Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:37 — 63.8MB)
Subscribe: RSS
Chris (@preiman709 on Twitter) and I chat about Daredevil, blindness portrayed in Star Trek, RPGs, and dating while disabled. You can subscribe to my podcast by searching for “The Geeky Gimp” on iTunes, or using the subscribe button in the right menu. As always, English subtitles are available on the YouTube video, and the transcript is below. Enjoy!
Thank you to Todd for providing us with this transcript and subtitles. Please support him by visiting his blog at http://boardgamemadness.blogspot.com!
[up-tempo music plays over an animation of the geeky gimp – Erin in her wheelchair with a red cape on, driving past a huge board game, driving past a pile of games and comics, then quickly driving past the title of the show in big letters and bold pinks, blues, and yellows. It reads “The Geeky Gimp Presents”]
ERIN: Hi everyone. Welcome to another podcast for the Geeky Gimp. And today I have a guest with me, and his name is Chris. Feel free to introduce yourself.
CHRIS: Hi folks, I’m Chris Preiman, I am I’m sure a few of you probably already know me from a rather obsessive and sporadic Twitter. I am also the blind underscore G M underscore over on Word Press though even more sporadically than on Twitter. Um I am obsessed with um tabletop RPGs, books, film, and television. And I guess that’s what I’m here to talk to you guys about today.
ERIN: So what kind of RPGs do you like?
CHRIS: Okay, so again, me being who I am I will happily play or accept the invitation to just about anything. Though I will concede that I favor the stuff from like the late 1990s through early 2000s. Because one a lot of the stuff is based on a nice simple if not easy system that I can actually find online so I’m not futzing around with PDFs or scanned images or anything like that. Even still, I also tend to avoid more experimental modern stuff because it tends to be playing with dice I have no analog for digitally or because a lot of the rules involve symbols in the books I can make no sense of whatsoever.
ERIN: Right. I just started getting into it. Like I started with Pathfinder.
CHRIS: Ooh, a lot of people are starting at that place. Its not a bad place to start either. Are you having a good time with it?
ERIN: Um yeah, I am having a hard time like understanding the…battle part. Rolling dice and how much to add or…it’s a lot of statistics that.
CHRIS: It can be.
ERIN: yeah. It’s a bit heavy in that part. But I like the roleplaying. I enjoy it it’s just very confusing at times.
CHRIS: I know it’s the very trite answer, but it will get better as you start to internalize why a lot of these things are the way they are. But it is also true. That..once you start kind of internalizing why the system works the way it does, you’ll actually find that you’ll even start being able to predict how a certain rule probably works even if you’ve never actually needed it. And believe it or not, that’s what a lot of GMing is saying “okay that’s probably how this should work, let’s do it this way.”
ERIN: I’m doing it online too…not in person. So I think doing it online is not the easiest way to get into it. But it is what it is.
CHRIS: Yeah well there are some barriers to online play. I know it’s becoming more and more common because you know people are spread out, schedules get complicated. I have a local group that I still mostly play with on Skype because…that way the people can just head home from work, get online and start playing. Rather than get home from work, get everything ready, then head over somewhere else and play than get home.
ERIN: Yeah. The people that I play with are having a hard time like getting together on the same day, it’s still difficult. But its fun.
CHRIS: It is. No, no it really is. And part of my mission…I say this as a ridiculous mission in life, but then part of me is like wait why the hell should it be a ridiculous mission in life. It is to kind of spread, evangelize if you must, the word of tabletop RPG for blind folk. Specifically, not just to the blind folk, cause to us it’s not a tremendous difficult sell. In a lot of cases, to the other sighted players that this is not only a can-do, but a thing we can be particularly good at. And who knows how long ago, I wrote an article specifically on that that actually got shared over at The Escapist. Um it was an article over on theblindGM.com specifically entitled “why you want us in your game.” And it got shared over on The Escapist. And that was a proud moment for me. And he said. I remember the comments on it over on The Escapist was that he hoped I’d stick around in the blogging community. That was also back in like 2011, 2012 and I don’t think I wrote on it again until I get angry at Daredevil. So that didn’t work out as well as I’d like it to.
