#neurodivergent is a useful concept and word but you need to remember its not us special people vs those Normies tm

[honeysucklethornsandalligtrhorns]

Lex's List: Truths, Advice, Quotes, Mantras, & Words to Live By:

Fuck it, we ball.

Take it easy, but take it.

Life is not measured in a series of wins and losses; some things just are.

Don't approach a horse from the rear, a cow from its side, or a fool from any direction.

Perform random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.

Be gentle with yourself. You are still learning.

Be gentle with your past self. They were still learning.

Treat yourself as you would treat your daughter.

We all die, you either kill yourself or get killed.

Fuck around and find out.

To accept queerness, disability, neurodivergence, mental illness, differing religions, differing cultures, and a differing world, is to accept 'weirdness' and learn how to properly educate yourself on new (sometimes only to you) ideas, subjects, concepts, ways of life, etc..

One essential way to properly educate yourself on new ideas, subjects, concepts, ways of life, etc., is by listening to the stories and experiences of people who are of that specific group, from them themselves.

"Because I'm sexy! And chubby, man." "Why aren't you on a diet?" "Because I like to eat, is that such a crime?"

There are two types of anger-- explosive and implosive.

Intrusive thoughts are not from you, your brain is a wrinkly hunk of fat with lightning in it and it doesn't always know what it's doing. Just let them pass on and don't dwell on them.

Maybe they're just new at it.

You need to love yourself before you try to love others.

Saying sorry doesn't guarantee forgiveness. It's an offering, not a fix-all.

Trust, like respect, is earned.

In that sense, respect & trust can be given and taken away. They are privileges. You have to uphold them.

Phases are a natural part of life. Embrace them.

Everybody talks.

Whatever you do, there is a child out there doing it better than you.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Everything is a social construct because we live in a society.

Family is not just blood or genetics.

It's okay to need help, but clean up your own messes.

If you leave towels crumpled up instead of spreading them properly, they won't dry correctly.

If you leave issues untouched instead of addressing them and communicating, they won't dry correctly. They will fester.

Water damage is real. Clean up your spills.

This is your only body. Take care of it.

At the end of the day, it's only meat, fluids, electricity, and bone.

You have free will for a reason.

Homosexuality is present in over 1,500 species. Homophobia is present in one.

Never make assumptions.

Fact check everything.

Do not get involved in drama that isn't yours.

It's just fabric, get over yourself (in regards to judgment of others' clothing).

It's just fat, get over yourself (in regards to judgment of other people).

It's just skin, get over yourself (in regards to judgment of other people).

Admitting you were wrong takes more balls than arguing over who's right.

Ask first.

Mean what you say and say what you mean.

Use deodorant.

Vaccinate your kids.

If you can afford it, go to therapy.

Don't expect rewards for basic human decency.

Healthy, safe, and well-informed sex education is vital and should be taught in schools.

Don't purposefully walk into a strip club and then act shocked and offended to find strippers.

The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.

Your ancestors looked like you, and they all managed to get laid. There's hope.

Spite is the world's greatest motivator.

Do it bored.

If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

You are the light. It's not on you, it's in you. Don't you ever in your motherfucking life dim your life for nobody. Don't you ever stop being who you are and dimming your light for none of these motherfuckers out here.

Art should calm the disturbed and disturb the calm.

Thousands of years ago, ancient peoples got bored.

There's a likelihood that you are not the first in your family line to be queer.

Nine days before the Wright brothers' flight, it was predicted that man would not achieve flight for another million years.

To love and be loved-- that alone is what makes this lifetime bearable.

Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

Language is fucking weird and accents are natural.

To laugh is to feel such joy you cannot contain it.

90-year-olds still go on dates. You will find someone.

Don't put metal in the microwave.

Taking 'unnecessary' precautions is favorable to getting unnecessarily hurt.

You can switch religions whenever you want.

And the universe said I love you/ And the universe said you have played the game well/ And the universe said everything you need is within you/ And the universe said you are stronger than you know/ And the universe said you are the daylight/ And the universe said you are the night/ And the universe said the darkness you fight is within you/ And the universe said the light you seek is within you/ And the universe said you are not alone/ And the universe said you are not separate from every other thing/ And the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code/ And the universe said I love you because you are love.

To be willfully ignorant is to welcome death.

The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.

Coercion is not consent.

Make sure you have a safe word set in place.

Grief does not disappear. You simply grow around it. You live with it.

Your conscience is a triangle. It pokes you when you do something wrong. If you ignore it enough, it'll smoothen out and become a circle. You won't feel the pokes anymore.

To live is not to survive.

Change your perspective, even if you think you're seeing clearly.

Don't be a dick to kids.

Money may not buy happiness, but it buys comfort.

First, you have to forgive yourself.

Don't panic. Panic drowns thought.

Carelessness is to die.

Your art hot like potato chip.

Remember to take your meds + drink water + eat a snack + unclench your jaw.

If you wouldn't take their advice, don't take their criticism.

'Bad' art that's made with passion is better than 'good' art that has no soul.

Hate is a learned trait. No one is born intolerant.

Love was the law and religion was taught.

Arrive early.

Just because someone looks like you does not make them a friend; just because someone does not look like you, or is unfamiliar, does not make them an enemy.

There are different temperatures and steeping times needed for different types of teas. If you get it wrong, your tea will turn out flavorless or bitter.

Don't store raw meat next to vegetables.

You can't 'just cut the mold' off of soft cheeses, fruits/veggies, or most dairy products.

Boiled water is not the same thing as boiling water.

Bake flour to remove the bacteria. Boil water to remove the bacteria. Put toxic things (such as tarantulas) in boiling water and boil for at least an hour to remove the toxins.

If you don't take yourself seriously, neither will others.

Defeatism is to die.

We are made of stardust.

Never make generalizing statements.

If small things bring you joy, fill your home with small things.

To be cringe is to be free.

Punch 'em in the throat.

[monstersandmagicians]

August Reading Recap

In which I finally read some books. 9, in fact. The book I'm writing also got some words added to it, and, gee, wonder if those two things are connected??? Anyway. This month wasn't the fanciest month, but I got those words into me that I very much needed, so, win win.

The Struggle - L. J. Smith Book 2 in The Vampire Diaries. The book which is about vampire... and diaries. But not diaries belonging to vampires. Well, not yet. Beyond that, I still stand by my ships, its fun, 90s YA. Bella Swan wishes she was Elena, girl got it done in two books flat. Either that or Bella needs to take that truck of hers over bridges more often.

(would you look at that, short and sweet. its not gonna hold)

How to ADHD - Jessica McCabe I've watched McCabe's YT channel (How to ADHD) and have found it a great resource. Consequently, I've been looking forward to this book since it was announced. This book will be a valuable resource to a lot of adults with ADHD, and possibly other neurodivergencies. I had the same issue I have with a lot of books in this genre, in that I already know. I'm basically reading these books looking for those little bits of information to fill in the gaps. Fun fact, I've played soccer for nearly two decades, and played baseball/softball for several years. I cannot slide. I've never performed a slide tackle or slid into a base. I've had coaches and try desperately to teach me. I can't. I am missing that piece of information to go from vertical to horizontal. It's not even fear. When I'm reading these books, I think it is that piece of information I'm looking for, and it's probably not going to be there. Anyway, again, useful resource, though if you feel its missing what you need, maybe try Taking Charge of Adult ADHD by Dr Russell Berkley, which is the best book I've found on the topic.

Winter's Orbit - Everina Maxwell A fun queer sci-fi romance that I enjoyed even more so than Ocean's Echo. I did read that her next book is wlw, so I have high hopes for that - WO and OE had very similiar character dynamics. I cannot remember if Maxwell included trigger warnings at the front though, so if you need those sorts of things, maybe check out some reviews first.

A Taste of Gold and Iron - Alexandra Rowland My first successful foray into Rowland's work. If I hadn't been in a desperate need of romances I probably wouldn't have picked it up yet or enjoyed it as much as I did. Still, talented author, talented work and I look forward to coming back to some of her other works when the spirit so takes.

A Marvelous Light - Freya Marske Speaking of the spirit so taking, after dropping the kid off one morning, I turned right instead of left and ended up at the bookstore, purchasing this book. It was a reread, but it is always nice to read a book you own instead of borrowed. Tumblr should know the drill on this book. If you haven't read it, turn right instead of left and find yourself a copy. Marske is probably my favourite Australian author at the moment - she plays with concepts I love and uses language with such glee, talent and precision. I cannot wait for Swordcrossed.

Long Live Evil - Sarah Rees Brennan Okay, so, I needed to go to Woolies. I went to Woolies. Realised if I left the carpark, I would get trapped in the school rush. Went into Big W. Bought this book. Read the first couple of chapters in my car. Drove home. Read most of the book, until I had to go do my tutoring thing.

I HAD TO SPEND 2!! HOURS PART WAY THROUGH THAT CHAPTER!!!

Anyway, Rees Brennan made me doubt my ships were going to be canon (I am typically a very canon-based shipper) and then followed through with a brilliant dynamic. Everyone in this book is brilliant. I was about to start listing characters, only to realise, that would be almost all of them. If you enjoyed In Other Lands, please read this. If you want a fun romp that will also attack your feelings, with a knife, please read this. If you think this looks camp and ridiculous, please read this, you are right and it is amazing.

All the Hidden Paths - Foz Meadows Another queer fantasy romance, this time the sequel to A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, which I read in May. It was a good book, and if you are a regular reader of this sub-genre, you will probably enjoy it. I'm not a regular reader of the sub-genre for a reason. I spent a chunk of time actually waiting for something to physically break the characters to we could start moving forward. I prefer pain over angst, maybe? I don't know. Furthermore, the third POV introduced was not for me, and, for the first time in my life, I just skipped those chapters. As a reader, its important to know your limits and that was hitting on of mine. Gods, I'm sounding like such a downer. I promise this was a good book, I was just not the target audience.

Tidal Creatures - Seanan McGuire Book 3 of McGuire's Alchemical Journeys series. Not my favourite installment (Middlegame my beloved) but a solid, creative book. If you liked Middlegame but found Seasonal Fears lacking (I didn't, but it wasn't the great thing Middlegame was and I know a lot of people felt let down) this book sits between them, I'd say; while the plot isn't the most complex thing, there are clever little ideas you can sink into here. (I did get irrationally mad at a near-throwaway line partway through, but I think that might just be because McGuire and I come from different backgrounds).

All the Hollow of the Sky - Kit Whitfield Kinda sequel to Heart of Hidden Things, which I read in September, last year. Yes, I had to wait that long on my hold. Anyway. I took forever to read, and actually finished it early in the month, but its last because I forgot to write it down. Mostly, the main problem of this book could be resolved by murder, and, look, I understand why it wasn't, but, come on, I really don't think it would have counted. It was a technically skilled book, but, in then end, I just felt tired. Additionally, the kid (whose name I'm blanking on) felt a lot younger than he was meant to be. That said, while Whitfield's backlist does not interest me, there was a reason I waited for this book and I will read her future works if they sound in my wheelhouse.

(By Kinda Sequel, I mean that the book follows the same people, in the events following book 1, but the whole book is arranged in such a different way that it nearly pushes into another genre).

[grey-sorcery]

Shadow work concept suggestions:

Why do you practice magic? Is your drive derived from your being? Is it superficial and aesthetic? Is it of curiosity or interest? Is it selfish? Is it to deal with oppression or injustice?

You are not immune to propaganda. What have you been influenced by, without necessarily noticing? How have your influences affected your interactions with, and views of, the world?

When you have had interactions with non-corporeal entities, how has your subconscious, mental illness, neurodivergency, state of mind, influences, and/or bias affected your interaction and interpretation there of?

When you have been hurt by another, what is the core influence for your initial reaction?

When you discipline yourself or talk down on yourself, who’s voice do you speak in?

When faced with cognitive dissonance or self-doubt, how often do you give in to the Dunning-Krueger Effect?

If/when you experience imposter syndrome, why are you the person that you are in that moment?

When confronted with new information, how do you react? What is the core of the reaction you have?

Write down your morals and personal philosophy as succinctly and accurately as you can. Do your daily actions and words reflect those values?

What emotion makes you feel like your magic is strongest? Why is that emotion potent enough to cause that?

In moments when you have wished harm unto others, how have you justified such desire and how does that same line reasoning affect the way you engage with the rest of your life?

In moments when you have felt or been othered by a group of people, what is your initial reactive emotional state?

Contemplate the concept of infinity. The vastness of reality, both structurally and conceptually and your place within them.

How much of your persona is rooted in intertextualism? How does this affect the way you bond or engage with others? Does it effect how you interact with different age groups in a negative way?

When you categorize things, places, concepts, and people what criteria do you use? How does sorting this way affect your engagement with these various categorizations?

If you were to describe yourself without using your name, occupation, physical qualities, species, or interests what would it look like?

Is there any other way that you could practice magic and have it feel right? If you can think of some, how many are rooted in aesthetic and consumerism?

How can you, in your daily life, strive to ensure the health, growth, happiness and development of those around you? Even those whom you do not know.

What is your initial reaction to ignorance? What is the core of that reaction? How do you react to willful ignorance?

Would you stand up for someone downtrodden, oppressed, or attacked? Even if those around you would not? Would you want to? How can you become the person who does?

What does community look and feel like to you? Does your current community match your idealization of it? Is it possible for you to have an effect on the community?

When faced with the concept of death and mortality, what is your initial reaction? Does that reaction carry over to confronting its actuality? What are the roots of both reactions?

Remember, shadow work is not necessary for witchcraft. If doing shadow work is initially difficult for you to approach genuinely, I would recommend speaking to a licensed therapist. You can give your therapist talking points to explore with you in order to help you come to a better understanding. If you are struggling as a result of mental illness or you feel like you may be a danger to yourself or others, please reach out to someone to help you. There are programs that can help you, you may just need someone to look into it for you. Stay safe and stay grounded.

What other concept suggestions can you think of?

If you’d like to learn more about me, see a list of all of my content, find my services, take part in magical experiments, take magical surveys, or support me on Patreon click here.

[biolizardboils]

Crumpled Up Pages: Old Captain Underpants WIPs #5-9

🎵So they’re FINALLY HERE, performing for YOU🎵—

It’s been a while, huh? I won’t waste as much space above the readmore this time. All the ground rules from the first post still apply, so go read them again if you need to—I know I did!

Again, most of these WIPs deal with the twelfth and final book in some way. If you haven’t read it, this post won’t make a single lick of sense. Any summarizing I do will be very sparse, cus this thing’s already super long. Seriously, just go read it (and the rest of the series, too)!

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So how about that Book 12, huh? In many ways, it’s a fitting finale for the whole series. It talks more explicitly about ADHD than ever, gives a glimpse of George and Harold’s future, segues into Dog Man, and doesn’t end with the usual “here we go again”. Not to mention, after years as just a running gag, the villain is the gym teacher.

Like, yeah, it’s pretty decidedly the final book. And it seems the general consensus is that it satisfies that role in all aspects… except for one.

George and Harold get a happy ending—two, in fact—but a certain superhero does not. In fact, he barely gets an ending at all.

Now, he was never truly the series’ main character, and the book gets very busy tackling a more serious subject. With those facts in mind, such an oversight is forgivable. Personally, I can forgive it. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell to see.

The book just… declares him “dead” posthumously. It’s just... you know what, screw the formalities: I adore the Captain and I miss him and I wish he'd had a better sendoff.

I’d been warned, but reading Book 12 was still very bittersweet for me. In mid-to-late 2017, when I wanted to get at least one fanfic out, I wrote down some ideas to express that pain. Casual cruelty to neurodivergent kids was a daunting subject, so I mostly focused on the Captain’s “death”. I started thinking: how could I make his last moments more meaningful without contradicting canon, or downplaying what makes the rest of the book so important?

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WIP #5: Sendoff (aka Chapter 33 1/2)

Soon they knew everything, from the chemical makeup of their arch-enemy to the events that lead to the destruction of Smart Earth... to the presence of one more consciousness among their combined particles. [Book!Verse, Book 12. CW: Major character death.]

This was by far the hardest WIP to summarize. I remember how it goes pretty well, but its concept is really tough to put into words… which, uh, might explain why I gave up on it 5 years ago. Welp, here goes nothing.

So after showing that snapping doesn’t affect Krupp anymore, the book offers two explanations: “Perhaps it was the electromagnetic pulse [when Sir Stinks-A-Lot blew up] that erased the hypnotic spell from Mr. Krupp's brain. Or maybe it happened during the Super-Power-Juice-ectomy.” This fic runs with the second option: basically when Sir Stinks-A-Lot absorbed Captain’s powers from Krupp’s body, he absorbed Captain himself as well.

After sending their distress signal, Old!George and Harold realize he’s there and talk with him telepathically. (I noted here that George should mostly use words, and Harold mostly pictures. Captain would’ve used both, crudely at first, but improving as the conversation went on.)

The following exchange of thoughts took place for only a millisecond. For its participants, however, it was as if time itself had stopped so they could speak once more.

[...] He knew they were adults, and yet they appeared in his mind’s eye as the children he’d come to know.

