#the slash version

[eatsbooks]

please christ fucking alive what tags do i have to block to be free of this godforsaken beaten horse of a ship war

[screambirdscreaming]

Something that peeves me whenever I see another post going around with some variation on "autistic people take things literally which means we are the only people who communicate Clearly and Directly" is that - for any given statement, there is not one singular, agreed on, universal Literal Interpretation. If there was, none of this would be a problem!

The nature of language is that there's always some degree of interpretability. Words have several different meanings, often overlapping, and there's nuance of context, cultural references, and so on.

Faced with a statement, most people will quickly come up with an interpretation that to them makes the most sense. But if you asked a roomful of people to explain in detail their interpretations, everyone's would probably be a little different, even for a pretty simple statement. Regardless of whether those people are autistic! Everyone conceptualizes the world a little differently, and everyone has a unique personal history of all the language they've encountered, and these things effect our interpretations.

In order for communication to be workable, given this slosh in interpretability, there's another couple of processes that go on. As conversation goes on, people reassess if their initial interpretation matches up with additional context. If it doesn't, they revise it, or ask clarifying questions. And on the flipside of this process, the other person in conversation is tracking if your reactions make sense with *their* understanding of what they're trying to convey to you, and offering context or rephrasing things if it seems you're out of alignment.

These processes are social skillsets that are, like most social skillsets, not ever directly articulated or explained. Many people are bad at one or both. Sometimes you encounter someone who is really, notably good at it - the vaunted "good listener", who puts in the effort to really understand what you're trying to say, or that really excellent teacher who engages with you back and forth until you really get it. But a lot of the time, it's a sort of passive social friction - people just not getting each other.

Sometimes, you encounter someone whose brain works so much like yours that talking to them feels almost effortless - you just get each other. But that's a pretty rare occurrence for anyone. More often, as you get to know someone, you start to understand the shape of the way they interpret things and learn to account for it, so over time it's easier to make sense to each other.

It's honestly not uncommon in society for people to aggregate in groups of people who interpret things similarly, and who are thus easier to talk to, rather than actually building the skills of communicating across interpretation gaps. Particularly egregious are those groups of men who talk about Women as an incomprehensible monolith, but it turns up to a greater or lesser degree on a lot of levels.

I suspect this is the root of a lot of parenting problems - people who have never built this communication skillset, and relied on choosing friends who make sense to them without a lot of effort, and who are then totally unprepared to interact with a child who interprets things in ways they don't expect.

Obviously I can't speak to The Universal Typical Experience, not least because it doesn't exist. But in general I would posit that:

Most people, give or take a few assholes, are not trying to say things that are confusing. Most people think they are communicating clearly, because the first interpretation *they* would come up with on hearing one of their own sentences is the correct interpretation.

Many people are not very good at accounting for different ways people could interpret things they're saying. However, it is normal and polite social behavior to be somewhat flexible about this and forgiving of misunderstandings. If people are being shitty to you about not understanding them, they are assholes. And I wouldn't assume that the rest of the communication they have with everyone else they know goes totally smoothly for them.

I suspect there is a bit of an unfortunate feedback loop, where people have bad experiences when someone gets mad at them for not getting something, and learn to hide when they're confused. Which then leads to larger, more complicated misunderstandings, which other different people get upset at them about, because those people think they should have asked for clarification in the first place.

Truly you can't win with everyone. No one can win with everyone. There is no monolith of "neurotypical communication" which resolves all these contradictions - all those people you're lumping in together under "neurotypical" have just as much trouble with each other.

[vinestaff]

rain or shine i'm by your side so why won't you look my way

[slavhew]

r/offmychest My girlfriend washed my hair today

[1du-ce]

Amo tanto a slash

Slash le pertenece a @xnzlian

[stupid-interrupted]

Just found this in the thrift store for cheap, anyone else want it, can't really tell what it's about. 【・_・?】

Quick lil drawing inspired by @/payaso/babas69 calico critter art ! This was fun to do lmao thinking up random hitb related stuff that would make sense. : P

[gummysaccharine]

he's so cute 😭😭

[diesmercurii]

I miss sensei garmadon

[holocene-sims]

next // previous

october 1, 2021 4:15 p.m. grant's house

[tevanbuckley]

so ftr I normally detest the “but why can’t straight men just be friends???” line, 9/10 times it’s just no homo wearing a progressive wig, and frankly the idea that close hetero male friendships are underrepresented in fiction is a little ludicrous especially compared to explicitly queer male relationships.

at the same time though, insisting that every interaction between the newly out bi man and his canonically straight friend is proof of their impending love affair just hits a little different. by 7.05 buck and eddie couldn’t so much as express an emotion in the vicinity of one another without someone screaming that it was proof bvddie canon was only around the corner. all whilst a lot of the same ppl were deliberately reading the “opposing” canon queer relationship not only in bad faith but in ways that more often than not played into homophobic tropes.

[tampire]

X

[aquastellae]

🌸 Good / Bad ending ❄️

[azzzryel]

Just wanted to illustrate my fic "Spliff & Chill" 💛

[maelswife]

I cannot explain into words how I hate CBL's Celestial realm and how its the only way its ever been shown for more than 1 frame

Like.. that's where yall live..... okay... like there are some buildings and stuff but... this looks bad

atleast in the anime in that one simple frame it looked A BIT cooler 😭 5 small islands with the same size and on the same height like....ok... wheres the flavor. There could have been so many cool things done with it and instead it looks like something I could have built in my minecraft world

[1du-ce]

Amo mucho dibujar a Slash

Slash pertenece a @xnzlian

[pande-monty-um]

Trapped

Staci's fighting spirit is like a coyote in a trap.

Willing to gnaw its own leg off for freedom.