#me when things are not mutually exclusive

[ms-demeanor]

do you have tips for working on a car when you have adhd?

YES. YES VERY VERY MUCH.

Part One: Prep

Purchase a tear-down manual for your car. For older cars these are books you can buy at auto parts stores. For newer cars these are subscriptions that you have to get and the primary producers are Chilton's and Haynes. If you end up getting a subscription, you are going to download and print out the manual. The entire manual. And you are going to put it in a three ring binder and then put that binder in a waterproof bag. And then you are going to cancel your subscription. Digital access to your car manual is not enough; someday you will be away from cell signal or with a dead phone battery and will need to fix your car. Someday you will need to fix your car and your hands will be either greasy or in gloves and you won't be able to scroll on a screen. You need a physical manual for your car. No matter where you keep your tools, the tear-down manual lives in the car.

Have an organization system for your tools. It needs to be a system that works for you. My system is a very organized toolbox where I put everything back as soon as the project is done. Wrenches are kept on carabiners, sockets are kept in dedicated boxes, the car tools stay in the car or in the car maintenance cupboard. Large Bastard's system is three five-gallon buckets full of wrenches and breaker bars and an ammo can full of sockets. Our systems are mutually exclusive. He is not allowed to use my tools. If he uses my wrenches they end up in the bucket and then the 14mm is missing from my set and the 14mm is the one I need for everything on this car and I have to go buy another fucking wrench no, absolutely not, stop taking my wrenches. So the deal is that you need to know what system works for you and how to navigate it; Large Bastard has many duplicates of things because he uses tools for a ton of things and has a really huge volume of tools. It's more effective for him to have ten places to search for a tool and will be likely to find one, and it's more effective for me to know exactly where the tool lives. Which brings me to my second tip:

Keep an eye out for tools at yard sales and secondhand stores. Tools are expensive. If you are a frequent tool-loser, don't invest in expensive tools. It's okay if Large Bastard steals and loses my SAE wrench set in a bucket because that was seven dollars at Harbor Freight.

No matter what your system is, have a designated general area where "car maintenance stuff" goes. This may be a box in a truck bed or a cabinet in a garage or a bag in your trunk, but you're going to end up buying brake pads that you mean to install but then it's raining for three days so you set them down somewhere and now you can't find the pads. You're not going to use the whole bottle of coolant every time you top off your coolant, so you need a space (that is INACCESSIBLE TO CHILDREN AND PETS) to store the half-bottle of coolant.

Okay. So now you've got your tool system and your car-based junk-drawer. Before you start any car project, make sure you've got all the tools that the project calls for. That means BEFORE you start working on the project, you look through your tear-down manual and watch a youtube video or two and make sure you know what tools are required, because if you get halfway through a repair and realize that you need some vacuum hose you are going to stop doing the repair to go buy hose and it's a total crapshoot whether you're going to get back to the task. I'll repeat again: IF YOU ARE DOING CAR MAINTENANCE WITH ADHD, DO NOT START A PROJECT OR REPAIR UNTIL YOU ARE CERTAIN YOU HAVE ALL THE TOOLS, PARTS, AND CONSUMABLES THAT YOU WILL NEED TO COMPLETE THE JOB. You are going to mis-en-place this thing. Get a tool caddy or a plastic bin or something, read or watch the instructions for the repair all the way through and put each required tool or part in the bin. If you need to order parts or if a tool is lost, write that down as you're adding things to the bin. Then set the bin aside and acquire those things before you pop the hood. Once you have acquired those things, put them in the bin too, and then check the instructions again to verify that you have all the necessary equipment to do your repair.

As a corollary, before you make any car maintenance purchase, check and make sure you didn't already buy it and forget. Do you need oil for this oil change? Or did you buy five quarts three months ago when there was a sale and forget it? This is why you have your car-related storage area. Go through the instructions for the repair when you are able to look in the car-stuff-pit and see if you already have the car stuff.

