I know i complained about the stardew valley penny and George cutscene at length but the it really is fucking. bizarre the lengths people will go to defend it because "the game lets you pick to side with him" (please do literally any reading about wheelchair use and realize why it's a problem that the game rewards you for moving someone without their consent.) or variants of that sentiment but then it's like. the rest of the cutscene is also So Weird
Like. Penny moves an old man in a wheelchair without asking him. He gets upset, she asks if you saw what happened The game prompts you to select from;
"I was. You did a kind thing there, Penny." (+50 friendship with Penny)
"I was. You should've asked instead of assuming George wanted help." (-50 friendship with Penny)
"I'm just taking a walk, minding my own business." (No effect on friendship.)
And these are the REVISED options. Before 1.4, the second option wasn't"you should have asked", it was "You should've left him alone. Now he's grumpy."
So already it's kind of shit. The person she's upset - who's entire existence in the game is experiencing inaccessibility, let's be real - because he was shoved without permission just for being in a wheelchair doesn't have his friendship level affected at all.
Regardless of which answer you pick, George apologizes (Penny does not apologize in every choice! But the guy she shoved does!) and says she was kind.
Once he's gone, she talks about how hard it must be to be old. It's worth noting, for what it's worth, that George has been using a wheelchair since a mining accident caused his immobility; it's not a result of age, and you learn about this whole he struggles with a bookshelf in his own home, where presumably he has been living with a wheelchair for at least two decades (given how he talks about his grandson), which is a whole different can of worms because why is this never addressed in a fictional community with multiple craftspeople who frequently do projects for each other?
Anyways. So Penny's like, damn, sucks that he's old. And the options the game gives you - all neutral in terms of friendship points - are:
"I'd rather not think about it."
"It's just a different part of life."
"That's why we should respect our elders."
"I'd rather die young..."
Like are you kidding me? You have a cutscene that's about being disabled - it's not about aging, because his disability was not caused by aging, it is explicitly and directly about the fact that he is in a wheelchair. And the game assumes your opinions will be "Not my problem,", "That's an old people thing,", and "I'D RATHER BE DEAD"? And this is something people just... don't remark on? Even in conversations ABOUT this cutscene? Like, George's mentions of being disabled are already Constantly Miserable -able-bodied writer standard quality - but the game is just like. Yeah you can say you'd rather be dead rather than express any positive sentiment about this guy surviving a traumatic mining accident. You can't say it's great that he's able to still be a part of the community in his chair, or renovate his house to make it accessible the way you can build ENTIRE HOMES for other characters. The community center you rebuild in the Good Ending for the community is only accessible by stairs. The path out of his home is dirt. It's the little things, y'know, like... obviously he wasn't thought about as his own character. The game's writing sees him as a source of conflict for others, and down to the very tiles of the terrain, he's irrelevant.
AND THEN THE TOWN DOCTOR DOES A HIPAA VIOLATION AND GETS SAD IF YOU SAY GEORGE SHOULD HAVE AGENCY OVER HIS OWN BODY. WHAT ARE WE FUCKING DOING HERE
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Call me crazy for reading so much into a show like House MD but I think the main theme of House is that despite doing everything perfectly and being a good person, shit happens.
Sickness and pain will be inflicted on you and your loved ones and there's nothing you can do about it, but to persevere, to fight for your life, to keep living despite it all - to love is a part of the human condition; our capability of love is what makes life worth living, despite all the pain that you will inevitably experience.
This show exemplifies the pain of living and the needs and desires of human beings to keep going despite it all
And idk... There's something beautiful about how a show with so many stupid whimsical dumb scenes can impart something so profound in my stupid little brain
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OKAY question
i wanna reread choices and edit it but i can never make myself do it cause im like "ugh wow so long i simply cannot"
but also, every time i do reread parts of it i have like *thoughts* like SO many thoughts about it and about what i was thinking at the time and how that has or hasn't changed and what i was trying to do and what i love and what i hate and blah blah blah
SO the question: if i did like a lil read-a-long with soph thing, would anyone be interested? like maybe in the form of small podcast episodes where i discuss the chapters as i edit them and you guys can like tell me the different stuff you want me to talk about etc etc and then i will have the motivation to actually do this and also somewhere to dump all of my *thoughts*
or is that like, a stupid idea that no one asked for? i cannot decide whether this is leaning more on the fun cute side or the annoying keep this to yourself side, Y'KNOW?????
so i ask
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Still on my Ulder & Wyll bullshit but like
I keep thinking of Ulder Ravenguard, sending away his only son at seventeen, and years later hearing of a hero with a fine rapier and mismatched, kind eyes and manners from a storybook, and thinking, demanding surely not. that cannot be my son. my son is a devil's servant. it cannot be. i have no son.
and then after seven long years meeting Wyll again, at Wrym's Rock through a mindflayer's thrall, and feeling something like relief, not at seeing him but at this cold surety that this boy, this man, this hero of the frontiers could not be his son, because his son was not this tall and old and sure-footed, and did not have curling horns and a devil red eye, and the rumors must be wrong, and this Blade must be a stranger.
And then Wyll looks at him, with such kind eyes- his mother's eyes still, even devil-tainted- and calls him "father", and he knows, he knows, and his son is here, so much older and wearier and stronger, too, and he's a hero and a man and by gods he's a monster and by gods he's his son.
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"Trans" is merely one of the many adjectives that describe me but in the eyes of so many people so many things I do will immediately be tied to that adjective.
So many things I feel weird talking about because everyone assumes I am like this because of my transness.
Me being openly very sexual in nature while being a woman? Well, I am a trans woman, need to remember that!
And the thing is so many people don't do this maliciously. So many people have simply internalized the misogynistic idea that women have to be one certain way and when they see a woman who isn't that way... well, if she's cis, she's a weirdo, but if she's trans... well of course, that explains everything doesn't it!
And the people who are seen as cis women in this equation also suffer please don't get me wrong. They get shunned and talked about with intrigue and wonder like they're some sort of mythical beast.
But to the people who are seen as trans women then a part of the observer so often will go "makes sense" as if they discovered the one single key to read humanity.
I am also curious how other people under the trans umbrella feel to this stuff. My idea is that we probably have similar but different relations to having the adjective "trans" heavily influence how people see us, and I would like hearing them out.
Also absolutely necessary disclaimer that it's great if to you personally the adjective is so important that it defines parts of your personality! I won't yuck someone's yum and stuff. I'm just tired personally of feeling like so many people will immediately think of me as trans before they think of me as anything else, but I get the idea of that being something someone could like.
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