#sidenote was anybody else told ''i love you‚ i just don't like you.'' as a kid?

[drinkyourvillainjuice]

how to not let your autistic inner child win (or how to write an if) by the secretary

[id: a student with glasses being pointed at and mocked by two students on screens, and two more offscreen with only their arms showing. the central bullied student looks sad, and everyone else is laughing. end id]

Ruhoh, is this another secretary essay? Well, yes it is! The gender politics one will eventually come around when I feel like it, but this one, as the title suggest, is about how to write an IF. And since I'm presuming most of you are on the spectrum (or on a spectrum), it gets a little tongue-in-cheek.

hehe

Anyways, if you have autism, you have eternal swag. It's just true! But having so much swag makes it a problem when writing, or doing any sort of project. This is something I've noticed from people who don't have evil autism. Those not afflicted by the rare autism version of evil autism (my autism) will often be really bad at just... doing things - despite having all the abilities to do so! I think it might be a adhd thing or something too. Anyways, I love helping people, (this is my evil autism), and I'd like to share some girl tips on how to kill your inner child :)

I think something I've noticed from people making any sort goals- online, real life, job, working, etc - is it is straight forward. ie: I want to graduate from high school, I want to make a video game, I want to journal everyday. These are all achievable using your abilities that you learn and gain through your life, and failure doesn't exempt you from trying again. Thing is, this specific thing I just described (straightforward goals) is something I think a lot of autistic people struggle with.

I deeply remember sitting down in the corner of my high school, looking like the hottest girl who played pokemon on her ds when someone who had +1% more autism than me told me that, one day, he was going to make the most cool pokemon game ever where you could date other characters and have babies and have your children go on adventure too. As a 14 year old, I thought to myself 'bitch, shut up' but also, 'this is so unrealistic, but he really believes it, uh'. And he did! And you know, I think that's okay. I think it's okay to believe that you can make things that you cannot do at the moment - I mean that's just how life it. We didn't go on the Moon thinking we couldn't

But... the guy didnt know how to code, or how to make games, or how to program, or how to develop stories, or how to make art, etc etc etc. He didn't know these things, but he wanted to make these things. And I see this to a certain degree quite a bit when it comes to creation. I want to say: it's a very important of the process but simply one part.

I think being able to imagine what you could do if you have all the resources in the world, all the time, and all the help is important - but it is even more important to look within and go 'alright with all this in mind - what can I do?'

And if you're in the field of IF, well, what can you do? Coding, storytelling, character design, plotting arcs, etc. I think the skills can be learned by anybody (sidenote incoming)

If anybody ever fucking says that art is innate, they're fucking lying. It's a skill you grind out. You work it out. You work even if you feel not creative. You write words even if they don't come to you naturally. You draw even if the images can't be conjured. You work you work you work and you make something. You cannot always make art when feeling creative because you aren't always creative. you must be willing to die for your art, yes, but you must also be willing to create without any creative sparks! If you want to be an artist, you better work bitch.

(sidenote ending) and with that in mind, you need to develop restraints onto yourself. In IF, it's actually to create restraints, and here are some I suggest for all of my fellow autists who might struggle with them. I love you guys, truly, anyways. here they are:

restrain characters.

Make three characters + a main character. Write a couple of scenes with them. Is that your maximum? Is that too much? Go up and down until you find the right amount. You can add more character when your writing is better. Stick to a minimum per scene. If you have ideas for 30 characters, you can easily melt them into 10. Seriously. Put the heat on maximum and start creating new fun dolls to play with.

2. restrain scenes

You cannot write 500 per interaction. This is a bad idea because a) you might do the thing where you run out of creativity which you need to learn to do without but it is hard and b) interactions are time limited and time sensitive. not everybody will go through them. if you have a 30k update, but most people will only see 1k... are you really writing a game for them or for yourself? I made my wife do this format:

youll gain the ability to gauge if a scene is important or not eventually, I'm sure.

