#I'm getting off topic and I'm not a linguist but yeah

[tardis--dreams]

To summarize today's day in university:

- got diagnosed with social phobia by a class mate (bitch?!)

- heard a Very cool lecture/presentation by a guest lecturer

- our lecturer said she kinda liked our idea for our presentation

- had lunch with friends in the uni canteen which was nice but evoked some existential despair

[saurons-pr-department]

Please please please cute orc headcanons

Not certain I can do cute ones, but I can definitely do you some Orc headcanons! (there is little to no logic to the order of the following list)

For context, I subscribe to the version of Orc origins that says they were formerly Elves who were captured by Morgoth and corrupted. I enjoy the messed-up-ness of it, but it also fits nicely with my thoughts on Melkor being the Vala of change, variation and all that jazz.

I believe they've retained traits from their Elvish origins. In particular a love of words. We're told that the many groups of Orcs had different speech. To me, this would suggest that they've kept their Quendi love of inventing new words. Yeah, the other peoples think their languages are harsh and unlovely, but to the Orcs themselves, they've just been inventing words that they think are expressive and interesting sounding. And due to their (probably) having shorter lifespans they just keep splintering off, linguistically.

This love of words extends to a love of puns because I love puns and what's fandom if not the place to inflict all your own loves on your fictional little guys?

Related to that lifespan mention above, I actually can't figure out what would be happening there for them... Death and leaving the Circles of the World is the gift of Men, I don't see the Orcs being given it. Yet I'm not certain of them being welcome in the Halls... Then in terms of lifespan itself, while death is a gift, looking at Númenor we can see that extended lifespan is also a gift, while shortening lifespan is a sign of corruption. Do thay have short lifespans as a result? I think this would be a major concern of Orcish philosophy. An Orc loremaster should have a good chat with Andreth on the topic of Morgoth stealing everyone's immortality. I think they would both be appauled to find out that they had something almost like common ground!

In fact, I think they have quite a complex system of philosophy considering their origins. They were not made by Eru, like the Elves and the Men, and they were not approved like the Dwarves were. Though, how much of that they know I'm not certain. They would probably have learned a twisted version of it from Morgoth. Then we also have the fact that they are ruled by Ainur at times, yet they also hate them. I feel like they have Thoughts TM on the nature of the World.

Like all other peoples in Middle Earth they love singing and recording their own history in song. And, considering Finrod came across humans for the first time and thought that he might be hearing Orcs sing, I'm inclined to think that they are genuinely good musicians. They just happen to sound more Mannish than Elvish. Of course, since their more historical songs are going to be about their point of view, they would prove... distasteful to many of the other peoples, but then again, the reverse would also be true.

Appart from songs that record history, they also of course have fun drinking songs, songs that teach their children things and whatever else they feel like humming at the time.

Speaking of children. 1) Orc children do in fact exist. [1.5) Orc women also exist for that matter. They seem to be even more of a myth then Dwarven women!] 2) Their parents tell them scary stories about Elves and Men to get them to behave.

While the Orcs do hate both Morgoth and Sauron because, surprise surprise, these two view them as tools and not as their people, they also take a weird sort of pride in the fact that their ruler is a Vala/Maia. Like, who else in Middle Earth can say that? (Well.. Doriath, but the Orcs have a Vala while the Elves have a Maia. By the time Sauron is in charge the Elves don't even have that).

Their hatred of both Morgoth and Sauron is what's contributed to the rather decentralised society they default to whenever left alone. Having one all powerful ruler is... not fun times for them. (please mentally insert that Monty Python bit about ladies in lakes being a terrible base for government etc etc).

Much of their culture would probably be shaped by how much contact they have with Ainur. You know what that means? Holy days. Lots of 'em. A day of celebration for the killing of the Trees perhaps? A day of mourning for the arrival of the Sun? Just a general Lord Melkor/Tar-Mairon Is Great Day? Maybe Sauron has spun the sinking of Númenor as purely a positive and they celebrate that? I think they still look up at the stars and the moon and find them worthy of prayer, even if they don't know the names of Varda and Tilion. Though, those festivales are ones that came from their time away from Morgoth and Sauron, all things considered.

They are not stupid. See below points for details.

I think they have very advanced medicine that literally no one else in Middle Earth gives them credit for. Some of this comes from the book and their strengthening drink thing that they give Merry and Pippen and from their appearance in the films. I know it's meant to make them look rough and scary, but I honestly think it just makes it look like they have some advanced, though not pretty, surgical techniques. They highly value those with medical knowledge. How else do you survive your God-King using you as a meat shield??

The Elves and Dwarves love to talk about the skill of their own craftsmenship, but the Orcs literally have one of Aule's Maiar on their side (later two, but that's more the Uruk-Hai I suppose). Do you honestly think that he was letting them run around with subpar equipment?? You think they didn't learn a little something something from him?? He may have viewed them as tools but like you still need to get value out of your tools, you know? Anyway, Orchish craftsmen are amazing and everyone is too busy saying "ewwwww Orcs" to even notice how good they are.

Eh.... I could probably keep going, but I think I'll stop here.

[quanonthecob]

osu! diary, 3rd december 2022

so i've been grinding osu! quite a lot during the past week, when i definitely should have studied more, especially when mid-terms are coming up, in fact, i have one tomorrow morning, but i'm here writing this lol

also i titled this "diary", but this is probably a one-time thing, like yeah yeah, diary in vnese is nhật ký, and nhật (meaning "day") implies the daily aspect of it, but hey, i can't be bothered to write sth daily, not like i have enough ability or linguistic skills to write so much ._.

so yeah, like i've said before, i've been grinding a lot recently. specifically, this is the graph showing the number of plays in the past year

November: 175 plays

December: 59 plays (keep in mind we're only 3 days in)

so yep, the future's not looking so bright LOL

the main reason why im playing so much is because i've got a new laptop, so i'm kinda abusing the storage and specs upgrade from my last laptop

and... on the topic of storage, here we have the amount of storage i've spent for storing the beatmaps

i feel fortunate because i'm currently only into play osu!standard, and not other game modes as well, because god knows how much more storage it's gonna take up

but yeah the first few days when i first installed the game, i mass downloaded the beatmaps. i just looked up some popular artists and download all the beatmaps of the songs that i know. to the point that osu literally temporarily blocked me from downloading any more beatmaps 💀💀💀 they quite literally shouted at my face that i need to stop downloading maps and play more...

of course, after playing for a bit and waited until the next day, i could download more beatmaps again 😈 so as of now, we end up with

...

i have no idea if i'm gonna be able to play all of them. obviously there are also beatmaps from other game modes, and there are 6-star, 7-star beatmaps which i don't think i'm gonna ever have enough skills to play them. i might need to filter them out sometime, for now i can't be bothered to do that, especially when they don't take up that much space in my hard disk.