The dialogue would’ve opened with Captain feeling very conflicted. Since Stinks-A-Lot and the Old!Boys could access each other’s memories and intelligence while merged, it would stand to reason that Captain could, too. 

You can probably see where I was going with this.

I imagined that learning the truth instantly, and in a way that he can’t possibly misunderstand or deny, would hit Captain hard. Unfortunately, I barely wrote any dialogue for this fic, and none of it was for this segment. This is the third time I’ve had to say “oops, 2017!me didn’t write this part,” but this is the one I’m kicking myself the hardest for. 

So, while I can’t say what I had in mind back then, I can at least describe how I’d write it out today. I think… I think Captain would try to apologize for all the ways Krupp hurt the Boys as kids. Then the Boys would assure him that Krupp’s actions weren’t his, that they don’t hold them against him, and apologize for never telling him the truth. Captain would admit that he probably wouldn’t have believed them. After some more back-and-forth, he’d conclude that as much as it hurt to learn he isn’t “real”, he was grateful it had never kept him from making a real difference.

Eventually the Hamsterdactyls appear on the horizon. George explains what’s about to happen, and Captain realizes what it means for him.

“Don’t worry. The explosion will send all the Zygo-Gogozizzle 24 back into space, but the elements that make up our original bodies should stay behind and reconstitute. At least, that’s what I’m gathering.”

His body had ran away screaming. What would happen to him when...?

This is where, I imagine, the three would’ve said their goodbyes.

Cheff Goal-d’ BLOOOM!

Sir Stinks-A-Lot explodes, and Captain’s mind ends up in the Super-Power-Juice-soaked Zygo-Gogozizzle 24 that gets launched into space. As it solidifies back into rock form, he finds himself watching the Earth grow smaller and smaller. 

But the rock starts to crack from the force of the blast, and his vision flickers as it falls apart. He accepts that this is it and decides that, after fighting so hard to ensure the world could sleep peacefully, he’s ready to enjoy some sleep himself.

So he slept, as the remains of Smart Earth splintered into millions of glowing fragments, glittering stars to remain forever in the night sky.

This is the only WIP where I thought ahead and wrote the final sentence, and I’m honestly still proud of it. Because I loved quoting Superman and passing it off as hypotext, it’s a near word-for-word reference to the original radio show’s first episode. The original line is about Krypton exploding, which makes for a nice allusion to both Underpantyworld and Smart Earth. It also just felt poetic to pair Superman’s beginning with Captain’s end.

I cared a lot about adhering closely to canon, but I did notice a continuity error while skimming Book 12 for this post: on the same page as the Krupp-snapping thing, Old!George says he has “no idea how [it] happened.” Maybe I just ignored that at the time, but now I’m imagining him lying so their younger selves wouldn’t be too sad, and now I’m sad. Well, sadder than I already was from typing all this. Oh God, there's still 5 WIPs to go.

So some of these documents have a “Mood Reference” segment at the bottom, where I pasted links to songs with the tone or atmosphere I was aiming for. I often forgot to label those links. So you can imagine the whiplash I felt when I found one in this fic, clicked on it, and heard this. I vaguely remember hearing it for the first time in mid-2017, and thinking of it when I first read Book 12. Sir Stinks-A-Lot threatened to wipe out the concept of childhood itself; in a series about celebrating the adult-offending things that make childhood great, that basically is the end of the world. Him blowing up brought to mind the song's explosive bass drop. And the vocals breaking down until it flatlines… yeah. I never shook off the resulting mental correlation, and I later chose a cover of it to represent this book’s events in Usually Responsible.

Sendoff was always a placeholder title, and I had some better ones lined up: Whatever Happened to the Waistband Warrior?, O Captain, Our Captain, and Up, Up, and Away. If I had to pick one today, it’d be the last one: it's short, it relies the least on hypotext, and it foreshadows where Captain ends up going.

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WIP #6: Untitled Rid-O-Kid One-shot

And together, the two friends wrote and drew and laughed all afternoon. 

They didn’t notice how nauseous they were until dinnertime. [Book!Verse, post-Book 12. CW: discussion of overmedicating children.]

You know the part where the Boys’ parents say they like how they’re acting under Rid-O-Kid? The last four books all have their sad moments, but god, this one just hit different. They had no clue their sons were drugged, though, and I liked to think they’re genuinely good parents who would make up for it if they found out. Thus, this fic about them finding out. 

This one never got further than a summary, some scattered notes, and a list of Ritalin withdrawal symptoms. I remember some details I never wrote down, too, so I’ll combine them all to paint a fuller picture.

This fic starts immediately after Book 12. The Boys go home for dinner, but realize they can't finish their food. Then they get bad headaches, and their parents get worried, give them the classic childhood check-up, and tuck them in early.

The parents call each other and make plans to ask other parents if a bug's going around. One of them sees the Rid-O-Kid ad on TV (the local network was slow to take them down idk). Meanwhile, the Boys whisper through Walkie Talkies and realize how blurry their memories are of yesterday—specifically after seeing Mr. Meaner in his office.

The next morning, the parents learn the truth from their friend circles and the local news: every kid at Jerome Horwitz is going through withdrawal after getting dosed with an untested drug. Along with them dealing with that bombshell, this segment would have expanded on the incident's aftermath: Mr. Meaner is in jail again, Mr. Krupp has fired him (possibly just to avoid bad press), and the school is closed until its whole student body recovers.

One of the families they call is the Sneedlys. Melvin's parents mention that he's shaken from being used as a guinea pig by a teacher after sucking up to them so much. They also suggest that the withdrawal might hit neurodivergent kids the hardest. This prompts Mr. Beard to dig up the ADHD book he'd read to the Boys years ago.

The Boys themselves wake up very late and very groggy. After breakfast, one family invites the other over for a meeting. There, the parents share what they’ve learned, apologize to their sons for not noticing, and ask what being on Rid-O-Kid had felt like.

The Boys admit that they’d felt a drive to compensate for all the little ways they’d disappointed their parents before, like forgetting chores and wandering off when they talk. Voicing it makes them cry, and hearing it breaks their parents’ hearts. They comfort their sons, assuring them that they’d rather keep those little disappointments than force something like Rid-O-Kid on them.

All three parents call in sick to their jobs, hit the store for bubblegum and cooking supplies, and spend the afternoon baking chocolate chip cookies with their kids. :) 

Nothing else to say about this one, except that I mentioned its basic plot in this post.

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WIP #7: Coda

In which George and Harold realize they forgot to say ‘thank you’. [Book!Verse, post-Book 12.]

This one takes place a little bit after Untitled Rid-O-Kid Oneshot. The Yesterday!Boys have recovered enough to keep working on their Dog Man reboot. They discuss their fuzzy memories again, and wonder if their doubles and pets vanishing might be connected. 

They make a safe bet that their doubles had gotten Captain to help fix things, and make a note to ask him what happened (and also thank him) when school reopens. One of them suggests going to Krupp’s house and asking him now, and the other says to remind him after they work a little more.

Cut to Monday afternoon. The first full school day since the events of Book 12 has just ended, and the Boys are selling Dog Man #1 on the playground. It’s an instant hit, but a few kids ask about their Captain Underpants series; the last issue ended on a cliffhanger, and they want to know if their hero made it out okay. *wink wink*

The Boys realize they’d hyperfixated so hard that they’d forgotten to see Captain, so they close up shop and run to the principal’s office. They find Krupp reading some resumes and snap their fingers.

I never wrote the dialogue here, but the Boys give a long spiel that’s all “sorry for not checking in with you sooner” and “thank you for saving the day without us” and “have you seen Tony, Orlando, and Dawn?”

They don’t notice Krupp trying to butt in and clutching his head until he suddenly screams at them to shut up. It’s so loud even for him that Ms. Anthrope comes in to see what’s going on. 

The Boys snap again, but he just gets angrier; he’s had a constant headache for days now, and their snapping and nonsense talk are making it worse. Any other day he’d gladly trap them here for a stern talking-to, but now he begs them to leave and let him get back to finding a new gym teacher.

The shock of hearing him beg gives the Boys pause. They look him over—no goofy smile, no puffed-out chest—but they still don’t quite believe what they see. Harold breaks the silence with a whisper:

“Captain…?”

But that whisper pounds at Krupp’s skull, and he orders Ms. Anthrope to get them out of his office. They snap even more as she drags them away, but he covers his ears until they’re gone.

Outside, the Boys' denial finally runs out. They tear up at the thought that whatever Captain had done to save the day, he had laid down his life to do so. They salute to him at the office door before walking out of the school. Some kids ask them what’s wrong on the way out; they keep walking, suddenly hyper-aware that they have no one to confide their grief to but each other.

After enjoying the peace and quiet for a while, Krupp thinks about the name Harold called him. The fic ends with him opening his drawer to stare at the Captain Underpants comics inside.

The Mood Ref section for this one contains two songs: Separation Anxiety from the movie, and… this. Like, wow, 2017!me was going through it. (If it helps at all, I just imagined Mr. Meaner in Scar’s place and chuckled. …Yeah, that probably doesn’t help.)

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WIP #8: Letter Column

20 years later, George and Harold still deny everything… even if it hurts. [Book!Verse, pre- or post-Book 12.]

This one was gonna be a Log Fic, made of mock-up screenshots from various sources. The setup is that Old!George and Old!Harold have an official website like Dav’s, including a page dedicated to fanmail. Kids send in questions (with their parents’ permission), and the Old!Boys post their answers for all to see.

The fic would’ve opened with a screenshot of this page, with two Q&A’s visible to show how it works. The next screenshot would be of a third question waiting in the Boys’ inbox:

So I notised this one guy shows up in crowds a lot. I checked every Dog Man book I own and hes in every single one! Whats up with that? 

– Curie Yuss, age 10

Attached to the email are close-up photos of different Dog Man pages (drawn anime-style like the one shown in Book 12). Each page has a crowd shot, and a bald man in underwear and a red cape can be seen in each crowd.

Cut to a series of texts between the Old!Boys. Harold opens with a screencap of the email.

H: oh man

H: i REALLY shuldve seen this coming

G: Its okay dude

H: u were right one in each book was too many

G: Calm down its okay! I can take this one solo if you want, Ill draft it tonight

G: [a few hours later] Done! If you like it go ahead and press publish

H: its up now. thx dude

G: 👍🏾 I get why youre worried but hey, its not like we have to lie

George’s response is then shown on the site:

Dear Curie,

I see you’ve spotted Captain Underpants! Harold and I came up with him when we were your age. He thought it would be funny to sneak him into every Dog Man book, and so did I!

Thanks for writing in!

– George Beard

And that's the end of it… until it isn’t. A few weeks later, six new emails sit in the inbox, all asking the Boys if they’ll ever make a Captain Underpants novel. 

Now they’re both worried. If they say no and don’t give a reason why, more kids might write in to ask. If they say “maybe someday,” they’d be setting up false expectations. On top of that, they’re upset at themselves for getting worked up over kids asking an innocent question.

G: We probably shouldve put a ToS on the page before we launched it

G: Like “we reserve the right to leave your fanmail unanswered for any reason”

H: yeah we probably shuldve

G: Its too late to add one now right? 

H: oh for sure. some kid will def notice. i know we wuld

Then a new email comes in from one Perry Graff and his mom, Artie. She’d gone to Jerome Horwitz with the Boys, and seeing Curie’s Q&A had jogged her memory. She’d dug her old CU comics out of her attic to share with her son, and strangely, one of them had seemingly been signed by the Captain himself. Artie admits to remembering having met a very real Captain Underpants, and asks the Boys how on earth they’d pulled that off.

Attached is a photo of the signature. The cursive lettering is too thin to have been stamped on, and too neat to have been forged by a kid.

If the Boys felt cornered before, now they’re mortified.

H: u know what

G: Trying to think

G: Oh god Lisa just asked what im looking angry at my phone for

H: maybe we shuldve ignored Curie 

G: ??And just leave her hanging?

H: better 1 kid than 7

H: also we never heard back from weird Al and we came out just fine 

G: We checked the mailbox for like a month!

H: yeah but we moved on. we figured it got lost in the mail or he was too busy or smthn. and then we forgot about it 

H: …..why cant we move on from him george 

G: Al??

G: Oh

H: why is this still so hard

G: I dont know man. I just dont know

…And that’s as far as I got. I couldn’t come up with an ending—or at least, one that didn’t leave me mad at the Boys—which might be why I scrapped it. Well, besides the whole “designing a fake website” thing. I never started the designing part, but I did leave screenshots of Pilkey.com in the doc for inspo (specifically from the mid-2000’s cus that was the site’s golden age, don’t @ me).

I love George and Harold so much, but I also think they should feel bad for, you know, making an entire person and hiding his existence. Yes, they were 9, and no, I didn’t quite expect Dav to touch on it. Still, it’s interesting to imagine the guilt they might deal with when they grow up and think back on it all.

Trivia time! The Log Fic format stems from an event I almost did at @treehouseblogsinc. The plan was for some space-time shenanigans to change the blog into the Old!Boys’ modern-day site for a little while. It never happened cus I was scared of changing the HTML too much, and its days were numbered at that point anyway.

The main conflict draws from something Dav said happened early in his career. He would draw Captain at school visits, and kids would often ask him to make a full book about him (“Becoming a writer”, fourth paragraph).

Finally, Artie Graff is meant to be that one girl from that one song. I thought it’d be fun to show she got that autograph after all and use it for drama lol.

——————————————————————————————————

WIP #9: Recall

One moment, Mr. Krupp finally had those two delinquents cornered. The next, he was having the strangest dream. [Either Verse, but borrows imagery from the Movie.]

Tired of all this talk about Captain’s “death”? Me too! Let’s dial it back and talk about his “birth” instead!

This fic was a first-person look at what went on in Krupp's head when he got hypnotized. It played out in four acts—the start of the trance, Chicken, Monkey, and Superhero—with the last one having the most Story Meat. (You'll see why I didn't just name it Captain in a bit.)

I remember researching how hypnosis works and what it feels like before starting on this. Most of the real-life “rules�� don’t apply here, of course, but I took note of aspects that made sense anyway. For example, trance can help loosen up even the strictest, most habitual thought patterns, which is why it's used to stop smoking; maybe all the years of bitter adult-ing and principal-ing melted away, allowing Krupp to look further inside himself than he had in ages. And maybe he just welcomed an excuse to take a nap during a workday lmao

That research also inspired me to experiment with this fic’s “voice”. Nearly every sentence in here is short, simple, and has a whole paragraph space to itself, as if that’s all the thought Krupp can muster at a time. The sentences get longer near the end, but take on a strange, lilting flow and break into new paragraphs where commas should be.

But enough explaining, let’s get to the actual text already. Act 1 was fleshed out a surprising amount, but given the format, that's not saying much.

I can’t move.

Correction: I can move if I want to. I just… don’t.

I can think of some good reasons to move.

My office’s linoleum flooring is nipping at my back, for instance.

I’m pretty sure my toupee’s fallen off again, too.

But everything is so heavy, and deciding which need to address makes me realize something.

My mind is so… quiet. I forgot it could be this quiet.

I can think… I think. I still have a few thoughts. They're just not pouring in constantly and bouncing off the walls of my skull anymore.

It’s like those walls are lined with cotton. It’s… weird, but not uncomfortable. 

… I could get used to this, actually.

Not right now, though. I’ve got paperwork to sort, kids to keep in line.

For ten straight hours… for the next five days.

…A few more minutes here couldn’t hurt.

Captain is associated with cotton, so its mention here was probably intentional. Anyway, this segment ends with two bullet points that just say “SNAP Chicken” and “SNAP Monkey”. Those two Acts never got written (Library of Alexandria-scale loss, I know), but here’s a bit about them from what I think was an early summary:

The night after he gives the tape to Mr. Meaner, Krupp has a very strange dream. First he's a chicken in a coop, plucking at an oddly-shaped pile of grain. Then he's a monkey, swinging on branches that glow and throwing strange white leaves.

Then, all of a sudden, he's a child again.

Surprise—we're in Kernel Theory territory.

Krupp is about 10, lying on a red towel, looking up at some trees and an overcast sky. Something flat lies on his chest; he holds it up and sees that it's a comic book. The cover is blurry, like a half-forgotten impression. All he remembers is that he desperately wants to keep it.

There’s a note here to leave it unclear if this is a memory or just a dream. Either way, Krupp’s thoughts on it might be my favorite excerpt out of all 10 documents:

I squeeze it to my chest and the paper crinkles in my ears. 

I don't want to lose it. 

I don't want to lose this. 

I’m going to lose this.  

I won't even remember what it is I've lost.

After a long moment, he loosens his grip on the comic… only for a sudden gust to send it flying. He grabs his towel and gives chase, down a hill and past his childhood home. When he catches it, he feels the wind still tugging at it.

He looks up and sees the source of the wind: a wormhole floating at his height a few feet in front of him. Its rim “glows a searing red [...] swirling endlessly into the deep blue void within.”

Somehow, Kid!Krupp knows where it leads. Somehow, he knows he’s been “stuck” here for decades, and that this wormhole will set him free.

Somehow, he knows it won’t be open for long.

When it closes… I’ll be stuck here again.

All the everything will rush back in and bury me, like nothing happened.

Not this time.

Not while I still have this.

