Melissa Avery-Weir 0:00
Audacious Compassion, Episode 23 – Be Dramatic
Melissa Avery-Weir 0:29
Hello and welcome to Audacious Compassion, a podcast where we explore how to find compassion in the most difficult places in daily life. I’m Melissa….
Gregory
And I’m Gregory.
Melissa
And today we’ll be talking about recognizing when people are making assumptions about the role that family should have in your life. So, Gregory, how are you doing?
Gregory 0:51
So I’ve had a kind of a rough week, I guess. An up and down the week, you know, it’s still life. I’ve been sleeping a little better lately, in part due to you know, taking naps and turning on my humidifier. But I’ve still got brain problems. I’m medicated. I’ve got an antidepressant regimen I’m on for depression and anxiety, but I had a really rough night… Wednesday night. I think we were supposed to record and I canceled because like I was having full on, like, trembling arms and emotional volatility. Up to the roof. Like it was… It was rough. And it’s something that I haven’t had this bad since I went on pills this previous time.
So that was that was tough. And I’m suspecting that part of it is pre-release jitters.
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
The next Wednesday, which is probably the day this will come out, the 25th of July. We’re going to have a book coming out. Rosette Diceless, a roleplaying game, that’s consensus-based, and that’s stressful. Like, we’re prepping. We got the book and there are a few printing issues that we’re working out with the printer. And like, that’s probably just upped my normal level of stress enough to like, throw stuff off.
Yeah, but one of the weird upsides to it is… So there are things that people just kind of assume you can do, right?
Melissa
Yeah
Gregory
There’s things you do that are part of regular life.
Melissa
I would love to do an entire episode about this.
Gregory
Yeah.
Melissa
In particular things that people will consider normal adult functions.
Gregory 2:44
Yeah, and the framework for this that millennials talk about is “adulting”, right? We talk about like, “It’s tricky for me to ‘adult'” as a verb. And so you know, things like leaving the house to get groceries, or dropping a package off at the UPS store to return a purchase, right? Or making a doctor’s appointment to get something handled.
Like, those are things that are really, really hard for me. Like, I don’t get stage fright.
Melissa
Mm hmm.
Gregory
But it has been months since my car had a working climate control system. Yeah, my car has a thing where–it’s this model car Nissan Sentra; the old model of Nissan Sentra.
Melissa
A variety of electrical issues.
Gregory
All sorts of electrical issues. But this one is–there’s just this little clip on the temperature control that will break after about a decade. And so the temperature control will be set on hot. Which means that in the middle of summer I, for a while, couldn’t drive my car without the heater being on full. Like, I could turn off the fan.
Melissa
Okay.
Gregory
But then the heat was still like, it’s still like air flowing through it would give off heat. So that was awful.
Melissa 4:02
And we live in the south of the United States.
Gregory 4:05
Like it’s not… that’s untenable.
Melissa
Yeah, we’re in a 90 degree weather sitch (situation).
Gregory
So I’ve been putting off and putting off fixing it. I knew that I could fix it. It’s I just had to tear open the console and put a zip tie–literally put a zip tie–on a thing.
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
Um, but it turns out when I’m in the mood where I’m, you know, struggling with self destructive or self harm impulses, it’s much easier to go like, “Screw it.” Like, this is a terribly scary thing. I’m feeling fatalistic, let’s just do it. And so, like I was out sweating and, you know, getting little cuts on my hands and stuff, fixing a car. Which I guess is a healthy way to work through those impulses?
Melissa
It’s a way. I mean working on cars is a thing, right?
Gregory
Yeah
Melissa 4:52
It’s a thing people do to destress.
Gregory
Yeah, so I don’t know. I feel accomplished right there, which I think is helped. I still had yesterday, a little bit of the same physical symptoms, but they seem to have eased off for today.
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
But yeah, that’s. So that’s a weird thing. Two months ago, I guess, we talked about realizing this is how your life is. And I guess this week was recognizing that the way that life is for me, isn’t the way that it is for a lot of other people. And that’s the classic disability thing of like, “Yeah, I there are things I can do. And there are things I can’t do. And that’s not the same list for everybody.”
And just because I have a psychological diagnosis instead of like an internal medicine diagnosis doesn’t really change that. And the fact that I have a diagnosis doesn’t actually change that, right. Like, yep, the those differences is an ability or everyone’s got ’em.
Melissa 6:00
Right.
