#especially because one is one of the literal-textbook early mass brands

[bigscaryd]

"good chuckle" is somewhat underselling it. Unfortunately, it's somewhat wrongheaded (even if it comes to the right advice of "consult an attorney,") in that legal stuff isn't more "adult," it's just "legal." When it comes to adulting, legal stuff comes at the end of it, or when you fail to adult properly. Saving up a down payment, figuring out what you can afford, picking a house: nothing a lawyer can help with. But once you're sitting down looking at a six-figure loan and five figures a year of taxes, insurance, repayments, etc., that's when you want a lawyer, so that everyone agrees who has to adult how.

Of course, I'm not involved in any of that. I'm involved when people copy your stuff (or someone else accuses you of copying theirs). Honestly, deep trademark law sounds like stoner talk more than anything else (even more so with the rise of cannabusiness and their refusal to abandon the hilarious habit of "parodic" product names.)

As much as it sucks having to scrape up money for a lawyer, let me tell you - that is the adultier adult we all keep talking about.

It ain't always feasible but if you are ever in a situation where internally thinking, "if I don't have someone more adult of an adult, I'm going to make life changing decisions barely knowing what I'm doing," that is probably a good time to see about scrounging up a retainer. I don't know if this is remotely useful because it's really hard to put that amount together but also it's really nice to have some guy you hand a contract to and be like, "should I sign this" or "is this guy possibly gonna legally be able to run off with what little money I have?"

The idea that lawyers are "adultier adults" I suspect is something lawyerblr would have a good chuckle about but from my end of things that is the adultier adult and if I was rich I'd have a lawyer decide everything I do up to including what to eat.

[lunamanar]

Mea Culpa

Alright...I know that this blog is typically very positive, very focused on FFVIII or FF in general or at least video games and sundry cool stuff. I don’t air grievances here, and I usually don’t opine on any heavy subjects. But, I need to make a serious post. It does touch a tiny bit on FFVIII, because it references something I said a little while ago, but this post is not about FFVIII. However, if you can stand to read it, I’d appreciate it. I promise the end point is still positive! I just need to get a little heavy for a bit. I’m not gonna hide any of this post behind a cut, either, just because I do think it’s important.

So, a couple days ago, I responded to an ask about my views on Seifer with a very long half-essay, half-editorial about the possible reasons for his behavior patterns, as displayed in the game. I knew that at least the first half of the post--which was from early last year and written while I was, uh, feeling a lot of things and probably shouldn’t have been answering questions about my FFVIII views--might be unpopular, but I thought that the opinion itself would be the problem, if anything, and if I stepped on any toes with it, I could clarify that, hey, my views have expanded since then. And I’ll never tell anyone else what they can and cannot think about a character, even if it stands in direct conflict with what I think about that same character. We all experience art and media in our own way, and I really, honestly believe that what we each get out of it is our own experience, and what good we find in that matters way, way more than whether or not our interpretation is “correct.” So while I’ll go down the rabbit hole trying to get to the bottom of what’s canon, what’s not, what differs between versions and translations and localizations...I still have my own feelings about the game, which I know are not provable, and I’m more than happy to let others have theirs, too. 

However...that, as it turns out, was not the problem with that post. People were really kind to me about my views on Seifer, actually. The most dissenting view I got was “uh I don’t think so but whatever.” And honestly, given...you know, the Internet...that’s pretty mild. 

The problem with that post, and something I’ve been thinking about ever since, wasn’t anything anyone got mad at me for. It was pointed out by a friend or two and I’ve been chewing on it trying to think about how to approach addressing it. It’s been really bothering me--as it should--considering my own history, and those of several loved ones, with mental illness. And honestly, I know better, should have known better than to couch Seifer’s violent behavior under the terms “sociopath” and “psychopathy.” While I do think my interpretation of him qualifies... ....Enngh. There’s a fine line between using the correct wording to describe a thing (which is what I’d done, in my mind) and representing that thing with your words. 

Well, maybe not such a fine line. Really, I fucking stepped in it, haha. And you know what the worst part is? Almost no one noticed, or if they did, they were either too jaded or too afraid to confront me about it. 

So, I want to take a moment, first of all, to sincerely apologize. Because...if just two of my friends tapped me to say ‘hey uh, maybe that wasn’t the best idea, man,’ the likelihood that there were other people who were made uncomfortable/injured by that post is right up there at 300% or so. And the fact no one else said anything is just further proof that...especially concerning those two scary awful terrible demon words--psychopath. sociopath.--there’s a stigma surrounding mental illness and the very discussion of it that allows bumbleducks like me to seemingly write off complicated characters like Seifer as a psychopath, signed sealed and delivered (no, I didn’t mean to write him off, but that’s not the point). Everyone else just nodded their heads, said “oh yeah that sounds right” and if they didn’t, it was either too intimidating or too exhausting to well-actually me about it. 

