So Much Reblog, So Little Consistency

She just realized the reason she planted so much. Was because she was slightly drugged by her anxiety meds.

And got worried she wouldn't have enough flowers to give to all the girls she likes on the island.

the city of los angeles

the city of new york

sex

how drinking alcohol works

how getting high works

how a child of any age speaks

how nuclear physics work

how [my job] works

how debilitating being shot in the shoulder is

how hypothermia works

things I have never before seen someone fake their way through writing about, until today:

SHRIMP COCKTAIL:

banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol

generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is

#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro

And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!

POMEGRANATES:

zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple

thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute

sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.

FRUIT TREES:

zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''

salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE

baander: #cranberry trees

DOUGH/BATTER:

maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre

livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles

lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY

Some other topics:

For one, in some cultures asking an obvious question is just a polite way of acknowledging the situation. So for example, if you just put your jacket on and start clocking out, a co-worker asking "oh, you done for the day and heading out now?" doesn't deserve you sneering at them like an idiot, scoffing, and saying "uh duh, just like I do every day at this time" when it's likely they knew the answer, but were just asking as a polite way of acknowledging the situation.

But even if they were genuinely unsure that you're leaving even though it seems obvious to you from context clues, so what? What does being rude and condescending to them achieve? Maybe they couldn't sleep last night so they're really out of it today, maybe they're dissociating, maybe they're about to pass out from low blood sugar, maybe some other employees sometimes put on their jacket and only clock out briefly but come back.

“Oh, are you cooking?” asks person who thought you were going out tonight.

“Are you leaving?” asks time-blind person who’s surprised it’s 5:00.

“Are you going to lunch?” asks person who remembers there’s a meeting in 30 minutes.

asks person who thought you were

going out tonight.

Nishimoto Ryota

For example, say you have a work colleague, and you want them to check in with a supplier and make some alterations to an order with a supplier. The reason it's more polite to say "Hey, could you give x supplier a call and get back to me after you've spoken with the supplier?" instead of ordering them "Call the supplier and get back to me after you've called them" is because by asking instead of ordering you are acknowledging your colleague's autonomy and free will, that they are your colleague and not your servant to order around.

Some people might argue "but if someone asks me 'Hey, can you ____?' technically they are just telling me to do something but with useless hollow formality!" which simply isn't true. If someone asks "Hey, can you ___?" you technically have the right to say no, even if it's your job that you are getting paid for, even if there are consequences to you saying no (such as being reprimanded at work or even losing your job), you still technically have the right to say no, and it's only polite and considerate to acknowledge that by asking instead of giving orders.

Of course, things are different in highly urgent situations where someone's life/health/safety are on the line. This is why you probably won't find firefighters or paramedics going "hey, sorry to be a bother but could you hand me that defibrillator?" to their colleagues.

It's Shaun_vids.

It's Leeja Miller.

It's Dan Olsen/Folding Ideas.

It's Milo Rossi/Miniminuteman.

It's Jessie Gender.

It's Adam Something.

It's Professor Dave.

It's Sophie From Mars.

Similarly interested in anything about the overall layout and physical organization of Jewish villages/settlements in medieval Europe.

If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.

I had an event that I was worried about, where I might have to talk about something that I was struggling to mask my autism about

And I was telling a friend, and she scoffed, saying "just don't be aggy"

And then I admitted what my non-masked response would be

And she was like "oh shit, yeah, that's super aggy"

And I know that

I know that I come across as a bitch when I don't mask

And I've recovered enough that I think I can mask appropriately, but whether or not I stepped back was a reasonable response in this instance

the big finding of the whole experiment was that both food and comfort are not just substantial, but required for healthy development. in the 50s the popular theory was that mothers should touch and hold their babies as little as possible to avoid “spoiling” them, especially right after birth (which explains uh. a lot about boomers as a generation).