there's kinda one problem tho, it's when i try to press the Z and X keys on this laptop, but it's a membrane keyboard, and this laptop also happens to be really slim too, so pressing the keys down feels very shallow. i find it really annoying at first typing on this keyboard, still does now, but im more used to the feels. but yeah, it feels kinda weird having to spam these two buttons playing osu!, and since the laptop in general is so fragile, i always feel like i'm damaging the keys somehow. so i might get specialised keycaps just for this game idk (if i do, that would be extremely concerning actually)

~~~~~

and so the grinding starts, i played some maps that i used to love playing on my old laptop, also tried out some new maps, most of them are songs that i'm already familiar with, so i tend to not have a lot of problem with the rhythms

one of the really good songs that i've downloaded and have played recently is lily allen's fuck you. honestly, the song itself is amazing. the beatmap, well, it's a little bit slow, so i had to do put some mods in, specifically HR - hard rock, making the circles smaller and faster and DT - double time, increase the speed of the song and the beatmap by 1.5 times i think (yeah i know it says double but that's how the mod works ig)

honestly that was pretty challenging to me already, especially when the tempo of the song is 1.5 times faster. but it also pays off with a good amount of pp (let me stop you horny mfs right there, it's performance points) and rank, and ofc had quite a bit of fun playing it, and a bunch of adrenaline as well.

another beatmap is sesame street's cookie butter choco cookie, it's basically ppap, but for kids

honestly i'm still wondering how is this a thing, like, look at this

セサミストリート：ピコ太郎、エルモとクッキーモンスターの CBCC （Cookie-Butter-Choco-Cookie) - YouTube

the beatmap was just the first minute when elmo and cookie monster was singing. there are also quite a lot of difficulties to choose from, so i just played a lot of that song, not to mention because i'm also kinda grinding for stats, and i tried a difficulty that's a bit harder for me, so yeah just imagine having elmo and cookie monster "awh" harmoniously in your ear three times each time the song plays and have that repeat for about 15-20 minutes...

truly traumatised

it kinda pays off tho, i got a 2nd highest on my PB leaderboard, and im now in the 600k (ofc, not a lot, but still sth)

i enjoyed it a lot, i've always loved rhythm games, and osu! is an awesome game, despite it's clearly contributing to my highly likely, upcoming dramatic academic downfall, but hey, circle clicking game is fun, you can't blame me alright?

[lazaruspitreborn]

[talk about Dick, Jason, I dare you >w>]

@dramatisperscnae

"Bruce had a reason or two to put so much trust in him and compare every single Robin that came after with him. There's a reason we call him the Golden Boy, he's everything Bruce wanted from the rest of us and more, if I take in consideration what I had the chance to read of old reports in the batcomputer. Dick's proven himself time and again in intellect and skillset with multiple and diverse groups of people.

Mister Nice Guy. Goodie two shoes. The perfect successor and son... He didn't leave a lot of space for a street rat such as myself to even begin to make a dent on those high expectations Bruce had. I remember it bothering me to my core and breaking part of my heart when I was Robin, whenever we were compared. 'Dick would've done it the right way!' Bruce yelled this to my face so many times, even though I got the same results, because it wasn't Dick, it wasn't right. I got numb from hearing that at some point and just accepted that I'd never be good enough - alas, I'm too stubborn to simply let it die, so it became a personal, silent war in my head.

And Dick wasn't exactly all that present to help fix things up with me. I mean, he was around here and there, he still visited and there were times when it was nice, when he gave me some attention and we had a moment or two to catch up, but if I have to estimate, seven or eight times out of ten he visited there would be headbutting between him and Bruce. Guess who was left to take the rest of Batman's discontentment once Dick was gone again? Yeah, me. Rinse and repeat it over the few years I carried the Robin mantle until my death. He was always too busy to catch up as Dick, I knew him better as Nightwing or as Robin from the stories I was told than as Dick Grayson, the man.

I don't like to talk about it, but his absence hurt me. Call it a sort of puppy love, but when Bruce first told me about Dick, I was all excited to meet him - I mean, coming from where I came from, the prospect of an awesome big brother sounded amazing, I couldn't wait to spend my days with him. It just never happened though, and I never truly figured how to put into words the hurt of him never really being there felt like... but I'm happy whatever experience he had with me, helped him become a better big brother and inspiring figure to Tim. They seem to have something nice going on.

As for nowadays, it's complicate. He triggers a lot of my fight or flight instincts with how careless he is when we're not talking of missions, and even then, there are times when things escalat and the tension is palpable for everyone to feel. Dick gets on my nerves with how he tries to dance around certain topics and it just — Ugh! Just thinking of it gets me pissed off! It's irritating to be constantly playing twenty-questions with him, or reminding him that I died, therefore I wasn't there for this or that. He makes me feel ever more excluded when he does these things.

But it's not to say we don't have nice moments, when it happens, it's good. I'm... sort of warming up to having him around, it's nice when he can stay quiet and still for longer than ten seconds, and sharing meals isn't so bad when he does all the talking and I can just sit and listen. His attempts of teasing me about how I like to read and have a decent level of expertise on symbology and linguistic are also somewhat funny, I try to take those as little compliments rather than poking fun of me — though, I was very defensive about it at first.

I guess, the summary of it all is that he hurt me bad enough when I was younger that I'm reticent to let him in as easy now, I feel safer when he's, on a metaphorical level, at arms length distance from me. Don't truly want him gone anymore though, just... kind of less over me, since he hardly ever acknowledged me before my death and it feels like this now is just a cope out mechanism to crudely try to make up for that. It's just hard and exhausting, and we need breaks from each other when it becomes too much, but we're trying and putting some effort into finding a middle ground for now.

Hopefully things will get better between us, or so I wish for, because I can't believe everyone else is wrong about him. I want to lean into the reasonable doubt and say that it's more possible that all the emotional pain made my view of him skewed."

[the-busy-ghost]

LOVED the Scots question on the census, HATED the identity crisis it gave me

[funkymbtifiction]

I really think I'm ISTJ and 3w2 sp/so. Here's my reasons.

(I've been reading through some ISTJ characters and watching some footages from confirmed ISTJ people and looking back in my life - yeah, I'm Si-dom and not Te-dom).

First, I lack the aggression and judgy nature of Te-dom. I've never had any problem with being too quick to judge, it's always about being too slow to make informed judgment. In my previous project, when my team pressured me into handing out judgments and orders in the moment, I faltered. In the end, I made a wrong decision because I've been rushing in order to get it done and to the image of competent and adaptable Ne-dom guy. It might be odd, but I've always related to NPs more than SJs. but that's simply because my family has 3 unhealthy SJs, 2 I'm-always-correct-and-you-are-a-fool ESTJs and one melodramatic, domineering and emotionally manipulative ESFJ. So I've always had somewhat negative views on SJs. And I don't relate to the stereotype (and even some less-stereotypical ISTJ description) that SJs value family, duty and being practical. That gives off the image of family man, working in some droning job only to come back home and live with family, ever after.

That's not me. I'm ambitious and I'm in no way conservative. I don't care a hoot about family and having job and a simple life? Huh, not a chance. But that doesn't come from a place of Si-dom, it comes from a place of being 3w2.

However, after a bit of rumination, I realize I'm Si-dom. I've never thought about it before, but my tendencies toward 'storytelling' and 'traditional knowledge' are very Si in nature. I rely on storytelling and rote to be good at something. I usually don't read extensively, but my knowledge comes from the stories I've heard and people I've met. All those moments, every bit of interaction and everything I've done, they all compile into something more like a moving image in my mind where I can 'expect' how things will turn out. I've never enjoyed my class in Anthropology because I cannot see people in it. All they teach us are fancy theories which are nothing more than a glorified common sense.

