optimisticllamathing

[optimisticllamathing]

[optimisticllamathing]

the thing about the jokerfish is that gotham isnt on like some pond that’s the fucking ocean. These fish probably show up elsewhere like there’s probably people fishing for like idk scup down in the Chesapeake bay area over the winter and pulling up jokerfish. That’s a fucking nightmare. What fish were they originally do you think. My money is on sea robins. Those things are freaky on their own they literally grunt.

[optimisticllamathing]

Not to be a technical writer on main, but I've been bumping into the idea lately that the only reason explaining yourself in more detail never seems to work is because neurotypical people are misunderstanding you on purpose, or because they have short attention spans, or because they just hate listening to you talk – and sure, occasionally that's even true, but most of the time the problem you're running into is more fundamental.

Every time you add more detail, you're running the risk of tripping over a bad assumption on your part about the listener's prior knowledge, or hitting the tipping point where they become overwhelmed with new information (and remember that you don't know which parts of what you're saying will be new information for them), or making a leap of logic that isn't as self-evident as you think it is, or any of a dozen other potential snags which, by definition, you will not see coming until it's too late to correct course.

Basically, every piece of information you add multiplies the odds of you getting blindsided by some vector of misunderstanding you didn't anticipate, even as it addresses the ones you did anticipate. The point of diminishing returns where continuing to elaborate increases the odds of unexpected miscommunication more than it decreases the odds of expected miscommunication is much nearer than you'd like.

The most effective act of communication is not the one which contains the most possible information, but the one which contains the smallest amount of information it possibly can while still getting its point across. It sucks, but it's the reality of the situation. People far more autistic than you have been trying for hundreds of years to invent a way of communicating which doesn't work this way, without success.

All of which is to say that "getting to the damn point" is legitimately a communication skill, not just an accommodation for people who aren't paying attention. If it's any consolation, it's something neurotypical people struggle with just as much as anyone else – if it was easy, technical writers wouldn't have jobs!

[optimisticllamathing]

Congrats to @merylmilesinksune for winning a comic from the @fandomsforpali raffle!!

This is a scene from Chapter 6 of my fic, Maintaining a Professional Distance!! So this was a lot of fun for me to do, thank you!!

[optimisticllamathing]

the thing about the heroes of Olympus books is that the character that dives into the fucking Grand Canyon in book one is the ‘boring’ character

[optimisticllamathing]

i had a dream that there was like a revival of the man vs bear debate but instead it was "would you rather be alone in a woman's bathroom with a random trans woman or jk rowling?" and everyone picked the trans woman and jkr crashed out on twitter because of it

[optimisticllamathing]

I think one of the best and unintentionally funniest worldbuilding aspects in Star Wars is the reasoning of why did Bail and Breha adopt Leia instead of having their own children. Leia is first established as the princess of Alderaan before she is written to be Luke's sister. So now we need to figure out how she got to Alderaan. She was adopted because she needed to be hidden and separated from her brother. Bail was placed there to be one of the only people who knew so there would be a reason why it was them who got her. They specifically wanted a daughter. Why? Because Alderaan is a matriarchal society, so they needed a princess. Why didn't the Queen and her husband have biological children? Because they can't. Why? Because the Queen can't have kids. Why? Because she got injured as a teenager and got her internal organs replaced and her body can't handle a pregnancy. How did she get injured so badly? She fell off of a mountain. How did that happen? She was climbing it. Why was the future Queen climbing a mountain in the first place? Because she needed to go through three challenges in order to inherit the throne and one of them required her to go through something physically impressive. Why? Because before that they just held a Battle Royale for all the heirs and the one left alive got the throne and they at some point figured out that maybe they shouldn't be doing that, actually. Oh, okay.

[optimisticllamathing]

A cartoon where Elmer Fudd gets married and gives up hunting Bugs Bunny to live happily with his wife only to discover 30 years into a blissful relationship that his wife was actually Bugs the entire time and also their three wonderful children were also Bugs

[optimisticllamathing]

part of being an ally to trans men is not being a dick to cis men for their appearance btw

[optimisticllamathing]

Reminder that the only reason "hermaphrodite" is even used in biology is because some zoologists a couple hundred years ago were were too lazy to come up with a new term to talk about how snails reproduce, and instead opted to compare them to intersex people. (Which were, at the time, ONLY called hermaphrodites. The word intersex didn't exist yet.)

Hermaphrodite has referred to intersex people since before we knew what a gamete was.

It wouldn't fucking kill you to use cosexed/cosexual, dichogamous, monoecious, gonosimulite, or whatever else to talk about animal species that have dual reproductive function. You don't need to contribute to a slur for us staying normalized.

