Magic is Purple

Hi I'm interested in too many things to keep this cohesive!

[thatdisasterauthor]

For the fire tower/lighthouse book, I'm trying to record notes of my entire process so I can eventually turn the notes into a "how I navigate being an author with ADHD and Autism and here's my process" type tool. But. Like. In doing this, I'm realizing I have very much reached the stage of "I've been doing this so long, I no longer know how I do it, it just kinda happens."

Where'd that idea come from? I dunno. My brain is just constantly running a "yes, and?" process in the background and eventually I'll get a little idea ping that I have to frantically scribble down before it drifts away on the ADHD river. Somehow that eventually turns into a book.

[thatdisasterauthor]

To be clear, I get where people are coming from with the whole "that's just how autism/ADHD thinking works!"

But also...no. No it isn't. I worked fucking HARD to get to this point, y'all. It is not innate. My first attempt at college fucked me up BAD creatively. Digging myself out of that hole was a very intentional choice that took a lot of work over multiple years. I had to completely rewire how I looked at, approached, and shared my creative work, both writing and illustration.

That effort has paid off in the ability to successfully do a LOT of stuff. I work at a rapid pace that most people cannot keep up with, but what most people don't know/see is just how much of a foundation I had to lay to be able to do that.

It's...okay, let's continue with the foundation metaphor here. Plenty of old houses were built without foundations. And they were beautiful! They stood for a long time! But they required a ton of maintenance as they shifted and cracked and settled, and sometimes they just straight up collapsed. That's the sort of creator I was in college. I had built myself a pretty nice house! But it was NOT steady and, frankly, not safe. I spent more time patching up cracks than I did making new things.

I could have just knocked down the house and walked away, given up on creative pursuits, or tried to start over from scratch. But the house I'd already built DID have value, it just needed stabilized. So instead of knocking it down, I invested the time and effort into lifting it up and installing a brand new foundation underneath. Then, with the new foundation built, I patched the last of the cracks, put up pretty new wallpaper, installed better lights. Now I've got a house/creative process that I LOVE and that works so, so well for me.

I went through all of that alone, just flailing out in the dark and trying to figure it out one piece at a time. Couldn't afford therapy or meds of any sort, didn't really have any friends at the time, so I was just raw-dogging it. I don't want other people in a similar boat to me to have to do it alone, which is why I have been considering doing something like this with one of my books for awhile now.

Sometimes, a house is fine without a foundation. But if you want to put one in, it's nice to have some blueprints.

[thatdisasterauthor]

Actually, I have more thoughts.

This is why the "autism/ADHD/whatever is a superpower!" shit bugs me so much. Because it ISN'T. That stupid idea is just the grown-up version of when we all got stuck in the gifted and talented program and then never actually learned how to study, causing us to struggle later when we did need to study.

Yes, my brain approaches things differently. Yes, I can make connections in a way other people can't. Yes, I'm a good problem solver. Yes, I can usually absorb basic processes pretty quickly. But without practice, without intentional effort, those connections are just a tangled knot of a thousand pieces of yarn. You might still end up with half a sock in there somewhere, maybe a chunk of blanket, but really learning to knit? Crochet? Weave? That doesn't happen accidentally, and expecting it to is just doing yourself and everyone else a huge disservice.

Things take time and effort and, in this obnoxious age of AI, I think it is more important than ever that we understand that. That we embrace it and learn to enjoy it. There's no superpowers involved.

[wizard-council-bureaucrat]

Trying to inflict psychic damage to a tumblr user is like trying to irradiate a cockroach, like it can be done, but the lethal dose is not safe for humans either

[gomezaddamsofficial]

Besides the point, but you could always try physical damage?

[wizard-council-bureaucrat]

You’re right Gomez, bring me the flail

[exhuastedpigeon]

Realizing the writing doesn't have to be done alone and is often more fun and more engaging when you're doing it with friends is a life changing experience.

I don't mean co-writing either. I mean having a friend or two who you talk through plot ideas with, who you bounce ideas off of, who you trust to tell you if something doesn't work.

Nothing is created in a vacuum and nothing can be created alone. Sharing drafts and ideas is a vital part of the creative process and it's a really fun part too.

