so I heard someone say, “I like my characters to wear glasses bc I wear glasses, but if I got penalties or my glasses knocked off the GM is a dick.” And..golly there’s a lot to unpack there (thread)

Like....in Star Trek, Geordie has a visor, and functionally his vision ends up most of the time as “no penalty.” Star Trek is a pretty specific setting where technology has unlimited reach (but sometimes reaches those heights in peculiar ways).

To me, if something is there in the game world, it has meaning. Sometimes the visor breaks; sometimes it raises eyebrows w/low tech indigenous peoples; sometimes if gives Geordi an edge seeing deep into the EM spectrum, or turn off his vision as Ulysses poured wax in his ears...

I’m just gonna let that example hang for a minute. “No penalty” doesn’t mean “never comes up.” To go further requires a complex kind of social, emotional doublethink that...is next to impossible for us neurodivergents to pull off. Can bring on meltdowns even.

The good news is in the spade is a spade world of autism spectrum and impaired emotional processing ADHD, we tend understand the golden rule...we don’t want to get singled out either. But we also dislike being constantly asked to perform as if we’re neurotypical.

The handwavium necessary to both see & overlook something, acknowledged as there, yet never show consequence or nuance...i struggle to do that, much less have fun GMing while doing the social and emotional processing gymnastics in real-time necessary to pull it off.

—so nobody gets confused about where I stand, trans women are women, full stop— i unequivocally accept self-identification as the ultimate source of gender; bioessentialism is dumb. But this thread isn’t about that...

Anyhoo, Social doublethink and doublespeak is next to impossible for neurodivergent people to pull off. We’re honest to a “fault” sometimes and that can mean we can’t help calling a spade a spade. Your PC wears glasses; you told us that was important we recognize, not overlook

As a neurodiverse person I have a play style that keeps me from having meltdowns trying to process 2+2=5 moments. I am willing to declare that, to give folks a heads up that’s how I roll.

I’m willing to step outside my comfort zone for inclusion’s sake, to try out some there-not-there. I’ll probably make mistakes, I might cramp up in one of those “autistic fits,” y’all love to make fun of us for, especially if I’m goaded/bullied to take advantage of my disorder

I don’t have a sharp conclusion to this thread topping it off w/a call to action; that‘d take empathy & emotional processing that doesn’t come easy to me. Let’s just remember RPGs once were a safer place for neurodiverse folks, Some of us even rose to prominence here.