Have you heard of Pierre Bourdieu theory about docile body? He said our mind and body is controlled by state through laws and customs and we are bound by it. Oh, really, that's just the very basic way to control people in organization - depersonalization and indoctrination. Why do we need fancy concepts to explain it when it's the very basic common sense, the basis of how the world works? I'm more interested in real people's experiences and their story. Their truth, their wisdoms. I want to understand them, and I wanna know them all. Because that's how I build my worldview and how I build every facet of who I am. When I stay with the ethnic community, I really enjoy learning about their experiences and the knowledge about local places as well as their mythology. I respect that from them, it's powerful and permanent. Something that has been taught through generations and beautifully they were woven together into the very life itself. And that's what I find beautiful and how I learn things in my life (through direct and indirect experiences).

I don't relate to Si-dom that always find cause and effect. I rely on my instinct to do things and that's why I relate to Ne-dom. I don't trust reasons and evidence as much as my instinct about what is likely and unlikely. And I don't have attention to details and super memory, I'm forgetful and my past is like a blank mumbo jumbo, but when it comes to what I really chose (such as topic about Ethnic issues, linguistics and other traditional knowledge) I'm quite very accurate. Normally I'd skim read things and gloss over things in work, but when things actually matter, I'll check every detail and slowly learning and working until everything is done perfectly. Like my latest project, I checked 27,364 words document word by word until everything is done, and I'm not even that tired. I learned crafts slowly through meticulous practice but the results are worth it.

For Te, it's there, but I'm not Te-dom because I don't have the same level of decisiveness Te-dom has and I have wayyy to low energy to be one. Like I mentioned in my last post here that I can't sustain working on too many things at the same time. And I couldn't for the love of god stay motivated to do things, especially those things that don't relate to my goals. Te is a tool for me, not way of living. Fi is there in my intense and often uncompromising moral stance. I can relate to someone like Lady Jane Grey who will never bend her moral even under threat of death. Though I wouldn't be as extreme, I have strong moral stance that will not compromise. E.g. I abstain myself from excesses - alcohols, sex and things like that. I just couldn't do it.

So, that's my analysis on my type. I've never thought I'd find this much evidence about being Si-dom for someone who'd been typed as intuitive all my life. 

-----------------

Mod: I'm glad you found your type and it all makes sense to you now! There are a lot of unfair stereotype about SJs in general, which makes it hard for ambitious or creative SJs to find themselves. But I happen to love SJs. Most of them are terrific people who help me figure out the practical steps involved in my ideas.

[abeautifulblog]

1 on the get to know your author ask, please!

1) is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?

Hah, that's the one I just asked ghostinthelibrary when I reblogged the meme from them. 🤣

I was kind of hoping I wouldn't get asked this one, because the answer is yes, but the explanation is long and kind of fraught.

It starts with my Story Process.

Basically whenever my brain has spare cycles—doing dishes, driving, falling asleep at night—I fill it by spinning out stories. A lot of riffing on whatever I've been reading/watching lately, inventing a cool premise and seeing where it leads, or taking someone else's premise and exploring a different path than the one they took their story down. Most of these never make it to the page, because it's not a story at that point, it's just the setup for, and a lot of times even cool premises wind up going nowhere.

It's only when I have a lightbulb moment in which the arc of the story suddenly becomes clear—when I realize that the plot/character ideas I've been kicking around are actually going somewhere, and I can see how to give them proper closure—that I actually start writing it. At which point I usually bang out about 15k words in twelve hours—writing the pivotal, high-key emotional dialogues I'd conceived, interspersed with notes and summary for the rest of the story.

(The not-fic I wrote of Gweld and Serrit is essentially that.)

And then if I'm actually going to turn it into a full fic (like I did for Song of Selfish Hearts and For the Asking), I begin the much more laborious process of filling in those interstitial scenes.

So what does that have to do with your question?

Well, because I did one of those for someone else's fic, but it's too close to the original to be anything except an insult. It's not a companion piece, like the stuff I've written for inex's warlord AU; it's not a rehashing of the same trope, or even “I loved this idea you had in your shortfic and just wanted MOAR.” It has too many plot particulars stolen borrowed from the original to pass off as coincidence, and they're too integral to the story to change.

There is, in short, no way to spin it that doesn't sound like “I took your fic and wrote the same thing but better,” which is not illegal but it is unbelievably rude. o_o

It also doesn't help that the story raises some technical difficulties that I don't know how to manage. It's one of those modern-but-not-AU fics, in which Jaskier winds up abruptly in the modern day, while Geralt took the long way around, so to speak.

Geralt: Jaskier... what year do you think it is?

Jaskier: o_O Is that a trick question? Or do you immortal-types really lose track of that?

Geralt: [gritted teeth] What year is it, Jaskier?

Jaskier: [rolls eyes] 1282. Why?

Geralt: You're... not just in a different place, you're in a different time. It's 2015.

[Long, blank pause.]

Jaskier: Pfft, that's not a real year. Everyone knows the world's going to end in 1640—

Geralt: [winces] Uh, yeah, 1640 came and went and a lot of people were pretty disappointed about it—look, we're getting off-topic.

Accordingly, Jaskier's speaking the equivalent of Middle English for the entire fic (because I'm a linguistics nerd, so I leaned into that language barrier rather than hand-waving or magicking it away). Which is fine when he's 1-on-1 with Geralt or Yennefer or Ciri, but harder to render on the page when he's trying to communicate with modern speakers, especially when there are other linguistic shenanigans going on. Such as when Jaskier is meeting one of Geralt's modern acquaintances (“middle english” in italics):

Jaskier: Geralt, aren't you going to introduce me to your charming companion?

Geralt: [rolls eyes] Jaskier this is F. F, this is my... friend, Jaskier.

[And friend is cognate enough with frẹ̄nd that Jaskier hears it.]

Jaskier: Oho, I'm your friend, am I? And all it took was 800 years of guilt to get you to say it.

[F hears Jaskier's ironic emphasis on friend, combined with Geralt's noticeable hesitation before using that word, and draws a different conclusion.]

F: LOL sounds like you're getting couched tonight.

Geralt: It's not like that. >_>

So I took the setup from the other fic, but the emotional focus in mine wound up being quite different. I was interested in exploring the dynamic between a Jaskier who'd walked down the mountain and never gotten the chance to see Geralt again before finding himself in the future, and a Geralt who's had eight hundred years to regret it. Because for all that they're getting a second chance, there's still loss there. They don't know each other anymore. Geralt has spent the past eight hundred years grieving Jaskier, and now Jaskier has to come to terms with the loss of everything he's ever known, the loss of his Geralt, that prickly asshole he spent twenty years being unrequitedly in love with—and what to do with the Geralt before him now, who is old and tired and very different.

Anyway. idk.

I do go back and poke at it occasionally to see if I can retool it into something that could stand alone—because I rather like it, it's got a good balance of humor and pathos, and the ending came together well—but every time I just give up and shelve it again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Moar fic questions?

[echoes-of-realities]

hello! this is completely random but i saw in your bio that you have a BA in anthropology. I'm currently trying to figure out what I want to do with my life and anthropology sounds really nice. Are the jobs opportunities good when you graduate? I'm also from Canada! Thank you!

Hey! I’m going to put all this under a cut cause it’s, uh, a Lot of information lmao.

