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But then when you think about it outside of the context of the sentient toy plotline, Sid's just a creative kid who likes to experiment and modify stuff and that's, in fact, a totally normal way to play (setting aside some of his other problems), meanwhile Andy has a cowboy doll from the 1950's that is somehow still in really good condition and has most of his accessories, and survives until Andy goes off to college with only relatively minor damage and repairs?

Which wouldn't necessarily make Andy's way of handling his toys more abnormal than Sid's, but at least implies that he is just as weird in a different direction?

I often think about this dichotomy in terms of fandom. In one corner you have the kinds of people who are like, yes we must treat our beloved fiction Respectfully, and in the other corner you have the kinds of people who would hot glue robot arms onto Hello Kitty so she could fight Megatron because that's badass, and honestly neither is better or worse it's just different. But sometimes the Andys of fandom think that the Sids of fandom are messed up and committing crimes against their toys, when in reality the toys aren't actually capable of caring, and the Sids are just doing their own thing.

Maybe the metaphor's not a perfect fit but like. At the end of the day, I think the worst thing you can do in fandom is fall prey to the temptation to be a sanctimonious prick about how other people play dolls. "Why would you watch a show if you don't even like canon and only want to write deranged fanfiction about some of the characters?" man I owned like, five GI Joes when I was a kid, and I didn't even like GI Joe. But some of those color change ninjas were cool.

"Because the decision rests entirely on the Montana Constitution, it is insulated from the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the principle of adequate and independent state grounds, the federal Supreme Court cannot review a state court's interpretation of its own constitution, so long as that constitution provides more protection than the federal one. [...] What this means in practice is that Montana's transgender residents now have a constitutional shield completely independent of the Supreme Court of the United State’s decisions."

Like it's bad when a "tattoo is undulating" (as opposed to... "drawn in a wave like pattern on the skin"?), or when hair is "wet wheat from a late Summer field" (as opposed to "sort of brownish light yellow that dries lighter, but is not actual wheat stalks growing on someone's head but kind of reminiscent of the color and texture"?), or when when ice cream tastes like midnight at the fair" (as opposed to "ice cream flavour bringing back memories of undefined ice cream flavours that are individually popular but always tied to a memory of late evening at the fair ground and probably smelling vaguely like popcorn and sugar"?).

This is like the literary equivalent of meeting someone who doesn't know Darth Vader is Luke's father.

So they go "I don't understand why anyone would have a problem with this relationship! Yeah he's older and there is a class/power difference but he clearly respects her as a person and it's so refreshing!" and you just cackle, cackle, cackle behind your screen until the inevitable day you get this message.

Them: I have a work of literary cyberpunk that seriously explores the impact of ubiquitous cybernetic enhancement upon bodily autonomy.

Me: Does it really seriously explore the impact of ubiquitous cybernetic enhancement upon bodily autonomy, or does it employ bodily autonomy as a metaphor for the artist's loss of intellectual freedom under the corporate state?

Them: It definitely seriously explores the impact of ubiquitous cybernetic enhancement upon bodily autonomy.

Me: All right – show me your work of literary cyberpunk that seriously explores the impact of ubiquitous cybernetic enhancement upon bodily autonomy.

Me: *looks inside*

And they were like "What?"

And I was like, "Agility isn't the ultimate form of preparedness. Contingency is. Agility still requires you to flounder and figure out a solution in the moment, but if you have a contingency plan, all you have to do is implement it."

And they were like "But you can't make contingency plans for every situation!"

And I was like, "Yeah, you basically can if you just identify all of your basic dependencies and contingency plan around the loss of any dependency," and then I gave a few examples.

And they all stared at me like I'm an alien.

As he described to the interviewer a moment of panic and how he he overcame, the interviewer said, in one of those, summarise-last-answer-given-with-appropriate-levels-of-respect-in-order-to-proceed-to-next-question phrasing’s, “Wow, so you rose to the occasion -“