Okay. You have your repair in mind. You have all the tools you need. You have all the parts purchased. You have your tear-down manual. Now you need to: Make sure that you have an open space to work and that you are following good car maintenance safety procedures - Never work on a car that is up on a jack, use jack stands - If you have a wheel off, put the wheel under the frame - Disconnect the battery if necessary (the manual will tell you what repairs to do this for) Check the weather and make sure you will be able to accomplish the repairs safely - If you need to get under a car, don't repair that car in the rain - If it is hot, make sure that you have some shade for your workspace; an easy-up is an oft-neglected car maintenance tool - If it is very, very cold, make sure you are protecting your hands from frostbite (you are going to be getting your hands wet and messy and then touching cold metal; you may not realize it if your fingers turn blue or lose feeling) Make sure that this is the correct time to start a repair project - Will you have enough light to get the project done in the daylight or do you need artificial lighting? - Do you have obligations that will cause problems if this repair runs long? - Are you hungry or exhausted? Wait to start until you have eaten or rested. You don't want to be too tired to think when you're working on a car.

Part two: Project (these are the answers you were probably looking for)

Every repair is going to be different, but all repairs are going to have some things in common. They're going to require some kind of equipment or tools, they're going to take some amount of time, they're going to require some amount of focus. Here are the things you can do to guard against your ADHD sabotaging you in regard to those things.

Equipment:

Use your phone to take a photo of what the repair area looked like before you started - make sure the photo(s) demonstrates where pins, screws, nuts, bolts, hoses and clamps were when you started.

Use a tool caddy or a plastic bin to keep your tools, parts, and consumables together as you are preparing for the repair.

Get a work blanket or a tarp to set your tools on top of as you're working if you're working under the car, or a bin to set tools in if you're working in the engine compartment; this prevents you from having to chase down that wrench that you set on top of the airbox and that promptly became invisible.

Have a container handy for screws, nuts, bolts, etc. Paper bowls are good for this purpose, as are old prescription bottles and peanut butter jars. Don't use a glass jar or a ceramic mug or anything that can shatter. Sometimes something that's relatively flat that you can lay parts out in is best for this purpose (for example a paper plate or a shoebox lid) and sometimes the best thing is something with a lid so you won't lose nuts if you knock it down (plastic jars or pill bottles). When you are finished taking apart whatever it is that you're taking apart, count the number of nuts and screws and pins you've removed and make sure that's how many you put back.

Time

How long a repair will take is difficult to predict; maybe it's super easy to get at a part you thought would be harder, maybe some dipshit decided to JB Weld a nut in place. Have some idea (from your manual or instructional video) of how long the task *should* take and assess whether you have the focus for a task of that length on that day. If you take meds, consider timing them to best facilitate the repair.

You know you better than I do; know if you will need a break. If you know you will need a break, prep your break ahead of time so that you won't have to stop for an hour to make lunch. Have a sandwich ready, have water nearby, have a comfortable place to sit set up close to your workspace so that you don't go inside, wash your hands, and suddenly remember that you needed to clean the grout in the kitchen and get distracted into a different task.

Focus

Obviously the last point is related to focus as well, but minimize potential distractions. Tell people you aren't available, set your phone to do not disturb, don't turn on the game on a TV in the garage. I find that I do well listening to stuff when I'm working on cars, but I don't do well with anything that I could watch or with having people around to talk to. I like music and podcasts when I'm working on cars.

Limit your scope. Maybe you're replacing rotted-out hoses and you remember that you were feeling some squishiness in the brakes. The brakes are a problem for later you. You are not working on the brakes now. You do not have your tools gathered for brake repair. You are working on the hoses now. (Aside from preventing you from losing tools, this is another reason to collect the tools you will need for each project instead of bringing your entire tool set out to work on the job - you can't work on the brakes, you only have the tools out for working on hoses right now)

Limit reasons to walk away from the repair. Go to the bathroom before you start. Have extra sets of gloves and shop towels handy. Climate control the area and yourself as much as possible (do you need a sweater? do you need a hat? do you need sunscreen? get that squared away before you start so you don't have to walk away in the middle and risk getting distracted)

Part 3: Post

When you're getting the thing buttoned up, make sure you use all of the parts that you took out. Compare against the photo you took at the start and count the screws.

Read back through the instructions step by step and make sure you did each step. Do this twice.

