flocculents

[avpdpossum]

can we talk more about avpd being a (proposed) schizospec disorder? because i almost never see that theory talked about but i wish it was. like…

avpd makes me censor my thoughts because i think someone might hear what i’m thinking and see what a horrible person i am on the inside or judge me for thinking embarrassing things.

avpd makes me so afraid of someone walking in on me doing something i Shouldn’t Be Doing that my brain twists background noise into the sounds of whispers and footsteps behind me.

avpd makes me so worried about people staring at me that in my peripheral vision, anyone near me looks like they’re already staring at me, and it’s only when i look at them directly that i realize they’ve been looking in a totally different direction the whole time.

avpd makes me so convinced of how much everyone must secretly hate me that i often start thinking everyone secretly wants to hurt me too, to the point where i’ve had panic attacks from a person walking too close behind me because i feel like they’re getting ready to attack me (when i haven’t had any kind of trauma that would create that fear), and the paranoia just serves to reinforce my need to avoid people.

avpd makes me lose my ability to speak or reduces it to nothing more than one word answers only when spoken to, turning the thoughts i wanted to express into a jumble that’s impossible to turn into words or just throwing them away completely and making my mind go blank, so i end up just staring at people silently or even acting like i don’t see them standing there at all (not on purpose but because my brain won’t let me engage with them).

avpd makes me look damn near emotionless around everyone but my safe person (and sometimes even around my safe person) because showing my emotions would be far too vulnerable for its liking, so it completely takes away my ability to express them.

and i could keep going! there are so many things i experience because of avpd that i’ve seen really closely reflected in the experiences of schizospec people. i don’t know how common these kinds of things are in avpd overall, but they’re a really prominent part of my experience with it, so when i found out that some research suggested it could be considered a schizospec disorder itself, that made so much sense to me! and i’d be so curious to see how many other avoidants have dealt with this stuff but haven’t talked about it because it’s never mentioned as being part of avpd.

[medicalunprofessional]

never change, man !

[kkoct-ik]

i dont remember why i drew this

[bowenoke]

i'm sure i am not the only one who is very concerned about the ~4 hours between when the midjourney change was made, and I knew to go opt out of it, so; glaze does not need to be on all your works to be effective. in the same way that one artist glazing all their works will ruin a broad, multi-artist dataset, glazing your works moving forward will ruin any dataset trained on you. if out of 100 comics I've posted, 10 are glazed, a dataset trained on all of my comics will not be able to make anything similar to my style. anyways. go download glaze.

[pigeon-butch]

I certainly have my own concerns about the treatment of moo deng but um. well i think some of you may just be racist

[ilovecoelacanths]

This is a story about a book that changed my life.

It's also about how amazing libraries and authors and people who care about sharing cool things with curious kids are. Also, fish (especially fish). It's kind of different than what I usually post but it's been bouncing around in my head basically since I started this blog so here you go, I hope you like it. This is the reason I love coelacanths so much, and why I think everyone should know about how amazing they are.

When I was little, I loved going to the library. My little brother and I would pick out way too many books and the librarians always had to come over to override the 30 book limit at the checkout stand (they pretty much knew us on sight and were ready to override it as soon as we started heading over to check out). After we finished getting our library books, our mom also let us look through the free pile that was in the foyer on the way out. It was mostly old library books that the librarians just needed to clean out, but there were a lot of books that people brought when they cleaned out their personal collections too (especially teachers, and there were a bunch of books with old school library stamps inside). The free pile didn't usually have a lot of things that interested me, but one day when I was poking through it I found a book called Fossil Fish Found Alive: Discovering the Coelacanth, by Sally M. Walker.

I loved it. I had never even heard of coelacanths before, but this book fascinated me. It told the story of an incredible animal, long thought to be extinct, that had somehow survived for millions of years! It was nothing like any fish I had ever learned about before. I already had a casual interest in marine biology that I can thank PBS Kids and Wild Kratts for (particularly their episode on sperm whales and giant squid, I loved that episode), but this book took it to a new level. I wanted to be a marine biologist so I could learn more about coelacanths.

Like a lot of things when you're 7, that was a phase. Unlike a lot of phases, this one I came back to. After taking a break from my dreams of being a marine biologist to experience the hell that is middle school, one day I pulled a book off my shelf. I hadn't read it in a while. When I picked it up again, I remembered how incredible this animal was, and how much it had inspired me when I was younger, and those thoughts of becoming a marine biologist started to return. I'm in college now studying marine science, and I brought the book with me to school, where it sits next to two other science books that have inspired me (My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees by Jane Goodall and The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson).