Harlow conducted his experiment to investigate this idea, and he found that physical comfort nearly eclipsed the food as a need in the baby macaques. They would go to the wire mothers only when they were hungry, sometimes even trying to reach the milk bottles without letting go of the cloth mothers, because they so badly needed both. Harlow’s other experiments showed that being deprived of parental comfort and enrichment as babies dealt lasting psychological damage to the macaques. and today we know that human babies can just up and die without enough skin-to-skin contact.

the big finding of the whole experiment was that both food and comfort are not just substantial, but required for healthy development. in the 50s the popular theory was that mothers should touch and hold their babies as little as possible to avoid “spoiling” them, especially right after birth (which explains uh. a lot about boomers as a generation).

Harlow conducted his experiment to investigate this idea, and he found that physical comfort nearly eclipsed the food as a need in the baby macaques. They would go to the wire mothers only when they were hungry, sometimes even trying to reach the milk bottles without letting go of the cloth mothers, because they so badly needed both. Harlow’s other experiments showed that being deprived of parental comfort and enrichment as babies dealt lasting psychological damage to the macaques. and today we know that human babies can just up and die without enough skin-to-skin contact.

Rumination is probably the most common type of OCD compulsion, but I rarely see anyone talking about it. I've talked to multiple people diagnosed with OCD who didn't even recognize it as a compulsion.

Basically, if you have OCD you have terrible intrusive thoughts. They can be about anything, but common themes are fear of being a bad person, fear of hurting someone, fear of contamination. etc.

Rumination is when you get stuck in a spiral. Rumination is when you spend hours catastrophizing, overthinking, analyzing, telling yourself it's going to be okay.

I'll say it again:

Rumination is a compulsion.

Rumination is a compulsion, and that means you have to stop doing it.

I did ERP (exposure response prevention) for my OCD with a therapist! For 9 months! And it did help, but the idea didn't really click until I found this website a couple years later.

And Oh My God. It made things make so much more sense, and I was able to pull myself out of an episode even though I wasn't in therapy or on meds at the time.

Genuinely if you have OCD, or even if you suspect you have OCD, I'm begging you to read some of these articles.

Like this was genuinely life changing for me.

Here are some of the ones that were most helpful to me:

Defining Rumination

How to Stop Ruminating

ERP Exercises for Compulsive Rumination

Yes but you have to be careful about how you do it. Knowing that a person finds an idea fascinating or fun to play with in fiction is not the same as knowing how they view the real version of that thing in real life.

And some stories and authors wear their heart on their sleeve more than others.

Take Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, Project Hail Mary, and Artemis:

All of his protagonists are people who are REALLY good at problem solving, really classically "smart," either highly educated or self-taught in a wide range of skills, and highly technically competent..... and they all value kindness and humanity over those things.

The narrative of the books are consistently about people choosing to work together to do what's kind, and using all their awesome science skills to advance that goal.

The writing itself uses math and science in the same way. If you understand it, then cool. If you don't, it won't hold you back, because the characters state the important parts out loud, and the stories focus on the practical impact those things have on the chatacters' lives.

At a certain point, after seeing that dynamic play out on every level of his books, you have to say, "if these features don't reflect his true beliefs, he wouldn't write this way. A person driven by a different motivation would write these stories differently."

I always subscribe to the idea that how an author portrays something is far more important than what they portray. Two authors can portray the same thing in very different ways, and it means that they're likely coming at that idea from different directions. A story showing protests against police brutality as anarchic, violent, and manipulated by criminals probably has a different view on those protests (and about the police) than a story showing those same protests as peaceful or principled.

I think you can also look at what authors write in aggregate. If I take an author like Christine Feehan, I've read probably 30-40 of her books. One of the most consistent dynamics she writes is the alpha male uber-possessive love interest with the female main character who starts off sort of spunky and independent but becomes more submissive as the story goes on. Do I know Christine Feehan's views on gender roles? No. But I can guess.

Sometimes the context of an author’s life of beliefs can put a book in better context. And sometimes it’s just not relevant and they’ll say that!

Is it relevant to her works that Ursula Le Guin is anarchist? Hell yes, it shows up all the time in her books in different ways.