Manually check tightness of every part you worked on and visually check fluid levels (shoutout to the sketchy mechanic offering $15 oil changes who was surprised as fuck when I came back ten minutes after my oil change because I'd checked and the oil pan plug was only finger tight; turns out he was running a scam)

Clean up your workspace, both to get things tidy and to make sure you didn't overlook any parts.

Take the vehicle for a test drive. Make sure things are running well. If they are not running well, go back to your workspace and go through the troubleshooting steps in the manual to see if you can identify the problem (shoutout to the saturn dealership for the time they got water in my plug wires on my station wagon, shoutout to me for the time i got the order wrong on my saturn coupe plug wires)

If your car is working fine and you don't find yourself with seven extra hoses and a mystery solenoid, good job, you're done, put your tools away and pat yourself on the back.

TL;DR -

Get a teardown manual for your car

Keep your tools organized in a system that makes sense for you

Don't invest in expensive tools if you lose tools frequently

Before you start a project, make sure you've got all the necessary tools, parts, and fluids; before you buy tools, parts, or fluids check and see if you already have it.

Use a tool caddy or bin to keep the parts, tools, and fluids in one place while you're getting ready to start

Make sure that you have the space, time, and physical safety to start a project

Take a photo of the repair before you start to mark the position of bolts, pins, etc.

Have a designated space like a bin or a tarp to set down tools while you're working so that you don't set them down and lose them

Have a container to old fasteners and small parts so you don't lose them; count the parts you take out and make sure you put that many back in

Figure out how long the repair might take and realistically assess whether or not you have time to start

Plan breaks that will minimize your need to walk away from the project

Minimize distractions

Work on one thing at a time, making sure each thing is complete and tested before you start another repair.

Limit reasons to walk away (see my write-up of Success Traps for more details)

Make sure you put back all the fasteners you took out

Mentally walk through the instructions at the end of the project to make sure you did each step

Verify that everything you worked on is properly tightened and filled

Clean up your workspace and make sure you didn't overlook any parts

Test drive the car to make sure it's working well and troubleshoot any problems that come up

Put your tools away so you can find them next time

Good luck!

[torchiiko]

i love giving my opinion on things nobody cares abt!!!! for example:

a few(?) vtuber artists got in trouble for holding raffles & not fulfilling the prize even after a year onward. some ppl are saying "who cares, its not like youre losing anything by not getting free art" & others say "artists should know how to prioritize their workload & be able to deliver as promised"

both are true! lots of ppl enter art raffles specifically bc they cant buy commissions, they usually cant afford to or might even be too young to use payment processors & things like raffles & requests are their only chance. life can get in the way sometimes & some artists rely on comms to pay the bills so free work has to be put off, understandably. but 2 whole years to deliver a raffle prize while actively doing other work is a little absurd

an artist can get a lot of engagement holding raffles, half the point is building up their audience to get more eyes on their art, so it feels a little scummy to profit from that engagement & then just not make the art that was promised. makes you seem a bit untrustworthy

but again, the winners arent actually Losing anything. they didnt get what they were promised & missed the chance to get smth they maybe couldnt have gotten otherwise, & it of course sucks to have to leave the situation empty-handed, but they have just as much as they did before the raffle

ultimately, it is unprofessional as an artist to offer free art if you arent in a state to fulfill it within a timely manner, & the raffle winners have a right to be disappointed. however, as the winners didnt have to give anything for the opportunity to get said art, theyre only so entitled to it & should just cut their losses & leave it be when it becomes clear the artist likely wont deliver

[unpretty]

I don't know if this even counts as kink taxonomy but this is the only place I can feasibly complain about it so here goes: so I stumbled across weird audio only hypnosis porn. As one does. Turns out it doesn't really do anything for me sexually BUT oh my god it functions as the most effective guided meditation I have ever come across. Traditional guided meditations never work for me but a woman with a nice voice gently domming me into relaxation? Magical.

