SO, I recall back when we used to have these little interactions, group therapy sessions, what-not, I had established some general themes for a "every-other day" form of posting schedule. Mondays as I recall were for "My Singing Monsters" and I'm still fine with that as I do still find the game to be adorable.

That said, I also loves me some Mario games. Having met Charles Martinet and spoken with him, heard his view on the character and the world. I'm also pretty cool with a Mario Monday together with you lovely sacks of red-rope licorice twists.


I have been watching Dan Floyd's playthrough of Paper-Mario & The Thousand-Year Door lately. TTYD has long been a wonderful little RPG to me. Hell, the whole Paper Mario series is just delightful fun. I love the mechanics. I love the aesthetics. I love the simplicity of the character design, the story and the nuances at play if you're willing to pay attention. Just a good, all-around gaming experience- which also had the distinction of featuring an openly-discussed transgender character, one who wasn't a joke, wasn't a stereotype and wasn't some blink-and-you-miss-it bit of performative representation in the background like you see in FAR too many works these days. Vivian, she was the real deal and she was adorable.

She was also oh so horribly offensive to bass-ackwards, regressive nitwits who get frightened by the prospect of anything even slightly outside of the camp of what they consider to be "the norm", an outlook which in-and-of-itself is embarrassing enough but when going through the game again, now, decades after its initial release, through the lens of a much older and more observant adult me, feels so... SO much more laughably nonsensical.

That? THAT? THAT is what the moral crusaders are so upset about? The cute little ghost girl who leaves her abusive sisters behind to join the hero in his quest to fight the evil threatening to destroy their world?

Forget everything I mention in the comic there, just... just the opening setting. *laughs* Sweet Lucy's knockers, The game almost literally starts with Nintendo's favorite, family-friendly little plumber and his crew of friends, hopping off their vacation boat into a town square with a gibbet in the center of it. A full-on gibbet with a noose and everything. Y'all were SO concerned with "but how am I supposed to explain the icky trans thing to my kids?!" but NOT "How am I supposed to explain why the town center would have a platform where people would be publicly strangled to death in front of everyone?".

George Carlin had a bit back in the 70's in which he pointed out the strangeness of american hypocrisy when it came to sex and violence. Fifty years ago, folkes. Parents routinely sat their innocent little children down in front of movies in which the noble sheriff and his posse might shoot and kill dozens of people, beat them bloody, stab them, drag them behind horses, blow them up with dynamite and so on so on so forth but oh my stars and garters there better not be anything even APPROACHING hanky-panky in that movie. No showing of physical affection of that might just harm our little innocent children's brains...

It IS great to see how some of us have moved on a bit from that as a society. Evolved. Just too bad that some of us still haven't.

*shrugs* oh well. We all mature at different rates. Maybe some of y'all are just late bloomers. *snickers* I'm sure you'll grow up sooner or later.


Love yourselves. Love somebody else. Stay hydrated and give up some long-overdue love to Vivian. She's a little sweetheart. Happy PRIDE Month, you weirdos. Enjoy yourselves, dammit.