ERIN: Oh yeah, we have to we have to talk about Daredevil. Because I just watched, um, the fourth episode last night.
CHRIS: Ah.
ERIN: and I was just. Hmm. I dunno. I can’t get into it.
CHRIS: People made, I made, a big stink about it online a couple weeks ago when it came out. So, when Netflix did start, y’know, bowing to public pressure and started introducing sort of, descriptive video for us, everyone was like, “You must be thrilled, aren’t you loving the show,” and I was like, “No, not really.“ Because my point was never that I actually wanted to watch the show. My point was always that this should have been an option for me. Now, I actually have a problem with Daredevil. It’s a problem that for years I’ve had a hard time putting my finger on. But I was actually watching a conversation between one half of James SA Corey and…I can never figure out which half of them is running the twitter at any given moment… and Scott Sigler. And they were talking, they were arguing over it, and one of the things James SA Corey brought up was that he always had a problem with Daredevil where his main superpower is actually not having the disability he pretends to have…
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: …and that so perfectly embodied what always felt wrong to me about Daredevil…
ERIN: Yeah! And the other…
CHRIS: …was that he’s NOT blind. He sees differently, but he’s NOT…
Both together: …blind.
ERIN: Yeah, that makes sense.
CHRIS: And that always sat wrong with me.
ERIN: Yeah, that makes sense. The problem that I had with it. I just, well,first of all, I don’t like that storyline, I didn’t like that crime, mafia… stuff. It just doesn’t interest me. But also, I didn’t like how,well, basically what you said, how when he became Daredevil, he literally throws away his walking stick and becomes, you know, not himself, if that makes sense?
CHRIS: Yeah, no, it all seems a little weird. My biggest problem with Daredevil is… See,I like gritty fiction.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: I loved Breaking Bad, I loved Dexter, I love Game of Thrones. But I think with Daredevil, I think, in a lot of ways.. and this owes a lot to the original Frank Miller run on Daredevil…
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: …uh, back in the comic books. But… it is dark and gritty, but unlike a lot of “dark and gritty,” it is utterly joyless.
ERIN: It is, yeah.
CHRIS: It tries to have a sense of humor, but it’s undercut by how unbelievably bleak everything is. It’s like, oh, that’s kinda funny, lets get back to the hopeless now.
ERIN: Right, yeah.
CHRIS: And that’s kinda hard to deal with, and I don’t necessarily want to. And again, I think a lot of that has to, I think Daredevil… and I’ve watched most of It at this point. It does owe a lot to Frank Miller. And I can’t remember if Frank Miller created the character or just kind of inspired and redefined the character, like he did with Batman. .But I think unlike Batman, Daredevil hasn’t completely shaken the legacy of Frank Miller. Everything is dark and ultra-brutal. Every woman is ultimately either going to be a prostitute,a villain, or a corpse, and delightfully sometimes all three. Everyone’s going to be white, if they want to be even remotely sympathetic. It’s… I think it’s… I’m not calling out the people who enjoy it. If you enjoy it, please enjoy it. But understand that I find it problematic.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: And don’t get me wrong, I really love some problematic stuff.
ERIN: Oh, yeah, me too.
CHRIS: If you’re not going to enjoy problematic media, what have you got left?
ERIN: Yeah, nothing.
CHRIS: But that doesn’t mean I can’t sit down and say, “I have a problem with this thing, I like this thing, but I have a problem with it, too.”
ERIN: Yes.
CHRIS: And that’s where I sit on Daredevil.
ERIN: I think everything that I watch is problematic in some way, there’s no way to get around it. But… I didn’t like Daredevil because of the reason you said, and I also did not like the way, what was his, the lady who he… went to her house after he got injured… What was her name?
CHRIS: I’ve blocked so much of that out of my memory at this point, which should tell you, that I’ve watched this two weeks, ago…
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: …That I’ve blocked so much this out of my memory, should tell you exactly how I’m feeling about this particular product, because I honestly don’t remember.
