ramorazinn

[ramorazinn]

I don’t hate people. I mean, I have specific people that I hate. I think everyone does. But I have a “work husband” and “work friends” and whatever. I’m not sure what you’re imagining about my life, but my contempt and hostility is for The Neurotypical Code™️, not the concept of interpersonal connection.

I’m sorry, you can gussy it up, but I can’t parse it as anything but NTs tricking me into asking what they want me to ask. “Nothing” as a response to “what did you do [time period]?” gets “aww, surely you did SOMETHING fun?” because The Neurotypical Code™️ has mysterious rules about balancing how much each person talks, so I have to give a “good” answer or they can’t talk about the half-marathon they ran and the funny thing that happened at dinner afterward.

I have had work-friends tell me “so-and-so-you-don’t-know-well is upset you didn’t ask about X after she asked you,” like we’re in kindergarten. I have had my old BOSS tell me to remember to reciprocate small talk questions. (I am not front-facing; small talk is not part of my job description I was failing at.) And I do try, but again, threading that needle of not lying but not telling the truth is WORK. I don’t always have anything left to remember my cues with. People largely don’t accept that.

NTs in my new office (where, as my prev tags stated, old hiring practices have left about half the seats filled with NDs) tend to spread out their visits more, and they come right in and start the conversation with what they want to talk about. They have learned that cornering somebody is not the way to have an enjoyable conversation. And I don’t always get them or care about their specific drama or even remember who they ARE, but doing the call-and-response where the onus is not on me to come up with a “correct” answer is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE less stressful. And they get the validation or attention or encouragement or connection they wanted! Everybody wins! (Except when it turns into #3 above, losing 2h to chatting.)

But most people stick with that “I have to ask you first before I talk about myself or it’s rude” Neurotypical Code™️ bullshit. I assume you will object to me characterizing that as them not caring whether I’m comfortable. But again, I don’t know how else to parse that. I don’t read social cues well, obviously, but if someone stammered and um-er-ahhed and never seemed to have a good answer when I asked about their weekend, I feel like even I would grok that I shouldn’t ask about their weekend? Eventually?

And yes, I’ve learned to lie without lying. I can dodge “OMG isn’t she the cutest baby you’ve ever seen?” with “she has your nose” or “I love that outfit” or whatever true thing I can find, because no, that is not the cutest baby, but my wife trained that social hack into me. I don’t like it, because it still feels like lying, but I do it. I don’t understand why people would phrase things that way if they didn’t want you to lie and agree. I was always told “don’t ask a question you don’t want an answer to.”

(P.S., it’s often uncomfortable when they “return the favor,” because I cannot always read the cues of when I am supposed to stop talking, either, and they are bound by The Neurotypical Code™️ not to make it more clear, because that would be “rude.” I read an article when I was 8 or 9 that said conversation had two parts: talking about yourself and waiting to talk about yourself. That sounded horrible to me, so I vowed to talk about myself as little as possible, until people got mad about that, too. Still haven’t found the sweet spot.)

But also… I don’t understand why I can’t just love people because they do their job and that means I can do mine. That’s way more important to me as a trust exercise – and when you know you can trust people, you have REAL conversations instead of “small talk.”

I'm trying to figure out a good way to say "you really should actually learn the basics of small talk" with sounding like I'm biased against autistic people.

[ramorazinn]

So here’s the thing. Small talk 99% of the time comes in 3 varieties:

1. NT person trying to trick me into asking questions so they can talk about something, e.g., they want to talk about what they did this weekend so they ask me about my weekend. In figuring out an appropriate response to “what did you do this weekend?” (pro tip: honest replies such as “nothing” or “recovered from spending last week dealing with you fuckers” are not accepted) I have now exhausted my social energy and will not remember to hit my cue and ask them about THEIR weekend, thus violating The Neurotypical Code™️. Why can’t they just drop by my office and say “OMG I HAD A CRAZY WEEKEND!” and tell me about it? Because apparently The Neurotypical Code™️ decrees that’s rude.

2. NT folks expecting me to lie. (This often overlaps with #1, because finding a response that NTs like often requires, at the very least, lies of omission.) In case you fell off the turnip truck yesterday, I will explicitly state that many NDs do not (or even cannot) lie. Personally, even though I know The Neurotypical Code™️ demands I say something about their baby/dog/house/event/whatever being the best/most interesting ever, I cannot make it come out of my mouth. I understand The Neurotypical Code™️ labels this a Skill Issue and does not address the apparent contradiction between “small talk means we’re friends!” and “lying is good, actually.”

3. Small Talk accidentally encounters a good topic, so I have lost 2h of my day without noticing and will have to make that work up instead of going home on time.

So yeah I DO think it is reasonable to expect NTs to either meet me in the middle or fuck off.

I'm trying to figure out a good way to say "you really should actually learn the basics of small talk" with sounding like I'm biased against autistic people.

[ramorazinn]

Game idea: you've got a series of spells you can use, which you cast by typing them.