Except then they usually try to get you off through the power of hypnosis (does not work for me) or it ends up being some other kink thing when I just want to be dommed into actually letting the tension out of my shoulders for a change. This is the stupidest problem I have ever had.

akljasdlkjasdkl as someone who specifically can't listen to guided meditations because of my 'who the fuck do you think you are' impulse this is so funny to me. i feel like there must be some kind of hypnosis asmr on youtube that would work because they can't get into porn with those but youtube asmr is a taxonomy hell all its own. SOFTLY SPOKEN WAS SUPPOSED TO MEAN YOU'RE NOT WHISPERING YOU FUCKS WHY CAN I HEAR YOUR TEETH.

[mediumgayitalian]

okay i’ve seen the take around and i have to add. it’s killing me.

i do not agree that will would avoid the medical arts when he gets older.

i see the argument about trauma and growing from it. and, like, yeah. he had so much on his shoulders from so ridiculously young, it had to be rough.

but it’s also like.

what he’s good at.

let me tell you a story. there was a girl. when she was a year and a half old her first sister was born. and her mother’s family warned her to keep her away from her sister: she had been an only child for her entire life up to this point, she would be jealous of the baby. she might even try to hurt her.

but the mother shook her head and reclined on her hospital bed with her new baby in her arms. and she called her daughter softly up and showed her how to sit, how to fold her hands. she placed her newborn into her daughters arms and her daughter, he toddler, stayed there for hours. for hours, mesmerized by her baby sister, holding her carefully.

that daughter doesn’t remember, obviously. but her mother tells her this story often, smiling. the daughter had hands to hold from infancy.

the daughter gets another sister when she is three. and another when she is eight, and a brother when she is ten. she has been surrounded by babies her whole life, while her parents work. she learned to change diapers before she could divide, learned how to cook before she learned to play properly with friends. she has known domesticity every day of her life.

and she excels at it.

she chafes, a little. of course she does. when she takes her baby brother to the park people confuse her for his mother — she is ten years old. she is used to walking with a child on her hip. her name was her brother’s third ever word, and sometimes — often times — her siblings seek her out instead of her parents. she is made to do thrice the chores her siblings must because she is more organized, because she is more capable. she is meant to take them safely to places — no one takes her safely to places.

but she glows when her siblings need her. at family reunions, she volunteers to mind the babies, nervous about conversation with adults. she is the only one patient enough to tutor her siblings when they’re struggling and frustrated and pride blooms in her chest. when she cleans, her anxious mind quiets.

she grows up to be an elementary school teacher, after a couple years of discovering.

do you see the projection connection i am trying to make here. it is hard to be trained your whole life for something — there is part of you, always, that will resent it, that will wonder.

but it is another thing when the training is so easy because you are so good at it already. when doing what you have been trained to do makes you calm after a long day, when the tedious tasks that others spurn brings a smile to your face. yes, i’m sure healing carries a lot of pain for will. yes, i’m sure he’s frustrated. yes, i’m sure he takes some time to experiment.

but he is good at healing. and he likes to be needed, to be the rock upon which others need: if he is the rock it means he is strong, he is steady. when he doubts himself he can remember those he has helped and it is impossible to write off his own importance. he has healer’s hands, builder’s hands, carer’s hands — to be anything else would be a struggle, first, but it would not bring the same relief. the same steadiness in knowing that he is capable and righteously proud.

i don’t know. this isn’t a real essay and i don’t have a real conclusion. i just cannot find it in myself to imagine a future where my path is dark and overgrown with foreign weeds, rather than peppered with the flowers i grew up tending. i doubt will can either.

[somepinkthing]

Imagining nie huaisang having a flock of spiritual birds.

Just his mother knowing early on that he would likely never be a great cultivator and getting him two spiritual beasts in the form of birds—wanting him to have something to protect himself with and figuring he might actually take an interest in training the beasts if they were his favorite animal. It would be just her luck that the two birds (that were both supposed to be male) end up a mated and bonded pair once fully grown. Luckily, they also appear to view huaisang, who raised them from chicks, as the leader of their little bird flock. Her husband, viewing this as both useful and hilarious, decides to build their son an aviary—aka a giant nesting area for giant birds. Which is fantastic if you are a humongous, newly mated bird looking to start a bird family. You see where this is going.