ERIN: The way they portray her just upset me so much, that I couldn’t continue watching it. Like you said, she was just… just there to move along his story line, she didn’t have…
CHRIS: Oh yeah, no no no. I’ve read some Daredevil, I don’t’ think any female in Daredevil with the possible exception of Electra occasionally, has ever really had agency of their own.
ERIN: No.
CHRIS: And even then, because it’s kind of based on Frank Miller, it’s always been a kind of skeevy agency, even when they do have it.
ERIN: I really don’t like Frank Miller. Like, I just, every time I see his name, I just get so angry.
CHRIS: You know every time you see his name, something hateful about women, minorities, foreigners or the disabled is about to be said.
ERIN: Yeah. So I mean…
CHRIS: And that’s disappointing, he did actually have some writing chops, back in the day.
ERIN: Yes.
CHRIS: But it’s kind of hard to overlook what he’s writing about, at times.
ERIN: Yeah. Have you heard anything about Batman Vs. Superman?
CHRIS: I look at the whole Superman thing. And… I’m looking, there are a number of things about why I both am and am not looking forward to this film. I don’t anticipate liking this film.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: But I’m looking forward to it and actually I kind of want it to be successful. I kind of want it to be successful, I want it to be good ‘cause even it’s not for me that doesn’t mean it’s not for anyone.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: But there are a number of reasons… again, my issue with the last Superman, and what seems to be multiplying, multiplying, and multiplying, is, this whole Superman Vs. Batman thing seems to be utterly joyless.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: Where’s the fun? It’s like, these things are comic books, and yeah, comic books can get really deep at times, but did we forget that they’re also comic books? They’re also supposed to be fun!
ERIN: I think…
CHRIS: I don’t want a moral-ambivalent Superman who spends time moping and wondering if he really should be Superman…
ERIN: No…
CHRIS: … before going out and killing a city. Superman’s supposed to be that giant kind of corny Boy Scout.
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: He’s not supposed to be Batman, that’s what Batman is for.
ERIN: I actually don’t mind how dark it looks, because I think it’s interesting to explore that aspect of it. But I also think this is why the Avengers does so well. Because it, it makes, it’s not as heavy, you know?
CHRIS: Oh, the Avengers is a lot of fun.and a lot of the properties, you know the last Hulk movie notwithstanding, and possibly Iron Man 2 notwithstanding… actually, I’ll remove that, Iron Man 2 gets in there. It wasn’t a good movie, but it was a really fun one.
ERIN: Yeah. It was… I liked the first one better.
CHRIS: I think a lot of people did. I think the first one was a little bit smaller scale. It had a little bit more to do with characters.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: I feel like the second one was trying to cram a little too much in, and while I was happy to see more about Hawkeye, I was also really mad about the treatment of Black Widow.
ERIN: Oh, really? I didn’t see it yet.
CHRIS: Um, you know, if you do see it, I’ll be happy to come back on and talk about exactly why I have some problems with the treatment of Black Widow as a character.
ERIN: I have heard people say that, so I’m interested to see, you know, why. I’ll have to… I’m probably going to go see it next week, maybe.
CHRIS: I do hope you enjoy it! I think you will. If you liked the first one, you’re going to at least like this one.
ERIN: Uh huh, yeah. but i’;m really, I mean, I can probably wait until it comes out on dvd, because while I like the Avengers, my real passion is with DC: Batman, Superman. I’m really looking forward to that, even though it is a little bit darker.
CHRIS: It can be. I will say this. DC, I think, has always been, for me, my third-favorite comic book line. I was definitely a Marvel kid, in the Nineties, when the comic books were weird and kind of bad, but the cartoons were fantastic.
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: And I kind of grew up with that Marvel, and Marvel to me, defined what a hero was. And I look at DC, and Barbara Gordon notwithstanding, they’re not a particularly diverse group of superheroes.
ERIN: No, they’re not.
CHRIS: Barbara Gordon… and most of them are white, you’ve got a couple of blacks and Latinos in there, too. And then you’ve got Barbara Gordon, who is crippled in the Eighties. I can get on about how Barbara Gordon hasn’t been depicted particularly well as a, you know, a figure, a disabled figure in DC…
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: …but again, I could be here all day if all I was going to do was point out the problematic stuff…
ERIN: Yes.