3. restrain area

I recommend writing like a murder novelist. You have a closed circle, and the player cannot leave it. they can only be within that space. That space that exists within that specific story is the only thing they have access to. it can be a school, a city, a bedroom - but its limited. you create setpieces that players interact with. some set pieces are the same with just a different coat of paint on.

anyways, i believe in dreaming big, but i also believe that we have little time on our hands to create. when wanting to make something, restraint yourself. its always way more fun to find ways to break out of our bonds then just roaming free, right? I mean... maybe not. I'm not your mother, you know.

[evilwickedme]

I just. Ugh. Oh my God. The fucking PARALLELS this season of Good Omens. Y'all know I'm an absolute fool for a good parallel, so to get so many? I'm so well fed today

Crowley and Azira are like, the definition of soulmates of the kind that are made, you know? Like there is no one single other being in the whole of Creation that shares even a fraction of the same experiences. Six thousand years in the making, this ship is - even more according to this season !!! And YET, they are absolutely brand new. They've never been in a romantic relationship - not with each other, not with anyone - and as Crowley pointed out, they've essentially just gotten out of toxic relationships with Heaven and Hell. Except like, not really? Because we see Crowley really got out Heaven so heavily traumatized he never really put all that much stock into Hell. Yeah, Hell might've still been abusive, but Crowley was halfway out the door the whole time. Azira, tho... He still buys into all of it. He's technically out the door, but he hasn't done any of the deprogramming you need to do in order to move on (I feel like I'm mixing my metaphors a little by using cult-related languages, but also abusive relationships are essentially two person cults, so)

And this season sets this dynamic up so perfectly with Nina and Maggie!!!!! And we're supposed to think that Nina is Crowley because she's dark and broody and Maggie is Azira cause she's frankly precious but really it's the other way around and it's Nina who finishes the season being like "I can't be in a relationship right now because I still need to work on myself having just ended an incredibly toxic relationship" and it's just. Nina and Maggie don't end the season together because that's not what they need right now and bc of that they might still be able to be together later, but Crowley and Azira hold onto each other SO DAMN HARD that they end up losing each other SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE AZIRA CAN'T DO THAT SAME THING OF UNPACKING HIS BASE ASSUMPTIONS it's like leaving a cult cause they were mean to you once but still buying into the new agey stuff they used to love bomb you into joining the cult in the first place

And so that's the relationship part of things but also we've got like soo many parallels showing how broken the system is in the first place and obviously ineffable bureaucracy is what stands out here because of the literal lines coming out of various characters' mouths during this plotline but can we talk about how heavily brainwashed Muriel is and how clearly they're supposed to be exactly like a young Aziraphale, one who doesn't "have" Crowley yet!!! Like tell me that if you gave Muriel a fiery sword and told them to watch over the first ever pregnant couple in history they wouldn't give them that Goddamn sword. Nobody on either side is capable of questioning their position in life without exposure to Something Else, but it doesn't have to be like, the being you're going to run off to alpha centauri with. It could very much be a copy of The Crow Road

(sidenote, has anybody read this book? It seems like an incredibly deliberate choice but I've never heard of it! I think I might send in an ask to Neil Gaiman himself if I don't see any meta soon)

Anyway yeah um. I don't know how to end this. Parallels and shadow selves fuck (double entendre)

[toaarcan]

(please excuse my English I actually speak German) hello, huge Fiona fox fan here I have been reading lots of your rants about fiona, on how her character had lots more potential and that her relationship with scourge is heavily abusive (on which I really agree btw) and since their not many fiona fans here I just wanted to ask you since I literally have no one to talk to. In sonic the hedgehog issue 179 on page 14 sonic says a specific line dialogue that's been driving me crazy. He explains to tails that he hooked up with Fiona hoping that he would move on, but ALSO because he was still getting over Sally stating that "Fiona was there*. Which kind of feels like that even if Fiona had genuine feelings for sonic he would have been still thinking about her. Now I am really wondering could this be a reason Fiona cheated on him, since she felt again like getting burned? We never saw the process of Fiona meeting secretly with scourge, but I heavily theory that A. He could have lied to her at a lot of points and B. That just maybe he could have told her about sonic maybe not truly loving her. Either all of that is true or I'm just going crazy but what's your opinion?

Your English is better than my German, to need to apologise.

