anyone who’s confused why my hatred has boiled to the bloggerly surface at this particular moment is referred to Build-a-Bearville, the new child-oriented MMO the company recently added to the already mooing cash-cow pile of child-oriented MMOs.

I’m hoping to post an actual, hopefully mildly intelligent write-up of Build-a-Bearville on Terra Nova sometime soon. In the meantime, I thought I’d vent my hatred by sharing tales of gender-bending in the oh-so-wholesome, bear-themed world.

For starters, Build-a-Bearville lets you mix up clothes and hair cuts to create a totally cute butch girl. See, she’s got the blue hair and the boy’s shorts? I’d say the game was cool for allowing gender ambiguity, but when I went to show my butch cutie off, every other avatar in the place was old-fashioned girly. Blond ponytails ruled the land of bears. The few boy avatars I ran into looked a lot like me–just without the pink Cons, or the boobs.

More fun than being butch though was being butch and flirty. The game only allows pre-scripted chat for users who haven’t bought stuffed animals–but cheapos like me can still use emoticons to express squishy emotions. Stand near someone, press the love-struck smiley, and heart float out from your avatar’s head–giving your nearby buddy a pretty good idea what you’re thinking. Me, I tried doing it to both boy and girl avatars. All of them took a a look at me, got confused, and promptly excited the room. I guess there’s no love for the gender ambiguous in Bearville…