But enemy bosses can attack your keyboard. Your "E" key is disabled. FIREBALL is out. ICE9? Also out. Guess they're getting hit with SUMMON FROG.

The bosses can also drop traps on your keys. So if N is trapped, you can cast SUMMON FROG, but the N-trap will go off and you'll take damage.

An advanced late game spell is THESAURUS, which lets you reanalyze a spell. Can't do SUMMON NIGHT WOLF because your N key is broken? THESAURUS it and now it's CREATE DARK DOG.

Another enemy attack would be putting a counter on your keys. So if they put a 1 on your R, you can cast "FIREBALL" but "CIRCLE OF TERROR" is right out.

The two can be combined: a trapped counter only goes off if you type more than the counter. So a trapped 2 on your S means "HEAL SELF" is fine but "TRANSFORM SELF TO SERPENT" will activate the trap and you'll take damage.

One late game boss attacks you by cutting your keyboard in half, and which half works alternates between turns. You gotta figure out which spells you can use that turn.

You could do some fun gimmick-fights. Like a boss sweeps your keyboard off the table and makes you play scrabble instead: you have to spell spells to cast them.

Or wheel of fortune, where you have to get enough money to be able to buy vowels before you can cast spells with vowels in them. The puzzle on the board is a spell the boss is going to cast against you, so it's also a fight against time. If you correctly guess too many letters, they'll solve and you'll get hit with the spell.

I think the way it works is that you fight some mooks and then a boss, and each boss has a new spell they can cast against you.

But you can cast any spell you've seen used against you, so like you start with merely FIREBALL but the first boss hits you with HIGH JUMP, and now you can use that ability out of battle, cause it's a metroidvania of course, and now new areas are accessible.

But bosses can use "forbidden" spells against you, and they do it by typing words you can't.

Like the viking boss hits you with a OÄNDLIG FJÄRIL and you don't have that letter.

(later you can upgrade your keyboard to get access to some forbidden letters, but at great cost: you must sacrifice a letter to gain it, and you don't get to pick which letter the keyboard surgeon will take)

[ramorazinn]

Can we talk about how Roy was 100% the person who came up with and choreographed the good bye dance for Beard and Ted in the final episode?

And the reason they lose their shit so hard when the coaches praise them for it is because they all got up and practiced the choreography at four am for a week to keep Ted and Beard in the dark about it and they’re all exhausted 😴

[ramorazinn]

While you are not wrong, “i had a bad experience with one religion so i distrust/despise all religions” is no different from any other “i had a bad experience with X so i distrust/despise all X” trauma. Yes it’s usually visible to others only as some flavor of -ism, but all you can do is go to therapy about it, and ain’t nobody can afford that in the Land of the Free.

cultural christians are some of my least favorite fucking people. "putting aside religion temporarily (or forever haha wink wink)" just say you don't know what Taoism or the Bear Dance is and shut up

[ramorazinn]

Santa's Reindeer will be well taken care of tonight 😉🦌🎅🏼🎄

[ramorazinn]

shit man tomorrow is christmas eve i swear yesterday was June 2010

[ramorazinn]

🎄🎄~The Christmas feast~🎄🎄

[ramorazinn]

The Brett Goldstein Sings the Muppets Christmas Carol in 6 minutes video was just brought to my attention and if you haven’t viewed it I would highly recommend youtubing it.

OH MY GOD!!!! I cannot believe THIS is the same man that plays Roy fucking Kent!!!!! 😂💀 This just makes me love Brett even MORE 🥰 The costume changes! 👏🙌

[ramorazinn]

ADHD time blindness be like "oh, today is the 30th? that's fine, December is still next month, that's forever away!

...what do you mean tommorrow?"

[ramorazinn]

In grad class RN and the prof is talking about Web 2.0:

"Most of you are probably too young to remember Tumblr."

[ramorazinn]

This the Blue Florida of prosperity Reblog for 4 years of good luck

[ramorazinn]

[ramorazinn]

like to charge, reblogs to cast

[ramorazinn]

Rolling around in my head one of those time-travel-into-your-younger-body fics that seem to have fallen out of vogue and I looked up the 2014 England national squad and who is there with Roy Kent but Ben Foster and ofc I also watch The Real Life Football Show so I'm like "OMG Foz!" and so I'm thinking Roy and Jamie (u17s?) chatting at St. James's Park:

"Fucking Foz from Wrexham, can you believe it?" Roy asks. Jamie about falls over laughing.  "He ent from Wrexham, nobody's heard of Wrexham until like… after Ted, right?  You're a mean old man, Roy Kent." "Maybe I should go there instead," he says.  "End my career with a different type of Yankee fucking Doodle."

[ramorazinn]

What the hell is in y'all's paracetamol in England, because the googs says it's the same as USAnian acetaminophen (Tylenol), but every time Roy takes it in a fic y'all make it sound like moose tranquilizer...

[ramorazinn]

Is there someone somewhere who has done a supercut of the Roy/Jamie(/Keeley) scenes because my Apple TV subscription is running out and I’m gonna miss my blorbos