Beastmaster huaisang except the beasts are just giant birds with the IQ of a pack of very loyal second graders who only listen to the commands of one of the most dramatic men in all the jianghu

[zuzu-romeave]

i know people are mostly joking when they insinuate that troy is too possessive or jealous to have a polyamorous relationship with abed but like that idea annoys me so much. when troy and abed both agree to take mariah the librarian on a date, troy is entirely okay with it UNTIL mariah chooses him over abed and then later calls abed weird. after that he tells abed “there’s someone out there for us.” he just wants someone who also wants abed, and that doesnt mean he wont get jealous over it. you can be polyam and still struggle with jealousy, which is the situation that troy’s in

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

Batman Annual #25

Before Talia took him in, before he was dunked in the pit to have his memories restored, even when operating purely on survival instinct, he always split a meal with the other homeless people. It may not have been essential to his survival, but caring about and helping other people when he couldn’t even help himself was just always such an intrinsic part of Jason’s core.

[lord-squiggletits]

Honestly it annoys me that pride, ambition, and generally having a big ego are always villainous/evil-coded personality traits because personally I think if you genuinely are a prodigy at what you do you are 100% within your rights, perhaps even deserving, of flaunting your skills and being proud of the fact you can do something that only a small fraction of other people can do. Is it even ego at that point if you genuinely are as good at your field/skill as you say you are? Are people not aware that becoming a prodigy at something is something that takes lifelong sacrifice and practice sometimes to the point of giving up on having a normal life, relationships, etc even potentially destroying your own health???? God I fucking hate how pride in your own skills and ambition are so villain coded all the time. As if it's evil to want to be good at something and be recognized for what you rightfully earned

[fromtheseventhhell]

I also find it funny that fandom will only accept Lyanna being her non-conforming, wild self in the context of saying that Arya isn't meant to be pretty; Any other day we get back-to-back posts about how Lyanna is actually super traditionally feminine cause she sniffled at a song once, so she's actually more like Sansa. Instead of constantly speaking on Arya and Lyanna, how about you guys reflect on why your standards of beauty for women are attached to how well they perform feminity within the patriarchy?

[trage-deigh]

When will people realize that if you're going to complain about a political message being botched in your media, and then shit on anyone who still enjoys it in the same breath, no one is going to care about what you have say about the message.

All they're going to see is you being an asshole.

[historyartthings]

Absolutely loving, adoring, Le*nda de L*sle’s review of MacCulloch’s work...

My thoughts, feelings, opinions I’ve put below. It gets very long because I cannae haud me wheesht

I don’t know why she’s obsessed with the idea that he mustn’t have loved his wife. ‘the supposedly grieving widower’? I don’t think the arrangement of a marriage for a king - which Henry obviously agreed to - is a sufficient way to judge what Thomas’s relationship with his wife was like. The (foreign and domestic) political, religious and dynastic factors at play there can’t be ignored in favour of extrapolating that he didn’t understand marrying for love. The “happy marriage” in quotation marks😭 have got to laugh. her condescending cynicism is based on nothing tangible, as far as I can work out. She shades MacCulloch as well through the, ‘he believes that although the evidence is sparse, Cromwell was indeed a grieving widower'…. Ngl I would argue it’s not a particularly strained logical leap to assume he might’ve been upset.

We know barely anything about their relationship. Mostly what can be concretely said is he, unusually, never remarried - we’ll obviously never know the reason(s) for that, but still. There was seemingly one notable relationship outside of it, which we only know of because it resulted in an illegitimate daughter, a wee while after his wife passed away. But even that isn’t for 100% certain. He also atypically didn’t have a mistress. There’s also exactly one (1) extant letter from him to his wife, which is pleasant enough, but not much revealing - he asks her for news of home and sends her a deer. she didnt live long enough so as to have any external remarks on their marriage once he entered court spheres. Essentially it’s impossible to draw anything more than speculative conclusions, but based on what can be tentatively extrapolated from his actions, it seems more likely he grieved for his wife than didn’t imo. And also just considering natural, human emotion??