[catchymemes]

[hunter-rodrigez]

[haruka89]

@thatdisasterauthor some inspiration for that story you're not thinking of writing?

[thatdisasterauthor]

Yeeeeeahhh, lol. Some fire towers can be a little rough after a winter alone. But they actually tend to be better than towers like this because there is a person there for a good chunk of the year doing constant maintenance and checks, rather than just coming by every now and then. Same with lighthouses.

[whenimgod]

Marie Curie's notebooks are crazy once you think about it. They're so radioactive they have to be sealed in a lead box. Imagine a world where atomic theory is forgotten and a dude just goes "yea there's a book that details the secrets of the universe, the machinations of the creation of existence down to its barest essentials, but if you get close to it you fucking die. The more you read it the more your body slowly disassembles into mush." like wat excuse me

[prokopetz]

Question for someone who literally grew up on the old internet: how were you supposed to find websites before the general search engine?

(With reference to this post here.)

In the very early days, the public-facing Internet was small enough that you could just, like, remember where everything was. Contrary to the modern Internet's rapid content churn and walled-garden siloing, early websites tended to have deep, statically preserved content archives and dense cross-site linking, so it wasn't uncommon to set about finding previously visited sites simply by retracing one's path from memory. Even simple bookmarking was sometimes derided as a crutch for people who were too lazy to learn how to navigate the Internet "properly"; indeed, once web browsers added built-in support for bookmark lists, some people refused to use them as a matter of principle!

Once the Internet grew to the point where this approach was no longer feasible, there was a period of a few years where various parties tried to construct human-curated, hierarchical directories of the entire Internet. This was, of course, doomed to fail, as the Internet was growing faster than it could be manually catalogued, but they gave it the old college try. Some popular search engines such as Yahoo actually started out as directories of this type, and only later added search functionality. Meanwhile, communities of interest adopted a more targeted approach, with dedicated "links" pages containing curated recommendations for other, similar sites becoming ubiquitous on personal websites, while users who lacked the time or expertise to offer curated links could participate in webrings and other volunteer-operated directory services.

(The idea of cataloguing the whole Internet according to a topical hierarchy led to some fascinating taxonomic decisions. At one point, Yahoo's directory had a subcategory specifically for sexually explicit Dungeons & Dragons resources, or "netbooks", as they were called at the time.)

[froxictog]

Speaking of human-curated directories, I still have the family copy of The Whole Internet:

The bulk of the page count is concerned with how to use the internet, both on a concrete level (e.g. "here is a list of file transfer tools, how to use them, and a discussion of their tradeoffs") and a conceptual level (e.g. "what is the internet actually useful for", or "how do you figure out answers to questions about it this book didn't think to ask"). However, there is also a catalogue of sites -- some WWW, but many other protocols are also represented -- sorted by topic.

Here's the start of the directory of directories, listing sites that are, themselves, directories of sites:

[theunfortunate-author]

my daily affirmation as an author

[concerningwolves]

I’m a staunch believer that although sensitive and authentic representation is vital, it should never strangle your story. What I mean by this is that sometimes the most “politically correct” choice is going to be the worst one possible for the story you want to tell. Is writing a deaf evil scientist in an erotic and complicated relationship with their test subject politically correct? Probably not. Does that story sound thoroughly compelling to me, a HoH person? Absolutely it does. (In reality, my reaction would depend on how the narrative handles the evil scientist’s deafness, but I’m pretending for the purposes of argument that it’s a brilliantly written work). Similarly, I once received a question about whether it would be offensive to have an antagonist rip out a protagonist’s hearing aid during a fight. My answer can be summed up like this: sometimes a story needs characters to be really shitty to one another. Shittiness generates conflict, and conflict is an essential driving force in any narrative. The key is for you, the author, to construct the conflict with intention and awareness of what you’re doing. In the ripping-out-the-hearing-aid example, the way this scene is framed would be everything. If the author makes the antagonist rip out the hearing out purely to show how evil they are, I would strongly suggest the author find a different action beat for the scene. Using bigoted and ableist behaviour as a shorthand for evilness tends to generate shock at the expense of any marginalised audience members – and it doesn’t actually tell your audience anything interesting about the villain or antagonist.

some snippets from a thing i'm writing about how to do the initial research when creating d/Deaf and HoH characters.