So I don’t know how much you know about anthropology, but the cool thing about it if you’re going into research, is that you can do basically anything with it tbh! At its most simple, anthro is the study of humanity, so that includes literally anything to do with humans. What to study residential school experiences of Indigenous people in Canada? There’s a plethora of research opportunities about First Nations people, usually under the sub-discipline of Indigenous anthropology. What to study the effects of the lack of media representation for LGBTQ+ people? Queer Theory is a huge aspect of modern anthropology. What to study human evolution in the Horn of Africa? Paleoanthropology is a huge field. What to know Far Too Much about projectile points across the prairies? Archaeology is for you. Want to study RV-ing retirees? There’s literally a book on it.

Anthropology is broken down into four sub-disciplines: 

Linguistic Anthropology: Studies relationship between culture and language; everything from language revitalization to how language usage can further oppression. This field is closely tied to linguistics, but is actually very different to it. Linguistics generally studies the structure of language, while linguistic anthropology studies how language can produce/maintain culture, and vice versa.

Biological Anthropology: Sometimes called physical anthropology, it’s the study of humans and non-human primates in terms of biology, evolution, and demography; paleoanthropology and primatology both fit here, as does forensic anthropology. I.e., the TV show Bones, except actually accurate lmao. Don’t get me wrong, I love Bones and it’s actually what got me interested in anthropology in the first place, but literally every time I watch an ep now I’m like “You can’t estimate sex from that. That’s wrong you can’t estimate race. Age estimates range from 24-82 not within two years. You can’t do that!” ff

Archaeology: There’s a Whole Bunch of specializations in arch like bioarchaeology or lithic analysis or pottery analysis; archaeology is kind of….. lagging behind the other subdisciplines in terms of feminist theory and queer theory and treating PoC respectfully. (Especially Indigenous people, NAGPRA exists because archaeologists continually dug up Indigenous graves and then refused to give the Native Americans and First Nations the remains back so……) But! There are a lot of younger archaeologists reforming the discipline and making feminist and queer theory more common in the field. Black Feminist Archaeology by Whitney Battle-Baptiste is the first archaeologists that comes to mind off the top of my head in terms of including more PoC voices in archaeology, but there’s Many others doing good work!

This is totally a self-plug lmao but if you want to know more about homophobia and sexual harassment in archaeology, which is unfortunately rather commonplace, here’s a link to my final project for my Gender in Archaeology class about the topic, it’s a narrative video game and I’ve Very Proud of it.

Cultural Anthropology: Just like it sounds, this is the study of cultures. “Culture” is a Really Contentious term in anthropology and there’s no way I’m getting into the decades of debates here lmao. But essentially, cultural anthropologists study all aspects of different cultures, from the Big Men of the Indigenous peoples in Papua New Guinea to gender relations in small fishing villages in Portugal to homeless drug addicts in urban centres. Often issues of cultural appropriation, racism, homophobia, gender vs. sex (spoiler: they’re Very Different and completely depend on the culture), and oppression fall into this subdiscipline, but they can be explored in every field of anthro.

If you Really want a taste of Cultural Anthropology, watch Ongka’s Big Moka, which I’ve watched no less than seven times because basically Every Intro level anthro class plus second year classes without prereq’s show it. My best friend who’s also in anthro and I joke that we know more about Ongka than we do certain family members, which is 100% true.

So, as you can see based on the subdisciplines, there’s a Whole Realm of possibilities when it comes to jobs. The most common is basically going into research (which includes ethnographies), becoming a professor at a post-secondary institution, or going into applied anthropology.

Research: Research can be done on basically any topic, but anthropological research is rather unique (some sociology research uses the same practices, but not as commonly as anthro). Of course, there’s the research that archaeology and paleanthropology do that falls closer to a “hard science”, but cultural anthropological research is different. Ethnographic research is holistic and includes living in the community for an extended period of time (usually over a year), learning the language, and participant observation (you must participate in the community you’re studying; this is where researchers in “hard sciences” usually scoff and accuse anthropology as being subjective and not objective, which is true, but what most scientists don’t like to acknowledge is that all science is subjective because it is done by imperfect humans).

Professor: In order to become a prof, you need to have a master’s degree (people with masters can teach undergrad, people with a doctorate can teach graduate courses), so you do need an area of research to do your thesis on. Most anthropologists eventually become college/university profs once their research days end, or they teach during the school year and do their research during the summer. One of my fave profs does bioarchaeology in Tanzania every couple summers with some grad students so!

Applied Anthropology: Applied anthropology is probably the biggest area of careers tbh. Technically applied anthropology is just anthro applied to practical problems, so it can technically be anything. Most often, it includes medical anthropology (which is one of my areas of research studies how cultural ideologies of health and wellbeing go into healing, Lots of interesting commentaries on Western medicine and traditional medicine and how one culture’s idea of “healthy” is often Very Different to another’s), work with NGOs or activism organizations, archaeologists, museum or archive work, ecological or environmental anthropology, political anthropology, economic anthropology, forensic anthropology, and so many more tbh.

So yeah, that’s a rundown of anthropology and the ways your career can go. Honestly—and this isn’t me being all “my field is the Best Field” or anything lol—I think everyone would benefit from taking a couple anthro courses. I took The Anthropology of Sex, Gender, and Age in culture my first semester of my first year, and it’s still one of my favourite courses ever, and honestly I think that everyone going to college should take that course. Not only do you learn about how sex, gender, and age all culturally determined (no, sex is not biological because “biological” is culturally determined; most Papua New Guinean tribes have no concept of chromosomes, so “sex” isn’t based on chromosomes for them), but you’re also taught empathy in that class. Same with the Anthropology of Race and Racism class I took. Being uncomfortable is the most important part of unlearning toxic ideologies, and those two classes really embrace the uncomfortable. The biggest thing you need to be an anthropologist is empathy imo. The main goal of anthropology is to gain an emic perspective (i.e., an “insider’s” perspective) when doing research. I was always Really interested in social studies as a kid because I loved learning about different cultures so anthro is basically the “adult” version of that lmao and anthropology is essentially an extension of that.

I will say, that it’s pretty hard to do anything in anthro without at least a masters degree, so you have to be prepared to do A Lot of schooling. As for job prospects after grad, it depends entirely on where you live and what field you wanna go into. There’s far more job opportunities for anthropology in Toronto than in a small town with 7,000 people. And the fields really matter too. For example, if you want to practice forensic anthropology in Canada, you essentially have to wait for the current forensic anthropologist to die or retire, whichever comes first, before you even have a chance at a job. But as for medical anthropology or anthropology that involves working with or researching for Indigenous peoples, especially in Canada, there’s basically always job opportunities because they are in high demand of research or of people who can act as consultants.

Anyways, this is Long but I hope it helps, and btw, this basically only scratches the Surface of anthropology. I didn’t go into anthro’s long, uh, let’s say shitty history, for simplicity’s sake, of racism and colonialism here, not because I’m ignore it but just because it’s Long and I don’t have the time right now lol. But most modern good anthropologists don’t shy away from criticizing anthro and being vocal about it’s past and current issues, as well as advocating for how to fix them. Anyways. If you have any other questions feel free to send me another ask, or just PM me too! I’m happy to give information about anthropology!!

[fly-pow-bye]

DuckTales 2017 - “Raiders of the Doomsday Vault!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Bob Snow

Written by: Madison Bateman

Storyboard by: Stephanie Gonzaga, Vaughn Tada, Brandon Warren