Gregory 6:01
So how are you doing today?
Melissa 6:04
I’m doing all right. My friends that have children are very… liberal? I don’t know, what do you want to call this?
Gregory
I’d say progressive.
Melissa 6:15
So there’s less focus on the presumed gender of the child?
Gregory
Yeah, they’re the sort of going to be like, “I’m not gonna dress my kids in pink or blue. Doesn’t matter, I’ll do green and purple!”
Melissa
Right. Or even if they do, they’re not going to make a huge deal about it. There’s someone I’m cool with who is having a baby soon, and so they had what they called a “gender reveal party”. So I had this brief moment of thinking that this person had come out as trans and then realized that was not what happened.
Gregory 6:50
This is actually, like, a party that you throw, where, you know, you’ve had the ultrasounds and you know the sex of your baby.
Melissa
Right.
Gregory
And you’re announcing it’s a boy or it’s a girl, right? Sometimes they have, like, a cake that they cut open to reveal, like, pink or blue something inside.
Melissa 7:04
Yeah, they seem to be this seemed, involves some sort of, you know, pressurized bottle or something that was like, popped, like a champagne bottle, like pink fzzt, pink powder puffed out, and everyone cheered. And you know, and that’s the, “Okay, now you can buy gifts!”
Gregory 7:24
Because you know sex of the baby.
Melissa 7:30
You know the sex of the baby. And this is something I had never heard of before. Like, I know that is a big deal for many people to find out the sex of the baby. Like, it’s a thing: you stand at the ultrasound–like every soap opera in the world–but making it a party… Which I mean, make a party out of anything.
Gregory 7:48
Sure.
Melissa
And calling it the “gender reveal party” —
Gregory
Both of us believe that you probably don’t have a gender until you’re three or four, until you can self-describe.
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
You can maybe retrospectively have one. But yeah, we call babies “they” consistently.
Melissa 8:07
And so it’s interesting. I was describing this to a colleague, and they were… baffled?
Gregory 8:17
Like that you didn’t know about it?
Melissa 8:20
Right.
Gregory
I mean, I think it is relatively recent, like, I don’t remember hearing about them growing up. It’s only been the last 10-15 years that I’ve heard about them.
Melissa
Okay, well, I’m not so out of touch.
Gregory
I think it’s kind of the Instagram culture that has sort of brought that out. Like, maybe they existed, but it was just like, at the baby shower. Yeah, maybe.
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
But yeah, as a separate thing, I think it’s relatively recent.
Melissa 8:44
Yeah. So anyway, regardless of strange customs like gender reveal parties. I’m super excited to like, I don’t know, have another happy friend.
Gregory
Yeah.
Melissa
And, and like, I’ll be traveling to the baby shower.
Gregory
Oh, nice.
Melissa
Yeah. The moment of hearing that there was a gender reveal party, and then spending 15 seconds going, “Oh, is congratulations in order?” and then realizing that it was not, in fact, what I thought it was, was pretty entertaining.
Gregory
Yeah.
Melissa
So our prompt this month is an email that we received. Thank you very much.
Gregory
Thank you.
Melissa
And it says:
Dear y’all,
I no longer speak to my biological father, and that is okay with me. However, I am finding that whenever I discuss this with some people they insist that I have “unfinished business” and need to find closure or something along those lines. This happens with friends, colleagues, and partners.
I really don’t think that I have any business to finish. I am certainly not trying to hold a grudge or anything like that, but I think that I’m fine without him in my life, though those kinds of conversations sometimes make me doubt myself. I think that I can be too “porous” when considering other perspectives, for lack of a better word. What should I say or do moving forward? Just never mention my father at all? I will add that it just sometimes comes up, and I am not actually asking for advice on the matter.
Love,
Daddy Detoxed
Gregory
It’s cute. It’s cute name.
Melissa
It’s a cute name.
Gregory 10:25
Boy… So I think you and I have more or–not the closest relationships with our parents. I’d say I think mine is a lot closer than yours.
Melissa
For sure.
Gregory
So people think you’re supposed to behave a certain way towards your family, maybe because that’s the quote unquote normal way.
Melissa 10:47
Yeah, I think it’s it’s regional and its cultural. And so yeah, it’s that weird sort of false nostalgia thing. And I think that feeds into this. Like that, the romanticism of that is kind of one extreme, and then moving all the way to, “But I have a phone call with my mother every month. How do you not talk to your father at all?”