[butchifiedcatfish]

Government: We want kids to have a safe time on the internet!

Kids: Oh so you’re going to make it illegal for gambling to be advertised to kids and make stricter guidelines on what data the companies can take? You are going to focus on how the algorithms make it addictive for social media and therefore make it difficult to stop using it?

Government: No, you’re gonna get banned, why would we regulate that? Come on guys think of the children :( forget about all the kids we are fucking over and removing their online safe spaces!!! think of the kids :((((

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

As I've said elsewhere (In response to social media moral panics where I live):

If you're going to take away kids' smartphones, then give them back the streets.

The fact that neither elected government representatives, nor "Industry Leaders," are even discussing that option leads me to suspect that they're less interested in child safety than in expanding their authoritarian reach.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Quoted tags:

#the fact that children are using social media so much that it's harming them is a sign of a larger issue (👈 This!!!)

#namely how lonely and disconnected everyone is

#it's even harder if you can't transport yourself (👈Speaking as a motorized wheelchair user who doesn't drive, and lives in a city with hardly any pedestrian infrastructure: "Yeah, I know.")

Evan Edinger, an American ex-pat who's been living in Britain for the last 13 years, recently made a ~30 minute video about trying to use public transport in and around the New Jersey suburb where he grew up. He (as an able-bodied, relatively fit, young man) could make it work, even if a trip that would have taken an hour, tops, if he'd gone in his own car, took an entire day -- most of that waiting around for the next bus to arrive.

I watched his impromptu documentary, and saw something that would have been impossible for me... Because the buses tended to drop him off on the side of the road where there were no sidewalks, and no curb cuts. He was able to step off the curb, jaywalk, and jog across the street through oncoming traffic, and step up onto the curb on the other side of the street. I, as a wheelchair user, would not be able to do any of that -- nor would a kid.

He did make the point that simply making the effort to use the bus system brightened his mood because it relieved the social isolation of riding alone in a private bubble of a car: getting a chance to say "Hello," and "thank you" to the bus driver, say "hi" to fellow passengers, and simply be sitting next to them in the same space.

...Which just goes to show how deep the problem of social isolation is for everyone in our societies.

[bebsi-cola]

honestly the impact of frustration is seriously underestimated. like as an emotion i think it's not seen as intense as anger or despair or even joy or excitement. and yet being frustrated is the quickest route to meltdown. for me at least. there's something about how it's just got nowhere to go that makes it so overwhelming and unpleasant. and it gives you just contradictory responses to the situation can do you keep trying, do you get angry, do you cry and get upset do you throw up like what

[the-sacred-now]

My teachers called frustration "a mild term for anger and helplessness combined." Those are not minor feelings on their own, I'm not sure why people speak as though they soften each other when it's more of a coke and mentos situation.

[reasonsforhope]

20,000 Pounds of Trash Removed From Pacific Garbage Patch: ‘Holy mother of god. It worked!’

The man who won't rest until the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is cleaned up has successfully tested his system for doing so.

““The Great Pacific Garbage Patch can now be cleaned,” announced Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, the wonderkid inventor who’s spent a decade inventing systems for waterborne litter collection.

Recent tests on his Ocean Cleanup rig called System 002, invented to tackle the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic pollution, were a success, leading Slat to predict that most of the oceanic garbage patches could be removed by 2040.

Intersections of ocean currents have created the massive floating islands of plastic trash—five slow-moving whirlpools that pull litter from thousands of miles away into a single radius.

The largest one sits between California and Hawaii, and 27-year-old Slat has been designing and testing his systems out there, launching from San Francisco since 2013.

GNN has reported on his original design for the floating device, but his engineering team improved upon it. System 002, nicknamed “Jenny,” successfully netted 9,000 kilograms, or around 20,000 pounds in its first trial.