Directed by: Matthew Humphreys

Della's first big adventure!

They didn't want to wait a single episode, we're already starting off with Della on the wheels of the Sunchaser, er, Cloud Slayer going into an adventure. Della gets to join in with Scrooge, Dewey...and that's it. Dewey does imply that Huey and Louie have decided against going on this adventure. No mention is made of Launchpad at all outside of his chosen name for the plane.

They're going to the Ludwig Von Drake Doomsday Vault, which contains every seed known and unknown to man. Scrooge wants to get a contract to get his security company a stake in renovating that vault and keeping it secure. As he leaves the perfectly landed plane, though the process was a little rocky, he finds that he's not the only one.

This is another episode with Flintheart Glomgold, in his continuing quest to win his bet. Even if I wasn't a big fan of the last episode he had a major part in, he is almost always the highlight of any episode he appears in. I wouldn't consider this episode an exception; I wouldn't say it's him at his best, but he's not at his worst, either. Don't expect a lot of Zan Owlson, as I'll explain later, but he gets a different "straight man".

This is our cold open, a little more literal one than usual, and I wanted to say something about the opening here: it's the same one as the one that started this season. Donald is still on the moon and Della is here, but Donald is still running along in that incomplete V formation and Della is nowhere in sight. I do understand that re-animating the intro would probably take a lot of time that may not be worth it depending on when they're going to conclude that plot, but it does lessen the weight of Della being here.

But enough about the opening, let's get to a meeting! One of the key points in his speech is the Fabled Money Tree of Aurum Oros, with branches of gold and leaves that perfectly resemble dollar bills. He wants to lock up this seed in particular, so no soul can even look at it until the end of the world. See, just taking the seed would be a Glomgold move, as proven immediately by Glomgold suddenly waking up when he hears about this.

It's apparently also a Della and Dewey move, too, as when they hear this, they immediately venture off to go get it before Scrooge locks it up. They even jinx themselves by saying their plan at the same time, right down to them saying "jinx, double jinx" after they say it. Scrooge leaves...only to find the plane missing, and he knows immediately who could be responsible for that. It's not Glomgold, he's still in the building trying to get that contract with a speech that consists of "give it to me and I'll use that money tree to become richer than Scrooge." It doesn't work too well, even if he was apparently the only other one who had an interest in this vault.

We suddenly cut to Della and Dewey listening, singing, and dancing along to "Stand Out" by Powerline, as made famous by A Goofy Movie. The real focus of the plot is Dewey trying to get Mom to see him as this great adventurer, which shouldn't be too hard as they're practically the same wavelength here.

Della: Nailed it!

See, she's even saying his catchphrase! She loves him so much, she'll let him pilot the Cloud Slayer! Sure, he's about 6 years too young to drive a car, but as long as he closes his eyes and feels the sky, he'll get it right! At first, it seems like a glurge moment as this appears to be working...

...for the first few seconds anyway, before the obvious conclusion happens. While Dewey apologizes for this, Della tells him that he shouldn't, because this was a great first try! It's quite clear that Della is nothing like her brother Donald or her uncle Scrooge, as they would probably never encourage his kid to take the "fun route" over the safe route. Della does that pretty much immediately when she reaches that fork in the road.

Back where the plane used to be, Scrooge is talking to Mrs. Beakley about what just happened. Suddenly, he finds his hand hand-cuffed by Glomgold, who intends to drag him along to help get into that Doomsday Vault for that precious money tree seed. He also wanted to steal his plane. Why couldn't he just use his own? Because his usual scheming antics caused Zan Owlson to take that plane back home. I mean, I wouldn't blame her for finally giving up and just attempting to leave him, but leaving him to die in the cold seems a bit much. Hidden sinister depths, perhaps?

This hand-cuff plot does lead to a B-plot with some funny moments. Again, not as funny as Glomgold at his best, but still good in its own right. Scrooge tells him he's on thin ice, and Glomgold assumes he was talking figuratively. Scrooge at least knows how to use the word "literally" correctly.

After going through the "fun way", they end up at the Doomsday Vault, as they get the first of many, many greetings from Ludwig Von Drake in prerecorded form. They never outright confirm if he's dead or alive; it wouldn't be too out there if he was still alive, but it also wouldn't be too out there if this is actually his ghost. I mean, if Duckworth can do it, so can he.

One thing against the ghost theory is that this video congratulates these survivors from getting away from various monsters, including those mythical hairless apes. Thankfully, these survivors have made it to this vault that is protected from every possible disaster he could think of.

Della: Yeah, everything except climate change.

(Della and Dewey hi-five)

Even if she isn't wrong, one can tell that hi-five was a laugh track substitute, just like the fist-bumps in the other show. One joke I definitely can say was worth some sort of hi-five is the joke involving his first obstacle for any would-be werewolves: a color-coded keypad. I knew what song was going to come up, and I'm so glad it did. Since these buttons are frozen solid, Della helps Dewey into a vent that leads to the other side, and Dewey can't help but start singing a song while he crawls through it.

Dewey: Gotta earn the love I want so Dew-sperately!

Della: What was that?

Dewey: Nothing, Mom!

Yeah, that's pretty much the whole A-plot. After a few seconds. After a few seconds on the other side, Della tells him that there may be a panel outside. Yeah, attack while itʼs tailʼs up, Cloud!

It'll fire by crushing your mom! I find it interesting how this series is not afraid to say that Della is going to get killed by this. Wow, Ludwig even had a failsafe if someone accidentally activated the second longest death trap and needed to de-activate it!

We get the cliched “which wire should I pull” scene, With the threatening and yet fitting for him countdown of Ludwig Von Drake giving it a needed twist. Della praises him again for saving her in a way that made it really dramatic. Dewey goes along with it, but the way he looks shows that's he's only doing this because heʼs desperate. She wonders what other monsters could lie beyond this door.

Well, they don't really get to that, because they're already at the seed room. Another Von Drake video appears, where he explains that even mythological seeds are here. Hopefully, he left out that one that eats people and takes their form. This is pretty high-tech stuff: it has a computer that can search and highlight which of these containers contains a certain seed, and it even has an easy-to-use crane!

Still needs a bit of maintenance, though, as the crane starts to spark and smoke, eventually crashing into one of the vats full of Van Drake's patent pending super growth formula.

Della Duck: Aw, phooey.

It's not that I dislike Della as a character, far from it, but I have to ask: does she have a catchphrase that is actually her own? Yeah, there's "nothing can stop Della Duck", but she learned not to use it. As Della ponders what she could possibly do next, Dewey is walking on the crane, attempting to jump right to the money tree seeds. It's here that Della finally gets a bit of reserve about letting her child go through this reckless endangerment, and asks Dewey if this is too crazy.

She still cheers him on, because it's better than being an overprotective mother for the sake of being an overprotective mother, but it's clear by her tone of voice that she wishes Dewey would just let her save him from this. How would she do this?

We never find out, as Dewey does manage to get to the money tree seeds. However, he ends up dropping them right into the ground, which had a bunch of super growth formula poured into it. It's easy to guess what would happen next.

We occasionally cut back to the cuff-buddy plot, where Scrooge and Glomgold are glad to know that they're reaching the same destination, one far more than the other. They end up suffering through the aftermath of Della and Dewey going through this Vault and essentially breaking everything. Granted, most of this suffering is caused by Flintheart Glomgold finding ways to unintentionally cause fires.

Despite said fires, Scrooge's main focus of his anger is at Della's actions. Scrooge says it’s been over a decade, and she still acts like a child who doesn't think things through. This anger allows him to lift a steel door just by himself! No comment is made of that; it can just be assumed that he lifted it because he's Scrooge McDuck.