Benny holds his comic up to the wormhole. Its pages fly out one-by-one and form a barrier around the wormhole’s rim, as if holding it open for him.

He looks back at his home, as if for the last time. Then he ties the towel around his neck and charges into the wormhole.

It closes behind him, and the pages start swirling around his floating form. He feels himself change both physically and mentally; he realizes he can choose what to “take with him,” and decides that the “this” he’s reclaimed is all he wants for now. A powerful sense of valiance sweeps away everything else, leaving him unburdened and unbelievably happy.

The void starts to dissolve, beams of sunlight pouring through. He recalls a song about letting the sun shine in, facing it with a grin.

Smilers never lose and frowners never win. 

But frowners still want to win 

even long after they forget how 

and now that I remember

I’ll protect smilers from frowners

until the frowners remember too

and the world is safe and happy.

The outline ends just as he perceives a floor beneath his feet and a battle cry in his throat.

How happy they’ll all be

to know they're being protected 

by the greatest superhero of all time.

Man.

There’s a crossed-out bullet point down here about why Kid!Krupp feels “stuck” and is so eager to leave the dream-memory. I won’t go into what it says exactly, and I think leaving it ambiguous instead was a good call. I remember other creatives at the time positing that his Krupp-iness might stem from... well, let’s just say it’s a topic I don’t trust myself to explore at length, even now. This way it can be whatever the reader’s most comfortable with attributing it to.

In the same vein, I hoped to find a note here explaining what his precious “this” was, but there isn’t any. I dunno if I deleted it or just never wrote it down, but maybe not spelling it out is better. If I had to guess, though, I think I was drawing from the Great “woah, I used to love these books!” Movement earlier that year. Sorry to bring it up again, but I can’t overstate how it helped me regain my personal “this”; something nameless that I’d lost growing up, but was drifting aimlessly without.

Recall’s Mood Ref section also has two songs: the first was Interlude by Dunderpatrullen. Words fail me here too, but I put it on SIDE A: The Warden to mark the playlist’s shift from Krupp’s life before Captain to after. 

The second song was this. Hardee har har, 2017!me.

——————————————————————————————————

So what’s this WIP based on Book 1 doing among all this talk of Book 12? Well, I tried to expand on the Baby Benny idea with my next and final WIP...

...which I’ll go into in its own post. I know, I know, listen—I’ve been writing all this up in a Google Doc, and WIP #10 alone takes up one-third of it. I REALLY don’t wanna put it off, especially cus it’s nearly finished, but this is already the longest post I’ve probably ever written and I’m scared of invoking this hellsite’s glitchy wrath.

Now, WIP #10 isn’t taking longer because it’s finished or anything—it’s probably the least finished out of all 10, actually—so please curb your enthusiasm there. I just have a lot more to say about it because, unlike the others, it wasn’t a fanfic. It was meant to be something a little...bigger. I’ll leave its description here so you can guess what that means. See you in Part 3!

They created the greatest superhero in the history of their elementary school… but that was all in the past future!

Time travelers George and Harold make a pit stop in 1950-something, a peculiar time when strangers filled your gas tank for you and every band sounded like The Beach Boys. They don’t plan on staying very long, but that changes when they meet a kid who’s familiar and different all at once. Can they safely leave the past without preventing the future? And how will their new friend change how they view their greatest enemy...? 

Have you read your UNDERPANTS today? [Book!Verse, post-Book 12.]

[creacherkeeper]

hey same anon from before!! and yeah i meant general headcanons/ aelwyn + the bad kids dynamics/ honestly whatever fh headcanons you have so lmao you’re good. if you have any more know i would LOVE to read them but no pressure of course!!

oh okay dope ^^ thank you for clarifying. but ...... while we’re here ...... MIGHT AS WELL TALK ABOUT SOME ND HEADCANONS EHH??

of course disclaimer that these are just my own reading and everyone is entitled to read it differently, but i’ll try to back up my takes as much as i can

-

adaine (autism & panic disorder) - detail-oriented problem solver, thrives under the structure of school but doesnt do well with overwhelm, organized, seems sensitive to noises (like if the bad kids are being loud or rowdy), extremely earnest and forward even in situations where its inappropriate and doesnt always understand when its actually hurting her goals (see: every time an npc has to go “whats your deal? can i help you?” to adaine), tends to fumble some spontaneous speech (come backs in fights or like. the WHOLE thing with the innkeeper), very knowledgeable and skilled in a specific area of interest (divination magic), thrives with an emotional support animal, possibly ace (for sure not all autistic people are but we tend to be in much higher numbers), vibes with ayda almost immediately (by like. just straight up asking if she wants to be friends), very direct when talking, strong sense of justice and morality and gets very frustrated when things dont work how she thinks they should

riz (autistic) - hyperfixates on cases (both in the ‘losing track of time’ and ‘has trouble thinking of other things while out and about’ way), odd sense of fashion, has trouble making friends and understanding relationship dynamics (him thinking he was friends with the popular kids in ep1, being obsessed with finding penny who was his babysitter but then they dont really hang out after, being very verbal about fabian being his best friend even though fabian is embarrassed), ace, detail-oriented problem solver, sleeping issues, CAN lie but tends to be very direct to the point of being rude and abrasive at times, very defined moral code and strong sense of justice, easily frustrated in certain situations, intimidated by social interactions (especially with people he doesnt know), struggles with self-care and self-maintenance, i dont know exactly how to categorize the hissing but im throwing that in here too, doesnt always have “average” emotional reactions (like being really excited about the video of his dad instead of upset), very mature interests for his age

gorgug (autistic) - trouble with communication (putting his thoughts into words, tends to speak very slowly with a lot of pauses, doesnt always know what to say or what the average person in his situation would say), has a hard time making friends, struggles with emotional regulation (you can read barbarian rage as this in general but im also thinking of him getting mad at the high elves and just having to run around to calm down), very emotionally intelligent but doesnt always come across that way because of communication struggles, understands the value of having things explained in a simple and accessible way and does so without judgement or embarrassment if others need him to, thinks in a different way and comes to conclusions others dont seem to (sometimes he’s completely correct and other times .... dad!?), uses sensory input to regulate emotions (mostly music/drumming), screams when overwhelmed, doesn’t always ‘get the point’, is a very good friend but is so with great intention and care

fabian (adhd + dyslexia) - doesnt enjoy school, has some Very Bad Rolls when it comes to books and reading, doesnt think he’s as smart as his friends, struggles with a disconnect of identity (how he sees himself and his family vs how other people see him), very physical and physically active, tends to default to loud and “rowdy” (as adaine put it), struggles with emotional regulation, very sensitive but would NOT admit that, doesn’t always understand social cues or when he’s being rude, struggles with impulse control

fig (adhd + autism) - sensory seeking (especially music & the physical element of playing music which can be read as stimming, as well as smoking cloves), disconnect between how she sees herself (mysterious closed book) and how others see her (incredibly open and earnest), feels like a social chameleon and slips into roles very easily but has trouble feeling like and understanding herself; very excitable, engaged, reactive, and verbal; runs away when she feels uncomfortable or overwhelmed, tends to wander from the group a lot, admits several times that she wasn’t paying attention or doesnt remember key info about the plot, builds an identity around deviation from societal norms, big emotions, lots of energy, cares very deeply but actively works on understanding boundaries, doesnt always pick up on social cues

kristen (cptsd) - discussed in this post but can be summed up as issues with affect and emotional regulation, cognitive/executive functioning issues, difficulty with boundaries, struggles with impulse control, goes from VERY self-restrictive to VERY loose with sexual activity, drugs, alcohol, tattoos, etc; struggles with self-concept, doubt, and trust issues; possibly has dissociative and/or depersonalization tendencies with her cleric abilities 

so 8))))) yeah. bad kids neurodivergence headcanons ahoy

[the-wardens-torch]

I’ve been up to some fun stuff in game these past few days, but I told myself I had to write a retrospective for this year’s ffxivwrite before I did anything else because apparently love to assign myself homework and wanted to put all of my thoughts together so I can come back to them later. Self-validation and all that.

Here I am Advertising my FFxivwrite2022 Masterpost Because I Can

-I drew on reserves of energy and ideas I didn’t know I had and I’m proud of myself for that.  I love this challenge so much and am eternally grateful to @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast for running it. I am an old dog and you are teaching me new tricks every year just with a single word a day.  Actually I should DM her and say that directly.  Note to self.

- I ended up writing quite a few stories where there was a theme of coming full circle with something and didn‘t realize it until I wrote this.

-That one I did for the last free day… Wow. It really was a long time coming. The idea of Fal having had his first sexual experience be with someone his mother hired had been in my head for a long time.  Its just so… messed up, and it seemed like a good reason for him to be, well, like he is.  To make him think that sex is only a fun thing adults do (which it can be, don’t get me wrong) and to not realize the importance of enthusiastic consent, or the great significance of having an emotional connection with one’s partner as well as a physical one. Fal is actually very good at sex and at emotional connections, but he still needs to learn about how best to combine the two. Hence why he overstepped his boundaries with Alain that one time.  That one time I have alluded to only a handful of times and even then, thoroughly neutered with vague language and metaphors.  I’m a pansy like that.

-I’m really happy with Fal’s Unsundered self, Philotes.  I‘m also happy with the idea that Philotes created the creature that would later become Ruby.  The Sundering separated them, but they were reunited when Ruby gave her life to make Fal live.  Creation saves creator. I wonder if they’ll ever know.

-The Tiamat story was my most popular - that makes me happy because I really wasn’t sure if I could write another Tiamat story after she was freed, since her and Fal’s relationship sort of hinged on the concepts of penitence and emotional self-flagellation.  But like any good friendship, I guess this one needed to grow a bit, and I’m glad it did. Also I have this sappy mental image of Tiamat taking Fal for a ride in the sky above Meracydia while she reminisces about Bahamut - but this time its with fondness instead of regret.

-For the past couple of years, I’ve had a “big reveal” in mind for each FFXIVwrite.  I can’t remember what year was what, but they were things like “Fal‘s dad seems like a dick but is actually somewhat sympathetic because he’s lonely, neurodivergent and bad at being a people,” and “Ruby was once a sentient creature that used to belong to Fal’s dad but expended most of her consciousness to glue Fal together at birth.” This year it was “Alain confesses to being asexual and it makes Fal realize that sex is important but emotional connection is importanter and also he finds out that his mom was a slut too.”

-This year’s batch of dirty limericks was the least popular I’ve ever had… But I was actually really depressed and having a super hard time organizing my thoughts when I wrote them, and I don’t consider them on par with the others from previous years.

-I didn’t do a folktale this year… Bummer.

-Lotta sexual references this year… yeah. Not what I intended, it just sort of happened.

-I kind of want to write more about Ianthe Dus Covetrus - and not just as an attachment to Fal. But I already have 3 alts whose stories didn’t stick so good luck with that.

[eldritchqueerture]

Point of View - Original Statement Fic

Point of View (5004 words) by LadyNikita Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Statement Giver(s) (The Magnus Archives) Additional Tags: Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), this was intended as the eye but evolved into the vast as well, happens, cosmic horror, attempt at Eldritch Madness, unreality, Discussions of pointlessness and meaninglessness, Canon-Typical The Vast Content (The Magnus Archives), from the eps about space, Mentions of Death, Compulsion, discussions of free will (kind of), Dissociation, Panic, Mentions of addiction, Leitner Book (The Magnus Archives), except it was not possessed by Leitner, Pretty Colours <3, Neurodivergent Protagonist, Queer Protagonist, because I can project a bit as a treat, Can Be Read Without Prior Knowledge of the Podcast (I think)

Summary: "Humans crave understanding. They strive towards knowing more and more, that’s what all science is about, isn’t it? To study, to learn and understand; to seek answers to questions. But are we really equipped to handle the answers we seek? Even if we were able to reach them, are our minds advanced enough to grasp the truths about the world we live in? What if there are things just beyond our understanding, lurking in the shadows of reality, peeking into our world just enough to feed on us, on our uncertainty and our pathetic scrambling towards answers that would only bring madness?" --- Statement of Lyria Ellison regarding a different point of view and the dangers of knowledge.

Notes: Hiiiiii <3 I've been reading Lovecraft recently and as much as I hate the dude, The Colour Out of Space gave me so much inspiration that I immediately sat down and produced this in one sitting. I've been meaning to play with the concept of eldritch madness for a while; something about this trope is really appealing to me and I'm really enjoying my attempts at shaping it with words. Lyria is a preexisting OC of mine, I will give some background on her in the end notes because I love her very much. This is a form of practice for me; I'm playing with horror themes and I'd like to get acquainted with them to better incorporate them into my overall writing. Therefore I will accept constructive criticism if anyone wants to give it, but only in the form of DMs, either on Tumblr (your-queer-vampire-dm) or on Discord, if we know each other through a server. All of the warnings I think should be mentioned are in the tags, but if you think something should be added then please tell me!

Date: May 10th , 2018

Name: Lyria Ellison

Subject of experience: A different point of view and the dangers of knowledge.

—

How do you start telling a story that changed your heart, your mind, and your soul so profoundly that you can barely still function in a society? How do you say all that without sounding borderline insane? Nobody knows what I’ve seen, what I’ve been through. I know they would all say I’ve hallucinated it all and should seek treatment. But I know it won’t help. I know… I know so much now. Too much and not enough. Never enough. I know what happened was real . I don’t have proof so I’m guessing you won’t believe me either, but I need to tell someone about it. So I might as well tell you.

My name is Lyria Ellison and I’m a neuropsychology major. Ex-major, I should say. I dropped out after… Yeah. I dropped out; there’s not much point in continuing studying things about the feeble, insignificant human brain. Utterly pointless venture.

Humans crave understanding. They strive towards knowing more and more, that’s what all science is about, isn’t it? To study, to learn and understand; to seek answers to questions. But are we really equipped to handle the answers we seek? Even if we were able to reach them, are our minds advanced enough to grasp the truths about the world we live in? What if there are things just beyond our understanding, lurking in the shadows of reality, peeking into our world just enough to feed on us, on our uncertainty and our pathetic scrambling towards answers that would only bring madness?

Just a year ago, I was convinced I was going to finish my degree. I was so passionate about it too, eager to learn more and more, to research and seek knowledge. Curious and fascinated by the world around us. What a foolish thing it was to give into that drive. My mind was open to the supernatural, although I always approached it scientifically; I never said the supernatural existed, but I also never said it didn’t. It was plausible; all in all, every scientist must accept that there is still a vast amount of knowledge we don’t have about the world.

The ignorance was a blessing. But I shall not get ahead of myself.

It started around December last year; my dad had died, and my girlfriend, Shawala, and I were clearing out his house. There wasn’t really anyone else to do it; my mother had passed a couple years prior, I had no siblings, and extended family was out of the picture as well; and my dad had gathered a lot of things in his adventurous life; he was a traveller, and he loved the world, loved learning about it, just like me. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with it all; my dad meant a lot to me back then, and Shawala proved an excellent support at that first shock. She promised to do some first view assessments of the ground floor, while I went to scope out how things looked in the attic.

It’s always either basements or attics, isn’t it? I used to read horror, Lovecraftian was my favourite – how ironic, isn’t it? How stupid . How utterly ignorant. The hubris of the human race at its finest.

Anyways, the attic was half-lit from the small windows in the roof, and dust was swirling in the faint light of the afternoon sun. It was cold here, but I didn’t pay much mind; the house was old, and it wasn’t surprising that there was draft. To say the space was cluttered would be an understatement; I could barely walk around the numerous boxes, old furniture, crates, and overflowing bookshelves; all of which made something in my chest curl tight, bringing tears to my eyes. I steered my steps towards the nearest bookshelf; I’ve always been a bookworm, fascinated by nearly any tome I came across; I’ve been reading popular science books since I was eight. So naturally, I was drawn to the books, taking huge steps above the cardboard boxes and careful not to hit anything else.

The books were old, of course, and dusty. Some of them had loose pages, and I treated them very gently, almost reverently. I have a little bit of a bookbinder streak, and I decided I would take them home and try to put them back together. As I rifled through them, I saw they pertained to a vast variety of subjects, from poetry, drama, and history, to science, metaphysics, and maths. The deeper I looked into this stunning collection, the more reverence rose in my heart; at my fingertips I had the oldest and the biggest accumulation of knowledge I had ever seen. I saw some books dated back even two hundred years ago.

At that point Shawala called me to check if I was alright. I put the book I had in my hands back and my knuckles brushed against the black leather cover of the next one on the shelf. I felt pleasant tingling in my palm at the touch and my heart leaped at the prospect; I didn’t know why –  the book seemed ordinary enough on the shelf and there was no title on its spine.

I sometimes wonder if I could have just left it there and gone downstairs; chosen to come back later and then maybe, it wouldn’t have enticed me as it did. If, by that point, I had had any choice left on the matter.

Alas, intrigued by the book, I placed my palm on the spine and took it out. The leather was soft and smooth, probably sheep, with familiar subtle grains all over the texture. I remember it striked me as odd that it was warmer than the rest of the books in the drafty attic, but I shrugged it off. The front cover had a title, small but visible in the centre, etched in gold – Punctum Visus .