CHRIS: …but what I did say about Marvel, one of the reasons that I miss, really miss, reading comic books, is Marvel always had better heroes. Because they’re not these giant, planet-stopping people. They are people, some of them are disabled, most of them are outsiders.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: They are wonderful. Now, Magneto notwithstanding, DC had better villains.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: DC gave me Lex luthor and the Joker and people like that.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: And that is wonderful, and I’ve gotta give that to DC. Marvel’s only come close, I think, with Magneto, and you can even argue whether, you know, Magneto’s even necessarily a villain or not.
ERIN: Right. When I was a kid, I was really into Batman, but then I got into Superman. So I grew up watching the Adam West Batman show.
CHRIS: Oh, the wonderful…
ERIN: Yeah!
CHRIS: It’s campy, it’s goofy, it’s unapologetically dumb, and it’s, it’s doing it on purpose. It’s absolutely tongue-in-cheek throughout.
ERIN: Yes.
CHRIS: Adam West Batman is wonderful.
ERIN: Yeah, it is…. How is blind access to comic books?
CHRIS: Blind access to comic books, with the exclusion of the occasional novelization, is more or less non-existent. I think accomodarily I do miss comic books, I’ve got like graphic audio adaptations, and Marvel and DC novelizations of major arcs.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: But I can’t go down to the store and buy the latest Wolverine mini-series, or that wonderful Age of Apocalypse, you know, hardback omnibus thing that they put out a couple of months ago, or a couple of years ago, or however long.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: And I do miss that. I still have all of my comic books, you know, this wonderful collection of Nineties garbage, up in the closet, because I hold out hope that one day, I’ll be able to read it again, somehow.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: And I can’t bring myself to get rid of them. I think it’s the reason I still have my old Playstation 2 and all it’s games, too.
ERIN: Uh huh. I feel like there should be a way to like scan in a comic book, and have voiceover, you know?
CHRIS: I think the biggest problem with, like, comic book text is that it’s all hand-written, or at least, that it’s designed as a font that’s supposed to look hand-written.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: And I think it’s a wonderful, you know, part of the style. But even if you… Think about the arrangement of speech bubbles…
ERIN: Yeah, it’s not easy.
CHRIS: That could be difficult for a human being who knows how to read a comic book.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: The computer’s never gonna make heads or tails of all that.
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: And then of course, even then, all we have is the narration. Because so much of what makes a comic book entertaining is the art that goes with that.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: That I think, unless I can get a point where it’s like… this is where I think I like adaptations. Take that, and give it to me in pure words.
ERIN: Yes.
CHRIS: And that’s lovely. It’s the same thing, I love the movies. I love the movies for exactly that reason, that it’s taking so much of it, that with a little bit of minimal description, is just… it’s wonderful.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: Whatever problems I have with Marvel, DC, any of these other comic book, or other movies in general… I love movies.
ERIN: What’s your favorite movie?
CHRIS: Oh, that changes so much based on the week!
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: Like, I’ve been on a Star Wars binge lately, but I don’t think I’d ever call them my favorite movies.
ERIN: Uh huh. I actually watched Star Wars, for the first time, last year.
CHRIS: Really!
ERIN: Yeah, I know. I’m more, I’m way more, into Star Trek. But Star Wars? I’ve seen, like, parts of it, here and there, but I never sat down and watched all the movies.
CHRIS: I get that completely. Now, I love me some Star Trek. I think Star Trek has always been a better character piece, and that’s what is. Star Trek, it’s all about characters. It’s all about these ideas.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: Star Wars, it’s got some ideas and some characters in it, but let’s be honest, it’s this plot-driven…. Star Wars is fun, and at times, it’s almost unapologetically fun.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: And I think Star Trek has those moments. But I think for the most part, Star Trek is at it’s best when it’s trying to speak at something inside you.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: Whereas Star Wars always gets a little weird when it tries to do that.