[optimisticllamathing]

not usually jealous of alloromantic people but the whole 'you have a guarenteed roommate for the rest of your life, who you presumably are pretty fond of being around' aspect of marriage DOES sound like a sweet deal. i'll give them that one. it seems useful.

[optimisticllamathing]

as much as i understand being a hater you have to offset that shit with genuine, sincere enjoyment & wonder sometimes lest YOU become the one who is corny. and sad. imo.

[optimisticllamathing]

man the crazy thing about babies is that like, some people would think that reading a baby a book about farm animals is teaching them about farm animals, but really it’s teaching them about the concept of a book and how there’s new information on each page of a single object, but really, beyond that, it’s teaching them how language works, and beyond that it’s really actually teaching them about human interaction, and really really it’s them learning about existing in a three-dimensional space and how they can navigate that space, but actually, above all it is teaching them that mama loves them.

[optimisticllamathing]

Because I know it is often a topic of confusion, allow me to break something down:

Hazel was a.) born 1928 and b.) moved to Alaska on her 13th birthday. She then lived in Alaska for six months before she died. Hazel did not die ON her 13th birthday, she died in JUNE (approximately).

She was then revived in approximately early September following TLO, when the Doors of Death open. Son of Neptune takes place in June, ten months later. This means Hazel is about 14 and a quarter in SoN, having technically turned 14 in about February.

Frank had just turned 16 in SoN, meaning Hazel and Frank are roughly a year and eight months apart. Hazel saying that Frank is three years older than her in SoN is just a blatant error, and this is doubly confirmed in Tyrant's Tomb when Hazel is 15 and Frank is still 16.

[optimisticllamathing]

I always kind of laugh when people get into the “Susan’s treatment is proof that C.S. Lewis was a misogynist” thing, because:

Polly and Digory. Peter and Susan. Edmund and Lucy. Eustace and Jill. 

Out of the eight “Friends of Narnia” who enter from our world, the male-to-female character ratio is exactly 1/1. Not one of these female characters serves as a love interest at any time. 

The Horse and His Boy, the only book set entirely in Narnia, maintains this ratio with Shasta and Aravis, who, we are told in a postscript, eventually marry. Yet even here, the story itself is concerned only with the friendship between them. Lewis focuses on Aravis’ value as a brave friend and a worthy ally rather than as a potential girlfriend–and ultimately, we realize that it’s these qualities that make her a good companion for Shasta. They are worthy of each other, equals. 

In the 1950s, there was no particularly loud cry for female representation in children’s literature. As far as pure plot goes, there’s no pressing need for all these girls. A little boy could have opened the wardrobe (and in the fragmentary initial draft, did). Given that we already know Eustace well by The Silver Chair, it would not seem strictly necessary for a patently ordinary schoolgirl to follow him on his return trip to Narnia, yet follow she does–and her role in the story is pivotal. Why does the humble cab-driver whom Aslan crowns the first King of Narnia immediately ask for his equally humble wife, who is promptly spirited over, her hands full of washing, and crowned queen by his side? Well, because nothing could be more natural than to have her there. 

None of these women are here to fill a quota. They’re here because Lewis wanted them there. 

Show me the contemporary fantasy series with this level of equality. It doesn’t exist. 

[optimisticllamathing]

To me the most fun part about fix-its is placing dominoes.

Tragedies often consist of and ecalating series of actions and circumstances that, in isolation, were not clearly leading to the tragic end but form a chain of cause-and-effect directly towards it in hindsight. In equal but opposite fashion, I love starting with small inoccuous changes to canon that in themselves do not obviously fix everything but start a new chain that leads to a better ending.

It's kind of impossible for fix-its to feel fully natural– the reader by definition knows what the original ending was and that this ending will be happier because the writer wants it to be– but it is possible for them to not feel contrived. A big deus-ex-machina, or a character breaking with their pre-established tragic flaws to suddenly make all the "correct" decisions almost always feels unsatisfying to me.

But a few carefully placed small domino pieces slowly knocking over bigger and bigger tiles until the entire story has radically changed? That's a lot more fun.

It recquires the author to both correctly identify the original chain of cause-and-effect and understand the characters well enough to know how they'd react to different circumstances. Because if the story feels like it's fixing the wrong problem or the characters don't act like themselves the magic is lost. But when it works? When it clicks and the reader sees the domino chain laid out in front of them? It's beautiful.

[optimisticllamathing]

adults, while forcing all children above the age of 5 to sit still, be silent, and obey orders for 7-8 hours a day with minimal breaks, reducing their exposure to fresh air and sunlight to almost nothing, forcing them to alter their natural sleeping patterns to increase productivity, and repeatedly telling them their self worth depends on their being able to follow these instructions perfectly for 13 or more years: kids these days are so lazy! they never go outside! they never want to do anything! clearly it’s not because of us!