Of The Demons That Here Dream

What is this thing that I am holding?

What is this deformity called?

Is it safe for me to handle it bare-handed at all?

What do I do with it right now?

And the communication difference is that autistic people will tend to occam's razor this by assuming you mean the most simple question. That's an apple, you're holding an apple. If they point at the abnormality and clarify what is THIS that is ON the apple? You may clarify what the deformity is called by its latin name. They ask you what one should do with the apples like this? Well the ancient Phoenicians used to throw them at people whom they thought-

At this point, someone who isn't used to communicating with autistic people is likely to give up and storm off mid-sentence in order to go find someone who is capable of answering the right question from context clues. And for the sake of the example here, the next person is the second type: a neurotypical person who sucks at communicating.

You see, neurotypical people don't assume you mean to ask the most immediate and obvious question, but assess what you are trying to ask from situational context clues. The ones who suck at communicating just suck at doing this. So they may see someone approach, dangling an apple with an abnormality cautiously by the stem, and asking "what is this?"

From knowing that the asker isn't familiar with apple abnormalities, and from the way they're dangling it by the stem like they're afraid to touch it at all, the second person being asked assumes that "what is this?" means "is this dangerous to people?" And will answer "oh it's harmless :)" and won't try to assess whether there could be additional follow-up questions they could also want answers to.

So the asker who still doesn't know what to do with that thing will have to wrangle themselves through trying to guess how to get the right answer to the question they were trying to ask, which is easiest to do by suggesting the answer that is probably wrong but the only one that feels plausible.

"So do I just put this in the same basket with the other apples, like it's a normal apple?"

OK

final one

for all the marbles,

this one doesn't have an illustration bc i think it was just a kids novel but i haven't been able to find ANYTHING about it on my occasional internet queries:

kids is staying with his (grandmother?) in the woods and she warns him not to look a fox in the eyes bc they're tricksy and will swap places with you. obviously that's the first thing the little boy does and gets body snatched by a fox who uhhhh proceeds to pig out with his new little boy human hands and the boy has to trick the fox into looking him in the eyes again to switch back...

i cannot express how much these are from memory, that's how internalized these artists and writers have become, they're a part of me now

The second one is likely Stellaluna.

Like. Plenty of people back then were pretty openly gay, as we’d regard it now, or at least bisexual, (and there were plenty of KINGS that were like that) and while some people obviously found that icky, the general attitude was “what happens in your private spaces, outside of business matters, is between you, god and the working folk” (servants, or children if you were poor)

Business matters would include confirmation of consummation, that is nobility having other nobility watch a new couple have sex so they could confirm there weren’t any problems. (Which included problems of compatibility and consent, to a degree. Not as much as now, but if either party refused the consummation for any reason, it would be noted and they’d be separated pretty quickly. If the man was too rough with his new wife, it made him look bad, and if she was too aggressive it made them both look bad, etc etc. the ideas weren’t necessarily for the couples benefit per se, but the observers could and would intervene if something seemed wrong or if they were clearly having a bad time. Marital incompatibility was a valid reason for annulment too, so it was a valid consideration.)

Think of it like this — if the socially prescribed method is only one thing and everything else is supposed to be “taboo”, then who really determines whether one taboo is actually better or worse than another? (Technically the answer is The Court of Law, but that didn’t really become a thing law was invested in until well into the 1600’s)

Obviously some taboos are just taboo no matter what or when, but the list of “thing humans consistently and broadly consider sexually depraved” is a pretty short list. As long as you weren’t flaunting any part of your, even heterosexual, sexuality in the public eye, most medieval people were perfectly content to ignore most kinds of kink or preferences. With a few exceptions made for things that were objectively more dangerous then than now, in the age of antibiotics. Oral sex was a HUGE no-no, like major major no no, more no no than anal, which was kind of a big no no itself, for obvious reasons. (Though that varied from country to country) Male on male oral was the least no no of the variations, with any iteration of “eating a girl out” being regarded as vile most the time, and dangerous — remember, you can die from a UTI, And human mouths are full of bacteria.

But things like light bondage were pretty nbd as far as I was able to tell. Using toys was usually regarded as bad, but they existed, so clearly were used. We don’t know a lot of details about common preferences through all the ages, but in the renaissance (1560’s through the 1750’s) there was a huge emphasis on legs, 🦵 and plenty of creative ideas on how to use those legs to get off. This even made its way into dance, with a surge of folk and formal dancing that emphasized the use and function of the legs, and made them even more erotic.

Your phone screams at you and displays an urgent message. There is a button to dismiss it.

What this means:

"Here is a message the UK government has decided it is of vital importance the majority of the public are aware of immediately. You can only read it on the screen of a device which is actively making as distressing a noise as we can force out of it. The only way to stop the screaming to make it easier to parse what is on the screen is to dismiss the message."

A+ design.

is this real? / i thought pro wrestling was fake? wrestling is 'fake' in that the fights are choreographed and the winner is predetermined, but the physicality is very real. there's no way to 'fake' getting whipped with a metal chain so hard it leaves welts.

why ARE they chained? this is a specialty fight called a 'dog collar match' where both participants are, you guessed it, fitted with dog collars which are then chained together.

is this legal? / how can this be allowed? why wouldn't it be? they're both consenting adults who planned and agreed to it.

but they could be seriously hurt! they know, and they accept the risk. pro wrestlers are well aware of the injuries possible in their line of work, and they do it anyway because they're crazy people.

IS there aftercare? of a sort, yeah - there's a medical team on hand to patch everyone up, and lots of coworkers backstage to give them a 'job well done!'

why are they wearing thigh highs? they're kneepads/shin guards for protection. looking like sexy thigh highs is just a bonus side effect!

ok, but why's that guy in a shiny speedo? personal preference. wrestlers can design their own outfits and some prefer full coverage long tights, while others wear less to show off the gams.

is that cm punk? yup! he unretired last year.

It can almost certainly tell different species apart based on the shape of those air bladders. And it can tell if a fish has something weird inside it, like a metal hook. In Hawaii, false killer whales often pluck tuna off fishing lines, and “they’ll know where the hook is inside that fish,” Aude Pacini, who studies these animals, tells me. “They can ‘see’ things that you and I would never consider unless we had an X-ray machine or an MRI scanner.”

This penetrating perception is so unusual that scientists have barely begun to consider its implications. The beaked whales, for example, are odontocetes that look dolphin-esque on the outside—but on the inside, their skulls bear a strange assortment of crests, ridges, and bumps, many of which are only found in males.

Pavel Gol’din has suggested that these structures might be the equivalent of deer antlers—showy ornaments that are used to attract mates. Such ornaments would normally protrude from the body in a visible and conspicuous way, but that’s unnecessary for animals that are living medical scanners.’

I'm not sure if I ever shared this story before here, but in Curacao, when I was allowed to assist in a guest interaction programme, there was suddenly consternation in the pool behind us. A guest had entered the water and the dolphins were going crazy, paying no heed to the trainers anymore. The lead trainer that was with me gave the dolphins to me to watch over while she went to help. When she came back she told me what had happened. The guest that had caused so much uproar had left the water again and was asked if he had done anything to upset the dolphins. He hadn't, and he couldn't imagine what was wrong... until he mentioned he had a pacemaker. The younger dolphins in the pool had never seen someone with a pacemaker before and apparently it rocked their world.