I, by all means, cannot read or speak Latin, but I figured it was something to do with vision. I opened the book, an unknown anticipation buzzing in my stomach. The pages were worn and old, their texture was slightly rough but pleasant under my fingertips; as I opened the front page, I saw the title again, this time in thick but still elegant, black letters, and the smell came up to my nostrils.

I tried to describe it in my head countless times after. I always loved the smell of old books, and I knew it very well, so it came to me as a surprise to realize it wasn’t the only smell I could feel from the book. It was… cold, somehow, distant but prickling at my nose, a little bit the way peppermint tastes. It reminded me of the night sky and distant stars somehow. The smell awakened an unease within me, as I couldn’t quite place what it was and why it seemed so weird , but it wasn’t by any means unpleasant. It was… enticing. Like a promise of a mystery.

I breathed it in again through my nose, closing my eyes, and for a moment I lost all feeling in my body. I was untethered and immaterial, somewhere in deep darkness that seemed to envelop me whole. It felt cold on my mind, stretching it thoughtlessly in the empty vastness, and I saw distant flickering lights of stars. Before I could form a coherent thought, I was back in myself, panting and shaking, staring at the front page of the Punctum Visus . I looked around with shaky breaths; the attic looked the same, and Shawala’s steps on the stairs reached my ears, with her voice calling my name. A shiver passed down my spine, causing goosebumps to bloom on my skin; was it the draft, the dread, or the excitement I couldn’t tell.

I knew I had to read this book, no matter what it took for me to do so.

I took it home, almost forgetting about the rest of the books upstairs. It had spent the next month laying in my room, as I dealt with the formalities and moving the rest of things that weren’t sold from the house either to my place or to charity. After the day we left the house for the last time, I collapsed in my bed, exhausted, but instead of closing, my eyes fell on the book unassumingly waiting on my nightstand.

A surge of excitement passed through me, waking me right up. I sat up and reached for the book. It was still warm; I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad, but warm it was. I think it made me subconsciously assign it more… being? Like, even before I knew anything, I somehow subconsciously accepted that it was more than just an object; that it was, in a sense, alive on its own. I brushed my fingers on the cover, feeling the texture of the leather and the etching of the letters. In the meantime during this month I had checked the meaning of the title – Point of Sight; a position from which a thing is or is supposed to be viewed. It makes so much sense now.

But then I didn’t know what dangers it held; or I didn’t want to think about them. I do remember feeling anxious, my hands trembling every time I opened the cover, but it was so mingled with exhilaration of the certainty I was discovering something important that I must have disregarded it. As I turned the pages, I wasn’t surprised to find the text in Latin; though I still felt a pang of frustration that it meant I couldn’t read it for now. I rifled through the pages, looking curiously at the letters that formed words yet unattainable to me. There was a hunger inside of me; a hunger to Know. As I turned the pages past various symbols, illustrations of the constellations, and of Earth, I determined it must be some sort of a metaphysical work. The point of view on the world around us.

Normally I just skim through works like this and leave them. While they are an interesting read sometimes, they’re not my favourite genre and, looking objectively, putting in the effort of learning a whole language just for the sake of reading a treatise on the meaning of cosmos by an unknown author seems strange at best. But somehow it seemed obvious to me that I had to read it. It called to me, sang into a part of my being that begged to be filled, promising knowledge that would finally leave me satisfied. I know now that it’s impossible. Once you’ve tasted the hunger for knowing, you will never find satisfaction; it’s like an addiction. You just crave more and more, and the knowledge never ends. After a certain point you know too much and when it all connects, when it starts to make sense… you slip. I didn’t know that, even though maybe I should have. I didn’t know what those things I was feeling meant then and I didn’t stop to question them; I gave into it as soon as it touched me. I was stupid.

What followed were a busy couple of months. Every waking moment that wasn’t spent keeping up the pretence of being interested in my major (back then I only thought it a brief hyperfixation, of course, and wouldn’t have called it a pretence at all), I was learning Latin online or staring into the incomprehensible words on the pages. This period of my life is a blur; I remember my friends checking up on me if I was alright, since I wasn’t particularly social anymore. Shawala got progressively more worried, but it fully escaped my mind to care. I know that staring thoughtlessly at the book took up more and more of my time; once, I remember, I returned from my classes at three PM and took the book out; when I came back to myself it was well past midnight. That’s when I started to feel truly uneasy about it. It was the second half of April; I looked back on what I’ve been doing these past months and this cold dread started creeping up to my throat. I realized I didn’t know why I wanted to read the book so much and I remembered the “vision” or the hallucination I had that first time in my dad’s attic. I had set it aside completely as unimportant, and I couldn’t wrap my head around why. I started shaking and theorizing in my head about the book being able to influence my mind somehow, to control it. Had my actions not been my own? How much of it was my own will and how much was the book? Was it even possible for it to influence me like that; could it be that it was supernatural in some way?

The house became cold, unnaturally so. It was dark and all the windows were closed, but a chill draft managed to find its way into the corridor I was in anyway. I sank to the floor and hugged my knees, trembling in panic. I was all alone in the flat, everyone I knew was surely already asleep in their homes, and I was small and weak in the face of something that maybe could have controlled my mind. I suddenly became aware of the leatherbound book in my hand, and I threw it along the corridor at the front door with a whimper, as far away from me as possible. The book thumped against the door, then the floor, and opened on a random page.

I’ve read enough horrors. I knew that the page would be significant, and that knowledge made me sob and hug my knees tighter. I didn’t know what was happening; I felt like I’d just woken up from a months-long dream… and perhaps I was right. The recent past felt alien.

I felt tears sting my eyes and that’s when the smell reached me. Again that mixture of old paper and peppermint cold, distantly sweet but freezing the blood in my veins. My breath came in ragged and shallow, and tears streamed down my face as I stared at the open book that was calling me in an inaudible whisper. The logical side of my mind was trying desperately to make sense of it, to assign the dissociative feeling to my father’s death and yeah, it was plausible, but somehow it just didn’t feel right. The whispers sounded again, swirling around my head, the golden sound almost touching the back of my neck, making me wince. It was enticing and promising, but this time, I felt terror instead of excitement. Disregarding how my mind was trying to rationalize the situation, I knew the book was cursed somehow. I knew that I was its victim. And I knew that I would not be strong enough to resist it.

I don’t know how much time I sat there, trembling, and sobbing into my knees, before I calmed down from the panic and decided I had to do something. I had to find out what this book was and how it found itself into my dad’s library. I couldn’t remember seeing anything in his diaries that would mention it at all, but then again, I didn’t read them all cover to cover. On wobbly legs I carefully made my way back to my room and searched the Internet until the sun started peeking out of the window; I found nothing about any book titled Punctum Visus . I tried all the libraries that I’d known of, that had their assortment online, all the research databases; nothing.

So, at the crack of dawn, with a fast-beating heart, I stood in the door of my room, staring out into the corridor, where the book still lay by the front door, unmoving. The golden strings of a wordless melody made it to my ears; it promised an explanation; that this time if I looked close enough, I would find what I was looking for.

What was I looking for?

Where else could I find the answers if not in the book itself?

I could feel its cold fingers slowly wrap around my mind, steering me to come closer. It called me with a hypnotising voice that awakened all the red signals in my brain, telling me to run and hide, but I didn’t. The voice meant danger, but I knew it also meant knowledge.

Dangerous knowledge. The pull dragged me through the corridor step by step; I hadn’t been fighting it as strongly as I could have had and I was about to start, since I was getting closer to the book, but suddenly I felt the chill of the influence let go, hovering close but out of reach. It was still compelling me to come, to Look, but I could move my own limbs. I had a choice to make.

Knowledge of danger. Did I believe my own warning thoughts that I would regret looking into the book? Did I take my own logical, rational side seriously? Was I ever good at resisting my own impulses?

I’ve never been addicted to anything, but then again, I never really had the opportunity, as it were; my friends were more of a no-alcohol types and I really ever smoked cigarettes once. I’ve never seen drugs in real life. So who’s to say if I’m not an addictive personality? And this, this was addictive. The thrill of mystery, the exhilarating process of learning, the anticipation of the answers.

Was it ever really my choice?

No supernatural force guided my steps that night; no cold fingers made me kneel next to the book and carefully cradle it in my arms, looking at the page with a shaky breath and tears in my eyes, as if I was coming back home like the prodigal son. But I’m sure it was by some paranormal means that this time I could understand the text on the pages.

I honestly don’t remember what it said. As I read the unfamiliar words, the meaning presented itself in my mind, not entirely unlike that first “vision” I had in the attic; as soon as I started reading I knew that I had made the choice and there was no turning back. That cold draft enveloped me, sat on my skin, and started to bite; I felt that smell again, stronger than ever before, something intangible but unmistakably inhuman . It was then that I realized that’s what had felt wrong to me about the smell since the beginning. It was inferior and alien. My hands started shaking as my eyes, glued to the text, moved now on their own down the page, drinking the words in. I was terrified out of my mind, but the pleasant tingling along my nerves was back, the anticipation of the promised understanding.

My mind was drowned with the tide of knowledge. This was just a prologue; a true discovery would require preparation, but I was almost ready. The voice said I was chosen, that I was a perfect candidate to bring It what It needs and that I would be rewarded. I cried tears of amazement and horror at the sheer scope of the voice – it seemed to encompass the entire world. I couldn’t comprehend it, but I didn’t know then that it was a blessing. I wanted to know, I craved to know what It was and how I could be of use to something so powerful, so huge. Divine. That was a word that crossed my mind, as much as I don’t like that. I don’t like many things, but I can’t change any of them.

The voice said I’m on the right path. I would Know and Understand. First, I needed to do something. As It told me what that was, doubt started to creep up to my mind. What was I doing? What was happening? How could this be real?

I came to on the floor by my front door, the cursed book in hand, with a tear-stained face and a bloody nose.

I knew what I had to do to get ready and, as I calmed down and went over everything in my head, I was surprised by how trivial it was. Honestly, by this point I was kind of afraid It would tell me to hurt someone, so I was glad this was just about reading a bunch of words in a specific location at a specific time. I was aware of the fact that this was most probably a ritual, and I was quite apprehensive. I kept arguing with myself in my head, over and over whether I should follow through, but deep down I knew that I would, no matter what I told myself. This part, I think, scared me the most; how compelling the promise of knowledge was, how reverently I’d found myself thinking of the book and its owner (which I assumed was the voice), how fanatical some of my thoughts sounded. I’ve never been religious, never really felt idealistic either. I was always focused on facts, on the here and now. Can knowledge be an ideal? Can you be a fanatic of Seeing and Knowing?

How much had I changed since I’d found Punctum Visus in that old attic.

I found a good, quiet spot, on the north-west side of the New Forest National Park near Southampton. I told no one about this, deeming it unimportant. I would come back after my big discovery, I would explain everything. I laugh at myself now; at my naivety.

The night of April 28 th was clear, and the starry sky looked back at me as I parked my car on the road in the forest and locked it. I tied a piece of a long red string to the wheel, not to lose my way in the forest, and started to walk forward. I held the book close to my chest, as if it could protect me from the dark, eerie outlines of the trees, swaying gently on the wind and whatever the darkness around me held. I didn’t light the torch; the moon was nearly full, bathing everything in its gentle light, and besides, for some reason it seemed that the crude yellow light would somehow break the sanctity of what I was about to do. I could see the ground in front of me and managed to lose sight of my car and everything else besides trees pretty fast.

I stopped when I found a small clearing. The moon was high in the sky, shining down on me like a big eye; I didn’t know why this comparison seemed the most fitting, but it did. I took a deep breath, feeling a chill plant little dots all over my skin, making my hairs stand on end. The wind died down and the trees froze, as if in anticipation. I felt something watching me closely; I was not alone here anymore.

The realization made my breath catch in my throat and the last streaks of sanity broke through my thick skull. Run! Drop the book and run! I didn’t. My hands trembled, my muscles tensed, and I stood there, frozen with fear as something stared at me, seemingly for eternity. Something bigger than me, bigger than anything I have ever seen was watching me, waiting. My eyes dropped to the book in my arms. The black leather was warm, as always, but this time I felt a pulsating sensation from it. A heartbeat.

I screamed. The book landed discarded on the ground, and I stumbled backwards and tripped, landing in the grass as well. It was cold and wet, and it glistened with something in the faint moonlight. At first I took it for water, but upon closer inspection I saw it was the grass itself that glittered – a shy rainbow, glowing iridescently in an impossible way. I froze, stunned, for I have never seen such colours before. It seemed utterly alien, something unfitting for the human eye to see; simultaneously beautiful and horrifying.

As I looked around, I noticed that everything alive in the forest – the trees, the grass, the bushes, the plants – had taken on that iridescent mixture of faint light that prickled my eyes and sent a shiver of terror down my spine. It was beautiful, utterly gorgeous in a way that nothing a human eye can perceive could be. It was horrifying in how different, alien, and other it was. My senses could tell this is not of the Earth; not of this reality, not of this world; everything in me that still had common sense tried to recoil from the inferiority of this magnificence and the danger it brought, but I had abandoned common sense a while back. Maybe even when I touched the book for the first time. I stared then, breathless and trembling, at this scenery as if from a fairy tale and decided to lock away my rational thoughts. I wanted to See, to Know; I wanted to experience and if this was the death of me then hell, it was a pretty good way to go. To behold such a sight, I thought, was a reward in and of itself.

Of course, I had no idea what any of it meant. I slowly rose to my knees and patted the ground down until I felt the book. It still pulsated with this heartbeat and the letters etched in the leather glowed with golden light. My hands were sweaty, and I didn’t know whether I was shivering from fear or the cold. I opened the book on the first page.

What I saw was not what I had expected. I remembered that the first page, after the titular one, was the beginning of the introduction, that much I had understood, but now it was a big picture in black and white; a night sky, with an almost full moon and strewn with stars. It was a shot from the ground and treetops could be seen at the edges of the picture. As the book swayed in my hands, the stars glittered, and the perspective shifted ever so slightly, as if it was in 3D. Stricken by a surge of dread and cold certainty, I looked up. My suspicion was right – the picture in the book depicted the exact image that was now above me. I gasped quietly and looked down at the book—

And this is where things started to really go horribly, horribly wrong.

The book was gone. What’s more, the ground was gone too and suddenly everything was not where it should have been. I blinked but it did nothing to ease the dizziness; and when I composed myself enough to register what I was seeing I froze, the most intense horror I have ever experienced crushing my body from all sides and inside out.

I realized that I was Seeing. I was finally Seeing, and I Understood it all.

I don’t know how to convey in words what I saw. I don’t believe it’s possible; humans were never made to see and understand such things. I should have never touched the book, I should have never asked for knowledge. All my life I believed that knowledge was the point; it was a tool, and it was power. I don’t know what I think anymore. I think some knowledge should always be hidden because we were not made to know everything. We can’t , it’s physically impossible for us to comprehend.

For one moment in my life. For one moment I became something else, and I saw the world in the way It sees the world. For one moment I shared a mind with an eldritch being, a thing that is Fear itself, and I saw the Earth through Its Eye. I can’t… I can’t tell you just how horrible it is. How… How meaningless; we’re all intertwined things, guided by strings of web that lead us through life, and we’re all connected in this maze of fear . We’re not individuals; we’re not special. We don’t have souls and none of our experiences matter. We’re just fear. These… These entities are a part of all of us. They’re our fear and they live inside of us, inside of every living creature that can feel fear. Can you comprehend that? How can you be sure you are yourself when there’s a cosmic entity, a power as old as life itself, living you ? And no one has any idea. Nobody knows and if I tell someone they’ll think I’m crazy. Sometimes I think I’m crazy. But deep down I know what I saw. I know it was real. And I’m terrified. I’m terrified because I know that this Being of eyes that I became a part of watches everything I do. I feel Its presence here very strongly, and I guess it makes sense. It will never leave me. It’s a part of me, just like the rest of them; just like they’re all a part of every one of you, yet you have no idea. But I know. And I know I’m all alone with that knowledge, the knowledge that I can’t comprehend, but I know I could in that one moment. It’s a very lonely place to be and I’m scared.

I’m scared as I have never been before; this fear doesn’t leave me anymore. Every second of every day I’m aware I’m watched by something as great as cosmos. I’m aware I shared my mind with that being and it makes my skin crawl.

I don’t know what to do now, but I don’t expect any advice from you. I’m leaving the book with you, as proof. Its heart doesn’t beat anymore, and I’ve seen what I was supposed to.

Don’t read it.

Notes: If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving me a comment!! For people interested in a little bit of background: Lyria is a D&D character I have created that still awaits her chance to play in a campaign. She's an arcane scholar that has a dark little secret of actually being a warlock of a being she doesn't know a lot about. She's in love with knowledge and she seeks to learn about her powers as well as the world around her. I'm currently DMing a Ravenloft campaign and I just couldn't miss the fact how much potential for a corruption arc she has. Then I listened to TMA and I was like, she would definitely become the Avatar of the Beholding.

[monsterqueers]

New Essay Up

New essay up on the website!

props and credit to @shadowfae , whos panel on problematic sources at Othercon 2021 motivated and inspired me to write about morality differences.