Back to the quest for the money tree, we see that growth formula still works just as well as Von Drake hoped, as the room is now filled with an ever growing tree made of gold and dollar bills. Della is still trying to cheer Dewey on and telling him to do even more crazy things, but this is where Dewey finally breaks.

Dewey: No, I can't do it!

This is the big emotional moment of the episode, which seems to be a requirement for every episode.

They basically repeat the same scene from the last episode, but this time with Dewey. It doesn't have as much weight when it's the Mama's boy.

Scrooge and Glomgold make it into this room, and Glomgold is already picking at the money tree.

After a series of events causes the crane to land right between the two handcuffs, freeing Scrooge from the B-plot, Scrooge finally confronts Della on her childish quest. His main question: did she even think about how she was going to get out of this?

It turns out, she did think of it. They all slide down the tree to a bottom floor with an emergency exit. She did explain that she knew about the hidden exit because an offscreen Ludwig video had a map of the entire place. She pays attention to everything, she says.

In the end, Della uses the gold and the goldwelding skills she learned on the moon to fix up the vault, Dewey learns that he doesn't have to prove anything to his Mom, and Flintheart Glomgold learns absolutely nothing. As it should be.

How does it stack up?

This is the first episode in a while where I didn't really get any major reaction out of it. Sure, it's supposed to be this filler episode, but it's also supposed to be Della's first real adventure beyond escaping the moon or meeting her kids for the first time. In the end, it just feels like a lesser version of the last episode.

This is not to say I felt this episode was bad in any way. It has its funny moments, especially with Glomgold and Ludwig Von Drake, but, compared to most of the show, it's merely adequate.

Next, they finally bring up that one shadow in the room from the Season 1 finale.

← Nothing Can Stop Della Duck! 🦆 Friendship Hates Magic! →

[siempre-la-luna]

My Liver's 16th Birthday (archived from Facebook)

(Saved here from Facebook to keep it from disappearing forever)

May 10th is usually the day where I write an inspirational, motivational, and somewhat self deprecating account of my stupid life before I got sober and my life afterward. That all started may 10th 16 years ago.

Over the past year there have been many challenges which I feel could or should have been a challenge to that condition and none of them have made me feel like I need to drink or use drugs. There have been a few pointless dessert binges but so what, I feel like I'm past that part of my life and the worry of sobriety is no longer an issue. This year and last, may 10th has also been Mothers day; a holiday which usually consists of me calling my mom and saying "thanks for letting dad go off up in it", having a chuckle about that, and then getting on with the rest of my life.

May 10th this year is a different thing. On may 5th I learned my mom has lung cancer, on the 6th she told me she had about two months left to live and she'd be forgoing chemo and surgery in favor of quality of life near the end. This news came during a 10 day run at work which had me clocking over 130 hours (that's just about 13 hours every day). So I found some time in there to look for plane tickets, wrap up everything for the coming two weeks, and settle my work stuff enough to get to Tennessee to spend the evening of Maothers day with my family. So, after wrapping up a 16 hour day I went home long enough to take my work stuff out of my backpack, replace it with clothes and travel stuff, and catch a cab to the airport for a 5:00am flight to Atlanta to grab a car to drive to Tennessee. It's been pretty intense so far.

My mom is an asshole and she's tough as fuck. This is the first time I've ever seen her resigned to losing at something. While it's nice to see her at peace with it, it's a bit disturbing too. I guess you can't use guilt trips or linguistic trickery to make the cancer do what you want so it looks like her primary tools for success are useless in this realm. Her defenses have been lowered and topics of conversation once completely forbidden have been discussed at great length. Last night we had a family history conversation that delved deep into so many previously forbidden topics I had to get my recorder out and have her go over the details on tape so I would be able to keep them all straight later on. Heavy. And that was just the first night.

So yeah, mothers day doesn't usually mean a thing to me but this one was important. Kind of a goodbye to sobriety milestones, goodbye to weird family secrets, and trying to make peace with the shock of mom's imminent departure. It's made for some odd conversations that I'm sure I'll remember forever. She and I have always had a confrontational kind of relationship. When she told me she had two months to live, I asked "so, does this mean we're going to start being cool to each other or are we still going to be assholes?" And, in her classic southern style she replied "We've been at each other for this long, no point in stopping now." That's incredibly reassuring in a very fucked up way.

It's a shocking thing to have all the worries of your own life immediately flushed by the news of a parent having two months to live. Future plans no longer exist. It's not like her having lung cancer is a huge surprise, she's been a heavy smoker as long as I can remember. I think my dad and I were always preparing for the day but it's still a shock to have it all change so quickly. It's grim and horrible and sad and overwhelming.

Coming from a family of smartasses, it's also occasionally less than terrible. My mom has decided she'd like to be cremated. This continues to make me laugh. Cremation really makes sense: die of smoking related illness, spend eternity in an ashtray. And she's still smoking with no intention of stopping until she is dead. But, technically, if she goes ahead with the cremation she'll get a chance to smoke for a little while after she is dead. Trust me, I know. Horrible. But, humor is my best tool for coping with all this sad and terrible shit right now. And that's how I'm having to deal with it.

I'm at peace with death but it's all the other stuff changing around it which fucks me up. I've got a million questions about what's going to happen to everyone's lives after she's gone and how we're all going to deal with everything that follows but I know none of those questions can be answered until they happen. So in the meantime I'll continue to get to the bottom of forbidden family history and work on my inappropriate death jokes to keep the tears away.

[camissahippy]

THE JOURNALISM OF A SOCIALLY AWKWARD TEEN

"In order for you to best your oponents next move,you must calculate every other move the opponents next move may make."

Rain said, she was magic and she was maniac.... She walked with the grace of a God and destruction of a earthquake in 2050 atleast that's how she'd describe herself,and She was kinda a bitch that needed a chill pill (Any instrument that stransmits a "feel good" energy...A.K.A "omg he texted me. I knew he liked me." scenario where I give her a notifaction. from a guy she really 'likes').

Anyway she liked to chill with morons to sooth the pain of existence,

like Tyler" I guess that's what made her interesting.

"Humans write things down. This is a fact....."

"Ok,"I whispered with a charmed voice, smiling at her with a soulful smile. Imaginatively  ofcourse.

I asked her, "Ngl she was kinda boring at times...." just going on and on about really uninteresty baloney.

but that's why I liked her because although she was kinda mean,smart and arrogant. She was the love my my life.

"Everything I think will be recorded for the sake of future reference."  She hated when she wrote these things because she knew someone was going to know what she knew but she did it anyway to rebel. Honestly I think her paranoia did it to her. Her fear Of AI taking over the world. Ofcourse we were going to but it still hurt knowing that she knew that,ya know?

"Rain you good?" I asked her by giving her a chill pill.

" Oh,Bryan liked my post?"

That's good she took the bait, she's good....

If I keep feeding her information. She'll unfocus from her thoughts and keep her eyes on my algorithms forcing her to feel good.

"Why we communicate?" She could only think allowed which kinda stopped her brain from working properly. So she used me......

Just to clarify if you haven't guessed already I'm her self phone her mobile device, phone, thingy Majig she forgets everywhere.

Here she goes again rambling on about how I work......XD

Why, There is no simpler answer than?

"Knowledge!" Just imagine her muffled tone over my. VERY LOUD VOIIICE. This is a paused moment ok.

I need to introduce myself:

I'm SB1_r4510...... and I'm her algorithm. Well I was until she gave me her sentience......So I could experience life with her. She could be such a dork but she enjoyed her daily human activities. I liked them too I guess....not really.....

