I dunno what's going on either

“If she’s got the temperament for it, she should try her luck inland,” they advise. “No point her starting a temple here if she’d find her people elsewhere, with a little searching.”

At first, your parents are reluctant to send you away. Though you’re well-behaved and diligent in your chores, you’re a sickly child with no God to worship. And besides, you’ve always been the dreamy type–inclined to lose track of time watching the path of rain droplets chasing down the window, or the fronds of an anemone as it sways in a rock pool.

Instead, they send you to the temple of the Storm to learn all you’ll need for your own God. You are happy there, for a time: making up beds and serving food to the castaways who pass through, keeping vigil at the lighthouse, burning incense and praying with the loyal widows and orphans of the drowned.

One such widow, an old, old lady, touches the mark on your forehead. “I recognise those letters. We wrote this way in the town where I grew up, way off past the mountains.”

Your heartbeat quickens. “What does it say!?”

She squints, eyes engulfed by wrinkles and hidden behind smudged glass. “A… Ar… Oh, I can’t remember how to speak it. I left before I learnt my letters properly. There was a war, you know. But I remember,” she says, mistily, “the most beautiful pink and white flowers used to grow, on the borders of the wheat fields…”

You try to ask more questions, but remembering the war distresses her, and so you speak of other things. When she’s drifted off to sleep, you get to your feet, go home and tell your parents: you are leaving in search of your God.

Note how they begin and end the story. There are a ton of rather contradictory pieces of advice about starting stories, so see how they do it in the stories you enjoy. Don’t only look at the most popular stories, but look at your more obscure favorites.

See what strikes you. Is it fast or complicated scenes with a lot of emotions? Is it stark lines? Pithy dialogue? What do you remember the next day?

Pay attention to different styles. It’s not just whether they use past or present tense, first or third person. It’s whether the writing is more neutral or deeper inside character’s heads. Do they use italics? Parentheses? Other interesting stylistic choices? Take the ones you like and try them out in your own writing. See what works and what doesn’t.

Keep track of how they deal with other characters. Do we see a lot of secondary character each for very brief periods of time or are there a couple that show up a lot? How much information do we get about secondary characters? Do they have their own plots or do their plots revolve entirely around the main characters? 

Count how many plots there are. Is there just one main plot or are there multiple subplots? Are the storylines mostly plot-based or character-based?  

Pay attention to how they introduce characters. Very rarely will it be all at once, and I guarantee the author went over the intro of each major character again and again while editing, so I always like paying extra close attention! Did the intro endear you to the character? Make you dislike them? How did the author impart that emotion?

Note instances of worldbuilding/info dumps, especially parts that don’t seem like worldbuilding/info dumps. Maybe the character mentions something offhand about a location you’ll see five chapters later. Maybe the internal dialogue makes a comparison to the character’s childhood. Was the information effective or did it leave you wanting more? Make note of anything that made you go, “ooh, neat!”

After you finish the story, try to find foreshadowing that you missed the first time through! It can be as simple as skimming and looking for phrases you know are important after finishing the story. Most authors add foreshadowing in the editing stage, so I tend to ponder how the story would read before they added it. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the story seems more magical for it and it’s just nice to appreciate.

A well informed autism self diagnosis is just as valid as a psychiatric diagnosis. Additionally, under the given circumstances it is safer, most probably less expensive and you don't need to wait for any appointment.

10 screenshots from a twitter thread by @devprice with white text on black background.

The thread reads as follows:

I hear from many trans & nonbinary people who are actively seeking an Autism diagnosis. My advice is RETHINK THIS. Restricting Autistic people's access to gender affirming care is a major TERF talking point. As legal attacks on trans healthcare mounts, a psychiatric dx is a risk

The high overlap between Autism & transness was one of the main "concerns" JK Rowling rose in her "TERF Wars" blog post. Numerous fearmongering anti-trans articles influenced by TERFs have raised the issue since. if youre trans now is not a good time to seek a formal Autism dx.

An Autism dx does not unlock access to any beneficial therapeutic treatment, bc there is no "treating" Autism. Formal diagnosis makes us vulnerable to legal & psychiatric control and gets our competence challenged -- you dont need to subject yourself to this. diagnose yourself

I am close with dozens and dozens of Autistic people, and I have no idea who has a diagnosis and who does not. It does not matter. There is no reason to ask, no reason for others to care how someone identifies and how they arrived there -- all that matters is community support.

also if you cannot afford to pursue a lengthy & expensive lawsuit, it's unlikely a formal diagnosis will actually protect you from discrimination at work, in school or in housing. if you have the means great, but most don't. disclosing disability can be more risk than its worth.

if you need a dx to access resources such as disability benefits or extra test time, by all means go for it, but be cognizant of the potential costs. you could be denied for surgery, lose control of your assets, be found legally incompetent, lose custody of your kids...