Alignments - A Memory Dump Essay

Essay has also been transcribed under this readmore if thats easier to read for anyone.

Morality, in The Before, was different, in the sense that there were Allignments.

I am A Silver Dragon, from a slightly AU-ed Dungeons and Dragons world. Alignments there dictated whether you were good or evil, lawful or chaotic. You may have seen the grid around, the nine squares with things like ‘neutral good’ and ‘lawful evil’ on them. This is that.

When I say ‘good’ and ‘evil’ I mean a different concept than the behavior choices that fall into ‘doing harm’ and ‘helping people’. There were words differing between the two in dragonic, though I do not remember them now, for what I am talking about.

In this world, ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘lawful’ and ‘chaotic’ - the dragonic forms of these words, were not behavior descriptors, nor intention descriptions. They were factions, and many species simply could not choose their born faction or change it very much if they could. These factions were generally due to god interference in the creation of that species, and it meant certain magics worked or did not work against/for them or they had traits that were often seen as harmful. The correct translation for ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is more accurately ‘darkness’ and ‘light’, though lawful and chaotic are close enough to ‘things that follow order’, and ‘things that reject order’.

These alignments said very little about the behavior they exhibited or the morals they had. The dragonic word for ‘evil’ as in how people here use it to mean ‘does harm to others’ could be retranslated as ‘being an asshole’. A person aligned lawful good could regularly commit tax fraud and beat their wife, and a person who was chaotic evil could be a pacifist who gardens and is passionate about healthcare reform.

For some of the littlefolk (the Polite translated dragonic word for humans and elves and the like), this was more flexible, and generally littlefolk would not consider those who did large amounts of harm to their in-group to be good aligned, nor people who had never done harm any worse than neutral, despite this not being the case magically speaking. It could make things rather confusing when talking to the layman, as much of the littlefolk could simply choose whatever faction they liked and often could jump ship whenever they liked too.

There were other various littlefolk somewhat limited in their alignment choice however- a Drow could not be ‘good’, and Aasimir could not be ‘evil’, for example. Usually this was split down the good and evil, rather than lawful and chaotic, as the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ deities held the most active sway.

Think of it like nationality, I suppose. Its the closest equivalent. Some people can't ever gain citizenship in a country other than their country of birth even if they want to, others can do so with a bit of work.

Dragons, however, didn’t have this sort of choice. All true dragons were born a specific alignment to do with their species, and inherent instincts to follow the tenants generally professed by that faction. This is one of the major traits that separated a True -also known as Greater- Dragon from other dragonic creatures, such as fairy dragons, wyverns, and rust dragons, actually. Other dragonic creatures had some wiggle room.

Chromatic dragons were all evil aligned, Gem dragons were all neutral aligned, and Metallic dragons were all good aligned. Planar dragons, while true dragons, were another matter and their alignments were to nothing on the scale as their origin points and commitments were beyond the gods of that my former plane’s influence. Lung dragons were a type of Planar dragon in my canon, instead of their own category.

The individual species of those groupings each had a assigned further spot. A Gold Dragon was ALWAYS Lawful Good, whether they are an abhorrent entity or not, and a White Dragon was always Chaotic Evil.

The individual species were as follows(* for ones that are AU to dnd 5e canon but are true to mine):

Chaotic Evil - Red, Black, Yellow, White

Neutral Evil - Brown, Purple*, Gray

Lawful Evil - Blue, Green

Chaotic Neutral - Topaz, Crystal

True Neutral - Amber, Amethyst, Obsidian*, Prismatic

Lawful Neutral - Emerald, Sapphire

Chaotic Good - Copper, Mercury*, Brass

Neutral Good - Silver*, Iron*

Lawful Good - Gold, Bronze, Platinum*, Steel

So I was and am a Silver Dragon. Bahumat created metallic dragons with the intention of combating His sister Tiamat, who created chromatic dragons in turn. The deities of Law and Chaos- neither touched my kind deeply. We could use all magic aligned with the light or neutral powers, and none of the dark. There was little magic that was specifically aligned with order and chaos, but all of that was accessible, provided the spell was not of the shadow. Things that repelled creatures of the light could keep me out.

The more ‘good’ creatures that existed in the world in relation to ‘evil’ ones brought more and less power to Bahumat and Tiamat in their eternal fight. So long as one ‘good’ or ‘evil’ creature existed, neither god could die and they were driven to wipe each other out. The same could be said of the law and chaos deities.

Of my life, the beginning is murky. Once I was grown enough to roam, I first Adventured with a elven rider companion and then lived upon a mountain lair until my death. Towards the middle and latter end, the towns at its base paid me rites and respect for my guardianship. These rites did technically elevate me to a minor god* capable of working greater magic. I also had a village much closer to and in my lair, one where I took those who asked my asylum who perhaps needed greater safety or guidance.

I would defend my territory and would help those who asked. It was a good life, and I hold little to no exotrauma from it.

*not to be confused with Greater gods, which are what effect Alignment or embody big concepts, minor gods are just those who are Believed in by enough people- and thus given power from that collective Belief

The divide between what was and what is is deeper and more shallow that one would expect, all at once.

I’ve started tentatively identifying as a walk-in relatively recently, my selfhood simply showed up one day and the original, whos interests, opinions, demeanor, and identity was different than mine disappeared shortly thereafter. The system has many theories on how exactly this happened, the origins thus such, and how much of the original’s ego was made into me, and also exactly when. The transition was rather seamless and there was much brain weirdness to muddle it all and convince me that I have always been here. None of us know the answer, and it generally doesn’t matter in practice.

The experiences of the original that I inherited gave a large amount of distance to this life. For reference, I Awakened as a Silver Dragon ~2014 perhaps 2015 -time is muddy- or so- having finally put together all the noema and shifts and assorted feelings that were not my cat theriotype into what they were. I had been in the body for a good handful of years previous to that, however. It gives me a distance from that life. My memories and retained selfhood from that life are dull- a botched reincarnation. I remember just enough- I experience just enough bleedover that it upholds a pillar of my identity and I still identify as the being of that life, but not so much I am exactly as-is.

I want to do a little disclaimer- The statement that this definitively IS a past life and I AM a walk in and these ARE memories of a past life is a theory, not fact. I do not and cannot know if my theory is right, and I have a healthy dose of skepticism in regards to this. My experiences could be sourced to many things, however I experience my draconity in a fashion that is similar to how others describe their past life experiences. It fits accounts better than the accounts of people who are not past-life otherkin. It feels right to describe these experiences as such, and so I do. Perhaps one day my understanding of this may change, but for now it is as such.

Returning to the topic at hand; its a point of frustration to me almost to the point of dysphoria, how good and evil, and moral and immoral are used in society here and how. Good and evil denote both the ingroup-outgroup AND the moral standard, equating sinful with strange with harmful behavior. Evil no longer means ‘entity supporting or created by Tiamat’- who is night and shadow. Good no longer means ‘entity supporting or created by Bahumat’- who is day and light.

The congruence of good with helping and evil with harming is far more intense here, Bahumat and Tiamat as I know them hold no power here- as they shouldn’t. Their place was in my old reality and that is as far as those entities reach. The assignment of moral values to enjoyment of a thing or thoughts, rather than actions is wholly new, and honestly quite unpleasant.

Evil here, becomes ‘entity that enjoys harming’ and often ‘anyone I don’t like’

Good here them also becomes ‘entity that enjoys helping’ and often ‘anyone I do like’

There will be people who insist to ignore people that do that last part and claim that it doesn’t matter- that the social realities of how others assign you do not matter, but I disagree.

Being queer, kinky, mentally ill, neurodivergent, disabled, and a strong leftist among other things means people will think me evil for existing quite a bit. Stigmatized minorities are othered, our traits become evil no matter how kind we may be.

Society calls us evil, has designated us evil- alright, how is this a bad thing?

Disassociating Evil from moral allows one to reclaim Evil. Ok, we are Evil now, but oh, no less kind. No less caring. Take the words slung at you and make armor out of them.

And also no matter how kind you may be, by this metric if you enjoy causing pain and destruction, you are evil.

This… is a thoughtcrime thing. No matter how you conduct yourself in life, if you enjoy pain you are evil to society at large. So as above, unlink Evil from Moral, and it is reclaimable.

How people assign you is a material reality you can choose to make hold no power over you. You can make it your own scales.

It is for the reason of words changing meanings, of the fact that my god I was born to does not reach here and thus frees me from obligations, that I no longer identify as Neutral Good. It simply does not mean the same thing anymore and I can now choose my alignment besides. Bahumat was no terrible god to serve or anything, but I would have appreciated the choice if it was not hardwired into my dragon brain at the time to be devoted to such a being.

I take joy in harm and at the same time take joy in helping, I think the absence of care of society is not something I can do, nor do I think rigid obedience is right.

Thus I would consider myself in the alignments of this world today as True Neutral.

Not to mention I have chosen the service of a True Neutral god in Cernunnos, so by my former world’s standards I am True Neutral now as well.

It feels right, to identify as such now. Society considers me evil enough I am too sin-stained to be good, but I have too much love of creation and helping to be wholly evil.

I believe that rules are necessary or we get Situations that cause harm to others, but at the same time am too Anarchist-leaning to not chafe under absolute order.

Still, the... Dissatisfaction with how people use alignments here persists.

[shiningkestral]

Reading and Writing with Aphantasia

I get a lot of compliments on my writing, and while I appreciate each and every one of them, they also tend to give me a slight bout of Imposter Syndrome every time they do, especially if the comments include a remark about the descriptive quality of what I write.

Aphantasia is an unofficial condition where someone doesn’t have a “mind’s eye,” or they cannot visualize an image. It can be something complex like a beach scene or as simple as a geometric shape, someone with aphantasia cannot see it. It’s not considered a disability because it usually doesn’t affect people’s lives at all. Instead, it’s simply considered a different way of processing information as part of the larger neurodivergent movement. Aphantasia is sometimes seen as an example that concept of neurotypical might be one we should be moving away from: as there really isn’t a “normal” or “standard” way for people to process information and thoughts.

I don’t consider myself someone with “true” aphantasia. I do have the ability to conjure images in my mind. However, it’s very weak. I can’t hold them for very long and it’s something I have to actively do. I also suffer from difficulty recognizing people, which is common among people with aphantasia. I can recognize and tell apart people I see on a daily basis like my family and close friends, but outside of them, I’m completely hopeless. I can’t remember who the aunts and uncles I only see once every two years are or what they look like and every Hollywood celebrity looks the same to me.

(This is one of the major reasons I prefer animation to live action: it’s so much easier for me to discern between characters and tell what’s going on. I’ve gone through entire live action movies without figuring out a single character’s name because I can’t tell one brown haired white guy from the other brown haired white guy.)

I hear that most people “picture” what’s going on when they read in their heads. From what I’ve been told, they actually “see” a movielike scene in their heads. They actually see Harry Potter waving his wand to cast a spell in their mind’s eye.

When I read, I don’t see any of that. What I see are words and words only. Once in a while, I will stop to try to picture something in my head, but it’s always a still, vague image with fuzzy shapes representing characters and objects. (I do this a lot more often when I write, because I need to keep track of things like character positioning in any given scene.) However this doesn’t reduce my enjoyment of reading or writing at all. In fact, I think it actually heightens it. To me, if I want something visual, I’d watch a show or a movie. When it comes to reading and writing, I’m here for words, not pictures.

So how do I process words without images? Well, to me, words represent concepts. When I see the word “cat,” I don’t try to picture one, I just know what a cat is. I know a cat is a four legged animal with pointed ears and whiskers. They meow and are commonly kept as pets. If there’s something important about the cat, like for example, it has six toes on its paws, I remember it and move on.

If you look at my writing, it focuses more on emotions and abstract concepts and descriptions more than physical ones. I use a lot of similes and metaphors, and the physical descriptions I do give are usually with a purpose: I want to evoke specific moods and emotions in any given scene. The lighting may convey a serene tone, or a movement may say something about a character’s personality. Those are I’m thinking about when I write. Because of it, I tend to feel like the way I write “normal” descriptions, just the way things look, is somewhat weak.

I do not picture things when I read, but I do feel a lot. The way I engage with reading is primarily through emotions, and that’s what I want to convey when I write: more than wanting the reader to see something, I want them to feel something.

So when someone tells me they enjoy my writing, it’s because I succeeded in sharing what I feel when I read.

But if not, that’s still great too, because even it still means that even across different ways of reading, different ways of thinking, I can still communicate with someone who goes through the world differently than I do.

[theexistentiallyqueer]

Sorry to bother, but where do autistic and adhd brains overlap? Because both are neurodivergent (and beautiful, I agree) But how can I find out which behaviour belongs more to me being autistic (got diagnosed this year) and which is adhd? (No Matter What Deadline, after several years in hostile environment (failed university, then call center work) I panic. Hard.) How do I disentangle adhd and autism to find out what strategies to use to function better?

Please don’t feel like you’re being a bother, because you’re not! Honestly the fact that someone is coming to me to ask ADHD questions makes me teary-eyed, because I’ve fought so hard to learn to function with ADHD that people Asking Me Things like I’m a trusted expert just makes my heart grow three sizes, the opposite of the Grinch.

I’m probably not the best person to ask about how ADHD and autism overlap specifically, especially if you’re taking this from an autistic POV. And I’m also not a behavioral expert, which is a very strong preface. But I can (and am very happy to) talk a bit about my experiences with ADHD and how I’ve learned to make things work for my brain.

I’m going to put this under a cut, if that’s okay with you, anon. It got kind of long and I don’t want to overrun anyone’s dash. And you can always, always ask me ADHD questions, and I’ll try my best to answer.

My ADHD tends to manifest specifically in the following ways:

Extreme hyperfixation that has its own varying degrees (e.g., I’m really into Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but I have so lack of interest in Byleth/Claude that my lack of interest feels like an actual void)

An inability to process feelings regarding things other people care strongly about that I don’t. If we’re using the same fandom example: I could rant forever about how Byleth/Edelgard gives me ALL THE FEELS, but if I friend I care about started to talk about Byleth/Claude, I would immediately lose all interest in the conversation and struggle to react in a way that doesn’t present me as a selfish monster who doesn’t care about the person I’m talking to.

I tend to monopolize conversation if I’m given the opportunity because I LOVE getting the chance to talk about my hyperfixations. If someone cuts me off when I’m really into a topic, I get incredibly irritated and have to try to restrain from myself from acting petty in response. The number of times I have smiled my mouth is a knife and said, “ANYWAY, as I WAS SAYING…” is beyond count.

I don’t recognize or remember people until I have something meaningful to associate them with. I also don’t tend to notice things that don’t clock themselves as Important in my brain. I usually describe this as “background furniture.” Even PEOPLE become background furniture. A girl I work with mentioned a person on her team had quit, and I’d literally walked by that person’s desk earlier that day and didn’t notice it was empty, because that person and the entire space they occupied was background scenery.

If something affects or touches me personally, it hits me Very Personally. I had a complete fucking breakdown watching the video of Philando Castille’s shooting, because I heard his daughter crying while she watched him getting shot and went down onto a spiral of personal loss over my own father to gun violence and started to immediately correlate the two. Separating ADHD brainness from my  whiteness is complex and hard and (said sarcastically) so, so much fun.

The direct inverse of that are things like: I’m talking to my mom, who’s telling me about a high school friend of hers just got into a horrific vehicle accident and is in the ICU. My mom then goes on to give me regular status updates on this woman I don’t know. I get out of work, and she talks about this woman’s surgery. I get out of work, and she talks about this woman’s family’s attempt to find an adequate rehab center. They find a rehab center, and my mom shows me how her friend decorated her daughter’s room. My mom shows me a video of the girl working with a physical therapist, who gets her to push herself upright with a walker and take her tentative steps. “Awesome!” my brain thinks. “Great!” my brain thinks. All of it spans over several days, weeks, months. I have nothing to do with this constant influx of information. I don’t know how my brain should file it. I don’t know this woman who was injured. I feel for her in theory because no one should ever have to go through that even though so many people do, but I haven’t ACTIVELY PRETEND like I personally am invested in the situation or else my mother gives me Concerned Eyes because I seem to be In A Bad Mood Today.

When it comes to organization, I tend to lean towards hyper-organization rather than hypo-organization. By which I mean I over-organize to combat the fact that ADHD often results in disorganization, and disorganization results in chaos, and chaos gives me COMPLETE PANIC ATTACKS. At work at one point, I had my emails auto-tagging every incoming email based on the email type, on top of tagging for my clients. Every label had a different color, and it all made sense to me, because I’d made it. When my team had cover my stuff on a day I was out, my inbox was such a horror show that it left them feeling drained and distressed.

Let’s talk about socialization! I have a rocky relationship with my childhood best friend. When I discovered social justice in college, I started picking fights with everyone over everything Problematique. The first major fight I had with my best friend at the time was because she felt I was over-aggressive towards a mutual male friend of ours. She was probably right, because I know the kind of bullying behavior I later developed. I thought I learned from it. After the 2016 election, I messaged her on FB, thinking I had a sympathetic ear, to say that seeing her mother post constant messages of support for Trump and sharing stuff dismissing Trump’s sexual assault allegations was particularly hurtful considering I’d told my friend that my mom had been sexually assaulted.. I’m not going to share what she said, but she wasn’t in the wrong. We didn’t talk for several months after that.

