A camaleontic blog

damn this is so cool. a little preview for everything to come

link

this is what Commander Fox looks like in my mind's eye

i kinda feel bad for oedipus b/c everyone assumes he chose to fuck his mom when in fact he went out of his way to avoid it. he left his hometown and distanced himself from his parents because he was afraid he would somehow get tricked into fucking his mom. everything could have been avoided if his adopted parents told him he was adopted.

someone: oedipus was fucked up like who fucks their own mother??? fucking weirdo.

me: it’s not his fault! he didn’t know!

also the point of the myth is supposed to show how despite your best efforts no mortal can thwart fate but also? what the fuck? the whole thing was an oracle telling laius that his son was going to murder him and fuck his wife. that shit came out of nowhere. he didn’t offend the gods or anything. they just decided for no reason other than the world is fucked up sometimes.

i have been informed that oedipus’ dad, laius, did in fact bring a curse upon himself for kidnapping and raping king pelop’s son chrysippus.

i stand by my stance that it’s still ridiculous to punish oedipus and jocasta for laius’s crimes. also why would the godss curse oedipus for fucking his mom when they tricked him into doing it in the first place? fucked up.

You’re assuming the gods are ruled by logic and not by zeus nudging poseidon and saying “hey you know what would be so fucking funny”

This is so accurate

did u guys ever watch the BBC drama “Atlantis” where the main character is a modern guy who accidentally travels back in time to Ancient Greece

and tbh it’s full of him having moments where he realises this is a myth

like this woman comes to him and asks for help because her husband is trying to kill her baby so he helps her smuggle the baby out of the city to be taken in by another family and the other family ask the baby’s name and she says “Oedipus” and the guy is like

oh fuck

and then he meets a girl called Medusa and the whole time is just like shit shit shit then she goes missing and they track her to a cave and he is like “guys this is gonna sound weird but does anyone have a mirror”

BEST MOMENT  is he meets a guy who says “Hi I’m Pythagoras” and he blurts out “THE TRIANGLE GUY” and Pythagoras is just HEART EYES like “YES I LOVE TRIANGLES HOW DID YOU KNOW”

movies where someone hears an important message only once and retains all the details….

girl if that were me, we’d be fucked. I have to reread emails like 4 times.

if it were me having to repeat my dead father’s instructions on destroying the death star:

I was in a college psych class, and the teacher was doing some kind of exercise about memory, patterns, and retention. He began with, “for instance, if I asked you what number the first letter of your name is in the alphabet, you wouldn’t be able to tell me right aw–” “Ten,” I said. “What?” “J. J is ten,” I said again. He stared at me. “I happened to learn it while looking at the alphabet when I was five or six, and it just stayed in my brain,” I told him. Then we did an exercise on retention. “I’m going to tell you a story,” he said, “and then I’m going to send you out of the room for five minutes, and when you come back, you have to repeat as much of the story back to me as possible.” He told me a long and meandering story with no plot or structure, just a random series of events, place names, actions, etc. Then he sent me out of the room. I looked at the wall for a while. He called me back in five minutes later, stood me up in front of the class, and asked me to repeat “just as much of the story as you remember.” Apparently while I’d been gone he’d been telling the class about how eyewitness accounts aren’t reliable because people don’t remember things well after a certain period of time. So I told his story back to him– not verbatim, but certain phrases were exact– and watched the consternation in his face as I accidentally blew up his (valid! and extensively studied!) lesson about how bad people’s retention is. “It’s like a song,” I tried to explain to him, and the class. “Or a poem. Every part of the story has a little tag to remember it. I looked at the chalkboard while you were saying this part. My leg itched while you were saying that part. A chair squeaked during the next part. Then I just have to come back and go over all the sensations that I had while you were” “Sit down,” he said. I sat. Turns out I’m Autisms Georg adn should not have been counted

ADHD version: A friend asked, on a field trip, why I knew the scientific name for Caltha palustris, “Well, we did that [one week long] field ID course [three years previously] and we saw it in one of the bogs”.

This, I was informed, is very much not a normal reason to remember the scientific name of a plant for the rest of your life.