You're right about that, while Sonic says his primary motivation for getting together with Fiona was his terrible plan to help Tails, it's also pretty apparent that Fiona is a rebound girl for him. The timing of when the relationship started is much too obvious for that: He and Fiona start their relationship in Issue 155, the same one where Sally's forced marriage to Patch is announced. I have no doubt that this information stirred up all of Sonic's hurt feelings from Issue 134 and drove him toward the course of action he took.

Now, that doesn't justify what he did, what he did is still an awful thing to do to someone, but it does explain it a little better.

I don't think Fiona knew what was going on in Sonic's head during their relationship. If she did, she almost certainly would've brought that up as a point against him, instead of only referring to her traumatic backstory.

(Sidenote: I think her betrayal makes a lot more sense if you reorder some of the stories in the 170s so that Eggman's attack on Knothole comes first, and reopens all of her old wounds. Then it makes total sense for her to snap and accuse Sonic of being too weak- instead of a dumb "I think being good is weak and being evil is strong!" logic that so many shallow villains have, she actually has a point, and an obvious example, that after everything Eggman did to them, a repeat of what Robotnik did to her, the FF still let him go when they easily could've captured or killed him)

That said, I think it's likely that Fiona realised she was a rebound and this pushed her closer to accepting Scourge's advances.

I think Scourge lying to her should be taken as given. Probably about Sonic, definitely about himself. However, I don't think he knew for sure how Sonic felt, simply because Scourge doesn't understand Sonic at all, ironically enough. We can see as much from his attempt at a "One bad day" speech, he fully believes that Sonic is only a bad day away from turning out like Scourge himself did, but Sonic has arguably had a rougher life than Scourge ever did. We've seen him have plenty of bad days and never once has he turned into Scourge.

Scourge thinks everyone is worse than they actually are, in essence. I have no doubt that he presents his flawed perception of everyone to Fiona, why else would she, a character who owes her whole life to the support she's received from other people (first Nic, then the FF) suddenly turn around and declare that "You can't count on anybody?"

It's an idea that fits so little with what we know of her character and history that it more than likely came from someone else, like the known liar and manipulator she's suddenly 'romantically' entangled with.

That said, him not knowing about how Sonic felt doesn't mean he can't tell Fiona that Sonic doesn't love her. He is, after all, a liar, and likely playing to Fiona's fears and anxieties. If he realises that Fiona believes Sonic is using her as a rebound, he would absolutely have agreed with the notion despite not knowing whether it was true or not.

This is part of what frustrates me with Fiona's character: There's the pieces here to make something absolutely fantastic with her, and Archie just... didn't do that. Her existence pre-155 is largely an afterthought, from 155-171 she's "Sonic's shady girlfriend" and then post-172 she's "Scourge's girlfriend", and that's all she's allowed to be. Even her one outing as an independent villain (with her own team, because of course the character who believes you can't trust anyone has immediately gone and gotten herself another team) turns out to be setup for her getting Scourge back.

Whether you prefer her as a hero, villain, or somewhere in the middle, Fiona has enormous potential as a character, and Archie never used it.

[yardsards]

emotional neglect is fuckin wild. it's like "hi. my brain's 12 kinds of fucked up just because my mommy didn't love me." like what the fuck

[datingadviceonreddit]

I see this a lot where I'll read a post. ( I need advice to sometimes ) were it'll be like "Shell love if-" don't change to meet anyone elses needs. I'm currently learning this myself. The last time I dated was in 2018 of March. I didn't realize it until later that I was sexually abused. ( I didn't want to do it ) and I've been told countless times I need to change in order to get a girlfriend. For me. I don't want one right now. I need to fix ME first. So for all you people struggling with being you. Just be you. He or she will love you for who you are. Wether its being an athlete or being a nerd. Focus on being you. I'm still learning it and moving on from past experienced but don't let somebody tell you to change! Only you can!Sidenote. I'm posting this as a way of "moving on" and going on with my life. No I'm not gonna report it to the police. Been there. Tried that.Tl;dr. Don't change for anyone else. Be you. That's who they like. via /r/dating_advice