Good news! Part I of my thesis is officially complete! Somewhere along the way, I also made the executive decision to remove Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy as one of my core readings. Why? Because, in plain words, I was doing entirely too much. Sometimes less really is more, and making that decision allowed me to tighten my focus and make the writing process much more manageable.

Now, I am shifting gears into my autoethnographic writing, which requires a completely different mindset from the analytical work I have been doing. Thankfully, my memoir writing independent study with Professor Giunta has been incredibly helpful in making that transition. It is exciting to move from examining other people’s experiences to reflecting more deeply on my own.

For now, I am right on track with where I wanted to be, and considering how ambitious this project has been, I am taking that as a win! One section down, two to go!

It was such a busy week, the horrors persist but so do I.

So right now I am like knee deep in the research phase.

Was this week crazy productive? No.

Is the research going well? It’s not bad.

Am I confident I’m gonna get it done? Yes.

I am at that weird point where I’m starting to knock out the articles I thought were going to be really helpful, but they weren’t. On the other hand, I am starting to see my paper coming together. (I am getting subheading ideas *evil laughing*)

I really have two big goals for this week and next:

1. Sources- Finish reading through the sources I have right now. It is a mix of looking through rhetorical and psychological studies so I have been casting a really large net. I have really just been going through any and every source I can find and *legally* downloading them. So, the next steps look like getting at least 10-15 more solid sources with an additional 5-10 supplementary sources.
2. Examples- I have been collecting real world examples of the phenomena I’m writing about for the passed few years. So the plan is to go through those and pick which ones I can use and which I would need to get rid of.

After I complete those steps, I need to start planning out my actual methodology, but I am excited for that so we’re still in the green.

Hopefully, I’ll have something really good to share next time. Until then, Dear Reader.

I did not get much done this week. I probably won’t get much done in for the rest of October. There is a conference in the middle of Novemeber that Guitar has me doing some work for, and he wants a finished paper by the 21st. It is the queer gaming thing I have mentioned in other classes, and it has taken me 10 hours to sort through the PlayStation and HALF the Xbox list. I still got the other half of Xbox and Steam to sort through. It might not seem important to go through all these list, but the Xbox one I did get through was interesting. There was a whole category for trans and nonbinary games, but I would say only like five at MOST out of the 60ish games should actually be on that list. So many games were on the trans/nonbinary list because the creator was trans or nonbinary. Which I don’t think should count at all. Just cause the creator is one thing doesn’t make the creation the same thing. Also, so many games have the main character that you play as be “nonbinary”. I say it doesn’t count, the game just defaults to using they/them to not offend anyone. It makes the player more acceptable to the game if the default is they/them instead of standard. I don’t really think it is to be queer I think it is to sell to more people. If the character isn’t even directly nonbinary I think it shouldn’t count. But yeah only a select few games have important enough queer story lines for me to think they belong on the list.

BUT, because of that deadline and the amount of research I have to do for that, I didn’t really find the time to do things for thesis. I am hoping to cram stuff in Novemeber and December for thesis, cause October is gonna be packed with queer gaming stuff. I can’t exactly lock in for extra time with thesis just yet. I am trying, trust, but not enough time in the week/day/month for all the research I need to do.

So, I didn’t get around to looking at more literature as I had planned/hoped to do. I did get started on a list of disabilities/characters though. I would like to go through more lists, but I feel like this is a good start/all the characters I could come up with for now. I wanted to look around the internet some more for some ones I might have missed/not thought of. I looked through three lists so far and have included ones I thought of, ones I think are popular enough, and ones that connect to my research. Apparently, some Agents of SHIELD show has a ton of characters I haven’t heard of/die? One list mentioned the character and did a parenthesis if they did and almost every character mentioned from that show died so. Idk what is going on in that show but it seems everyone just be dying so not sure if that is even good Marvel lore to include. But, considering I have seen almost all the Marvel movies and a bunch of the other shows and didn’t know those guys, they must be niche comic characters. And I figured it would be better to stay to the more popular ones, espeically the ones not found in a show that kills off everyone. I didn’t think that show was popular enough but if these characters do keep poping up maybe I will include them? I don’t want to have a 50 paged list though, so sticking to the more popular characters has to be the way to go. And if I don’t know them, with my decent Marvel knowledge, then they aren’t going on the list. Anyway, the list.

Amputees/missing limb

• Bucky, metal arm  
• Nebula, multiple metal parts  
• Echo: Maya Lopez, prosthetic leg 
• Misty Knight, metal arm 
• Ulysses Klaue, arm turns into gun 
• Razor Fist, kinda like the name suggests this guy has knives/razors for hands 
• Eitri, Thanos ruined Eitri’s hands in Avengers: Infinity War by forcing them into a vat of molten Uru metal, which solidified and encased his fingers into useless metal blocks
• Yo-Yo Rodriguez, loses both her arms and gets metal prosthetics  

Deformities/Disfigured

• Thing 
• Dr. Doom 

Visually Impaired

• Visually Impaired 
• Daredevil, blind 
• Cyclops, without special eyewear that has him see in red, his eyes are portals to a punch dimension 
• Alicia Masters, blind 
• Nick Fury, eye patch 
• Thor, eye patch/fake eye  
• Odin, eye patch  
• Stick, blind (skilled and experienced grandmaster of various Asian martial arts)  
• Gordon (as shown on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., eyeless Inhuman teleporter), blind  

Hearing Impaired

• Hawkeye: Clint Barton, hard of hearing  
• Echo: Maya Lopez, deaf 
• Makkari (member of the Eternals) deaf 

Science gone wrong

• Dr. Morbius: As a human, was dying from a rare blood disease very similar to the one that killed Harold Ramis but combined with severe bone depletion. Morbius experimented on himself and accidentally became a scientifically created vampire but with certain draw backs 
• Lizard. Amputee that used Lizard DNA to regrow his arm, but the science went wrong and transformed him into a lizard  
• Man-Thing: Man-Thing used to be a brilliant Scientist.  Now he is something of an empathic plant monster that can sense emotions, especially fear. He’s mute. 
• Aldrich Killian, A limp that requires him to use a cane for walking, severe scoliosis or stooped posture, resulting in hunched and awkward body movements.Driven by a fierce desire to overcome his physical limitations, Killian founded Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.)  to develop Extremis—a techno-organic virus designed to rewrite the body’s genetic code to heal crippling injuries and illnesses. Killian used himself as a primary test subject. The Extremis serum completely cured his disabilities, corrected his posture, and eliminated his need for a cane. When he later reunites with Pepper Potts in 2013, he covers up the radical transformation by lying and attributing his new look and perfect mobility to “5 years of physical therapy 

Mobility Issues

• Professor X: Paralysis from waist down, wheelchair 
• Iron Patriot: James Rhodes: permanent paralysis from the waist down. His mobility issues stem from a severe spinal column fracture sustained during the airport battle in Captain America: Civil War. Moves using advanced bionic leg braces and his War Machine armor 
• Jonathan Pangborn, paralyzed from an industrial accident, healed through magic at Kamar-Taj, and later stripped of his powers by Karl Mordo, which made him paralyzed again. 
• Bullseye: Ben Poindexter, had spinal surgery after Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) slammed him into the corner of a wall in the climactic fight scene of the season finale of season 3. Moves fine in Daredevil Born Again  

This is the list for now. After like two or so more lists, I plan to look at how the internet views these characters to see if how Marvel handled the disability sits well with people. Like I doubt people enjoy the representation of these people with mobility issues getting fixed up. So the list is still a work in progress, but it is the only progress I have for this week so it is getting posted.