Speaking of her! When she started dating the guy she’s now married to, at one point I asked her if they’d had sex yet. I asked it because I thought it was a thing you were Supposed To Talk About as friends, and also because I was, in a way, morbidly curious, because I’m grey-ace and queer. She confirmed that they had, but I still felt so icky and uncomfortable about that for so long afterwards. It was only after I started to understand that I’m not cis and not allo that I really understood why: I was forcing myself to perform what I thought female friendship was based on how it’s portrayed in media, and it’s only once I began to understand that I’m on the ace spectrum and that I’m nonbinary that I really started to understand how forced mainstream conversations of attraction are.

I’m loud! I’m loud! I’m loud! I’m loud all the time! I live with my mom and I socialize with my mom and when we’re in public spaces and I’m talking about something that interests me, she always, always, always feels like she has to shush me. What makes it ironic? If there are other people being loud around me, I can’t function. I can’t process the noise. It’s EVEN WORSE if they’re speaking in another language, because if it’s English I can process the words at least, but if it’s another language, it’s just pure, inescapable sound that I know has meaning but can’t intuit, and if I can’t understand something, that’s as bad as dying.

From what I’ve read about autism, here are ways I THINK my ADHD traits overlap with autistic traits:

I can’t read facial expressions. I think I have a better concept of emotional nuance in facial expressions than someone who’s strictly autistic, but I’ll still panic when I see a smile that isn’t bland enough. RDS (rejection-sensitive dysphoria) will kick in. They hate me, they hate me, they hate me, is the track my brain will play on repeat until I’ve drunk myself into oblivion. Whenever someone smiles, I mistrust it immediately.

Eye contact is incredibly fucking frustrating. I understand that it’s expected, but it’s SO UNCOMFORTABLE. Why do we need to stare into each other’s eyes to understand one another? How can you people write whole treatises on the sanctity of locking gazes and finding an instant intellectual bond without realizing that eye contact that’s not called for is personally invasive?

I can’t understand flirting vs not flirting to the point that I’m absolutely paranoid someone is flirting with me, at which point I usually become hostile if I think they ARE, because DON’T FLIRT WITH ME. TALK to me!

I hate, hate, hate unsolicited physical contact. If I’m in a state of over-expression, I hate it even more. I’m not physically withdrawn, because I love hugs, and cuddles, and human touch. But when I’ve spent the entire day listening to other people talk and I have to walk into a room where people continue to talk, if someone touches me, it’s fucking No-Oh-One.

Someone is interested in a thing I’m interested in. We’ll use Persona 5 as the concept, because this honestly happened recently. I talk with the guy whose desk is across from mine about Persona 5 all the time. He’s also excited about Royal. I started going into my Sophia theory that I’ve really only lobbied at @softspokensansa. I could see, I could viscerally see, the interest drain from his expression. BUT I HAVE AN IDEA SO I WILL TALK ABOUT IT ANYWAY, and then afterwards I felt incredibly resentful that I was being filtered through a cookie-cutter drain.

It’s painful–it’s really painful!–to try to talk about my spiritual ideas with other people. I have a side blog I just started and am preppy myself to share, and I’m absofuckinglutely TERRIFIED everyone is going to write me off without looking at what I have to say. IT’S THE RSD AGAIN! Nothing I ever said has actually mattered before, so why should it now?

I feel, constantly, like I’m halfway between a point of reality and a point of something. What that something is is indefinable, but regardless of it, I exist.

I’d like to direct you to two very positive youtubers I know; I meant to do this earlier, but now feels right in terms of how I’ve written: How To ADHD and Amethyst Schaber.I credit both of them in helping me find a safe place with ADHD before diagnosis. There are stories other than yours that matter.

I wish you the best, anon! If you think you’re autistic and ADHD: given the comorbidity between the two, you probably are! And ADHD is just as beautiful, complicated, and misunderstood as autism is.

If anyone reading this can speak to living as both autistic and ADHD, please respond so I can lift your voice. And to my anon: you’re beautiful completely. I hope my story has helped you in its anyway, and I hope that you find yourself at a place of peace. It’s a struggle to get there, but it’s worth it, every step of the way.

[golden-witch]

Rosa, Rosa, why are you such an idiot?

Hey! I wrote up a long character analysis of Rosa for fun. I hope you enjoy it.

[Read the full post under read more]

The narration mentions in Episode 2 that Rosa still feels like a child because she can’t accept and overcome her trauma which makes her an incapable mother. The banquet scene during the Tea Party has always been one of my favorite scenes in Umineko for its more somber aspects, something both the manga and the anime neglect in order to focus more on the horror themes. I’ll link it here because it’s the most important point of consideration when analyzing Rosa’s character. It certainly leaves an impression of what her childhood was like.

Some people were surprised to learn that Krauss and Eva were full fledged adults when they abused Rosa. If Eva and Krauss are in their 50’s and Rosa is In her early 30’s, that puts about a 20 year age difference between them! This isn't a case of sibling rivalry such as Eva vs. Krauss-- this is the abuse of a child by her adult siblings. We don't know the exact numbers, but we can assume Rosa is closer in age to the cousins than her eldest brother and sister. They suggest this several times in the story when Battler notes her odd position in the family. Rosa is treated as neither an adult nor child and is continuously forced out of conversations with her siblings. (Think of the scene in episode 2 where Kyrie manipulates Rosa to leave the room by gently reminding her that she's left Maria outside.) She acts submissively towards them and follows their guidance. This is likely why 12 year old Battler got the impression that she was “sweet”.

There's also the issue of her parents, who we can assume were neglectful if not equally abusive. I would imagine Kinzo would want as little to do with her as possible; he would have little incentive to raise her as she was a girl and because he was already committed to Beatrice II (who grew up alongside her). Rosa’s relationship with her mother is suggested to be strained (when Rosa talks about running away from home because she did badly on an exam), and I think-- as is the case with the other adults-- that she doesn’t remember the woman fondly.

The way Rosa behaves supports my impression that she grew up in a household where she was undervalued. It’s reasonable to assume she threw herself at the first man who treated her with the slightest bit of compassion and who offered her an opportunity to leave Rokkenjima. His character ended up being flimsy, but someone of Rosa’s background wouldn’t be able to notice the warning signs of abandonment. Rosa believes he left because of her pregnancy, but you could make the argument that he purposefully conned her and dumped her once he had the money Kinzo lent him. Having never been wanted before, Rosa would accept his behavior to feel desirable.

The relationship Rosa had with Maria’s father is one of two romantic relationships mentioned in the story, the other being her fling with the married man in Maria’s book (classy). I don’t know how accurately I can say this reflects all of her romantic endeavors, but we do know that Maria never makes note of any men who might have come in and out of her life. It seems that Rosa doesn’t bring her lovers home out of fear they will leave her due to Maria (as she believes her ex did), so I think the relationships were very shallow. Bringing a boyfriend or girlfriend home with her would have been a step in deepening their bond, but Rosa pushes them away perhaps out of fear they will one day leave her (#abandonment issues). She is in favor of short-term romances with a low level of commitment. This is why I can’t stand when people try to argue that the scene of Rosa in bed with her lover in episode 4 is just “Ange’s fabrication”! Everything about Rosa screams that was the truth of the situation.

“So Rosa sacrifices her time to have passionate one-night stands with guys she doesn’t even care about?” Sort of-- she feeds off of the attention they give her. It’s not very important who her lovers are so long as they acknowledge her as her family did not. She craves the external validation she was denied in childhood. There’s also something to be said about sex as a means of claiming adulthood. I can totally see why someone so insecure of their maturity would go so far.

I could talk a lot about what I make of Rosa’s relationship with other adults. If you want to discuss that further, totally send me an ask, but I’d like to dedicate the later half of the analysis to Maria. This is where I have to give a major content warning for discussions of violent child abuse.

The story alludes strongly to the idea that Maria is most likely on the autism spectrum. I don’t know if it’s canon, but after hearing from autistic fans that Maria resembles their experiences, I feel comfortable saying that she’s neurodivergent. It’s not my place and not within the scope of this essay to make claims about Maria’s mental health, but we should take into account how her behavior affects her relationship with her mother. Nothing Maria does is “abnormal” for a child (I would argue there are no abnormal children); Rambler once answered an ask about a “what if” scenario where Maria was neurotypical and gave the answer that it probably wouldn’t matter in terms of Rosa abusing her. Rosa vents her anger towards Maria. It doesn’t matter if she is a “problem child” or not.

Maria is continuously said to be different from her peers, and differences breed scorn. Rosa wants Maria to be “normally” behaved so she will be acknowledged as a good parent and an adult. Kids are seen as reflections of their parents, and she sees Maria as a threat to her reputation-- especially in front of her siblings, who openly mock her. Ironically, Rosa plays into this expectation; she was considered incompetent as a child and incompetent as an adult. She wants to defy that expectation so badly that she ends up beating her child. It’s a cycle she puts no effort into breaking. For that she should be seen as a deplorable character and an abuser. I believe Ryukishi wanted it to be obvious that Rosa is a neglectful and irresponsible, sometimes violent mother.

Let’s break down their relationship.

Rosa-- at her heart-- cares about Maria’s wellbeing. She acknowledges she should have been a more accepting mother and recognizes that her actions were wrong-- Most notably in episode 8 in the Golden Land. Unfortunately, she is only able to consider mending her relationship with Maria in retrospect since she is, of course, at that point dead.  I believe this indicates that she had the capacity to change her behavior, and it a better universe, she would be able to become a good parent. This is all hypothetical, though there is enough in the story to hint that this was a strong possibility had Sayo not given up on the family. If only someone had intervened successfully…

Ryu also wants us to consider that Rosa is protective of Maria against outside threats. He refers to her as both a mother bear and a mother wolf who will bear fangs when her child is in danger. The story supports this in episode 2 when Rosa fights to protect her daughter from the goats. On the contrary, it is suggested that Rosa’s abuse of Maria stems from how others interpret Maria’s behavior. I don’t really understand how Rosa can both be “protective” of Maria and brutal towards her daughter depending on external threats. I think this is supposed to be further evidence (intentional or not) that Rosa is unbalanced and acts inconsistently.

It was exceedingly difficult for Rosa to manage raising a child. Her polarizing behavior was what led Maria to come up with the “white witch/black witch” concept since a child couldn’t make sense of something so complex. Rosa explains during episode 2 that she often spoiled Maria, and this is seen in episode 4 when she takes Maria out for dessert at a restaurant she can’t afford. This is exemplary of Rosa’s genuine feelings of affection for Maria which she is at a loss for ways to convey. A girl who grew up rich and neglected may see objects as a means to soothe wounds. Her lingering guilt causes her to feed into Maria’s material wants without considering her emotional needs. She overcompensates with gifts. Maria would cry and demand presents, and Rosa would either buy into it to satisfy her or beat her into submission. Neither of these are good parenting!

The reason why CPS is notified about Rosa’s behavior has to do with parental neglect; Rosa left Maria by herself for too long for too many times. We know from Maria’s diary that Rosa was often absent and used the excuse that she was working late into the night and for days at a time, and we know of one instance where Rosa lied and instead went on vacation. However, we can’t say that Rosa was always on vacation when she left Maria alone. I personally believe that Rosa would engage in some unhealthy working habits to offset the cost of her frivolous lifestyle.

More headcanons that I have are that these bursts in irregular behavior for Rosa happened clustered together. Basically, Rosa would irresponsibly work for multiple days straight and then impulsively abandon her daughter to go on vacations in a predictable pattern. I believe Rosa suffers from bipolar II-- the sort of self-sabotaging behavior she engages in is evidence. She wants her business to succeed, but risks its stability. She wants to be a good mother, but she abuses Maria. Her sudden fits of rage and violent mood swings could be connected to this because it's a common symptom for those with mood disorders. I don't think it's out of the question to say that she was suffering from a manic episode during the period Maria writes about in her journal. This isn't to say that people with bipolar II are abusers, I'm just suggesting some of her behavior can be explained this way. This comes from my own experiences and observations, so please don’t take my word for it. I’m just offering up an interpretation.

Anyway, if you want to hear more about Rosa as an abuser, and why she’s responsible for her actions, check it out here!

[anonforlackofabettername]

b'tzelem Elohim isn’t a popular concept in Judaism? I would’ve thought it was just kinda assumed to be true

I’m gonna assume this is in response to this post I made during pride month. I made that post because so much of being queer, being neurodivergent, or simply being diverse, is being told that something is wrong with you because you’re you and why can’t you be more like Them. My original post was trying to spread the idea that we are wonderful, we are holy, and that G-d loves us, not because of anything we’ve done to make G-d love us, but because we are who G-d made us to be and that is loved.

But speaking on the concept of b’tzelem Elohim I don’t know if its a popular concept or not. I used to think getting bar/bat mitzvah was like a mandatory thing and then it turned out that half the Jews in my college hillel weren’t b’nei mitzvah. It honestly wasn’t a big deal, but it was still weird for me to wrap my head around it. One thing I learned from being away at college was that there’s so many different ways to be a Jew and to practice Judaism. How’s the saying go? Two Jews, Three opinions. Its like that with everything in life. 

And as for what you know about the culture/religion, even things that seem like central concepts, it can depend on bunch of stuff; your religious schooling, the denomination you practice, how your family practices, and even how much you care. The truth is I didn’t care much about Judaism and religious school when I was younger. I went to services and religious school and got bat mitzvah because that’s what you did and I wasn’t old enough to argue against it. I dropped out of religious school the minute my mom would let me and stopped being Jewish for a while because as a kid I didn’t have the appreciation that I do now. In the later parts of high school and in college I made a choice to learn more about Judaism and start practicing again, but that doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly learned everything I didn’t already know. I’ve probably heard of the idea before in different contexts and different words, this is just the one that resonated and stuck with me. I’ve always known that G-d loves me and that G-d doesn’t care about whether I keep kosher or other petty things. But reading about b’tzelem Elohim for the first time, hearing the concept put into words and then summed up in one word, struck a cord in me. Knowledge comes to us when we need it and when we go looking for it, and in this moment I’m glad I found that knowledge. That being said, I’m glad that this is a concept that is familiar and ingrained in you. I’m glad its something you know intimately. That’s great. But you have to remember that sometimes loving yourself can be the hardest thing to do, so the idea that G-d loves you even when you hate yourself can be very comforting and I want to make sure as many people know that as possible. 

[fierceawakening]

I think you don't see reblogs of things I reblog from you if you're not the OP, so just thought you might find it interesting context that the OP of that anti-Latinx post started arguing with me about it with the assertion that non-binary genders do not exist (and the contradictory assertion that my viewing this as a trans issue mistakenly reframed as about racism/xenophobia is a misguided SJW conception of the world as social justice issues, while calling "Latinx" ethnocentric whitewashing).

Ugh, yeah, that’s something I disagree with, and I’m alarmed by the rise of comments I see in transmed circles like “Nonbinary genders don’t exist in non-Western cultures, it’s just their way of saying gay. Proof? I’m supposed to have proof? LOL WHATEVER, TRANSPHOBIC SNOWFLAKE WHO WANTS TO TAKE MY HRT AWAY. *flounce*”

But I don’t think the fact that that’s BS (or at least wildly unsubstantiated by people who don’t seem to want to prove it, which smells a bit like bull feces to me) invalidates that a lot of neologisms are not designed with non-native speakers in mind and really only make sense to people in on their creation. (I often wonder, for example, what non-native speakers of English make of “cis,” since its etymology is similarly opaque even to most of us!)

In fact, part of the reason I think… well, it’s not that I think people don’t get to or shouldn’t make up words. But one thing I consistently notice about neologisms, especially as they relate to trans people, is that certain subsets of the population seem to have real trouble adopting them.

For example, I don’t remember exactly when or who this was, but I remember a while back several neurodivergent bloggers who have trouble with language saying “I need you to know I can’t use your neopronoun. I have trouble processing language as it is, and the pronoun-set is one that my brain has serious trouble adding to. I hope you understand that, if I default to ‘they,’ it’s not meant as a snub.”

And from what I recall, people generally respected that and quickly picked it up. So where you used to have, like, “my pronoun is bun” (just choosing that one because it’s the one that became notorious, not out of a desire to imply anything about the person who used it), suddenly you started seeing like “bun/they,” meaning “I’d really prefer you used bun, but if you can’t, please use they.”

I responded to the latinxs post not because I think non-binary people don’t exist or that they shouldn’t make up words, but because my brain went “ah! You know, I’d nodded my head vigorously when people said disability made adopting this hard! And you just explained why I have trouble adopting this other similar neologism–because something that breaks how you learned your second language makes you go ????? Wow, thanks!”

But somehow… I feel like… eh. There are certain political views that people automatically associate with saying certain things, such that “if she said latinx is hard to learn, she’s either racist or only okay with binary trans folks or both! BOO URNS!” is an instant pattern match… even if you actually said “You know, as a non native speaker, I can really relate to this, because that’s so weird looking I cant’ even pronounce it INSIDE MY HEAD and that’s straight up unnerving,” which contains neither anything racist nor anything denying the existence of or disrespecting nb people.

