#isn't quite compelling

[rad-roche]

i am wholly compelled by the artifice that goes into making youtube videos, and it's youtube videos specifically. tv and movies don't itch in quite that same way. i think it's fascinating. like, you know those solo camping videos? if i'm absolutely bedridden for whatever reason, i find myself watching a lot of those. they're sedate, you don't have to keep track of them in the way you would a tv show, the scenery is beautiful, you see amazing parts of the world. somebody lugs a tent up a mountain, and you think well, that seems hard, to lug that tent up that mountain. look at him crest that hill, walking towards us. but somebody had to put that camera there for this person to do that, we aren't seeing this psychically. there's either somebody else there, like a tv travel show, or this is genuinely is a solo camp and this guy has trekked to the peak, put the camera down, walked a reasonable distance back, walked to the top again and then reacted to the beautiful view. when they do that, i'm always obsessed with the few minutes i didn't see, setting up that camera. did they look at the view and appreciate it beyond the confines of a packaged video, for themselves? did they avoid looking for a more genuine reaction? are they overwhelmed twice? it's not like a beautiful view wears off, right? if i parked myself in a beautiful location and said heyguyswelcometothisvideooooo would i enjoy it more, for having shared it, or less for the obligation? how does editing that footage change how you think about what you do? does somebody else doing it make that better? my god, don't even get me started on what goes into making those silent cooking vids!

[demaparbat-hp]

In your Spitfire AU, since Zuko is looking after Lu Ten II, what happened to Ursa?

Zuko is slightly older in the Spitfire AU. He was banished at fifteen, his head a little clearer and denial a little weaker than in canon. After his first look through the Air Temples, Zuko decides that if he can't find a myth, he might as well search for the next best thing.

Finding Ursa isn't easy, but in time he makes it to a secluded house in a near-forgotten part of the world. His mom is there, older and stronger and alive.

But she isn't alone.

And Zuko, as it turns out, didn't keep the best company during his search.

When Ursa is discovered and her secrets are laid bare for assassins (for Ozai) to find, she begs Zuko to take his little brother and run. She'll do anything it takes to protect her children, even if that means leaving them behind to keep a target off their back. Ursa diverts attention from them and allows Lu Ten's ancestry to be kept a secret. She orders Zuko not to follow her again, and disappears.

Zuko is left with a little three-year-old brother to raise and a mother he cannot hold onto.

[bisaster-energy]

people who hc cas as this just. guy that helps dean with his issues and trauma. why are you living that "no one cares that you're broken cas" life. why are you not caring about him.

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[luv-again]

wondering whether i shld just jump back into my cryptic castle fic now that i've left it for almost a good couple weeks

[pynkhues]

Finally watching s3 of Industry and it's becoming an example I use in my head of good storytelling, bad writing.

[arataka-reigen]

botl is probably my least favorite og pjo book. It's good, but it can get annoying with the whole "and we're back in the labyrinth again" "and we're back in the labyrinth again" "and we're back-

[ploverpaw]

going to post this video saturday at noon [no reason for me to miss it this time] and the frames the next weekend

[wizzardhat]

Im rereading nona and i am baffled anew by people who listen to jod recount every single agonizing step in his slow and terrible descent and are like, "wow John was always an awful irredeemable liar and his reluctance to admit that he set off the nukes was not, in fact, him struggling to accept the magnitude of how completely and terribly he failed and became the very person he was trying to stop, but was just another calculated lie because he's a Bad Man. if it were me i would have simply not done that." I have to assume these are the same people who read "**When our backs are against the wall and everything is falling apart we rarely become heroes" and were like "huh i wonder who thats for"

**approximate quote from memory because I cannot for the life of me find the exact excerpt but it was one of Wake's "letters" that only Harrow could read while they were in the bubble

[lightsonparkave]

how do you choose the theme and compile the prompts for each months of LoPA?

Thanks for asking! For themes, I go with concepts that both intrigue me and are broad enough that I won't have trouble finding prompts and I feel give space for different interpretations and approaches. I also have a list of themes that I came up with a few years ago and add onto it whenever a theme comes to mind. I peruse that list if I'm not quite sure yet what the next round will be. If I get struck with sudden inspiration, though, I typically go with the theme that just came to me for the next month.

Seasonality frequently comes into play too. Certain times of the year I feel are ripe for contemplating certain ideas and being in certain moods, so you can see connections between some rounds across different years! This helps me figure out rounds ahead of time, though I almost always end up scrambling last minute each month despite that haha. I tend to get distracted by my prompt search.

Speaking of which, if I see something that would make a great prompt, I save it. I rummage through that collection every time I need to make a new round. That never gets old because even if I had a theme in mind for that prompt, while I sort through my likes and drafts, I may see that prompt in a different light because I realize it suits the round I'm hunting prompts for.