It’s carbon-neutral, able to capture microplastics as small as 1 millimeter in diameter, and was designed to pose absolutely no threat to wildlife thanks to its wide capture area, slow motion, alerts, and camera monitors that allow operators to spy any overly-curious marine life…

Slat estimates ten Jennies could clean half the garbage patch in five years, and if 10 Jennies were deployed to the five major ocean gyres, then 90% of all floating plastic could be removed by 2040.” -via Good News Network, 10/19/21

[beemovieerotica]

I like to check up on good news like this that’s over a few years old, and it does look like they’re slowly ramping up - they’re still not at the level of being able to deploy 10 of these Jennies at a time yet, but System 003 is currently deployed in the Pacific Garbage Patch, and they’re pivoting toward river cleanup in developing countries where coastal pollution is a major human health issue. (2024 annual report in the link below)

Cleanup is ongoing in Jamaica, Guatemala, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and others. They’ve been independently audited by a Dutch oversight organization for financial transparency and were found to be in good standing. I’m going to stay optimistic about this!

[everyday-cutephoto]

[ailithnight]

This is a worm? Or perhaps some sort of slug?

[cotardkindrome1999]

@misidentifying-animals-in-posts

[misidentifying-animals-in-posts]

Striped legless lizard (Delma impar)

[fictionadventurer]

The Phantom of the Opera: I was born with facial deformities that are so horrific that even my own mother couldn't bear to look at me.

Me: So that's why you have to live as an outcast in the basements of the opera house?

The Phantom, who has been an admired performer, palace architect, royal executioner, and chief contractor of the opera house who is able to go out in public with no alteration to his face except a false nose and mustache: No, that's a separate choice that I've made.

[hacash]

someone at the marketing department had a little too much fun with this

[villainessbian]

a challenger

[cryptotheism]

It is kinda funny that there was like a 10 year period where renaissance cartographers were obsessed with Pomponious Mela, almost entirely because he criticized Aristotle in a way they were also criticizing aristotle. Mela was not a very good cartographer.

[cryptotheism]

You get one W on aristotle and suddenly you're the goat. Until you describe Africa as a big trapezoid.

[velvet4510]

To anyone who believes fairy tale romances never happen in real life, may I remind you that JRR and Edith Tolkien met and experienced a forbidden love in their youth, and then were separated for five whole years because of his guardian’s rules that he could not date till he was 21, and she got engaged to someone else only because she assumed he’d forgotten her and lost hope that she could ever be with him, but then on his 21st birthday, he wrote her a letter saying he still loved her and wanted to marry her, she responded basically saying ‘if I’d known you hadn’t left me on the shelf, I would never have said yes to anyone else,’ then a week later she greeted him at the train station and then immediately dumped her fiancé, and they got married and she converted to his religion and danced for him in a flowering field far away from the trenches into which he was drafted, which left such an impression that he crafted an entire story about the most beautiful maiden in the world who danced in the woods and made enormous sacrifices to be with the man she loved, and they had four kids and remained faithful to each other and blissfully grew old together and their gravestones are now marked with the names of that same fictional couple that he created, who broke every rule and overcame every possible obstacle to be together and get a happy ending, who only did all that because he based it all on their own real love story.

[tuulikki]

Knowing all this has always made this bit of Beren’s song instantly reduce me to tears:

Though all to ruin fell the world

and were dissolved and backward hurled

unmade into the old abyss,

yet were its making good, for this—

the dawn, the dusk, the earth, the sea—

that Lúthien on a time should be!

Tolkien straight up wrote a poem that said “the world could end, but it wouldn’t have all been pointless, because she was in this world, however briefly, and that justified all the rest.” Kills me.

Who can outdo Wife Guy Tolkien? Dude was writing elaborate AUs where his wife is an impossibly beautiful magic-wielding immortal elf princess who fights Satan and wins to rescue her human boyfriend from Satan’s doom fortress. Flawless.

[english-history-trip]

Final note: while they were dating, a favorite activity was to go to a local cafe with a balcony and throw sugar cubes into people's hats.

[panerasexual-deactivated2017100]

drop whatever you’re doing right now and climb a tree

[nintendowii2011]

its pitch black outside, and freezing cold. I think ill climb a tree tomorrow

[panerasexual-deactivated2017100]

you climb that fuckin tree right now

[likes-dinos]

I’ve literally never seen this post on my dash when it is not after dark and cold as balls. I’m beginning to think this is a conspiracy to get us eaten by some nocturnal tree demon.

[the-place-where]

everybody put in the tags at what time you saw this