Tweet replies to this thread:

By Greysquirrel @/treerat93

My autism dx was forced on me at age 2 and kept me out of the military in my 20s. It’s been nothing but destructive. I was beat up in sped and believed myself to be stupid my entire life because of it. I can’t even buy life insurance.

By Emily Johnson @/emily_rj

In some states, people with autism face being denied organ transplants, are at higher risk for forced sterilization and/or denied contraceptive and reproductive care, and have a higher risk of police brutality I considered this and decided informal diagnosis was best for me

By AK Faulkner is sweet and...

unlike rabbits, a baby hare can run, fight, or flee almost immediately after birth.

file under “no gender, just vibes”

imagine meeting a handsome young man who’s seen as a player and sleeps around a lot and you notice a scar along his arm and ask where he got it. he just look down at his feet and said “i used to be a soldier in world war one”. He’s been sleeping around and hooking up so much cause he’s been trying to find his soulmate for years but hasn’t yet.

Imagine going on your first date with someone and you really hit it off and then the next day you notice a grey hair and call them on the phone excitedly screaming and they both just sit on the phone hysterically crying and laughing.

Imagine sitting in silence with your partner and having them say out of the blue “i feel so old when im around you… but… in a good way” and thats the moment you know that they love you.

imagine having a dog thats 18 in human years and it starts to get gray patches of fur because they loves you so much.

imagine noticing you look older and freaking out but then stopping and getting super confused because “im not dating anyone right now…. which of my friends is my soulmate… WHICH ONE IS IT!?!?!?” and then they hopelessly date everyone they know in order to find out which one it fucking was. it was the pizza delivery guy the whole time. they went on 27 dates that all ended in confusion and heartbreak and it was the god damn pizza delivery guy from a month ago the whole fucking time. 

imagine someone dating their partner for 5 years and then having an affair. only after the affair do they start aging.

imagine nuns who start to age after they ceremoniously “marry god”

imagine people getting surgeries to look older cause they dont want people to think theyre alone.

imagine having parents who wont let you date anyone but they start to notice you aging and then you have to have a terrifying “surprise im gay and i have a boyfriend haha oops” conversation

imagine seeing couples with teenage kids and the couple both looks 18.

You can see some of them, if you look closer while you clean the cups between serving customers, have distinctively ancient Roman flares to their outfits. Others are rocking asexual and aromantic pride flags. Some have both. Many, in fact, if not most.

You hand the plate with a heated muffin to the regular who has started looking greyer lately with a congratulations and a smile, then - once he’s walked away - jerk a thumb at the group of women (one of whom, you notice, is also wearing a trans pride pin) and hiss to your manager, “Is there a cosplay event in town?”

Your manager looks at you with slight disappointment. “The Vestal Virgins and friends,” she says, “their business has kept a cafe or before that a restaraunt open here for two thousand years.”

For a moment you look at them with sadness - no soulmate in over two thousand years? - but then you look again.

These people are having a wonderful time, clearly fulfilled, clearly they love each other - just not in whatever particular requirement there is to count as a soulmate. And how strange, you realise, that society and lifespan is so tied to something which cannot even be properly defined, if these ancients are clearly not missing it.

One of them has a printed t-shirt. It says I belong in a museum on the back. You’re pretty sure you recognise her as the curator at the local natural history museum.

Suddenly, the fear that has sat in the pit of your stomach for so long - what if you never find The One (or The Polycule)? What if you never start aging - fades away. It’s clearly not the end of the world if your world never ends.

“If they’re that old,” your most annoying colleague interjects, “why don’t they run the world by now?”

– https://searchmysite.net/ Search engine for the indie web, personal websites, digital gardens. You can also find them in websites like Neocities, Indieweb, Blogarama, and write.as. There is also a big list of personal websites.

– https://search.marginalia.nu/ Search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and promotes websites that aren’t usually at the top of the list.

– https://www.worldcat.org/ Search engine for items in libraries (books, but also maps, articles, sound recordings, theses, etc.)

– https://scholar.google.com/ Search engine for scientific papers, reviews, etc. It’s still google, but a lot better than the normal search engine counterpart.

– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines A list of search engines sorted by subject, area, and more. If you’re searching on a specific area, it might be worth checking if there is one focused on that area.

– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines A list of academic databases and search engines.