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oh.

Everyone gets *so mad* when the DCs are high because magic is on the fritz, but then no one likes it when I show them a path to meet said DCs. 😈

little baaaabeeey

Turtle ducks!

Tumblr already has a personalization algorithm it's called my beloved mutuals who have great taste and only wish to psychologically damage me sometimes

I feel like I literally get 3000 scam calls day so sometimes I entertain it and let the class answer for me😂🤷🏾‍♀️

“Guys, I’m getting a scan call go!”

*whole class makes a chaotic horror score*

writing advice for characters with a missing eye: dear God does losing an eyes function fuck up your neck. Ever since mine crapped out I've been slowly and unconsciously shifting towards holding my head at an angle to put the good eye closer to the center. and human necks. are not meant to accommodate that sorta thing.

other things I'm bitching about but which could still be useful as writing advice for 1 eyed characters:

2. they're going to favor their sighted side, obviously, but it doesn't always manifest in the way you think. when I walk down a hall I walk much closer to the wall on my sighted side than on my blind side. which is the opposite of how it might seem logical to do that bc it means the world at large is on your bad side, but the reason is I can't fucking See the wall if it's right next to me in the blind side and I end up knocking into it.

3. door frames and poles are my enemy. If your character is smart this will not be a problem but for me it is. I am King of walking into shit I could absolutely see but couldn't tell how far away from me it was. on this note, their blind side hand is getting bashed into every jutting out thing in a 5 mile radius.

4. having 0 depth perception is less of a big deal than you'd think it is. Especially with driving. I've become a Much safer and more wary driver because I can't tell how far the other cars are from me. however I fucking suck at parking now. because I can't tell how far the lines are from me either.

5. you know how people who lose limbs get phantom pains? that happens with eyes too but like. phantom sights. for me it's like. a lot of bugs. like every so often my brain will just put something suddenly skittering beside me there. hate that.

6. it is completely possible to "get stuck" somewhere because your ability to tell how wide a space is is just Gone. shopping isles especially where bumping something or Someone is matter of embarrassment or potentially breaking something. it can be legitimately paralyzing and also irritate everyone around you because they can tell there is Plenty of space for you to get your cart through even if you can't.

7. if the eye is still in their skull it can still be the normal kind of painful. Glares off of shiny surfaces causing weird sharp pains you can't figure out the cause of are genuinely one of gods greatest tests of my patience.

being in a long-term committed loving relationship with a neurodivergent person, as someone very much neurotypical, has been a beautiful exercise in both humility and communication

I am high maintenance and I am demanding, and I do expect A Lot from my partner. but for a very long time I lived in this realm of half-coded half-messages, cryptic signals and unvoiced expectations, a spiderweb-like system of relations and emotions - a realm of my own creation - where I'd feel upset and abandoned if those needs were not correctly guessed, anticipated, decoded or fulfilled. and usually that'd only result in my alienating myself and hurting myself even more than it hurt others.

with my partner now I know that those Messages and Codes and Expectations have to be explained, sometimes twice, and in great detail, ideally with examples and data to back them up - initially even called out as they happen - and only after that is done I can reattach this value and emotion to them. if my partner misses those then, I have a right to be a upset. but they're not obvious or set as default, and not knowing them intrinsically isn't my partner's way of being purposefully hurtful.

sometimes I will tell my partner something and they won't have much of a reaction. and I learned that all it takes is just giving more explanation: what I'm saying now to you means that I am upset, the words and tone are both there to tell you that I'm upset, I'm upset because of XYZ, and I would like you to react, preferably by being there for me/hugging me/listening to me.

I used to think that was ridiculous. that it was debasing, that it was humiliating, that it was me begging to be acknowledged, begging to be loved. but in this case it isn't - I only had to do it twice, maybe three times in different situations, and since then they've learned my Messages and my Codes and my Meanings. and they love me so they do their best to follow them and act on them - and ask for guidance if they're not sure. and that's love, that's what love is to me.

and the other way around - oftentimes it had to be me asking for clarification. it had to be me going "what you're saying now, your wording and your tone do not match your facial expressions and body language. what you're saying is positive but your face and body tell me you're angry and distressed" - and my partner would usually just tell me, oops, you can disregard my facial expressions because I actually didn't even know I was making them, I am actually very happy and calm now" or sometimes "what might seem like distressed to you is actually the way my body behaves when I'm just focused on explaining something to you, it's not negative, I'm actually having a great time".

sometimes it had to be me going "I really hoped you'd like this [activity/place/movie/whatever] but to me you seem bored and disinterested, can you please confirm whether you're enjoying this or if you'd prefer we do something else?" and sure, sometimes it would be "yeah I'm not that into this, sorry" but much more often it would be "I really like this but there's this one detail/smell/sensation that gets in the way of me fully enjoying it" or actually "oh no I really like this, in fact I like this to the extent where I focus mostly on it and not on acting outwards with the intention of showing I like it"

and I've learned. even when those are things that go directly against all the Codes I learned for neurotypical people in my life, I now know better. it was embarrassing and sometimes frustrating to ask and to need an explanation, but it worked so well. and that's love. again, that's love.

Hideo Tanaka — I’m Here  (acrylic on canvas, 2020)

my uncle was somewhat of a rascal. we were hanging out on the roof of his barn when i was ten, and we saw some shooting stars. he told me they were angels carrying messages from god. then he handed me his old hunting rifle and taught me how to nick one out of the sky, even when it was travelling all fast like that, and how to triangulate its location — taking me out in his rusty truck down dirt roads, unerring and unceasing, until we saw that gleaming lantern. he pocketed the note from god and took me down to a pinboard where he was working on deciphering the language with his friend who was a linguistics major but got kicked out of grad school. after they shook hands, they held on for just a bit too long and i started wondering why my aunt doesn’t live with my uncle anymore, but then my uncle took me back up stairs and taught me how to fry the angel up real nice, halo and all. it was tasty

Debra Spence — Lucky Spoons  (pastel pencils on pastlemat, 2022)

i’m all sex positive and shit but i’m begging you. do not make your characters over 30 fuck on the floor. please. think of their lower backs. their knees. have some empathy 🙏

Common things in the notes:

Meet the New Colossal Cover Artist: Lisa Ericson

Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.

Yep.

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.

my pet mold spores

Sporses

Actually my favorite replacement for both 'kill myself' jokes and jokes about reacting violently to things/people that upset me is "I'm going to end up on the news" like it's versatile, it's vague, it's not going to get me in trouble with any censors or websites that take joke threats seriously, it's family friendly while still getting the point across, what's not to love???

You. You get it.