Gregory
Yeah.
Melissa
Because I don’t want to. Right, like the answer’s pretty simple.
Gregory 11:12
Yeah, but what do you say to that? How do you say that?
Especially as I mean, as someone who as this Daddy Detoxed says, kind of has maybe fluid social boundaries with people. Where it sounds like maybe they second guess themselves a little bit when someone says, “Well, you should do this.”
Melissa Avery-Weir 11:36
I used to. Yeah. And in fact, some of the things we talk about on this podcast are things that led me to question it. Because setting a firm boundary and setting up an email filter to put someone’s stuff in the trash is a very hard boundary. And it can easily feel or be twisted to feel that you’re not being open minded, that you’re not being compassionate. You’re not giving space for that person to change, etc, right? So it’s very easy to fall into, “Am I actually doing the wrong thing?” And people will tell you stories of having had rough adolescence and then coming back and being cool their parents again, right?
So I totally get that. Yeah, it’s tough.
Gregory 12:18
I guess there’s a bunch of different things that could work.
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
Right. Like not mentioning your father at all? Sure.
Melissa
Sure. But, like, people will bring that shit up.
Gregory 12:30
I mean, but you can not mention your father when they ask, you can say, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Like…
Melissa
That’s true.
Gregory
It’s easy to dodge that sort of like–no judgment in that dodging–like, it is easy to avoid.
Melissa 12:41
Yeah.
Gregory
That kind of conversation.
Melissa
Awkward. It’s not easy. It’s awkward.
Gregory
Sure. But it’s simple. It’s hard but simple.
Melissa
There are some parallels to this with being a woman who does not want to have children.
Gregory
Yeah, and get “When are you gonna have kids?”
Melissa
And also gets to slam that down. Like, “I’m not going to” or you saying “I don’t want to talk about it”, and people assume the worst.
Gregory
So there’s kind of that end of it.
Melissa
Right. Like just shoving it down.
Gregory
Yeah. And then I guess the other thing would be like, if someone brings it up, be like… I mean, I don’t know exactly what the feelings are that are there. Like, I think I can get a little bit of possibilities. But like, “I don’t like my father.”
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
Or “The things my father has done result in not wanting to ever be in contact with him.”
Melissa
Oof. Over-sharing!
Gregory
Cool, but like you can be… You can say something dramatic enough.
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
True, but dramatic enough.
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
That they’ll be like, “Oh, shit. Well, yeah, nevermind. I guess not.”
Melissa
So they mentioned that even partners do this.
Gregory
Yeah. So partners presumably know the story behind it.
Melissa
Man. That would… Yeah, that would piss me off, quite frankly.
Gregory
Yeah.
Melissa
Like, especially like having–if the problem with your father is they were abusive, then having a partner question whether you should be in contact with that person (with your father) suggests that they don’t believe it was so bad, or you should just get over it, right? Like they’re making an assessment of your trauma.
Gregory
Or maybe the issue is the father doesn’t approve of your life choices. And in that case, your partner is one of those life choices.
Melissa
Right, right.
Gregory
So yeah. I mean, you one of the things that you mentioned, really early on, I think, has been percolating in my head. Which is–
Melissa
Like, over the last 13 years or over the last 13 minutes?
Gregory
No, no, the last 13 minutes. You said, “we’ve all got unfinished business everywhere.”
Melissa
Oh, yeah.
Gregory
Like, I think that if, if someone says, “Well, you’ve got some unfinished business you need to take care of.” I mean, you could say, “I might have unfinished business. That’s not the unfinished business I want to deal with right now. I’ve got a bunch of business.”
Melissa
Yep. And I mean, I think that’s a–when you think about like, the “being porous” question, right? Like, “do I question myself and whether I’m closing this door?” Like, yeah, okay, maybe you’re not, right? Like, you can find–you can get in touch with each other in some fashion later down the road. But that is so low on my priority list. That I’m not going to worry about it.
Gregory
And not only that, maybe it’s just not worth it. Like, there’s a thing of like, I’ve got this unfinished business here. But I’ve got this business that I would be starting if I tried to open it up. That isn’t… the trade off isn’t worth it.
Melissa
Right.
