Sentimental Android

The first thing is that you have to preheat your oven, and also your pans on the stove. You think "oh I can just throw Thing in the oven and wait for it to come up to heat" that is the devil talking. Whatever you're cooking, you want it to go in the oven and the oven be a consistent temp and start those tasty chemical reactions that cook your food: crisping edges of veg, causing cookies to rise.

You also have to preheat your pan on the stove. Every time. You think "oh the pan is fine I'm gonna put Thing in it now" and then nothing happens so you turn up the heat thinking the stove needs to be hotter because Thing isn't cooking and then all of a sudden it's too hot and you ruined the Thing. Let the pan preheat. For several minutes. To test if your pan is hot, run your hand under the sink and flick a couple drops of water onto the pan. Sizzling? Good your pan is hot. Water just sitting there? It's not preheated.

Can't tell you how many times I've talked to someone who "can't cook" or "the recipe didn't come out right" and when I asked if they preheated the oven or pan the answer was no.

As far as I can tell, all other pfas-free nonstick claims are kinda bogus.

and we are going to have to stop desperately scrambling to say noooo, they have to be like that, they have no choice, they wouldn’t be like this if they didnt have to. we HAVE to stop falling all over ourselves assuring straight people and transphobes that we hate being us as much as they hate us being us, that we are suffering and that’s why we deserve this decadence and deviancy. we HAVE to start saying “yeah ok and?”

the closest thing to real soulmates you can find

we fought in the same trenches and have a warrior's bond that carries over into every stage of life

friend i sit next to in every class and pass notes to/whisper to constantly

academic peer/colleague that i respect and have a little intellectual crush on

neighbour in the same apartment block that i say hi to on the stairs

neighbour across the street who i wave at every morning and evening

we're regulars at the same bar

A lot of it boils down to dumb luck. Hobbies resembling modern tabletop RPGs have come and gone before, but none of the ones that came before Dungeons & Dragons ever managed to blow up into a broader cultural phenomenon.

For example, tabletop American baseball simulators that use rules tech very similar to that of modern indie tabletop RPGs – complete with d66 rolls and Big Stupid Tables full of increasingly improbable random events – have been around since the 1880s, and by the mid 20th Century, dedicated players were using them to simulate entire virtual leagues in a way that would be instantly recognisable to modern indie RPG fans as a form of solo journalling RPG. Robert Coover's 1968 novel, The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop., dramatises the hobby in a way that strikingly pre-figures the later Satanic Panic's fearmongering about D&D players becoming so immersed in the game that they lose touch with reality – pre-dating D&D itself by over five years.

It never went anywhere from there. Such games still exist, but the hobby remains insular to this day; it just never stumbled into the right combination of time and place to grow beyond its roots. And it's not even the first time a niche hobby had approached something like modern tabletop RPGs and just never taken that final step. We can speculate about the whys and wherefores, but ultimately, a lot of it – ironically, given the subject matter – boils down to a cosmic roll of the dice.

Naked mole-rats:

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

People often ask me about my unmasking journey and express surprise to hear that such a big part of it has been 1) accepting I must avoid light/the sun and 2) wearing clothes I can stand.

I’ll play it jokey and say it like “well it took me far too long to realize that my former wardrobe made me want to jump off a bridge.” Or “turns out my old underwear was anti-autistic.” Or “for whatever reason when it’s too bright, I can’t think.”

“Ghosts aren’t real” it’s very fair and rational that you believe that

“Ghosts aren’t real anymore” I’m about to hear a poem or very sad story