Archive of ‘personal’ category

The “forced microphone” policy.

Whenever games allow you to use the microphone, Bub and I opt out of this without fail. We also tend to mute the mic on games that allow us to do this. But whenever games force you to use the microphone and listen in on others’ conversations and there is no way to prevent this, even if this game is otherwise the best game, this is a game that we take a hard pass on. And we have to do this because Bub has to be protected.

Bub’s vocal inflections let everyone know that he is disabled, and this is something that he can not hide. It would then make me make the incredibly hard choice of not playing the game with him so that people on the other end of the game did not hear his vocal inflections, or having him play alongside me and risking being asked inappropriate questions about him (“is he retarded?”, “is your son retarded?”), or making fun of him for the way he sounds. So I would either play the game that I had bought him without him to protect him, which would exclude him, or I would run the risk of Bub being bullied and made fun of by attempting to include him if a bully is on the other end of the mic. So the easiest way to solve both of these problems is: don’t buy games that force you to use the microphone. Research the game, find that out, make that decision. Done.

The only way that we work around this is if you can choose who you party, or team, up with. If I can select friends of mine who I trust to play the game with, that’s different. That makes the game playable. But if it’s a random distribution of players and there is forced mic use, I don’t purchase the game and we don’t play it.

I wish more game developers took this into consideration, because I am sure that Bub isn’t the only person that something like this applies to. I am sure that there are many other disabled individuals out there who have to stay completely silent on the mic during games like this in fear that they will be bullied if if they speak. There may be individuals who have severe social anxiety for whom forced mic use petrifies them, and this may apply to them too. There are aspects of gaming culture that need improvement. This is one of them.

Another thing worth getting into.

I have actually encountered individuals who have stated that they “don’t want to have children because it would cut into their gaming time,” and the level of absurdity that it must take to make a statement like that and then proceed to follow through on it continues to perplex me to this day. It boggles my mind to the point that I actually wanted to come here and make a blog post about it, because there are actually people out there — for some reason, more males than females — who actually think like this. They are so… engrossed, and involved in gaming as a hobby that they absolutely do not want to have any children, because then they would have to step away from gaming, whether it be the console or the keyboard, to provide some level of care for these children. (Although I’m still not sure if this is better than those men out there who game and let their girlfriends or wives tend to the children while they spend hours at a time gaming. I mean, there’s also that to take into consideration, because that is a scenario that actually happens “after the fact”, as it were.)

For instance, I’ve actually had it said to me that I “shouldn’t have had children” (what?!) “because I’m such a good gamer that they take away from that” (are you serious?!), or “that it’s good that I stopped at two” (are you the arbiter of my childbearing decisions, seriously) “because any more would make it even more difficult for me to game” (no, seriously, do you hear the words coming out of your mouth). Some men that I have dated in the past have also stated that they “don’t want to have any children of their own with me” (good, because whether you like it or not, I’m stopping at two), “because that would make it even harder to game” (again, do you even hear the words coming out of your mouth). And these are actually worse than the ones that I’ve encountered in the past who have wanted me to have children of “their” own, who “don’t understand why I had kids with the men that I did, but won’t have any other children”… I mean, between my disabilities, my health conditions, and my own wants, you should have gotten in line sooner or considered finding someone else when you were in a relationship with me. I know what I want and I am not budging.

But seriously, it’s foolish to “decide not to have kids” because you want maximal gaming time.

To decide that you don’t want to have any children, or any more children than you already have, is one thing. It’s a respectable thing. But to decide that you don’t want any children at all because they take away from your gaming time is incredibly foolish… and it speaks volumes about you as a person that should be spoken.

Now that I’ve gotten all of that done…

Most of what has been needed to set this blog up has been accomplished!

Here’s hoping, at any rate.

I did the pulmonary function testing that my lung doctor needed to have on file for me this morning. When I started needing to have these done, I sucked so hard at these that they took awhile to do, pun definitely intended. But now that I’ve needed to do them with more frequency, I’ve gotten used to them, and I haven’t had to repeat any part of them… that’s always good. And when I was done with that, I got to do another six-minute walk around the area in front of my lung doctor’s office with one of the new nurses working there, which is always good for causing brief desaturations in my oxygen levels, but I mean, what isn’t these days? Luckily for me, my saturations always come back up. I don’t have some of the diagnoses that my friends have, which is always good. I count my blessings that I have asthma, and some of my friends — probably a few more of them than I realize — count their blessings that they do not have, as I’ve sometimes put it, “my level of asthma”. Ever named nebulizers? Held funerals for them as you dump them into the trash canister out front when they “die”? That’s what we’re talking about here, folks. Daria Morgendorffer humor is my thing, at least as often as I can muster it up. And that’s actually fairly frequently, because it does help out.

When you’re a “frequent flier” in the spoonie department — and a fairly young person for being a member of that department — you find that being civil and polite helps you get through the day, even though you also find that coming home and venting to your similarly minded (and bodied) friends also helps you get through your day when you have to deal with all of the bureaucratic nonsense that comes with being a card-carrying member. It does seem to surprise the people that you interface with, though. Oh, she’s actually thanking me for handing her page after page of forms to fill out? She’s actually polite about this? Yeah, I know that you’re just doing your job. I’m not going to make your life more difficult because you handed me the forms that you had to hand me. I know that you had to hand me the forms. I know that I have to fill these out. Carrying on…

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