Gregory
So I mean, it’s not, I don’t think it’s going to be.. I think the easy approach is to yes, don’t mention the father, shut it down, whatever comes up. And that’s totally a cool way to be…
Melissa
Except. So here’s what that gets tough: you cannot remove the history with that person. So like, consider, I work in tech, my father works in tech. I learned a lot of things as a child–math, whatever–from living with this person who worked in tech, right?
Gregory
Sure.
Melissa
It is difficult to talk about early experiences, like, “Oh, where did you first program?” like, “Well, I worked with my father on a thing.” I can’t like, I can’t do the like, family picture with the person cut out on it.
Gregory
I mean, there’s a certain extent… I guess a strategy that I learned from my mother is like: you can rehearse these social interactions. Like, “I learned it as a kid.” “When did you get into fishing?” “As a kid.”
Melissa
Yes.
Gregory
Like, you don’t need to say you got it from your dad. It’s, that’s, that’s sort of that same expectation. And that’s probably the easier of these but it’s still not… it’s still not gonna be easy.
Melissa
That’s true. And something I have struggled with is–along with sort of the idea of erasure–is being generous with what credit there is to give. My parents aren’t evil. They’re not. There are good things and bad things.
And to erase the good? Like, imagine applying that as a life template: I’m going to ignore the good things because, yeah, some things were bad? That’s not how I live.
Gregory
I don’t know that I believe that anyone is entirely bad.
Melissa
Exactly.
Gregory
Certainly, people whose badness outweighs anything they could ever do.
Melissa
Right. But so like, as a sort of a mindfulness and like, in line with my own values, I don’t want to erase someone from existence. Now, there are people with whom I will not bring up my father, because of exactly this. They’ll be like, “Oh, let’s open this door and talk about your stuff again.”
Gregory
That’s true. You don’t need to use the same strategy for everyone.
Melissa
Exactly. So I would again–the fact that partners are in that list is worrying.
Gregory
Yeah. I mean, with partners especially, that might be a case where you do set up a boundary. Like, “Don’t say that to me.”
Melissa
Right.
Gregory
“Don’t–I’m not interested in hearing that. Do not do that.”
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
And that is a boundary that you can totally set with someone who if they are close to you, and care about you, they’ll be like, “Okay, yep.”
Melissa
And you can pick your colleagues like, being a woman in the industry, I don’t need people around thinking I have “daddy issues” at work.
Gregory
Right.
Melissa
Like that… that gets weird. So I don’t, you know… You just don’t.
Gregory
So I guess strategies are, yeah, don’t bring it up, or alternatively, shut it down with enough truth to to make it clear that you’ve got reasons.
Melissa
The drama angle… I’m not sure. It’s–I can’t even imagine.
Gregory
Well, I mean, I think that making it clear that the circumstances are exceptional–
Melissa
Mm hmm.
Gregory
–Breaks that expectation thing, right? Where they’re like, “Well, everyone needs to be close to their family”. And be like, “My family is not normal.”
Melissa
Except that that’s the BS, right?
Gregory
Like, no, I mean, I don’t think that any family is normal, but.
Melissa
Right. But the pretense that nice families are the norm, regardless of whether it’s actually nice.
Gregory
Right.
Melissa
And regardless of whether you actually like interacting with them, but that the performance of close family is what’s normal is something I’d like to see shaken up a bit.
Gregory
Sure, but it’s okay to lie sometimes.
Melissa
Sure.
Gregory
If, I mean, as long as it’s not coercive.
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
And it’s okay to sometimes compromise your ideals, if it means staying safe. But I think you have to look at your options in each circumstance and figure out what feels best.
Melissa
Yeah, yeah.
Gregory
And if you try it out, and it doesn’t feel right at all, switch how you respond in that situation. Like, it’s gonna be an ongoing thing. You’ve already set huge boundary of being like, “No, I’m not going to fulfill the societal expectation.”
Melissa
Yep.
Gregory
How you deal with the edges of it, and where it bleeds into the rest of your life is going to be easy in comparison, I think.
Melissa
Yeah, yeah. And it does get easier with time. I can say that.
Gregory
Yeah, practice.
Melissa
Yeah, people are more surprised over time, but I am much more blasé over time. And so it’s easier to shrug off–
Gregory
Speaking of the dramatic statement. If you’re talking about it getting easier over time saying, “I haven’t spoken to my father in five years.” That I think is a good way to shut people down.
Melissa
Yeah, no problem. You can go “Oh, I guess yeah, I guess that’s what it’s come to.” Once you get on the the other half of a decade, people start leaving you alone.