It took me five whole years to learn when my partner’s birthday is.

I can remember specific details about games I played over two decades ago that I have not played since.

I once forgot it was my birthday. On my birthday. And when my sister (Who lived several hours away) jumped out of hiding and yelled happy birthday, I looked around to see who she was talking to.

I hated having to take a second language in school, and more so I hated the options the school had available; German, Latin, French, and Spanish. (I would later find American Sign Language clicked well) I took Spanish because my older sister did and that meant I’d have help if I needed it. I cheated on most of my tests though as if I needed to remember phrases I would just Draw on the paper something. Often unrelated. I couldn’t read the phrase but I knew the answer associated with it and with key words matched the drawing, and because I doodled all over everything in school including assignments it wasn’t suspicious that I had drawings and doodles in range of my sight.

I don’t remember my left and right naturally, as any time I need it I immediately remember my third grade teacher smacking the chalk board with each hand; “LEFT! RIGHT!” and the sound of the smack because the chalk was in one of his hands so one hand made a ‘tick’ on impact while the other didn’t

I only remember which hand is my left and which is my right because we watched an educational show in first grade and I distinctly remember the man speaking in an accent as he said “which hand makes the letter ‘L’?”

Naturally, sometimes I forget which way the letter L is supposed to be facing.

This is despite the fact that my last name begins with the letter L.

This is despite the

fact that my last name begins

with the letter L.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

I once had to order some stuff for my lab and went to put my name on the form and wrote “Derin Edala”. Simple slip, understandable, I spend a lot of time online; I erased it and went to write my –

I couldn’t remember my government name.

To complete the form I just wrote the names of everyone who worked in my laboratory until I got to the one that I recognised as mine.

I figure out which is my left hand with the L trick too. I never remember which way L is supposed to be facing so if there isn’t one written nearby I can cheat off of I think about Louisiana, which is L shaped.

If anyone else has trouble with lowercase B and D a trick for that is that the word bed kind of looks like a bed with B (the letter that comes first) at the beginning and D (the letter that comes later) at the end. This is also how you can tell if the moon is waxing or waning. You hold up your finger to it so it seems like the two points are touching it and see if this forms a lowercase B or D. If it’s a B then it’s a baby moon and will get bigger. If it’s a D then it’s a dying moon and will go away.

The current mood

Oh I’m an asshole.

So today pulling into Stop and Shop, this lady cut me off and nearly drove into me, and then, when I tried to pass her, she swung to the right and nearly hit me again, and then flipped me off.

So somebody is having a bad day and taking it out on me. That’s fine. It’s harmless, and I don’t know what’s going on in this woman’s life. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt she’s not just a piece of shit and is just having a bad day.

But then I park and she follows me, and gets out of the car and starts swearing at me and getting in my face.

Now I go from “indifferent” to “I’m gonna fuck with this woman’s head.” Now I would say I’m a gentleman of size, and in all black and bemohawked I probably look spookier than I actually am, so props to this lady for getting in my face. Now of course I’m not going to hit her, or even threaten violence. That’s shitty. Nobody should get threatened with violence.

Instead, I take a step back, narrowing my eyes like I’m studying her face really closely, and then I touch one of the several piece of “occulty” jewelry I’m wearing (none of which, by the way, are magicked in any way at all). Then I mumble some nonsense under my breath, and then make the fig gesture and the horns at her.

She stops, wide-eyed.

“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO TO ME?”

I chuckled, and shake my head. “Nothing at all.” I say in a not-terrible convincing voice. “But every time something bad happens to you today, you’re gonna be thinking of me.”

Then I winked at her, and walked away.

Official graveyard post. +Bonus

Somehow, the Matchbox 20 comment is the more unhinged part of this.

When a curse is cast to save Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer, Jaskier is forced to sacrifice his humanity. He is transformed into a small bird, and all memories of him are erased from Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri's minds.

Jaskier doesn't regret his choice. He never truly felt he belonged in their family, anyway.

Geralt often notices a tiny songbird following him on his journeys, always flitting nearby, though he has no idea why it’s there. Ciri affectionately names the bird Buttercup, and Yennefer agrees, saying the name suits it well.