This is also why it takes me hours to put a list together even if I have that treasure box to sift through as well as things I come up with that I think will be good ideas to start a search. You'd think I'd learn by now to spread this process out throughout the month instead of scrambling last minute, but no. :') It's fun, though, because I not only revisit works that I've gone through, but I get to go down rabbit holes as well. I use the works as starting points and go down different branches, or I have keywords in mind that I use to see what turns up. I've been introduced to a handful of new writers, artists, musicians, and other creative individuals and thinkers and works that way, and my Steve/Tony and LoPA mind never shuts off entirely when I look at new things so when I'm experiencing something new, there are a lot of times when I think "THAT'S STEVE/TONY" or "how can this be Steve/Tony?" haha.

I love looking at a variety of sources for creative inspiration although weirdly enough, I tend not to draw on them while I write. I guess I just like looking at shiny baubles and the act of curating and sharing my finds! But the whole reasoning behind LoPA's existence and what inspired me to start it are a whole different story and this is about process so I'll stop here.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

sometimes I think about The Last and want to scream

[omegawizardposting]

If I see one more woman or straight man try to ~critique~ the Boyfriends webtoon, I'm going to hunt them down and skin them alive. (In Minecraft, etc., etc.)

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 4 :)

[dirtyoldmanhole]

slightly sleep drunk on a saturday just 2 poast that gunter is solidly my favorite villain of all time like.... god

i am not over this fucker.

[curlicuecal]

playing science telephone

Hi folks. Let's play a fun game today called "unravelling bad science communication back to its source."

Journey with me.

Saw a comment going around on a tumblr thread that "sometimes the life expectancy of autism is cited in the 30s"

That number seemed..... strange. The commenter DID go on to say that that was "situational on people being awful and not… anything autism actually does", but you know what? Still a strange number. I feel compelled to fact check.

Quick Google "autism life expectancy" pulls up quite a few websites bandying around the number 39. Which is ~technically~ within the 30s, but already higher than the tumblr factoid would suggest. But, guess what. This number still sounds strange to me.

Most of the websites presenting this factoid present themselves as official autism resources and organizations (for parents, etc), and most of them vaguely wave towards "studies."

Ex: "Above And Beyond Therapy" has a whole article on "Does Autism Affect Life Expectancy" and states:

The link implies that it will take you to the "research studies" being referenced, but it in fact takes you to another random autism resource group called.... Songbird Care?

And on that website we find the factoid again:

Ooh, look. Now they've added the word "some". The average lifespan for SOME autistic people. Which the next group erased from the fact. The message shifts further.

And we have slightly more information about the study! (Which has also shifted from "studies" to a singular "study"). And we have another link!

Wonderfully, this link actually takes us to the actual peer-reviewed 2020 study being discussed. [x]

And here, just by reading the abstract, we find the most important information of all.

This study followed a cohort of adolescent and adult autistic people across a 20 year time period. Within that time period, 6.4% of the cohort died. Within that 6.4%, the average age of death was 39 years.

So this number is VERY MUCH not the average age of death for autistic people, or even the average age of death for the cohort of autistic people in that study. It is the average age of death IF you died young and within the 20 year period of the study (n=26), and also we don't even know the average starting age of participants without digging into earlier papers, except that it was 10 or older. (If you're curious, the researchers in the study suggested reduced self-sufficiency to be among the biggest risk factors for the early mortality group.)

But the number in the study has been removed from it's context, gradually modified and spread around the web, and modified some more, until it is pretty much a nonsense number that everyone is citing from everyone else.

There ARE two other numbers that pop up semi-frequently:

One cites the life expectancy at 58. I will leave finding the context for that number as an exercise for the audience, since none of the places I saw it gave a direct citation for where they were getting it.

And then, probably the best and most relevant number floating around out there (and the least frequently cited) draws from a 2023 study of over 17,000 UK people with an autism diagnosis, across 30 years. [x] This study estimated life expectancies between 70 and 77 years, varying with sex and presence/absence of a learning disability. (As compared to the UK 80-83 average for the population as a whole.)

This is a set of numbers that makes way more sense and is backed by way better data, but isn't quite as snappy a soundbite to pass around the internet. I'm gonna pass it around anyway, because I feel bad about how many scared internet people I stumbled across while doing this search.

People on quora like "I'm autistic, can I live past 38"-- honey, YES. omg.

---

tl;dr, when someone gives you a number out of context, consider that the context is probably important

also, make an amateur fact checker's life easier and CITE YOUR SOURCES

[bonyato]

One remarkably funny aspect of my experience w/ DGМN was all those instances in which Id favor a digidеstined's critter more than I did the kid they were partnered up with. it felt exactly like this image