Gregory
So what have you been inspired by lately?
Melissa
Can I be inspired by a hashtag?
Gregory
I–sure, I guess.
Melissa
So, the week of this recording has been a social media event called #loveindies. And it is started by a company called Failbetter Games. They’re a British game development company. All their stuff is amazing. Go play their stuff.
Gregory
They’re very narrative-heavy sort of weird fiction. Steam punk?
Melissa
They call it Victorian officially.
Gregory
But Fallen London, Sunless Seas, Sunless Skies are their most well-known games.
Melissa
Yep. And so they started this is like a way for the indie community like not only developers, but people who play indie games, and people who stream and are quote unquote influencers. Which is a word I hopefully will never say again for another two years.
Gregory
Yeah, indie games are just like games that don’t have major publisher support.
Melissa
Right.
Gregory
Little little mom and pop shop games.
Melissa
Yeah, usually 100 people or less?
Gregory
Yeah, roughly.
Melissa
And so one of the things that really makes us be able to pay the bills with that kind of thing is for people to like, review and recommend our games. There’s a lot of indie games out there. And it’s really hard for people to get attention. And so they’re like, let’s just do this week, where we review and recommend and and rate game.
Gregory
And giveaway to the community. Like, celebrate the people that support us by–here’s coupons and, and behind the scenes information. And here’s our personal game recommendations and all that.
Melissa
So we just threw ourselves in this week. It was like, “Sure, let’s do this.”
Gregory
Let’s do something.
Melissa
Let’s do something. Conveniently, we have four games that are commercial, and we kind of got really rolling on Tuesday, so meant a game a day. Five? We must have had five? I don’t remember how many games we have.
But I also did things like do Twitch streams of games that either I had never tried or had very few reviews on Steam. You know, you buy a bunch of games on sale, and that sort of thing. So I streamed a couple games I never played before. Stream some games I love, wrote reviews of them, things like that.
And it was a lot of fun. What was inspiring about is one I played two games that I bought five or more years ago and never played.
Gregory
Right.
Melissa
There’s that whole backlog problem that that game folks have these days. So it’s good to dive into that. It was awesome to like, sort my list of games by least number of reviews on Steam.
Gregory
Yeah, least number of reviews other people have made.
Melissa
Right. And so Steam has some thresholds on how many reviews you want to have, and things like that. So I was like, “Well, let me start from the bottom work my way up. If the game can run we’ll try it.”
And so it was fun. I played games–a couple, at least one of the games I played was something that I might have never played. Like, I bought it because it looked cool, and it was super cheap, probably.
And now that I looked at it like, “Boy, this actually is gonna be really hard. Yeah, I think I’ll pass.” I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled it probably five or six times over the years.
I played it. It was a lot of fun. It was weird, quirky, streamed really well. This one was “Particulars.” So I recommend that. The company seems defunct… That’s actually true of both of the new games I played.
Gregory
All of the creators are working on one thing or another, but don’t seem to be doing the same thing they were doing when those came out.
Melissa
Right, yeah. And so I don’t know. It was just like, it was fun and invigorating. And I’m trying to figure out–I really like streaming on Twitch. I like doing short streams. By short I mean, like, you know, I follow some people for whom this is their full time job.
Gregory
Yeah.
Melissa
So they stream 8-10 hours a day.
Gregory
Short is like, half an hour, one hour.
Melissa
Half an hour to one hour feels about right. I can only like, if I’m drinking wine, I can get a glass and a half before I start slurring just a little bit. So there’s that.
Yeah, I’m kind of thinking through, like, what kind of schedule do I want to have? Where does this fit like, is this a creative endeavor for me? Does this fill some sort of niche? I have a million side projects I could be doing.
Gregory
Right.
Melissa
Is this one I want to do?
Gregory
You can stream those side projects, too.
Melissa
I could, I could. I don’t know live coding is weird.
Gregory
People do it. Stream writing, stream knitting.
Melissa
I haven’t knit in years. So yeah, that’s what’s been inspiring me. Getting some creative juices flowing in a way that I don’t normally. So what have you been inspired by?
Gregory
I’ve been reading a book called He, She and It by Marge Piercy. I’m almost done with the book like I’m in the last chapter or two I thought I might finish it–
Melissa
Fiction? Nonfiction?