(Even if you want to suggest they didn’t marry for love in the beginning - and/or weren’t in love by the end - they were married for what? Roughly a decade and a half? With no signs of estrangement, and friendly correspondence in letters to Cromwell asking him to pass on their regards to his wife. So even if it was simply an amicable relationship, on a basic level being with someone in such close proximity, for that long, and losing them is probably going to be upsetting?)

On a tangential note, as MacCulloch does point out, the valentine to Mary mentioned here wasn’t at all romantic - it’s misleading to present that, as she does, as an attempt for he himself to marry into royalty. Or more charitably, I think she misremembered the context for it from the book

I’d also question de Lisle’s point about the executions. Personally I don’t think it suggests a greater misogyny than any of his contemporaries? Imo it’s indicative of the broader pattern of a brutal, violent ruthlessness towards those he saw as any enemy, in his way, and/or as going against the crown/policy etc. As opposed to any particular or especial hatred towards women. This isn't meant as an excuse for those actions in any way, because they're - quite obviously - horrific. I just question the rationale behind such a judgement of even-worse-than-usual-for-the-time-misogyny based upon it. Such brutality wasn't isolated to women, men were treated just as abominably. She talks of their humiliation to evidence her point, but again, men were faced with the same. (Ask Richard Whiting who got dragged up Glastonbury Tor at nearly 80, whose case involved, 'to be tryed [presumably for treason] at Glaston and also executyd there' from cromwell's remembrances; or John Forrest, who was strung up in chains, which is a humiliating - to use her term - prolonged death in itself, but was also supposedly burnt using kindling made from a statue of a saint - oh how clever of you!). We don’t (afaik) have letters or remarks which reflect cromwell’s views on women in the same way as for Norfolk, for example. it's just a bizarre extrapolation to me. again, imo it's an incredibly dark, ruthless streak through his personality. it seems to have been his standard handling of any major execution. Also, to be clear, I’m not suggesting he wasn’t sexist/misogynistic, because ofc he was. All men back then were, as a symptom of living and socilisation in such a patriarchal society.

(also interesting for her to pair this suggestion w/ her thoughts about his marriage come to think of it. she seems to be linking the two in a broader picture, I assume wherein this should be added to the ‘evidence’ he didn’t/couldnt have loved his wife)

also the contrast of his physical looks in the Holbein, against his 'becoming' a 'convivial figure' in MacCulloch's work, is disappointing. not reading personalities from portraits, nor ascribing negative character traits to appearances and/or weight (implicitly or otherwise) shouldn't be a big ask, but apparently is. It'd be a wee bit different if she’d pointed to his expression - I still think that’s an unsound way to go about things fwiw - which at least isn’t intrinsically linked to his features, but alas no.

Lastly, re: MacCulloch’s arguments, i would say he’s more impartial than she implies. He might be Anglican, but I wouldn’t say he’s ‘on the Protestant side’ particularly. I struggle to see how his presentation of Catholics - from what i remember, altho it’s been a while since i've read it - is less than fair? He directly praises more and fisher iirc. but someone with a better knowledge of the book could correct me on this point.

also, positioning that he's on the 'protestant side', alongside the next line being about his argument that cromwell was grieving, is an interesting choice. is the suggestion that if you agree with the latter your sympathies must lie with "protestantism"? that it's only through a biased lens you could reach that conclusion? sksjksjk diabolical suggestion that that's the only reason anyone might consider he mourned his wife. like am i going insane or is it genuinely what she's saying??… i cant see why she'd juxtapose those specific points otherwise. Like critiquing mantel's comments about catholics and their presentation in wolf hall is fair enough, but connecting that with the fact she wrote cromwell as 'heartbroken' and that he loved his wife, comes across to me as though she's suggesting the former should invalidate mantel's interpretation of the latter. which again i dont think is fair based on the evidence we do have..

I would also question (because it is confusing to me) despite the fact that MacCulloch and Mantel were friends, why the “”””””happy marriage”””””” across both works is the way in here??? like why are you so bothered as to both lead and finish the article with that?