Earlier this year, I was thinking about how much this one book had changed my life and I wondered if I could find Ms. Walker and thank her. I knew she had many other science books for younger audiences, and even another book about coelacanths, so I was sure she had a website of some kind, and I was right. So I found her contact page and wrote her an email explaining the impact her book had had on my life, and thanking her for it. And to my surprise, she responded! She was very kind and we sent a few emails back and forth. She gave me some excellent advice and even told me about some of the people she contacted while researching her book, including Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer herself, the person who rediscovered the coelacanth when it was thought to be extinct! I'll never forget how she took the time to respond to me and how encouraging she was.

But Ms. Walker isn't the only one I have to thank for pointing me toward the path I'm on right now. If I hadn't already loved reading, if I hadn't seen any show or video to make me interested in marine biology, if the library didn't have a pile of books for anyone to take home, if I had lost that book during one of our many moves as a kid, I don't know what I'd be doing right now. There were a lot of things that happened to make it so that I found this book, but I'm glad for every single one of them. They led to me learning about an incredible animal and changed the course of my life. And now, I love coelacanths.

[heavenpierceher]

repeatedly trying and failing to word some sort of stupid post about how having ocd and ptsd and the general state of being of Having Triggers on this site is like torture while inelegantly dodging current discourse buzzwords like a minefield

[saturnisfallingdown]

a big part of the queer online kid to queer online young adult progression for me was losing all interest in labels. not in a distasteful way!! just. losing interest .....

[machiavellli]

I’ll go into a social media exile for a bit, so idk when I’ll be back, but just picture me like this while I’m gone: working <3

[good-beanswrites]

My english lyrics for Triage woo! (They're written out under the cut, I just wanted to share my lil chart lol)

Though I'm too indecisive to officially label this as my favorite song, it's had the strongest emotional impact on me by far. It holds a special place in my heart, I definitely wanted to write lyrics for it first! I'll leave all my rambling process commentary in the tags, but I was so happy with how it came out!!

All of those cards of promise thrown down carelessly,

This must be retribution for all I've taken endlessly.

If that were the case, it should have been fate for me to die.

That's the truth, given my crime, so why--?

No, I can't take it, to this cruel joke I'll submit. You

don't know, you can't know, but I'm ready to admit:

Killing for them, extracting for them, won't change the fact they're dead.

I need someone to tag me as RED.

It makes me sick (sick), it's too unpleasant. Sick (sick)

Is this punishment? What do you mean I'm INNOCENT?

I see, the world is cruel and leaves you on your own.

(I can't die) to atone. (I can't love) alone.

I can't be saved (saved), you've nothing to give. Saved (saved)

But what if I lived? Why else would you choose to forgive?

I see, there's lives to save so let's be sensible.

Right now, you need me, (I can be) indispensable.

Tilt to and fro, I know the scales should land on GUILTY for me.

Tilt fro and to, it's INNOCENT that they choose.

They cry (x4) out in pain, I can hear them. There's no one else, to guard their health,

My mission is offering help.

All of those cards of promise thrown down carelessly,

This must be retribution for all I've taken endlessly.

So if that's the case, then it must be fate to make amends,

Extract that fang before we meet the end.

It makes me sick (sick), it's too unpleasant. Sick (sick)

Is this punishment? What do you mean I'm INNOCENT?

I see, the world is cruel, but what I've realized is

(Now I want) to be INNOCENT. (Now I want) to live.

It makes me sick (sick), This wasn't my plan, hostages at my command.

Their future resting in my hands

I see, there's lives to save so let's be sensible.

Right now, please save me, (I will be) indispensable.

Maybe this was meant to be -- oh  -- or maybe neither of us can know

There's lives to save so let's be sensible.

Right now, please save me, (I will be) indispensable.

---

I mentioned earlier that I always get annoyed with myself when people post translyrics and I can't figure out the rhythm they were going for, so here's a recording of me singing, but I'm bad at it! It's just for fun! Like a rough draft for music! Because the only thing worse than people hearing my voice is people thinking I can't count syllables!