Gregory
Fiction. So it is, I would call it dystopian fiction in the cyberpunk lens. Megacorporations rule most of the world The world has been destroyed by man-made climate change. Most places, you can’t go outside during the day without dying in a matter of hours. From the cosmic rays. A lot of the agriculture is dead, a lot of the animals are dead.
And the main character is a woman who came from one of the few free towns which sort of are able to sustain themselves and protect themselves.
Melissa
Under some sort of shield or bubble?
Gregory
Yeah, yeah, they’ve got they’ve got a wrap is what they call it.
Melissa
Like a burrito!
Gregory
So they’re free towns, they’re like these domes and cities that are controlled by the megacorps. And then there are these slums there where the rest of the people live that are like the… The one that’s most relevant to the story is called the Glop, the Megalopolis.
Melissa
Okay.
Gregory
It’s the East Coast megalopolis, where it’s like these are basically bedroom communities for cheap labor for the corporations. So all the people that clean the toilets, and answer the phones, and all the people that the corporations consider “less than” live in these relatively violent de facto gang run–actually de jure gang run–places were like the corporations will pay local gangs to keep peace.
Melissa
This feels like a Farscape episode… or 10.
Gregory
Yeah, it’s that sort of, like, gritty cyberpunky thing. But the main character is, working for one of these mega corporations, and has just divorced and loses custody of her son. And moves back… When you’re kind of in a–during a time when she can kind of no longer fight to get custody back. He’s been, like, off planet. So she’s kind of has no choice but to give up for now, she goes back home to this Jewish free town that she’s from.
And there she finds out that her grandmother and someone her grandmother knows have been working on making a cyborg. An artificial person, an Android, however you want to call it.
It’s the first one, like this is not a normal thing in this world. You are not allowed to do it and nobody knows how. You don’t make human-shaped robots. That’s the one of the things. Like there was a thing that happened was bad. So don’t make human shaped robots and even if you do, I mean, they won’t be a person; they’re not, you can’t make them that smart.
Melissa
Oh, of course.
Gregory
And so in this case they have. His name is Yod after the Hebrew letter, because he is the seventh, eighth? There have been several prototypes before him.
And she’s kind of, she’s a programmer. And she’s been hired to get him functioning in society because he’s designed to be a protector for this town.
Melissa
Okay.
Gregory
And so there’s romantic attraction that develops and like “Is he a person? Isn’t he? What does it mean that I’m, I’m interacting with this person who’s essentially chattel?” And then this is tied in with a retelling of the story of the Golem of Prague.
Melissa
I figured a Golem was gonna figure in here somehow.
Gregory
And so there’s this exploration of like, you know, what does traditional Jewish culture think of sort of artificiality and the role of women in society, and how does this perspective apply?
Melissa
Yeah.
Gregory
And in the meantime, so there’s this romance, there’s this inner story, which is actually the grandmother telling the cyborg the story of the Golem of Prague. Which, if you don’t know it, very roughly, it’s the story of Frankenstein.
Melissa
Okay.
Gregory
Before Frankenstein. It’s: person makes a makes a non-human creature for one purpose. It proves to not necessarily obey that purpose, and the creation and the creator have to determine what the relationship to each other is.
Melissa
Okay.
Gregory
Which is mirrored in the in the larger story. But there’s also this sort of cyberpunk-y story of like Internet assassins and–
Melissa
Really?
Gregory
Yeah, cybernetically-modified people who are fighting the mega corps and kidnapping the kid back and all this stuff. So it’s very good so far. We’ve reached the point in the story, where there’s the confrontation like, is this really a person? Are we going to turn them over? Like all of that.
So I’m interested to see how it turns out. It’s definitely an exploration of gender roles. I don’t know how–I don’t think it’s particularly queer except in, like, there’s definitely this feeling of like, women don’t necessarily have to have this role. It’s cool for women to have relationships of various kinds. It’s definitely feminist, but not–
Melissa
Not “newly” progressive.
Gregory
Um, no, I mean, it is old; its from 1990 or so. 1991. So I think it’s progressive for the time.
Melissa
But the college we went to was still all male at that time.
Gregory
Yes. Yeah. So I mean, but to put an example of how old it is, um, I was almost thrown out of the novel entirely when the spy they talked about spy drones that were flying around taking pictures of things. And they said, “Don’t worry, I blew it up. So it can’t take its film back to base.”
Melissa
No!