[thereadingmoon]

Traci Chee’s A Sea of Ink and Gold: What Could’ve Been Better

In the first part of this review of a Sea of Ink and Gold, I’ve extolled its virtues as a series that manages to wrangle in a dozen stories together while managing to maximize its medium as a book to tell a story about the magic of reading with an inclusive cast to boot. Really, I find that it’s an amazing feat for a debut writer to pull through.

But also said in my last post, I did have a few grievances with it. Every story has its flaws, and that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily bad. It just means that they’re as human as the writers who make them.

Despite it being a wonderful story, I personally found a few things to nitpick about: an issue with the lack of worldbuilding, and the later benching of a large fraction of the cast.

One thing that I didn’t like in the worldbuilding of this book is something I haven't found a formal name for. I’ve come to call it non-ethnic diversity. I call it that because, yes, there are people of color at the forefront of this cast; but they have no inherent culture behind them, and there is no context to the cities, jungles, or societies they live in.

Characters are race-coded through descriptions of their appearance, but their societies are vaguely described besides explaining how they function with the lack of the written word, the effects and views of the transnational war, and the strings the Guard pulls in the Five Kingdoms of Kelanna. It also didn’t sit well when mentions of ruffly dresses worn by women and girls, streamlined military uniforms (translated into my mind’s eye as Napoleonic or Continental blues and reds), and individualistic outlooks in life (see: the need to leave a legacy) painted the setting as inherently western.

If you were to look at the map of Kelanna, you’d see that it’s a vast world. I find it a missed opportunity to even briefly mention the cultures of each nation and how distinct they are in a world rich with interesting worldbuilding that’s built on an intriguing concept.

The fantasy genre is somewhat infamous for it’s stereotypical and even racist allusions when it comes to fictional species/races. Warmongering "savage" races hit all the stereotypes and descriptions of indigenous or African peoples. Countries that are covertly Asian-leaning in culture always seem to be sneaky and manipulative. More often than not, the superior warriors and peaceful elves or fae are depicted white, or at least fair-colored. This uninspired and lazy race-allusion is not what I hope this series to have achieved.

Instead of assimilating real-world races into a fantasy setting, why not create a fantastic culture? Let's look at another modern Fantasy series, A Darker Shade of Magic. V.E. Schwab sets an alternate London in a country that’s inspired by Euroasian culture, where locals speak a language loosely derived from Turkish. The locals are tanned with dark hair, and their culture and values are implicitly explained throughout the series. What’s more, in the second book, the foreign cultures that are ushered into the story aren’t stand-ins for real-life ethnic groups. Sure, they were inspired by aspects from reality, but I personally found it something unique in that series: these cultures were distinct to the world of Red London, and can only be contextualized by the series itself and not real-world biases.

That is what I wanted in Kelanna, and what would’ve fleshed it out more as a world. Yes, there are people of color in this book. Yes, this is great in the terms of inclusivity and diversity in the Fantasy and YA genre. But in my opinion, the non-ethnic diversity takes away from the worldbuilding as well as an opportunity to flesh out the Five Kingdoms and the characters that inhabit it.

Another thing about the characters: some would say that the vast cast of Sea of Ink and Gold is an example of baiting or pandering the people of those communities by creating characters that are meant to represent them, only to be later discarded from the story and the plot. I would say that too. In fact, I am saying that.

I am so happy that books are becoming a platform of representation, most of all young adult fiction, which is fiction aimed at people who are still looking for their identity or for affirmation of their identity. But I found it absolutely jarring that there was a build-up of intimacy between we the readers and the merry misfits of the bloodletters—  the kidnapped children turned impromptu army. We read into their rapport and sympathize with their stories. We listen to the bloodletters speak of how they were kidnapped and turned into murderers in the quest to fulfill a prophecy. They revel in their atypicality, their uniqueness, and their strangeness.

Then, later, they are a collective group, almost only exclusively referred to as a unit. I can barely remember any of their individual names, and I can only categorize them through what makes them different. They are defined not as people, but what group they’re meant to represent. The only times a character is distinguished is if they become a plot point, if they need saving, or if they die.

This is a pattern: we are introduced to the intricacies to a person, but soon they are benched and put to the sidelines. From the extensively inclusive cast who aren’t Safia and Archer, only a handful was fully fleshed out as people and given character arcs to develop in. Everyone else becomes background characters and is briefly mentioned in passing. They simply slip right off the page.

Though that may be the point. Identities and people don’t need to have meaning. But one must remember that when writing a story, all things that are mentioned must have a purpose according to the principle of Chekhov’s Gun. Setup must have a reason and must follow through with a purpose. In Sea of Ink and Gold, there is little utilization of the liberal details we’re given of each individual throughout the story, and the characters become mere labels to glance over.

In writing a story, some things can only be cut out because of their irrelevance, or they can at the very least be briefly or implicitly stated through showing and not telling. Adeline and Isabelle's relationship in the book is heavily implied through their affection and loyalty with one another, but their love doesn't need any confirmation because it's blatantly clear.

That's not to say that the canonization of character traits like gender, sex, and neurodiversity shouldn't be done. But like more common character traits, I believe that there are more diegetic and natural ways to have them revealed other than jarring, jagged word-of-god narration that details the nuances of someone's identity. I've found this done in the book The First Sister, by Linden A. Lewis. There, a person's sexuality and gender are referred to glibly, and the pronoun "they" was used with little over-contextualization. Only once was there a very brief and in-character exchange referring to the gender of the character.

In a Sea of Ink and Gold, the characterization of Aljan is one such example of this. His neurodivergent behavior is deliberately noted in narration but never directly referred to. Some of his habits are offhandedly mentioned through dialogue in a way that alludes to the bloodletters' familiarity and acceptance, but it was never something that we've brushed by on an intimate level because it wasn't something relevant to the plot. What was important was Aljan's character as a whole.

I understand that not all characters can have this treatment. I personally think one pitfall of a Sea of Ink and Gold is the size of the cast and the number of plotlines that are forced to come together. In the quest to weave how many plotlines together, some characters are pushed back and forgotten, arcs falling weak or forgotten entirely. This may draw back from the story, but it doesn’t remove what good this series has in it.

A Sea of Ink and Gold is many things. It’s a magical work of fiction that I still encourage anyone who loves books and fantasy to read. It was ambitious, if not cliched, and it’s no reason to swear to never read the series out of spite. If this is Traci Chee’s debut, I only shudder to think what she’ll come up with next.

Want to see more essays like this? Check out my blog’s masterlist for more hot takes or book recommendations.

[malenkaya-glosoli]

Stuff I’m tired of hearing as an autistic person

This is a list of things and variations of things I hear from three family members (who shall remain anonymous, keep in mind that they know I’m autistic) that are offensive to me, even if it’s said in a joking manner but especially if it’s said in frustration or anger, and I hope I NEVER EVER hear any of the following responses from any significant other I may have in future. Some of these things I hear a lot in the situations listed below or otherwise rarely happen or have happened only once so far (Warning: Some of the responses I’ve listed here may be triggering for some people, and a massive trigger warning for occasional use of ableist slurs):

1. Response when I tell someone to go away or leave me alone: “You’re being rude” or “Quit being rude”

2. When I’m rocking in public, I hear this: “Stop doing that” I keep rocking; response to this: “You’re being defiant”

3. Another stim I have is picking at my acne and plucking out my eyebrows and eyelashes. The response: “Stop picking” *they even move my hand away from my face even if i wasnt going to pick at anything. On one occasion they started teasing me about it and they said they would tie my hands and then they all got out their phones and started photographing and videoing it. And we were in public, in the middle of a restaurant, but nobody seemed to notice...*

4. Responses when I get very angry about something or if I try to defend and/or justify my need for alone time or if I continuously keep asking to go home from someplace far away: “You know what, you’re selfish”, “You’re such a homebody”, or “You’re acting like a two year old”

5. Response to when I pace around the kitchen: “Stop pacing”

6. Response to me explaining that me being autistic is the reason why I don’t want to talk and/or why I like to stay alone in one room for hours: “I think you’re just making excuses”

7. Occasional response to when I get out a shirt or pair of shorts that I feel like wearing or if I want to leave the house in a shirt that I’d been wearing for a couple/a few days before: “Oh, uh-uh” or “You look like a slob”

8. Response to me saying “I don’t want to talk” and/or me wanting to go into the bedroom for alone time: “You never want to talk”, “You never want to spend time with us”, “Don’t you want to talk?”, “You always have privacy”, “You’re so antisocial”, “Do you love me anymore?”

9. Response to me trying to tell someone the difference between the words “asocial” and “antisocial” and advising for use of the former: “I don’t care!”

10. Response to me leaving the bedroom for a snack or water or to ask something: “Do we know her?”, “Who are you?”, “*overly dramatic gasp* She’s come out of her hole!”

11. Response to my mostly lifelong inability to tie shoelaces: “Even three year olds can do it”

12. Response to me not being able to see something physically obvious that’s being pointed out to me and the person and their tone of voice is getting more and more frustrated when I keep saying I can’t see the thing: “You’re acting retarded”

13. Response to me rage shouting about something: “Quit acting psycho”

Other stuff: They don’t believe that “I don’t know” or “Nothing” is a valid answer but they let it slide anyway, they keep poking me when I tell them to please not touch me, them (one of them) having a frustrated tone of voice when they tell me to “speak up” if I’m talking too quietly...

EDIT 8-11-17 (Trigger warning for an ableist slur) - A few weeks ago I called my mom’s mom and asked her questions about what she thinks about my autistic traits, autism, and autistic people in general. She said that she sometimes thinks it’s “annoying” when I don’t want to talk to anyone and spend hours alone in the bedroom but she also claimed that she’s been trying to understand me better; she also said that she doesn’t think it’s sad for a person when they get an autism diagnosis. But this turned out to be hypocritical because when I asked her if she thought that there should be a cure for autism, she said yes. I felt very disappointed and even betrayed. But I tried not to let on that I was angry and disappointed and I told her that people like Albert Einstein and Thomas Jefferson were autistic and that if I weren’t autistic or if there weren’t any such thing as autism, I either wouldn’t exist or I wouldn’t be the same person I am. I asked her again if she really believed that a cure for autism was necessary, and she insisted that it was.

And last night, while I was getting ready for a shower, my mom called me a “retard”, and she kept asking stuff like “why are you being so disrespectful to me, what’s gotten into you lately?”. If you ask me, I’m only defending myself. She wanted me to brush my teeth, but I’d been eating some food and if I brush my teeth before I eat, then it’ll make the food taste bad until it wears off, my sensory problems make it hard for me to deal with that, so for me, it’s only logical and better to not brush my teeth before eating anything. And in the shower she grabbed my wrist pretty hard and she slapped me, but I don’t remember if it was on my face or my shoulder, but I’m pretty sure it was on my shoulder. She apologised later, and the apology was genuinely sincere, but she has similar complaints when I can’t do basic things that most people take for granted. When I was in the shower, she said ”even your five year old cousin can bathe herself.” Said cousin is neurotypical. I was deeply offended.

EDIT 9-7-17: Here’s a hint as to what I’m going through atm. I have been feeling stressed and exhausted and the source of it is not stopping anytime soon. A mix of intentional procrastination and natural executive dysfunction is worsening it, and I don’t dare try to explain the concept of executive dysfunction to my mom because I just know she won’t understand or even care. I once read aloud these posts to her:

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/143950944846/strangelyschizotypal-neurodivergent-people

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150231283186/autisticliving-friendly-reminder-that-its-okay

and in response to the second one she said “no, it’s not okay”, so I’ve learned that it’s better for me to just stop trying with her.

I’ve tried to tell her that there are some things that I’ve accepted that I might never be able to do without help (washing my hair because the feeling and sight of wet, stringy loose strands of hair on my skin and hands/fingers is a mix of scary and disgusting and shaving because I’m too gentle with the razor) or at all (driving because too overwhelming), and when I talked with her about this yesterday she was like “how the h*** can you say that when you haven’t even tried, i don’t accept that, you’re just limiting yourself”. I can’t even describe how enraging and hurtful that was. I already know I’ll never be able to do those things without help or at all because just thinking about them and imagining myself in the driving scenario makes me feel overwhelmed. While I was in the shower she was saying stuff like “you should be doing this stuff yourself already, do you expect me to do this for you the rest of your life?” and i said “no, my husband will have to do it” (i meant future husband, whoever that’ll be) and mom was like “it gets me angry when you say stuff like that”. stuff like that is a common refrain during showers: “you’re seventeen, you should already be doing this”. Why is it like this for me and lots of other autistic people out there? Why is it that as we get older our families usually get more and more frustrated and impatient with us when we still can’t do basic things that most people take for granted instead of just getting used to it and accepting it like we (or at least some of us) have? This is exactly why I feel very strongly that you should NEVER EVER use a person’s age as a reason for why they should or shouldn’t already be doing something that most people can do without help or at all. It’s ableist and invalidating, not to mention emotionally abusive, whether you mean it that way or no. STOP. IT.

Sometimes I want to leave them, but that’s where I feel trapped. I rarely use money as I rarely buy anything alone and I have no wallet, I don’t drive, I don’t have a boyfriend, I don’t know anyone who I could go stay with, and it’d feel wrong to leave them because it’s my family, the only family I’ve ever really known. I can cook simple meals that are already cooked and only need to be reheated and I rarely use the stove because the hissing noises freak me out and that frustrates mom. My dad is autistic too but if you think he’d understand my inabilities, prepare to be disappointed. He wouldn’t get up and help when I asked him to get some chicken in the oven for me, to the point where a couple times he wouldn’t even respond at all when I asked him to get up and help, which was all i said “Get up and help”. Things have gotten easier in the past year but growing up I never had a really good relationship with him because he would spank and pinch me a lot when I was little, and on two occasions after two upsetting arguments that got physical, the police got involved, although there was never any arrest. He grew up with a dad who abused the entire family and plus he grew up in a place and culture where corporal punishment is seen as discipline, not corporally punishing your child is considered worse than not raising the child properly, it’s considered completely acceptable to spank kids who aren’t yours, and even toddlers aren’t thought of as too young to receive corporal punishment (also that place and culture is VERY openly and devoutly Christian, I have nothing against Christianity and I’m a lot more spiritual than religious but I do believe in God and the whole shebang and I do pray for people, and the culture and place is very homophobic, I’m straight but I’m supportive of LGBT+ people and my favourite couple is a gay couple so when I see any homophobia I still feel hurt and offended). Although the following doesn’t happen often, he does sometimes imply that I need to just stop talking if the person I’m talking to about a certain thing seems disinterested in the subject or has reached their limit, so I can’t say I find much support there. And my mom says that she thinks my autistic friends and I are defiant in the negative way and that we bully people into accepting us and our traits, behaviours, etc. and that I want to be accepted but, as she believes, I won’t accept how others are. Unbelievable.

This is exactly why I wish it were possible for children to be able to pick and choose their families. Because of my troubled relationship with my dad, I started wishing that the couple I mentioned (Jónsi and Alex) could adopt me, even though I knew that would be impossible for multiple reasons, I even wrote a few fantasies about it. But now it’s for another reason: because of the treatment I mentioned. I know that Jónsi and Alex would be awesome dads, if and when they ever choose to adopt a child (they’re not married yet tho), and also because I believe they’d be more understanding, patient, supportive and accepting because they know what it’s like to be different. Also: back in January I got a big crush on Ivar from the show Vikings, and I quickly started work on a modern AU author self insert fanfic about him (I wrote it as an outlet for my crush and my feelings and problems) which, at the time of this update, has 1,149 views and counting, and so far it has five sequels. I quickly discovered that I felt that I could relate to Ivar because:

1. We’re both disabled (I’m autistic, of course, and Ivar was born with his legs deformed)

2. We both feel sad, alone, and mad at the world, I had violent urges when I was younger (even then I knew better than to act on them) and if I’m provoked enough I can get as rageful as Ivar does)

3. We both have to deal with ableism from a relative (the above says it all for me, and Ivar has been emotionally and verbally abused and harassed by his brother Sigurd. He’s dead now because he was abusing Ivar and he mentioned their mother and Ivar just lost his temper and killed Sigurd)

So yeah. Ivar is SUPER angry and violent but he is also sad and he feels alone and unloved. Through my stories I am able to improve his life and love him and I have gained his trust and he always protects me. When I myself am being scolded or whatever, although I understand the difference between fantasy and reality, I silently beg Ivar to help me and sometimes I get teary eyed because it’s impossible, for obvious reason. I’m pretty resilient and I don’t think I’m vulnerable to becoming clinically insane or whatever, it probably depends on the person and how well or not well they’re able to cope with being in this kind of situation, but sometimes I feel like I genuinely want to be with Ivar and I feel like I love him in every way a person can be loved, I can tell from both his canon personality on the show and his fanon personality in my stories that, since he’s lost both of his parents, Ivar would be VERY protecive of anyone he loves, and in my stories, that anyone is me.

If anyone would like to read the story I mentioned, here it is:

https://theeclecticone.deviantart.com/art/Vikings-Modern-AU-fic-Ivar-Finds-Love-661877797

That’s all for now. Again, please feel free to reply, comment, like, and/or reblog.