ERIN: Yeah. I think… I thought, Star Wars, I liked it, but it didn’t have the same emotional impact that Star Trek has, for me.
CHRIS: Star Wars can, I think… and I’ll actually cite one moment, from the very beginning of the new series, Rebels. At the very end, they open, y’know, the characters open the holocron, and Obi-Wan is talking to them about how the Empire has risen because the New Republic has fallen, the Jedi Order has fallen, the future is uncertain and now it’s up to you guys. That absolutely hit me in the feels, but it’s the exception, not the rule.
ERIN: Yeah. I am looking forward to the JJ Abrams movie, and I know a lot of people are already complaining about it, and it’s like, really? You haven’t even seen it yet, you know?
CHRIS: It’s the nature of fandom.
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: And I think that’s the big part, it’s the nature of fandom to criticise. But I’m not worried about Abrams making a Star Wars film, and I’ll tell you why: he already has. He called it “Star Trek,” but he’s already made a Star Wars film, and he made a pretty good one.
ERIN: I have to say, I did… I liked his Star Trek movies, and I know that’s not a popular opinion, to have as a Trekkie.
CHRIS: You’ll find a number of people out there that do, that still like them. I think they’re the minority. They might be the majority, but I think they’re the majority being drowned out by a very vocal minority.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: I think they were fun. My argument towards them is actually a lot of the same argument I have against Enterprise…
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: …which is, I feel like it lost the soul of Star Trek.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: I felt like the movies were too much about, “What can we do to these characters? How could they shoot their way out of this problem?” And I’m happy when Star Trek does that… But Star Trek’s not at it’s best when it does that.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: Like, think about Picard. Picard’s answer to a situation was never, shoot first.
ERIN: No.
CHRIS: It doesn’t matter what the situation was. Shooting, violence, was always his last resort…
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS.: …Though he did bring it hard, when he had to.
ERIN: Oh yeah, he did.
CHRIS: When that was all that was left to him, he brought it hard.
ERIN: Yeah, maybe too hard, sometimes.
CHRIS: Whereas if I look at, whereas if I look at, the original series, and then I look at the Abrams movies and Enterprise, too often shooting a problem is the first and only thing they try.
ERIN: Right. I think that, for Star Trek to have been successful, there’s no way they could have made it like the original series. Because today’s…
CHRIS: No, and…
ERIN: … yeah, today’s audience…
CHRIS: …and you’ve watched the original series, though, and, I mean…
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: I wouldn’t want that today.
ERIN: I would… no.
CHRIS: It works ‘cause it’s wonderful, historic, and kind of fun, but you couldn’t do that today.
ERIN: No way, no. And that’s why it makes me angry when Trekkies are like, “Oh, it’s nothing like the original series.” No, it’s not.
CHRIS: Honestly, that’s a blessing in a lot of cases, that’s a blessing. Do you mean…
ERIN: Today’s audience wouldn’t…
CHRIS: … it’s not as accidentally racist? It’s not as misogynist?
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: …It makes sense?
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: I mean, I love me some old Trek, but again, let’s not look at it with fan eyes, let’s try and look at this objectively and say, “Yes, these were good things, and then what the hell was going on here?” Another on Star Trek, I’m stuck again on the idea of blindness in media…
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: …and Star Trek had that wonderful episode, er, well, I call it wonderful because it’s almost hilariously bad…
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: …with the blind woman who didn’t tell anyone she was blind, because she had that sensor-web…
ERIN: The dress!
CHRIS: …woven into the hippie dress?
ERIN: Yeah, yeah. What did you think about that, yeah?
CHRIS: And it’s just, it bothered me, partially for her attitudes, but a big part of that was everyone else’s attitudes towards her. Because the big plot point in that whole thing was, you know, she said, “I could play a tennis match against you, McCoy, and probably even win.”
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: And the whole thing was, you know, “Yadda yadda yadda, but you still can’t fly a starship.” And I was like, if her web’s that good, why can’t she fly a starship?
ERIN: I know, right.
CHRIS: The entire moral of that is, “Well, they were kind of right.”