Gregory
Yeah, right. Because back then, we didn’t think about wireless tech in the same way that we do now.
Melissa
We were still putting floppy disks in our digital cameras.
Gregory
We still called things car phones. So yeah, it’s very cool. I definitely recommend it. It’s a good I think, relatively easy read. As someone who is only passingly familiar with Jewish culture, I always like getting insights into cultures that I’m less familiar with. And I want to read more of her stuff.
Melissa
Yeah,. So we’ve been talking about recognizing when people are sort of pushing expectations of the role that family should have in your life. Daddy Detoxed is struggling with communicating with folks who, you know, “unfinished business” and stuff like that.
Gregory
“Talk to your father, this is what is done, this is normal.”
Melissa
Right. And I think even aside from our own struggles–mine, of course, happens to be my father. But there are plenty of other ones, right? Siblings. Navigating this space where what’s normal isn’t normal–we know this internally.
But we do have to live in a world that does have an idea of what normal is. And that extends… I mean, we’re talking here about parents and siblings. But as two poly people.
Gregory
Oh, yeah. How many partners should you have? We talked about, like what is a normal thing to be able to do in life?
Melissa
Exactly. So all of that applies. And it’s hard to manage, it’s hard to put a face on that is normal enough to get by and not cause trouble.
Gregory
I think understanding your normal or your state is really, really valuable in this situation. Like, the fact that Daddy Detoxed can say, “I don’t want to talk to him. I know I don’t want to talk to him. That isn’t the issue here. I’m not looking for help on that. I just want to deal with people who tell me that I should.”
I think that that’s an important thing. Like, that’s the big step.
Melissa
And that can be hard to get to.
Gregory
Yeah, yeah. But how you are is okay and is good and is wonderful. And if you want to be different, and want to be better, you can work on that too.
But accepting who you are and what you need is a big thing, huge thing that not enough people do and that I think no one does as much as would be best.
Melissa
Yeah. So stand firm, be dramatic. Flounce out of the room.
Gregory
Pick the strategy that works best.
Melissa
For the setting, for the person.
Gregory
If avoiding it works best, cool. If you try it out–like each of these interactions is going to be such a singular data point. Like, sometimes you’re gonna mess them up.
Melissa
Yeah
Gregory
It’s okay. You’ll do better next time.
Melissa
And hopefully this doesn’t come up all the time.
Gregory
Hopefully. And if it does, that’s a boundary setting situation. That’s like, “Stop talking to me about my father every lunch. I don’t want to. Like, just no, let’s talk about anything else.”
Melissa
“There are so many other things in the world. Can we please.”
Gregory
If you’re being hassled about it, that’s that’s a different situation. But yeah, it’s gonna be a process, unfortunately. And it’s totally okay for you to keep setting that boundary despite everyone telling you that it’s wrong. And if you change your mind later, that’s cool, too. Yeah.
Melissa
But I think people have to kind of earn that trust. Like if they’ve, if they’ve questioned before whether you should be talking to your father not, they get to earn the right to know more and the right–
Gregory
They get to demonstrate that they also accept your choices.
Melissa
Exactly. So thank you for talking to me today.
Gregory
Thank you for talking me.
Melissa
And thank you all for listening. This has been Audacious Compassion. If you have a question or prompt for discussion, please submit it to us@avery-weir.net.
Gregory
And as a reminder, we’re taking a new practice where we’re not recording episodes if we don’t have prompts.
Melissa
Mm hmm.
Gregory
So if you especially want to see a new episode, it could be your submission that causes one to happen.
Melissa
Yeah, and you can find the show on Twitter and Facebook at “audaciouscast”. We’ll be posting there some of the stuff that we post will be Follow Fridays. So like when we talk about games like Particulars or various books we like, we’ll point those out on social media. We occasionally retweet some interesting articles and things like that.
So we would greatly appreciate likes and follows. If you listen on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher or wherever you listen, take some time and rate us there. It helps us helps people find us.
Gregory
Indie games and podcasts benefit from this.
Melissa
Yes, I am Melissa Avery-Weir and I can be found at melissaaveryweir@mastodon.social.
Gregory
And I’m Gregory Avery-Weir and I can be found at GregoryWeir on Twitter.
Melissa
And together, as we have mentioned, we run a video game studio called Future Proof Games, which you can visit at futureproofgames.com. Our theme music is “Invisible Light” by Joshua Woodward, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
Talk to you later.