[astranauticus]

the rwd season 4 qna inspired me to start thinking about college au headcanons except a lot of these are gonna be really specific to my school and y'all are just gonna have to deal with that <3

Kyana feeds some of the school cats. she would feed all of them if she could

Dani smuggled Plug (the scrawniest black cat you've ever seen) into her dorm room illegally and somehow management hasn't caught her yet (based on a true story) (Kyana visits to see Plug all the time)

Finbar keeps an updated tier list of every canteen in the school with breakdowns of the best stalls/dishes for each

A senior from the school of engineering once said to me 'all the engineering people dress like rats cuz our classrooms don't have aircon' (context: tropics) anyway that's Dani

Kyana would probably be involved in a lot of freshman orientation events from second year onwards. she just likes talking to the new kids and giving them advice like she would be the kind of orientation group leader who'd get messages from her freshies asking about all kinds of random nonsense because she's made sure they know they can always contact her with questions

VR-LA is The Guy you go to for textbook pirating resources

(this is more of a 'wouldn't that be funny' but VR-LA is just Veerle's discord handle)

Docent is the name of VR-LA's old laptop that broke down so he gave it to Cassimere (computer engineering major he met once at a networking event) to fix except Cassimere got everything off the hard drive and then somehow managed to fuck it up Even More so he had to get a new laptop (and named it Emi)

Roy has gotten food poisoning from his dorm meal plan at least once (based on at least one true story)

The heap trio + Mandy would be those friends constantly playing majong in the dorm lounge and if all the majong tables are taken they just play in one of their dorm rooms on a towel to dampen the tile shuffling noises (it was Mandy's idea)

Every morning Dani goes to the drinks stall at her faculty and orders one iced coffee to the point where the stall owner starts preparing an iced coffee whenever they see her approach (based on my true story)

Roy would be one of those people who goes clubbing every other week and every time he tries to drag the rest of the heap trio and Egan almost always goes and Dani would go if she didn't have a good excuse but always begrudgingly. anyway Roy would always be the only one having a good time until Egan gets drunk enough to start having fun

Finbar actually uses the dorm kitchens instead of just buying canteen food and it always makes the hallways smell really good

Vhas also uses the dorm kitchen sometimes but like. one time i walked into the pantry on my floor and someone had left cut sweet potatoes and 2 eggs in an inch of water in a pan on the stove. that's Vhas

Kyana's constantly applying for overseas exchanges and international summer/winter school programmes. the world is large and she wants to see it!

Maxim's the definition of a hall phantom. you know he lives on your dorm floor because you pass him by in the hallways sometimes and literally nowhere else. sometimes you're not convinced that he actually exists

VR-LA and Maxim's friendship stems from them being from wildly different faculties (VR-LA's in STEM, Maxim's doing anthropology so arts/social sciences) but also having lots of weird interests they cant really bug anyone in their home faculties about

Elyse is in student government and every once in a while Finbar receives a series of angry texts about the newest idiocy she's had to put up with

MR-SN and AS-TR start a stargazing club together. other notable members include AS-TR's girlfriend E-DN, MR-SN's friend C-RA (the one who always volunteers to carry the heavy ass telescopes) and MR-SN's friend K-LB who he pestered into coming to fix one of the wonky scopes even though K-LB's actually in electrical engineering but he's the only engineering person MR-SN (an arts student) knows

oh and of course VR-LA joins because he genuinely just likes space (developing a crush on his club chairperson was not on his bingo card)

Kyana and E-DN were MMA sparring buddies at one point which is how she found out about the stargazing and joined immediately

honestly i can probably think of more but this post is fuckin long LMAO

[spacedlexi]

[myloveforhergoeson]

writing a little tasw short story about the boys new town high appearance and i got so fucking distracted in doing research about the universal studios (aka colossal studios) lot and i forgot what i was originally doing. did you know it takes 3 days for them to fill their fake lake. 10 hours if you only fill the pit. 4 days to drain and it will never, ever be clear water. they have 47 soundstages. a gym. 2 banks. a coffee bean and tea leaf. the bates motel is there if you even care!

[capricioussun]

Will probably delete later but genuinely WHY do so many ppl hate uf papyrus. "He’s horrible and a bad brother and abusive >:(((" my guy. YOU made him that way

[first-blight]

the dark urge;

"there's no magic binding this blood to your body — only guilt"

[skitskatdacat63]

I wish AI images didn't make me so intensely upset. Just the existence of them bothers me a lot, because it's just clutter without meaning or emotion or any genuineness. But recently something happened that made me very upset, and I feel so irrational saying this, but it really gave me this sick, heart-wrenching feeling, and I wish it would stop. My mom was looking through Facebook, and showed me this image of birds that to me was so obviously AI. But she wasn't 100% sure it was fake, only telling me after I had told her it was definitely AI, that she had been a bit unsure about it.

I hate how intense my feelings are about it, bcs it made me want to irrationally almost infantalize her without meaning to. It just made me overwhelmingly sad that this is state of things. That people are being fed this imitation, this trash, and aren't familiar enough to recognize it all the time. Every time I think about it, it hurts my chest.