So, here’s some clarification that I should have explicitly provided in that original post. 

Mental illness in any form is a tangled mess. It gets messier the scarier the words being used. Most often, when you hear something like--for example--’ADHD,’ you get the mental image of someone with the attention span of a goldfish who can’t manage their vocal volume and is just generally hyper and all over the place. But...well...

I’m gonna use myself in this example. I have ADHD. And I’m not like that, at all. I’m focused, I have a pretty good long-term memory, and if anything, I am a very low-energy person. If you were to meet me face to face, I’d seem like a pretty normal introverted soul, maybe a bit more distant than average. But even something as “simple” as ADHD is not simple at all, the same “brownouts” that cause a lot of people to be hyper, loud and flighty cause me to be very quiet, highly anxious, and obsessive. Someone asked me, just about an hour ago, how I write all this content, and “think so hard” about FFVIII. Firstly, I’m far from the only one. But the answer is that--that, that’s just how my brain works. I can focus and pick over a subject for literally decades, if it means enough to me. It doesn’t mean I’m smarter, I’m simply devoting more time and effort to this than I otherwise would be. I almost have no choice. 

But, surprise, I don’t have OCD, despite the fact that “obsessive” is part of my behavior map. That’s a different set of brain things, and it’s been pretty solidly concluded that they aren’t part of my personal headsoup. Behaviors in and of themselves do not make a diagnosis; we might once have only had those to go on, but in this brand new age of fMRI and robot-facilitated chemistry testing, we have no such excuses. An absolutely huge tapestry of genetics, learning, body chemistry, past experiences, and simple dumb luck go into determining how a person behaves and what the particular cause of that behavior is. It’s not enough to say “oh, that person’s a psychopath.” That means...basically nothing. And the sad fact of the matter is, there are any number of diagnosed psychopaths who may have read that post, and as a result, pulled themselves even further into the shadows. Because they do have feelings, and they aren’t violent, or otherwise dangerous. But the moment they tell somebody they have this diagnosis, people are going to make assumptions about them, just because holy shit is that a scary terrible word. Or maybe not believe them at all. “You don’t seem like.....” People used to tilt their heads funny at me when I told them I had ADD. I eventually quit saying it, because it was annoying having to re-explain it all the time. But ADD isn’t a scary diagnosis. It’s a common one. Yeah, uh, so and so presidents/geniuses/inventors had ADD...if anything, it puts you on a pedestal with the greats, whether or not you deserve it. 

But the “scary” stuff? How would you like to be dumped into the same socially valueless pit as BTK? Or Hitler? In our society, association is everything, and while diagnoses of psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder are actually not that uncommon--especially “borderline” cases--when we hear about them, our immediate reaction to them is a fight-or-flight response. Danger. 

That’s...really not the way we should be looking at these things, though. 

To some extent the very doctors diagnosing the patients are to blame for their own demonization of these words and diagnoses, especially in the past. Media, which tends to only talk about mental illness when they find a terrifying fringe case involving it...serial killers, mass murderers, violent abusers...doesn’t really help at all. And then there’s the everyday klutzery of people like Yours Truly.

That exact kind of pigeonholing is exactly what I engaged in. Even though I was talking about Seifer as a textbook case, even though I said I didn’t mean he was a “stabbity” psychopath, what I left out of that post spoke a lot louder than what I put in. I didn’t stop to clarify that I was talking about the impact/influence of his mental state on his behavior, rather than as a direct cause to an effect. I didn’t slow down to say that I wasn’t calling all or even most people with similar illnesses violent. Hell, I didn’t even stop to call it a mental illness. I skipped straight to the “scary words,” without any preamble, any explanation, and I missed a huge opportunity to talk about mental illness in fiction, games and FFVIII in particular, and how we can collectively do better at discussing it, when we do cross that boundary between Talking About The Thing and Representing The Thing. 

I was nervous about being judged for my interpretation of Seifer, and in my haste to just get the answer out and then go hide in a hole for a week, I put forth a two-dimensional image of people living with powerful mental illnesses, and did those people--and Seifer himself--an injustice. I’m sorry for that, and I do intend to re-write the answer and correct that slight. I can’t say when I will have the energy or time to do it right...but, it will be done. In the mean time...I wanted to at least put this out there, and I hope, if you are someone who was hurt by that post, and for some reason, are still around listening to me yak, I can undo the damage.

...That’s all I got.