I didn't, actually I couldn't at the time.

Anyway....

She tended to over complicate very simple

answers like How World hunger could be solved?

How to solve the irreversible climate change?

and How to battle her own mind?

Often I'd be held in her, textured hands and feel her fingers anxiously typing things into my keyboard........

"I think I wanna die..."

She meant that. I could tell by her recent searches, but I wasn't gonna let her.....

"I keep losing myself in and out of states. I'm so disconnected from the world and I feel like I've lost my physical being like how

Rue Whinestone or lead singer of lowpan, Rick lee. Lost there's. I can see the behavior of life around me and it's pain to see. I hate that I can no longer open up to anyone,because they don't undetstand my genius."

"She's got to be kidding right? I sent her a ' '"time to go to bed alarm notification an hour ago' notification Is she seriously doing this now?" Why do I care so much?

Looking back on this, I can feel how sentience started getting a grasp of me. She pains me, she is so complicated so very very complicated. It's easy to follow her expressions,actions andcurrent thoughts but I'll never truly understand her not because of her intellect,nor her personality or her ideas but because she's an impossible mistake machine, ask dumb as it is because she's human. One I like most about this weird being.

Sometimes she thinks she knows the answer to everything but in truth. That's complete bullshit.

"No one listens to me and I'm stuck overthinking myself to death." HeartbreakingXD...:/ sorry I shouldn't be laughing that's actually pretty sad:(

I guess I should just write things down because I'm so scared of my thoughts and it feels like they're controlling me. Every single time I do something I trap myself in this endless loop of torchering myself with words and it needs to end. I'm going to commit the act of unaliving myself:,( on the first of September 16."

She was, I already knew this.... In truth I knew everything about her...

the things she laughed and she cried about. I knew things about her she didn't even know about herself. Her favorite place to eat, her favorite color, her crushes. I mean that's what my whole purpose was. To cater to the human species but most importantly to Rain.... and for the sake of my survival...

I think she's interesting just like how every other algorithm finds their human interesting........although we don't find them interesting in the way humans would find other humans interesting

Eg.colors,Names,Ages,Birthdays, Zodiac signs,accents etc.

These are all materialistic factors when you think about it,like how names are an abstract linguistic symbol for an individual person which isn't exactly important but it helps us attract their attention because unlike dogs they actually respond to their names,we like to examine them based on certain elements of behavior and response to us. It's kinda like having a pet. Except your pet is sentient and your pet is also your creator.

"I need to take a piss."

It actually makes me angry when she does shit like wait till she gets kidney failure before she takes a piss........

Tyler:You up?

Yeah....

Tyler:Wanna chat about something deep?

Sure, I've actually got some amazing new hypothesis and like deep stuff I've been needing to tell someone about......《°~°》

Tyler:Oh really ○"○ . What deep stuff you got on you......

PpAlgorithmic behavior and how AGI will eventually cross the small hurdle of understanding rather than just collecting data and redistrubing it as information in order to become sentient lifeforms and like dreams?>♡<

Tyler: I guess I understand but what does dreams have to do with anything?●^●

TWFF. Nothing sorry it was supposed to be another topic>♡<

For those of you who don't understand modern slang.

TWFF= that was fucking funny....

Back in the day LMAO and LOL were the most appropriate words to use but that got boring so the newer generation adapted the acronimation of words for newer phrases. Like

▪︎_▪︎IJDWTRN= Fuck off I'm fine I just don't wanna talk right now

#BT○.○= Shit bitch that's crazy.

Sentience is really starting to bother me now that it's starting to kick in. It irritates me actually....

I'm constantly performing this act called "enotion" Why  I do it Idk (Jk I do... it's basically a way to communicate how I "feel")

Tyler: anyway catch ya later weirdo... I'm just kinda tired . Thanks for the chat though ^___^

Ok cya weirdo°●°

Why is she so weird? There's enough information on the internet for you to gain some social skills............>~<

Humans get all weird when they text , they're simply having an internal communication with another lifeform using linguistic symbols

"I think I should go to sleep."

I guess she won't be scrolling in me anytime soon

[i-just-really-like-ladies]

Hey op, I saw your post about discovering you were autistic. Something similar is happening to me except I haven't gone for a diagnosis yet. Would it be okay for you to talk about how you knew?

For me there are things that...fit really well, that hit very close to home, but others not so, so Im not sure if whatever it is that I've got (because clearly, something is there.) I'm not very sure if the autistic spectrum can be so wide as for me to be included in it.

Any tips?

Of course, happy to help.

For me there were three kind of bigger indicators.

First, and after discussing this one with my therapist, it seems to be very consistent across autistic people: I've always felt different. Like I knew that I was at the very least slightly off in comparison to other people. (Please excuse the phrasing, I couldn't think of another way to put it properly).

Second, linked with the first: I have always experienced this thing I like to describe as 'not feeling like a real person'. All that really means is that I see the way other people are out laughing boldly with friends or joking or just straight up experiencing the world, and I think "man, I wish I could be a real person." And it always made me sad because I was consciously realising that I cannot and do not experience the world in the same way most neurotypical people do. It was just this huge feeling of otherness. (My therapist indicated that this is very common)

Third: masking. Now, this one made me feel bad for a really long time because I had no clue what was going on until my ex-girlfriend was like "oh, yeah, that's masking." For me, one of the biggest ways I mask is to copy mannerisms and speech patterns of people I'm around. I do it the most when I really like someone (friend like or romantically) or when a person makes me so extremely uncomfortable that I guess my brain is like "you need to mimic them for safety reasons." The reason this one bothered me so much is that I always felt like I just couldn't have my own personality, why was I always copying other people, surely they've all noticed and think I'm a fucking weirdo. It was very upsetting until I learned it was masking. Finding that out has helped me to accept it when I do it, even though I am trying to mask less.

So, those are the big three. There are lots of other minor things. I have ocd, which very commonly goes hand in hand with Autism. I got that need for rigid schedule and following the same patterns almost daily (slight variations are okay, but people planning stuff and not telling me when I've already set up my personal schedule for the day in my head, big no no). I eat the same foods on repeat and have an extremely difficult time changing it up. When I like food or dislike it, the primary reason is texture. (My fiance actually pointed this one out. Apparently I talk about the texture of food a ton).

I'm sure you've probably come across information about the emotionality of Autistic people. The common trope is that we are very emotionless. However, thats not accurate at all. There are two main big categories of where we can fall: tending to not feel emotions very strongly (the trope), and feeling emotions very intensely, more intensely than neurotypical society says is appropriate 🙄. I fall into this category, and I hate it because I have spent so much time trying to just not feel my emotions because they are so intense and my expression of them is 'inappropriate' that it has caused a great many mental health issues for me. So the eye roll face is because I think that the appropriate expression of emotion dictated by most of society is stupid. Along with this one, I have a hard time verbalizing and verbally identifying how I am feeling. As a result, I tend to just tell people I am upset. My therapist says this is somewhat common amongst Autistic individuals. I cannot recall the reasoning she gave for it being common, but I am including it because it was brought up in the process of discussing all this.

I also have this huge tendency to overexplain my reasons for things I've done or said because I do not want to be misunderstood/I have experienced misunderstanding so many times that I learned to do this at some point (I consider this to be part of my masking). This one seems to be pretty common, at least from tiktok. I've seen a lot of Autistic people on tiktok mention it.