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: And it’s like, the hell?
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: I feel like you got so close there, only to at the end, pull out and say, “Yeah, no matter how good a technology is, you’re always going to be less than us.” It was like, oh, so close.
ERIN: What did you think about LeVar Burton playing Geordi in The Next Generation?
CHRIS: Okay, so LeVar Burton, I feel, I feel they got that a lot closer to right.
ERIN: Yeah, they did, I think so.
CHRIS: I would’ve… And people say that they would have preferred it, you know, if he wasn’t stumbling around a little bit whenever he didn’t have his visor.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: But I actually thought about that. He always has his visor! Why should he have learned my techniques for navigating when he, you know, without sight, if he always had the visor or the prosthetics or whatever.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: There’s no reason he should be as capable as I am, when he’s not wearing it. No, my biggest.. I have two big issues with Geordi, actually, no, it’s one big issue, and then one kind of hilarious thing.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: The big issue is, throughout the whole thing, throughout the whole thing, he doesn’t miss his eyes, he barely remembers seeing. But this is how he sees the world and he likes that.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: And then in, I can’t remember… if it was Nemesis or Insurrection, when the planet’s field suddenly makes his eyes heal themselves for a time. And he was so happy. And it was like, are you really?
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: Because to my mind… if I had your visor… Because I miss seeing, I really do, but if I had your visor, I probably wouldn’t miss conventional sight, because his visor sees so much more.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: The other hilarious thing is something LeVar Burton actually said on the set. Which was that he said, yeah the visor’s supposed to help Geordi see. But he couldn’t see a thing while he was wearing it…
ERIN: Yeah. Yes.
CHRIS: …and that actually really amuses me. So LeVar Burton thinks it was because he was black that Geordi didn’t have the romance subplots that so many of the other characters did. I actually don’t think that’s true. Because I actually look at Worf…
ERIN: Yeah.
CHRIS: And, you know, I look at Worf, or if I look at Sisko, I look at other black characters. These people had romances.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS:I look at Geordi, and I say, no, I don’t think it was because he was black that they didn’t give him a romance.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: I think it was because Geordi was blind.
ERIN: I think so, too.
CHRIS: And because, more and more, I think when we portray people on television, disabled people on television, there’s this idea that, either they are asexual beings, because I know a lot of people do look at the disabled as being asexual beings…
ERIN: Yes.
CHRIS: … or if we don’t look at them as asexual beings, we look at them as people who should be.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: And it’s like, my eyes work, everything else… my eyes don’t work, but everything else works just fine.
ERIN: Exactly!
CHRIS: Those urges did not go away!
ERIN: Right, people don’t get that, which is very frustrating. Especially…
CHRIS: It’s like, “Aren’t you worried your kid should be … Aren’t you worried that your kid would be blind, or…” you know, is what I get a lot. Or “Aren’t you worried that…” I’m sure other people get, “Aren’t you worried your kid would be deaf, or couldn’t walk?” It’s like, if that happens, we’re gonna deal with it. I do…
ERIN: Right, yeah. And that’s like, just to go…
CHRIS: And if they’re not, we’re gonna push them to 16 and make them drive!
ERIN: Going on, going off on a tangent, but when you’re dating, being disabled, it’s very difficult to find somebody on a dating site. Because people assume, you know, they don’t want to even look at me in that way, you know. And it’s so…
CHRIS: And that’s why so many disabled people, we date within the disabled community…
ERIN: Yes.
CHRIS: … because, well, there are preconceived notions there.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: There’s not as many. And I’ll be honest, I’ve dated blind women, I’ve dated sighted women, I’ve dated women with other disabilities. There is something to be said for dating another blind woman, which is, very simply this: there is that point of shared experience, and… it’s that shared life experience. It’s not necessary for a partner, frankly, I don’t need a partner that’s blind. I do need a partner that will let me go play D&D once a week.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: But the blind is kind of nice. There are down sides. Neither one of us can drive. Neither one of us can explain television to the other.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: But, you know, there are enough upsides, you know?
