Stardate: 20260424

Intro:

This month: I’m helping out a friend, and we examine the rule that silenced awkward family visits with that one relative eberybody’s got and no one likes to talk about:

Just because I am this way, does not invalidate you being that way. Your truth is as valid and beautiful as mine. I’ve no more right to yours than you have to mine.

Lets get to it!

News:

Like I said in the title, the two Dev’s are uniting!

A while back, I did some voice work and some writing for a fiction podcast called Forward Momentum Productions, run by another ‘Dev’, Devin Cox.

FMP shut down during the pandemic, but now, after several years Dev is trying to bring it back, and finish the last two series FMP was working on, “Bubblegum Crisis” and “Sea of Stars: Odyssey.” He’s even tapped me to do more work as Quincy Rosenkroitz in Bubblegum (IYKYK).

But even as FMP was set to rise phoenix-like from the ashes, they hit a big snag. They needed a new place to host their episodes.

So, FMP is coming to the Galaxy! All of their back catalog will be uploaded soon, and the new episodes when they’re ready to release (that’s on Dev C., so yell at him for being vague). The idea is to release them on a new free tier, because we both agree that these should not be behind any kind of paywall. You can check out FMP’s website for more details about what they do, even hear some of the back catalog now. But be warned, their host is somewhat temperamental about bandwidth, hence the shifting of the big audio files to the Galaxy.

The podcast will technically launch May the 4th, with the re-release of FMP’s original work, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Outcasts! (sheesh what a title!) That’s right, we’re doing a proper Star Wars Day!

More on this as things develop, wish us luck.

In The Library:

I’m just going to plug FMP again. Their stuff is definitely worth a listen, and yes full disclosure, I did voice work for them since the original Sea of Stars days, and the April Chunk on the Galaxy is set in that universe. So I guess I’m plugging my work work again, kinda?
But still, worth a listen.

The Good

So, what do I mean by this:

Just because I am this way, does not invalidate you being that way. Your truth is as valid and beautiful as mine. We’ve no right to take each other’s by force.

I mean that you do not have to think and believe as I do. Not must I align with your way of life for either of us to exist. Our mutual existences do not require either of us to agree. We have the right to differ, to express our differences with respect, and even to try and change each other’s mind if all parties are open to that discussion.

The Fugly

I’m swapping the order because this month’s Bad builds on the Fugly instead of the other way around.

All families have that one relative. The person who clings to their viewpoint and is so convinced of their own correctness that they become angry when challenged. Among my kin, my Uncle Mike (not their real name but I don’t want to out em) and I were famous for our arguments.

Mike was always right, because that one youtube video agreed with their stance. Didn’t trust any media that didn’t come from their church, and would disqualify any evidence against their viewpoint as coming from ‘them’.

I on the other hand, don’t trust anything that comes from Network News sans corroboration, try not to cite things I don’t have a source for (I don’t always succeed with this, but I try), and am generally skeptical of anybody who is selling something- particularly when it’s not apparent what they’re selling (it’s probably you).

Uncle Mike would always try to save my soul, and I’d respond with (hopefully) polite counterpoint. But eventually we’d get to the point where we talking at each other – not to, and our rhetoric was escalating. To Mike’s credit, if someone tried to change the subject, he’d go along with it, for a few minutes, then try to sum up his previous argument and kick it all off again. To be fair, I did the same thing a time or two as well.

Really. Freaking. Ugly.

The Bad

It got to the point that Uncle Mike and I didn’t really talk for a year or so. Worse, since Mike is my maternal uncle, my Mom felt stuck between fire and flood.

It was then that Mike said something in a family chat. Something along the lines of just wanting his opinion respected. Now, we’ll talk about opinions in a later episode, but his brought me up short. I’ve long held that the right to think and feel as you want is a fundamental right of sentience. But at what point does that stop? If I think and feel that I have the right to own another person- that’s wrong… but that’s an easy one. Where is the line?

Mike was feeling hurt because I wasn’t respecting his right to disagree, and I was feeling hurt for the same reason. What was the solution?

Then it hit me. Mike and I both have the right to be wrong (from each other’s point of view). I dislike using the word ‘wrong’ here. I don’t want to use something that sounds judgmental, but I also don’t want to keep repeating a long sentence when one word sums it up. Our viewpoints weren’t physically harming one another, just the disagreement was. So why keep trying to settle what could not be?

We still disagree, and we still argue. But now, we know where the line is, and we do a much better job of not crossing it.

---

Well, that’s it for this episode. Next time, we end the KU Experiment, and I’ll have all sorts of FMP new to discuss, as well as the goofiest rule of the bunch:

If you kill the joe, make some mo.

• The same is also true for the last tray of ice cubes.
• If you don’t know what the joe is, look it up. Don’t make others do for you.

See you in June!
-Dev J.