I don't know when you had the conversation with him about not naming stuff after him, but is it possible this was at a time when he was feeling pretty depressed? About Hafidha, PTSD, failure to save that last kid in Natchez, etc? Because I totally understand that he has major family issues at the best of times, but ... he does like kids. And I can easily see that when he is feeling bad about himself that would be a particularly touchy topic. But I suspect that if he was generally feeling more self-confident and secure and happy, and/or if he gets married, you might get a different answer.
I don't remember offhand what was going on with him at the time. It was before Refining Fire, is all I can tell you.
Alternatively, having killed his shoggoth by accidentally starving it to death while he was being starved on purpose, he might have extra issues attached to the shoggoth thing and not want you to name something after him that people do occasionally forget about and kill by neglect.
No, not only was it before RF, but he explicitly gave permission for that, and said he was fine with people naming anything other than children after him.
I disagree. Chaz very much wants kids. (See his first Livejournal Down The Rabbit Hole Day post, and "Smoke and Mirrors," among other places.)
He feels it would be horribly irresponsible to have them, though. Which is not the same thing as not wanting.
There are all sorts of things that I want very much that I have made the decision not to have, over the years. It doesn't always help with the wanting, though. In some cases, it makes it worse.
You're right, badly worded. He does not intend to have kids. He does not apparently intend to have kids who DON'T share his genetics, either, which was why I started suggesting other reasons he might not intend to have kids, including early death, not wanting to continue learned behaviors from his family (my brother has specifically asked me to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't start acting like our dad, so kinda like that), etc.
MG? I think you might be getting a little triggery and invested, and now might be a good time to take a couple of deep breaths and not try so hard to control/ shut down the conversation, okay?
--Bear in a moderator hat
Yes'm.
MG, sorry if I accidentally pushed buttons. I've absolutely no problem with people opting not to have children; I don't have any myself, though that's circumstances rather than choice. I've been thinking about eugenics after a recent post elsewhere from someone actively advocating for a fertility technique that allows selecting disability-free embryos, which, as someone with, probably, two genetically linked disabilities, I'm less than comfortable with and that influenced my point. Chaz is the one known surviving Beta geneset*, as a scientist, as a strategist, there is value in retaining access to that. That that conflicts with Chaz's decision not to have kids concerns me as a matter of individual rights, but in a world facing the Anomaly, Chaz is a weapon, not simply an individual and the good guys need to consider every angle. I can look at something from two different angles and hold differing opinions depending on whether I'm wearing the friend hat or the strategist hat. Is El Jefe's thinking likely to be all that different?
* Hope Mitchell is dead and burned, Hafs turned out not to be a true Beta, forgetmegirl has been forgotten.
DWG, the apology is much appreciated.
Just a note, though: apologies are much more effective if you do not, immediately thereafter, do the same thing you're apologizing for again.
I'm dropping the topic now, because I don't think I can discuss this calmly.
If I could get rid of *my* bipolar, on the other hand (retroactively make it vanish?) I'd be on that like white on rice. It's not interesting, it's not useful, and it's not *me*--it's an illness that I have to fight through to be me.
I feel very cheated about all the time I've lost to it. Years of my life, and all kinds of good things, and there's been plenty of collateral damage.
I knew that about you, actually, and was trying very hard to make it about
my experience, and the experience of
some other people with various disabilities, but not about the experience of everyone. I hope I did not sound as if I was.
My bipolar is a part of me for several reasons: I spent my entire childhood having early symptoms, and having them be part of what made me different, and learned to define myself largely by my differences. I've mostly moved on from defining myself by my differences, but continue to identify strongly with the things that make me different, if that makes any sense. But, essentially, I've been dealing with it all my life, and it's become as much a part of me as having curly hair, because I have never known me without it. (This was the point of extrapolation for Chaz.) Not everyone with bipolar has this experience, and not everyone who does identifies their disease as part of themselves. I just happen to.
Also, honestly, before I did the work of learning to cope with and live my life with my disease, I wasn't, personality-wise, a terribly effective or good (by my own definitions) person. I like who I am now. I like
where I am now, and what I've done with my life, and my bipolar is part of the cause of that. I spent years struggling against it, and defining myself by that struggle, and the struggle changed me and made me better. Now I don't struggle much, but letting go of it . . . letting go is not something I'm terribly good at, and while I've learned to do it when I must, I don't need to let go of this, so I won't.
I hope they DO discover a cure some day, so that the people who want and/or need to get rid of their bipolar can do so. I just wouldn't take it myself.
This is, actually, a big topic in disabilities rights circles, and for most types of disabilities, there is this split. I hope we can learn to cure ALL of them, or prevent them. But there will be those who don't want to be cured. And that's our choice to make.
I don't know where Chaz comes down on this, and I can't ask him. Not without building a whole fishy-sounding hypothetical, which I am just not going to do. But it IS something he's had his whole life, and I think we ought to consider that he might not want a cure. And his metabolism is a result of his anomaly.