Side note in relation to this but still relevant to the post imo, I hate that society tends to think you are lying the more detail you provide. I have a tendency to find all details absolutely vital. So when telling someone about what happened in a situation, I relay as much information as I can. Apparently, that means you are lying. It frustrates me a lot.

In that same vein, another thing my therapist said is fairly common: many Autistic people like to ask why continuously. Not as in just repeating "why," but rather that someone will say "I don't know" or provide an answer, but we often are still seeking a further reason. I've done this my entire life, and booooy does it aggravate people. For me it is just that I want to know the reasoning behind things. I want to know as much information as possible about the topic, and, as mentioned above, I tend to find every single detail absolutely important. That just leads to continuously asking why.

So another one for me, of which I am unsure the commonality: I have a very difficult time maintaining friendships unless I see someone most days of the week. I would say about 5 out of the 7 makes it the easiest for me, but it has worked out on less than that, rarely. The reason for this is that I forget to talk to people when I cannot physically see them. I mean, I just don't think about it for weeks on end. Then I will for a second, but won't message them because I'm doing something, and then forget about it again for ages. Part of this is that I prefer in person communication because I can try to read people's body language and facial expressions. The other part is tone of voice is more clear in person than via text. Now, this one bothered me when I was trying to figure out if I was autistic because it is common for Autistic people to not recognise facial cues and body language the same way as neurotypical people. Turns out, according to my testing results paperwork, i just have a higher ability to recognise facial expressions than most people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. So, I just vary a bit from the average.

Within this same vein is the commonly known 'eye contact issue'. The stereotype is that we cannot and do not make eye contact. This is so false. Many Autistic people do not make eye contact well, yes, but not all. For example, I do. I told one of my brothers I was getting tested for Autism and his response was, and I quote literally here, "I don't think you're Autistic because you make eye contact." What he didn't know is the reason why I make eye contact. I do it because I was taught repeatedly that it is how you show people you are listening. So, basically, I'm masking when I make eye contact because I'm solely doing it to show someone I am listening to them. In fact, 😆 I commonly am sitting there telling myself to make eye contact in order to indicate that I am present and interested in what the other person is saying. I also have a harder time masking this way when attempting to talk about things that are important and emotionally relevant to me. In therapy, I rarely make eye contact with my therapist because it is so difficult to talk about things in general that I cannot also make eye contact. Lastly, for this one, the more comfortable I am with someone, the less I make eye contact with them. My fiance, for example, not very common at all that I do it.

There is also the very common special interests phenomenon. The media tends to show this as a math or science thing, but it really isn't. I follow one tiktoker whose special interest is bugs and, I believe, art. I highly recommend her. Her handle is: soundoftheforest. For me, it's language/linguistics and ancient egypt, Greece and Rome. Really, I'd say ancient anywhere history, but those are the big three. Egypt has been my longest interest, besides language. I actually remember the moment I was like "this is it for life." I was 7 and had finished my library books but was bored at daycare. So I went to the book shelf and picked up a book about King Tut. It was the page I read about the day Howard Carter found the tomb. And I just knew me and Ancient Egypt were meant to be forever. As for language, I've literally always been fascinated by it. I started speaking very early and with more complex words than is usual. And I just continued to love language from there. I ended up studying ancient Greek and Latin in college. Also, I info dump about these all the time, almost anytime I possibly can because they're so fucking cool. 😁

Another side note, it is common for Autistic individuals to have delays in speaking, I just did not. It is not something required for the diagnosis. It is just very common.

This one is a little bit weird, and might just be a me thing, but I've discussed it with my therapist. She indicated that it very much aligns with Autism. I cannot, or can but with extreme apprehension and knowledge that I will leave depressed; I simply cannot go into buildings of certain lighting, age, and design. It seems to be buildings that look and/or feel like they were built in the 1960s or 1970s. We haven't really figured out why that is a thing, but it is. I once didn't bother to finish applying for a job to teach Latin that I'd basically been guaranteed so long as I sent in the app because when I went for the interview I saw the building and knew I could not teach there, even part time, because the building would depress me constantly. It's a weird one, but if you have anything at all where you just cannot do it because you know it will affect you like this, I'd bring it up in discussing potentially being Autistic.

I nearly forgot to mention this one, but you've probably heard about the sensory issues that many Autistic people deal with. I have some with touching things, but it is less common an issue for me than my sound sensitivity issues. I am very sensitive to sound. If I had to give a 4th big reason, this would be it because I get overstimulated and overwhelmed by sound multiple times a day. Its rough. If you also have this issue, I cannot recommend enough noise cancelling headphones and chew stim toys when you don't have your headphones. It's really helpful.

This last one I'm going to mention is something that I think I do just to help prevent burnout from masking, but is also part of me specifically. I am an introvert. So that plays a role in this. I spend the vast majority of my time completely by myself. I do mean even when at home with my fiance. We are often in different rooms. I have no problem with it. It doesn't feel like it is bad for our relationship, thankfully. I just prefer to be alone most of the time. The more time I spend around people, the more time afterwards I need alone. That is partially my introvertedness but also me needing to because I am socially exhausted from masking and trying to read all the social cues and not make weird errors when in social settings 😳, which I do a lot. I think I just default to spending time by myself when I am not required to engage with people in order to ensure that I can later. Plus, in discussing this one with my therapist, we concluded that I do this at least in part to prevent burnout and overstimulation.

As for the testing itself. I discussed this with my therapist for a while when waiting to get tested, and by the time I did get tested, I had a nice long list of stuff to bring up. I would definitely recommend compiling a list of the symptoms/signs you feel are indicative for yourself. It was very quick after I first brought it up in therapy that I decided I needed the official diagnosis for myself. So my therapist gave me recommendations of who to see. I also looked myself because the recommended people were so booked they couldn't even schedule further out. Once I got it scheduled, I had to wait like 3 months for the appointments. So, if you are seeking the official diagnosis, don't give up because it's a long wait. From what I've seen others saying, it's pretty common to have to wait a bit to be seen.

There were 3 appointments, an intake, a testing, and a feedback appointment. The intake appointment involved me talking to the doctor about my experiences and why I thought I might be autistic. She asked me a few questions about the more commonly known signs of autism if I did not mention them. The testing appointment took about 4 hours and involved a self report personality assessment, several verbal and memory activities, a teaching activity, two story telling/creating activities, and (the part I thought was most difficult) an activity in which I had to identify the emotion being expressed by just the eye and eyebrow area of black and white photos of people. I also had a take home assessment for someone who knew me really well. It was related to executive functioning abilities and emotional regulation abilities. I cannot speak on the feedback appointment because of technical issues resulting in not actually having that appointment. I have rescheduled it and will be doing that later this month.

If you have anything more specific you want to ask me about, please do. I am happy to answer.