Each night, Geralt dreams of a song whose name he can never quite remember.

Fiddleford after the memory gun

In bigger letters for those in the back:

As a critiquer, your job is not to “make this piece of writing better” but to understand what the writer wants to achieve and help them to achieve it

Applies beyond writing as well.

Also applies to editing. I was recently talking to another writer whose editor (at a publisher) almost destroyed her desire to keep writing. Writers, know the signs of a shitty editor versus one who actually wants to help you achieve your vision, and don’t be afraid to ask for a different one. (Or fire a bad one if you’re indy.)

This is why some random person on the internet isn’t qualified to give unsolicited critique to fanfiction writers. Because they don’t know what the author wants to achieve. They can’t.

Link for full article below.

*pretends to be shocked but also maybe this will make people realize that Indigenous People Know What The Hell They’re Doing and Deserve Respect*

3 other fun/cool facts about the Inuit:

1. They also invented kayaks and dog booties.

Dog booties are actually really important for working sled dogs in winter to protect their paw pads from iceburn and keep ice from getting in between their toes and burning them that way.

2. The traditional Inuit diet is one of the healthiest in the world, and the most balanced for the ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 consumption

Most modern diets consume way too much Omega 6 and not enough Omega 3.

3. Inuit is a plural noun. When speaking about a single person the correct word is Inuk (always capitalized)

For example, “This Inuk woman is wearing traditional Inuit tattoos”.

And she is wonderful

it was affection that held us together

satisfying

One quiet day on the farm, the Little Red Hen found some wheat seeds and decided to make bread.

"Who will help me plant these seeds?" the Little Red Hen asked.

"I would." said the Horse "But I'm a workhorse, and I'm too busy moving carts around."

And so the Little Red Hen planted the seeds by herself. And they grew into bountiful golden crops.

"Who will help me harvest the wheat?" the Little Red Hen asked.

"I would." said the Dog "But I'm a guarddog, and I'm too busy keeping away burglars and predators."

And so the Little Red Hen harvested the wheat herself and made it into flour.

"Who will help me bake the flour?" the Little Red Hen asked.

"I would." said the Pig "But I'm a mother of 5 newborn piglets, and I'm too busy taking care of my young."

And so the Little Red Hen baked the bread herself into twenty beautiful loaves.

"Who will help me eat the bread?" the Little Red Hen asked.

"We would." said the Farm Animals. "But we're ashamed, for we didn't do anything to make the bread."

"Nonsense!" said the Little Red Hen. "You, Horse, helped move around the stones that built my oven. You, Dog, kept me safe while I worked. And you, Pig, are raising a new generation of Farm Animals, who will too contribute to our Farm one day. You've all helped me so much by simply being you."

"Besides," the Little Red Hen added. "I couldn't possibly eat all the loaves on my own, most of them would go to waste. Come, eat with me."

And so the Little Red Hen and the Farm Animals ate the bread together. And all saw their own, and each other's, worth.

better

This healed a very old wound

"omg stop saying fat lesbians you can just say butch. You can literally just say butch." Hey guys? Butch isn't a body type? It's like, a complex set of identity factors? You guys know other people, yes even other lesbians, can be fat, right? You know femmes can be fat and hairy, right? You know lesbians who don't/don't want to fall under either label can be fat right???? You guys know people can be fat, right???????????????

i'm genuinely having so much fun writing a jock protagonist. can't believe i never tried this before. all these years i've been limiting myself needlessly

i've created an extremely elaborate magic system based on linear algebra and not once does the narrator ever explain how it works. he doesn't know. he doesn't care. that's nerd shit. he is going on a lad's night out and if you try to tell him anything about equations he'll put his fingers in his ears and go "lalalala"

i feel it's important to add that my other protagonist is an academic and does know how the magic system works, but he doesn't get a POV chapter until halfway through the story. which means that over the course of 40,000 words we gradually build up a solid working idea of this world and its laws, as understood by Jock Protagonist - and then it switches to Nerd Protagonist, who's like, "just so we're clear, he was wrong about basically all of that."

This is genius