(And, frankly, MacCulloch paints a picture of a happier marriage - he writes that the simplest explanation is, ‘he couldn’t bear to marry anyone else’ - than Mantel does. Who presents their relationship as literally (as in, textually), ‘loves’ but not ‘in love’. and has him actively wanting to remarry. she had a line in TMATL that goes he was ‘mostly faithful’ which? I’m not sure if she meant to imply infidelity but… altho she did present a picture of him missing her i guess)

[silkpages]

the dichotomy of crushing on both cole and jindrax

[glubandeepspace]

what if mc were to somehow through some other big incident remember all their past lives with rafayel and then gets like a few minutes with him being a mess about it before the weight of it all hurts both emotionally & physically too much for mc's brain to handle and then passes out in his arms and maybe it's hard to wake back up again and he kind of hates himself for even partly wishing mc could remember if it meant this and

[blastthechaos]

Sometimes I wonder if I'm too mean to Season 3 of GX...then I see that people genuinely believe Judai is selfish/doesn't take things seriously just because that garbage ass season said it, then I rage again.

[wonder-worker]

I heard that Edward IV and Elizabeth Widvile were known to be very beautiful. Were there any reports on their appearance at the time?

anon 😂

But yes, contemporaries and post contemporaries in the 16th century were pretty much unanimous in praising their appearance. I'll list some of the ones I could find:

Elizabeth:

"The most beautiful woman in England" - Jean de Waurin

"Her very great beauty" - Jean de Waurin

"Her beauty of person and charm of manner" - Dominic Mancini

"None of such constant womanhood, wisdom and beauty" - Hearne's Fragment; its author was one of Edward IV's servants

"A daughter of prodigious beauty' - 1469 Continuator of Monstrelet's Chronicle

"Both faire, of a good favor, moderate of stature, well made and very wise" - Thomas More

Edward IV:

"The beauty of your personage it hath pleased Almighty God to send you" - James Strangways, Speaker of the Commons in Parliament

"The king is a handsome upstanding man" - Gabriel Tretzel, travels of Leo of Rozmital

"A handsome prince and had style" - Oliver De La Marche

"In the flower of his age, tall of stature, elegant of person" - Croyland Chronicle

"One of the handsomest knights of his kingdom" - 1469 Continuator of Monstrelet's Chronicle

"A handsome and worthy prince" - Pietro Alipranto

"...Tall and strapping as the king" - John Paston, Paston Letters

"He was young and more handsome than any man then alive" - Philippe de Commynes

"A man so vigorous and handsome that he might have been made for the pleasures of the flesh" - Philippe de Commynes

"The handsomest prince my eyes ever beheld" and "I don't remember ever having seen a man more handsome than he was" - Philippe de Commynes

"A very handsome prince" - Louis XI, from the Memoirs of Commynes

"He being a person of most elegant appearance, and remarkable beyond all others for the attractions of his person" - the Croyland Chronicle, referencing Edward a few months before he died

"He seized any opportunity that the occasion offered of revealing his fine stature more protractedly and more evidently to onlookers" - Dominic Mancini, writing shortly after his death

"He was a goodly personage and very princely to behold...of visage lovely, of body mighty, strong and cleanly made; howbeit in his latter days, with an over liberal diet, somewhat corpulent, but nevertheless noy uncomely" - Thomas More

Etc.

I'm tagging @edwardslovelyelizabeth because I think you got a similar ask?

I hope this answers your question, anon! I don't generally pay a lot of attention to the physical appearance of historical figures (I find it pretty irrelevant), but in this case, it ultimately does play a role in both Edward IV and Elizabeth's historiographies for better and for worse, and seems to have actually been a personal prop of Edward's kingship, so I don't mind discussing it :)

[shootinwebs]

alastor being canonically aspec made me finally realize and accept that i am aspec, but due to so much aphobia, i'm still not any less afraid to be open about it to people i know in real life. even allo people who claim to be "ace allies" simply don't seem to get it, and i've seen that manifest in this fandom so vividly.

i know fandom can make things different, since characters typically don't just explicitly state or explain certain parts of their identity. but for the love of god please don't pull apart the way aspec people choose to characterize alastor. it's none of your business how we experience our own aspec identity in all its nuances, nor is it your problem how we write made-up things about made-up characters lol