ERIN: Yeah, I mean, my two exes were disabled, and my boyfriend now is not disabled, and well, you know, I like him just as much.
CHRIS: Of course!
ERIN: But it’s different, because they don’t understand certain experiences. It’s just…
CHRIS: And I want to ask to ask you something, because I don’t know if you get this as much as we do. When you’re out together, do you get a lot of the, “Oh, he’s such a wonderful person”?
ERIN: Ugh. Yes. All the time.
CHRIS: “Oh, you’re so good, you’re such a good person”,” and it’s like, why? Yes, he’s a good person or she’s a good person, otherwise I wouldn’t be dating them.
ERIN: Right.
CHRIS: But they’re not a good person because they’re dating me, that’s not some grand sacrifice. It’s just not being a complete d-bag.
ERIN: I actually get that. When I was dating my ex, I don’t think people thought he was my boyfriend. I think people thought he was like my brother, or something. But I always get that, “Oh, you’re so wonderful,” when I’m with my mom, or my nurse, or a friend. It’s always, “Oh you’re so wonderful,” and I’m like, why?
CHRIS: It’s because in their minds, we must be a burden to them. It must be, you know, this Herculean task just to treat us like a human being.
ERIN: Uh huh.
CHRIS: And that’s always really frustrating.
ERIN: It is. It’s very frustrating. But it is something I have to deal with, something we have to deal with. But I think with my blog, and you know, other people, are trying to get it out there, that we are… people.
CHRIS: Oh yeah, no, we are people! We are good people, we are bad people, we are geeky people. We are… we are everything you are!
ERIN: Right. And that, for some reason…
CHRIS: And that’s just so difficult. That’s so difficult for people to conceptualize.
ERIN: Right. It’s almost…
CHRIS: One of the things I basically tell people is, “You’re always an ambassador,” and it’s like, no, I’m not! I’m an asshole!
ERIN: Yeah… yeah, I mean…
CHRIS: I have really bad days, and I will absolutely let that spill out into the world around me. I’m not an ambassador, I’m a terrible ambassador!
ERIN: What annoys me the most is, when people say, “Oh, you’re so inspirational,” and they don’t even know me. Like, how do you know? I’m not inspirational. I’m just me! Like, it’s because of my disability, you know?
CHRIS: I get that sometimes. “You’re so inspirational!” It’s like, no, I’m not! I had ice cream for breakfast, and spent the day in my pajamas!
ERIN: Yeah, exactly!
CHRIS: That’s not inspirational, that’s a pathetic 30-something!
ERIN: It’s just, aargh, people. But, yeah… so, well, I think that’s it for today.
CHRIS: All right.
ERIN: This is at 35 minutes, not bad! So I’m going to edit everything together, and I’ll probably have it posted by… Friday, I think? So…
CHRIS: Well, that’s… All right, very cool. I hope we covered everything you wanted. I hope I didn’t ramble too much?
ERIN: No, it was good. It was fantastic! Thank you.
CHRIS: All right. Very cool! Of course.
ERIN: Thank you for being on. Oh, how can…
CHRIS: No worries.
ERIN: How can people contact you?
CHRIS: People can contact me mostly through Twitter, @preiman790. P-R-E-I-M-A-N-7-9-0. From there, I’ll eventually link them to the blog, to the Goodreads, to whatever ridiculous project I’m working on at any given moment.
ERIN: Okay, thank you.
CHRIS: Although I do warn people, I don’t self-filter there. Whereas I might in conversation, I don’t self-filter on Twitter, because that is kind of my space, you’re just welcome to come spend time in it.
ERIN: Right, okay, all right. So thank you very much, it was a lot of fun.
CHRIS: If you ever want me to come back on and talk about something in actual detail, I’m more than happy to.
ERIN: Oh, yeah, sure! Well, take care.
CHRIS: Yeah, you too.
[Up-tempo music]
ERIN: Thank you for listening to another podcast by the Geeky Gimp. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, you can reach me on Twitter @GeekyGimp, or my email, erin@geekygimp.com. I hope you enjoyed! Thank you. Bye bye!
