#very curious to know

[honeytuesday]

special place in the heart for compliments on things that are so wonderfully ordinary about yourself, you don't even realize their charm until someone points it out. last week my best friend told me her favorite part of winter is holding my hand and feeling the warmth pass between our palms. yesterday a girl told me she loves it when i lean in to whisper things to her because my breath is still kissed coffee-sweet. that she purposely sits next to me just for the chance. like huh, we're really loved in a thousand quiet, unpredictable ways aren't we?

[most-definitively-a-human]

Question. Is this medium support needs

Feel alienated from lots of online autistic creators. Focus on social struggle and work and masking. Personally talk to people online without masking much, don't work because I can't, seem to make friends easily but don't understand social cues (I just operate on the assumption that people are well intentioned and also that everyone is an individual so what is most kind and respectful to them varies so listen to them and get to know them well and this seems to have worked very well?)

Just. Have issues I have not seen people talk about. Understand why since it is difficult to articulate if you have a brain similar to mine so that is why I don't see things I relate to that often.

Examples: if I get stressed and can't do a hobby for a while, hobby often gets stressful. I haven't watched anything on TV for a month so now I am panicked at the idea of finishing watching Arcane. No longer relaxing. Have to put in effort to keep fun things fun.

Other example: am sound sensitive to the point where the sound of my breathing can distress me so I wear noise cancelling headphones inside of my flat which is usually on the quiet side because I need to.

Other: bad sounds cause me to freeze and I cannot move voluntarily if they last long enough. I wanted to go the park to escape construction work but I couldn't change clothes and just lay on the floor in a weird position.

Other: obvious concepts just do not appear to me. I have a bad memory so can't give obvious examples. I schedule delivery and it needs to be fifty pounds to avoid surcharge. This means I run out of fresh stuff before I run out of food. For years I just ran out of food and my solution was buy frozen veg to have fresh-ish things and never once did I think about going to a nearby store as a feasible option even when I was aware it existed. Things can exist but I do not really understand or take note of them.

Most of the time it feels like I'm just borrowing concepts from when I was coherent and doing my best with a mind that doesn't understand what it understood an hour ago. Very frustrating.

Really hope I can finish my book with Asran in it. (Semiverbal and autistic, some experiences similar, nice to have a protagonist not completely alien and always a challenge to write like the others.) Hopefully would make people feel less alone in the world.

Just. Thoughts individually coherent but no connection no flow and even then often chaotic and not individually coherent? Annoyed.

Does this sound like medium support needs? Seem to relate to medium support needs people most but don't want to use a term before I'm sure it's accurate.

Usually don't share thoughts when like this which is most of the time. Usually only talk when coherent. Or just share short snippets/scripts.

If you read this far thank you for reading hope you have a wonderful day. The wonderful day wishes also apply to you even if you did not read all of it as it is rather a lot.

Too tired to edit. Love you have a great day

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[twinstxrs]

so much happened in this whole episode but i’m still on fig infiltrating ruben’s dream, making it look like the place where his friend was murdered, and then disguising herself as kipperlilly & repeatedly saying different variants of “somebody needs to take the fall for this, and it’s not going to be me. it’s going to be you.” while adaine as the elven oracle shows up next to her. can you imagine waking up from that, the idea of a horrible truth being pinned on you by your friend to save her own skin while the personification of fate and destiny stands there, almost as a promise that this is GOING to happen to you. we don’t even know if this kid is guilty. my god.

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

forever obsessed with dynamics between vampires, specifically that of a maker and fledgling, as a way to explore abuse. the creation of a vampire itself can so easily be a literalization of the lasting impacts of trauma and also much more simply the ways a perpetrator might shape their victim’s very identity. the extremes of isolation in the way that the new vampire, in most narratives, must cut all ties to their mortal life, or else go through an elaborate charade to maintain the facade of humanity, while forever still being removed from it. and the sheer dependence and vulnerability of being in an entirely new state of being, wholly uncertain of what it entails, and relying on another person to define… everything.

[fandom-geek]

i think the thing that really gets me about pre-canon durge is their absolute sense of duty, and their utter isolation outside of the cult of bhaal.

most of the cultists seem eager to see durge upon their return, and one even says they were the first to feed him flesh. gortash tells them of an exhibition of a bhaalspawn's corpse and another bhaalspawn's creations and durge immediately plans to attack the hall of wonder to recover them. they then apparently entrust said bhaalspawn's corpse to sceleritas fel to "restore" through taxidermy. they deride orin for her artistry with corpses explicitly because "bhaal will never care" and because orin "[does] not understand lord bhaal".

even their infamous prayer for forgiveness is framed around their absolute submission to bhaal's plans, and the crime that requires forgiveness? admiring his rival's chosen. that's one line, and the next three paragraphs are swearing to carry out his plan exactly as they've been told to, all for his forgiveness.

hell, even their room reinforces this. orin has barely touched the place aside from installing her mother's corpse and her manifesto - and that is some of the only decoration. what was it before orin, an empty room with skulls, a bed, a desk, some chests and a wardrobe?

the durge didn't have any semblance of a life outside of bhaal, aside from gortash. and is it any surprise? the only other hint they ever had a life outside of the cult is the flashback of kid durge murdering their adopted family, all thanks to their father's urging.

bhaal even tries to force them back into isolation after they've been tadpoled by forcing them to kill alfira, and then trying to force a durge who resists him to kill their lover. if they continue resisting, bhaal kills them. bhaal will not allow them to have a life outside of him and, if it weren't for jergal, he would've succeeded.

[agentc0rn]

I was meant to protect and nurture life, not destroy it.

[spocks-kaathyra]

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

[sysig]

“It could be that the loss of her children drove the Queen deeper into her darker desires...but, I don’t believe she was fighting against them that hard before that particular tragedy. No monster does.” (Patreon)

Bonus:

Hmm, wonder what he could cover those holes with :3c

[ashleyslorens]

#grey streak of hair

[un-pearable]

wait wait wait i actually have a genuine research question i’ve been curious about for a while

we’re talking whichever wacky critter ORIGINALLY got you super stoked for the speedy hedgehog - whether it was five-year-old you or just recently, whoever lived in your head first i wanna know…. i’ve got a theory :]

[frostedpuffs]

* If you want them to break up but get back together/get together as a different side of the love square, that still counts as a "Yes"

[aholefilledwithtwigs]

I am curious about the oldest item of clothing in your regular rotation. Not jewelry/family heirlooms/costumes etc, but something that you might grab when getting ready in a normal day (it may be a costume/heirloom but you actually wear it).

And were you the original owner, or did you get it second hand/passed down/found etc?

Tag with how old it is and how you got it!

[magicicephoenix]

(the nickname Squeaky did, in fact, stick)

Toony and ASHTE!Bendy being a duo because they’re my AUs and i said so. Bendy has a… prickly personality but Toony can soften just about anyone’s heart :)

bonus:

[daminini]

style exploration

top

hair. top. skirt. boots. jacket* | top. skirt. shrug. shoes | Top. skirt. boots. bag* | jacket. jeans. boots.

bottom

hair. top. skirt.* arm warmers. shoes | hair. outfit.* shoes.* earmuffs | hair. top. skirt. legwarmers. shoes | hair. top. bottom. shoes. sunglasses

*=early acess/permapaywall