Posts I’ve reblogged that elaborate on all this (WARNING LONG):

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159857814936/ndgirlfriends-so-to-all-the-girls-who-constantly

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856353686/when-they-say-your-autism-is-not-an-excuse-for

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856337041/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-other-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856320506/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-other-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856301231/sbroxman-autisticquestions-dont-laugh-at-or-mock

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856273001/sbroxman-autisticquestions-sometimes-it-feels

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/158125804696/sbroxman-autisticquestions-that-autistic-problem

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157809830756/cosmicautistic-why-do-people-insist-on-touching

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157808877166/ableist-why-do-you-act-this-way-autistic-person

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157808675211/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-other-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856232176/happy-stimming-is-such-a-nice-thing-to-see-and-it

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159724609526/introvertunites-if-youre-an-introvert-follow

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159668391651/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-the-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/158691542131/on-using-autism-as-an-excuse

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/158691153136/but-how-can-you-knooooow-you-dont-like-the-food

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157784200641/do-people-get-annoyed-by-stimming

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157403112936/trans-mom-stimming-is-normal-stimming-is

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157332198686/sbroxman-autisticquestions-i-hate-it-when-people

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157174323231/autism-problems-2

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156807367896/introvertunites-if-youre-an-introvert-follow

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156718532431

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156505810611/ndgirlfriends-you-dont-deserve-the-invalidation

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156178091191

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156178055291

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156178041551

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156178024041

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156176025301/radsturbate-i-hate-ppl-who-get-personally

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156045245181/rentboy-tony-shout-out-to-people-who-have-a-hard

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156011656186/serenavampire-neurotypical-voice-stop

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934926521/autism-problem-717

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934918486/autism-problem-608

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934909651/autism-problem-637

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934902666/autism-problem-411

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934895996/autism-problem-588

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934884411/autism-problem-584

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934876216/autism-problem-290

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934210941/muted-serendipitybubble-ignorance-isnt-bliss

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155933220616/autism-problem-755

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155931816041

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155925440681/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-other-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155859175671/messatmybest-janeysprings-due-to-sensory

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155859150906/parents-we-need-to-talk

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155689458176/reasons-to-avoid-accusing-someone-of-blaming

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155659677701/digitalufo-autistic-ppl-who-get-flappy-and-bouncy

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155426144511/theconcealedweapon-allistic-person-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155425409931/theconcealedweapon-i-hate-when-people-tell-me

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155425281356/theconcealedweapon-theconcealedweapon

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155425121666/theconcealedweapon-autistic-people-are-too

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155424530461/theconcealedweapon-neurotypical-people-you

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155424322271/theconcealedweapon-allistic-people-its-funny

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154841269766/ladyautie-im-sorry-if-i-didnt-post-anything

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154841055036/ladyautie-keelan-666-seriously-dont

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154727816316/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-everyone

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154721632341/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-anytime

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154655907631/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-people-with-autism

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154647497556/things-to-never-say-to-any-autistic-people

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154645929986/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-other-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154629619396/if-someone-ever-accuses-you-of-blaming-autism

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154629164341/butterflyinthewell-sbroxman-autisticquestions

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154628953381/me-doesnt-talk-person-you-really-need-to

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154594676751/autisticliving-if-a-disabled-person-tell-you-they

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/153636602021/npdfox-not-a-lot-of-people-really-understand-how

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/153636586631/little-autism-things-1

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/153636327551/little-autism-things-84

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/153636274181/little-autism-things-96

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150299063241/another-autism-feel-41

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150299046296/another-autism-feel-3

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150298550331/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-you-have

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150296089161/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-nobody

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150296051946/ladystoneshield-that-autism-feel-when-youre

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152172013261/disabilityhealth-excuses-shouldnt-be-seen-so

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152483526466

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152482579361

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152482495726

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152480786081/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-you-do

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152480760611/autisticliving-that-autism-feel-when-youre

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150220918916/jaunepois-when-you-come-out-of-your-room-and

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/145819797276/runningfromomelas-them-look-at-me-when-im

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/137690666961/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-you-feel

EDIT 9-7-17:

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/165091980636/how-to-hold-back-the-tears-when-youre-being

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164655304111/do-as-youre-told-stimmyabby-sometimes-people

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164192864721/never-trust-a-man-that-agrees-with-anything-trump

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154647497556/things-to-never-say-to-any-autistic-people

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164654794431/vashti-lives-jemthecrystalgem

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/162875121331/spanking-your-children-is-abuse

And here are some excerpts of diary entries I’ve written about my autism and stuff (most are in foreign languages but they have English translations):

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164783034161/%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%8A%D1%82-%D0%BF%D0%BE-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%89%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE-%D1%81%D0%B5-%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82-%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%81

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164782715106/%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0-%D0%B5-%D0%BC%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE-%D0%BF%D0%BE-%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%B8-%D0%BF%D0%BE-%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B5-%D0%B4%D0%B0-%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BC-%D1%87%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164781794476/thuis-is-er-niemand-die-me-begrijpt-niemand

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164781637616/zal-ik-ooit-vind-iemand-die-zullen-begrijpen

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/163547046451/%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%8F%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BC-%D1%81%D0%B5-%D1%87%D0%B5-%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D1%89%D0%B5-%D1%81%D0%B5-%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%8F-%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/163547032441/%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D1%81%D1%8A%D0%BC-%D1%87%D0%B5-%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BC-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%B8

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/163546629581/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B4%D1%80%D1%8A%D0%B6%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0-%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B2%D1%8A%D1%80%D0%B6%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%B8

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/163546363491/terwijl-ik-meer-heb-nagedacht-over-mezelf-en-hoe

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/163158549021/jeg-h%C3%A5ber-at-jeg-vil-m%C3%B8de-nogen-der-vil-v%C3%A6re-den

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/161902733031/postoji-previ%C5%A1e-ljudi-u-svijetu-koji-su-okrutni-i

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160169300336/%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%BD%D0%B5-%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%B8-%D0%B5-%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%B4%D0%B0-%D1%81%D0%B5-%D0%B1%D1%8A%D0%B4%D0%B0-%D0%B0%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B7%D0%B0%D1%89%D0%BE-%D1%85%D0%BE

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160167659301/jag-kommer-aldrig-att-f%C3%B6rst%C3%A5-varf%C3%B6r-vissa

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160167270051/zelfs-toen-mijn-gezicht-dwingt-mij-om-met-tegenzin

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160166845626/en-het-is-nooit-fout-om-te-willen-met-rust-gelaten

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160166658026/ik-ben-niet-ego%C3%AFstisch-of-ondankbaar-ik-ben

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160166447661/daar-ik-ben-autistisch-kan-mijn-emoties-zeer

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160166273081/alleen-mijn-vrienden-zijn-bereid-om-mijn-problemen

Please feel free to comment below or add a reply to this post if you want to.

[ark-of-eden]

R is drunk and raving (not in the party way).

(R:) Additionally, I’m procrastinating like a fucking champion at working on fic construction, so you know the best use of my time is going off about random social media crap on the internet.

tl;dr: Putting all commentary in tags on Tumblr makes R cry and shit thousands of words into the Internet.

Every social media site inevitably develops sets of unwritten social conventions. Some of them actually make sense as being derived from meatspace etiquette and therefore you don’t really have to stress about remembering them as long as you play nice like a decent creature.

And some of them just don’t make any fucking sense that I can see. Folks on Twitter using a deliberately space-limited form of media to write a page’s worth or more in a string of 30+ rapidfire tweets? This is just how it’s done over there? (Tweetlonger exists but for some reason these massive chain-tweeters never seem to use it. Same with posting the whole thing in a long-form site like LJ/DW/Tumblr and just linking it to a tweet.)

And Tumblr has things that I literally had to put effort into learning after I migrated here, and after I learned about them I frankly decided to ignore them because I couldn’t see the point in them. Tumblr has this bizarre allergy to commentary and, likely derived from that, the practice of instead commenting by putting it all in awkward tags that render the tagging system not especially useful and are harder to get to if you’re actually interested in an individual’s thoughts about a thing and not just the twelfth instance of the same post crossing your dash in a day or two. It’s not like you can’t engage with people, because asks and messaging and such exist, but like...there’s this strong sense that it’s Terribly Ill-Mannered to weigh in with your own impressions right there, in the body of the post, typing your own words in that seductive, wide-open text box that appears all on its own when you go to reblog something. The properly-socialized Tumblrite eschews that tempting text field and instead posts weird sentence fragments in tag form (interspersed with actual tags that might serve to usefully categorize the post’s content), to the extent that some people can add on a good couple paragraphs of material down among the hashtags where others need to go looking for it on purpose if they want it. (I, at least, haven’t been able to find a plugin or something that automatically expands full tags on all posts so that I don’t have to fuck around with extra interface elements to get to them. I admit that I haven’t looked super hard, though.)

Preserving the original form of the OP’s post is a noble practice that I heartily support, but how is adding commentary a problem if you’re only adding a separate thing, not taking away or altering anything in the original...? This was already a practice/convention/code of social interaction on Tumblr when I got here, so I was never in the front row to witness this element taking shape. I suppose it must have made good sense at the time, but every time I see ten people reblogging the same post with no additions and a paragraph of tags appended to it, it’s like a splinter in my brain that has been digging into me for years now.

And I’m not hating on people who do that! I get that that’s The Way It’s Done Here and I am the deviant weirdo for continually adding comments directly onto things that I reblog. Tags are where individuality lives here, unless you’re producing your own original posts, which I guess other people are then supposed to reblog without commentary so that you have to go hunting after all the reblogs individually if you want to get an actual sense of what these people were all thinking when they reblogged your thing. It all just seems...so...WORK INTENSIVE, refusing to use site functions as they were intended??

Look, I absolutely know that my commentary is not the work of incisive genius that unfailingly adds value to every post I find worthy of my attention. We’re pretty much solid shitposting on this blog. Because I’m a little loaded at the moment and that gives me a handy excuse to run my fingers like an idiot (plus I put that readmore up there, so if your eyes are actually consuming these words, you have only yourself to blame for being here), let me run down relevant history of how we got here.

LJ was home for a good long while. Then shit got seriously messed up and Dreamwidth was created as a better LJ, so we migrated all our stuff over there. And journaling sites along those lines still feel like a native environment. I, in particular, am the most long-winded piece of shit we know and I am honestly incapable of talking about anything of worth in short form. It’s a sickness and I just sort of have to own it. :/ But that’s why journaling sites are a good place for me to live, because that’s where people go when they have the inclination to read meandering scrawls about the depths of other people’s lives or whatever.

We went to Twitter for a good while because all the cool people we knew from LJ were going there for some unfathomable reason. These people wrote things that were complex and fascinating to read, so all of them jumping ship to a place that limited them to 140-character chunks made no damn sense, but we loved those people and wanted to trust that they knew what the hell they were doing. And they probably did, and a couple of us were actually okay with Twitter, but I, being the long-winded shitpiece, spent a lot of time frustrated and kind of overstimulated.

Then things started going to hell more and more consistently for me personally (and us generally by extension, but that’s unnecessary detail). Bunkering down specifically to protect people that you care about from the fallout of your crazy is a fairly common thing for mentally-ill people to do, I think. So I’d shut up online until I felt stable enough to talk to people again. Those periods lasted a few days, then a week or more, then a month, then eventually I stopped talking entirely. I missed the LJ/DW format, but in the past I’d written about life events and things I was thinking about and such, so...at the time, all I really had to write about was the bad stuff. So LJ/DW was basically unusable as well.

I literally came here to be as shallow as I could possibly manage. Tumblr had a rapid, chaotic flow similar to Twitter, but could hold longer content like LJ/DW. We’ve never really used the site’s full functionality at any point, though. For at least a year, all we were following was the most lightweight, zero-calorie entertainment that we could find. (We actually came here for Flight Rising content, so there was a lot of that.) Being engaged with fandom in any consistent respect is an extremely recent thing.

And I’m not saying that fandom hasn’t got depth and complexity because it absolutely does and that’s one of the beautiful things about shared fan experiences. I kind of got into that sort of fandom by accident after getting here and rediscovering Transformers. But the unvoiced policy that I’ve always had here is to avoid the Too Real and dodge serious topics whenever possible. Thus, no gender theory, no neurodivergence or multiplicity, no nonhumanity, no religion or UPG, nothing with real substance behind it that bared real vulnerabilities. (Apparently this was a good move anyway because the nonhuman and multiplicity situation here on Tumblr is a bit of a clusterfuck? I honestly wouldn’t know, as I haven’t made a lot of effort to link up with those folks.) That’s still the policy. That might remain the policy forever until I reach some vaguely-defined threshold of sanity that makes me worthy of talking about those things in places and formats that other people can interact with.

And I’m sorry for all this talk about mental illness, but it’s simpler just to explain things clearly. I likely won’t go into any more detail about it on Tumblr. Or anywhere else, because I care about people even if I’ve never met them or talked to them at all and I still want to keep it all in the bunker to protect good people from the crazy. Sometimes, all you can do is just prevent the damage from spilling out into other people’s lives, and that’s the place that I usually operate from.

I’m still pretty drunk, so I’m allowed to ramble from too much truth serum, but all of that explanation was to get around to saying that the format of online communication that is most intuitive to me is the long, oversharing gut-spill of random people talking about things that are really meaningful to them - not in the sense of elaborate philosophy or artsy epistles to the cosmos, but just people being super real about things that are meaningful to them and going into lots of detail about them because gushing about things you love is great. And it’s possible to get that sort of discussion and gushing in Tumblr fandom, and I love it because it reminds me of better times, and the fact that I love it is WHY IT MAKES ME SO GODDAMN FRUSTRATED that Tumblr culture is basically stifling discussion and feedback and RESPONSE to things that people find interesting!!

Like, here’s how I see it. Unlike on LJ/DW, where you were limited to hyperlinking to a cool post in one of your own posts if you wanted your readers to go check it out, on Tumblr, if you find a super cool thing, you can pull it directly into your space and let other people experience it directly, exactly as you experienced it. But the thing is, I also subscribe to the My Blog My House concept. If I pull a thing into my “home,” I do it because there’s something homelike about it; it belongs in my home for some specific reason. I don’t take “ownership” of an item in the sense that I’m claiming it in place of its creator, but I’m taking ownership of it in the sense that it’s part of my Stuff now and it’ll get my fingerprints all over it and be blended into the general morass of Stuff that I recognize as my home. I don’t just pull random crap into my home for no reason at all.

And I just figure that other people are similar in the sense that they reblog things for distinct, unique reasons, not in the sense that they have some master plan for their blog content (some do, but it’s not necessary), but just that they have compelling reasons why they pick certain bits of content out of the larger river of their dashboard and put it in their own space for people to experience with them. I follow people based on the interesting things that they find interesting. I’m interested in why they’re interested in those things. They seem like interesting people to me because they’re interested in what they’re interested in.

But the WHY is a really important part of the equation for me. Did this person reblog that photo because they’ve been to that place themselves, because they like that kind of tree, because they reblog photos with that color scheme every Thursday? Did that person reblog that piece of art because they love that character, because they’re studying that art medium, because it reminded them of something funny they saw somewhere else? People attach their own context to things that they latch onto. It’s so freaking weird to me that people have to hide their interpretations or impressions in tags here on Tumblr, making them unimportant and optional in the process of sharing things they like with others. (Okay, people also share a lot of things they hate, but reasons for outrage are still part of the context that one adds to content.)

I WANT TO KNOW WHY YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE SHOWING ME. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT TO YOU. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT MAKES YOU THINK AND FEEL. Even if it’s a blurb about how giant robots fuck or a cute kitten video, I NEED TO KNOW THESE THINGS.

Not in excruciating detail or with insightful analysis or even a lot of text at all. Mostly, the things that people put in tags are things that, to me, are a really crucial part of the experience of being able to go into someone’s “home” and see the Stuff that they chose to put in it. Reducing oneself to a glorified signal repeater is...okay, I guess, though it turns a Tumblr blog into a kind of faceless stream of other people’s material a lot of the time. The personal touch is what makes it all interesting. And I’m just unutterably frustrated that, somewhere along the line, it was decided that personalizing an experience by sharing one’s own impressions of it became rude enough that polite society decided that it had to be hidden away in tags. I want all of it, so I do go looking for it, but omg it requires MORE EFFORT and BURNING CALORIES and BODILY MOVEMENT and WAAAAH, you know what I mean. :P

And possibly Tumblr society is right and it’s done for a good, decent purpose and I’m being pigheaded and uncool by insisting on doing things my way without bothering to try and understand the local customs. I’m not usually that much of an asshole, but I am about this, for some reason. And I admit that my craving for those personal touches could very well spring from how utterly isolated and lonely I am, so maybe normal people really don’t need all the extra info and actually do just want mostly-impersonal streams of content. And that’s fine, since I know I’m kind of a weirdo even on my best days.

I’m pretty sure that that was all that I really wanted to say. I’m probably overreacting about the whole comments-in-tags thing. Like I said, it’s kind of an irrational irritation. Also, I need to stop before I write myself sober and no longer have an excuse for all of this. If you actually read all of that, you are an awesome, generous person and I’m pretty damn certain that I love you even though I have no idea who you are.