Muddlenmuse @faintlyradiantish - Tumblr Blog

This meme is a MURDER ATTEMPT.

I am absolutely fucking serious. The original meme, without the big red denial, is someone's attempt to fucking kill people.

There is NO SAFE DOSAGE of pennyroyal oil. Even Mother Earth News says there's no reason to use pennyroyal essential oil for ANYTHING, even topically or as a fragrance, for fuckssake! That should give you some idea about how dangerous it is!

Pennyroyal tea, plant matter in hot water, is a traditional abortifacient. It is *incredibly* dangerous, induces abortion by bringing the body close to organ failure (and frequently pushing the system right over the edge, because dosage is impossible to meter), but I would drink a gallon of it before I took a half-teaspoon of pennyroyal essential oil.

Two teaspoons, taken across 48 hours, has successfully killed someone.

Three teaspoons taken as a single dosage killed the consumer within THREE HOURS.

There is NO SAFE DOSAGE! FOR PENNYROYAL OIL INTERNALLY! NONE!

The person who made this meme is PURPOSEFULLY, ACTIVELY, trying to get desperate people killed!

fuckingconversations

Pennyroyal oil contains pulegone, which is highly toxic, particularly to the liver. Ingestion can lead initially to gastrointestinal distress such as nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Later on, it can lead to failure of the liver and kidneys, resulting in bleeding, seizures, multiple organ failure, and death.

There is no antidote for pennyroyal oil poisoning.

- straight from poison control

neil-gaiman

In the hope that this saves someone’s life one day.

faintlyradiantish

Always worth consulting poison control.

rookhunty

everybody 21 and under rn is like “omg y2k!!! early 2000s fashion!!” but will not TOUCH a pair of low-rise coochie jeans…………….cowards im telling u right now if u were caught dead wearing high waisted ANYTHING in 2002 u would be shoved into a LOCKER and called slurs by a bitch named Hannah with a belly button ring and a whale-tail thong. commit or sit

rookhunty

WHY are you only considered a valid fashion historian if you only research fashion before the 70s….fuck you im 2000s fashion historian and all of you y2k cyber bitches with mink lashes are incorrect first of all take off your eyebrows and be humble . put your eyeshadow on wiht a fucking sponge

yawnjockey

This is not an exaggeration… fuck you if you wanted pants that didn’t show your pubic zone. So you had to be completely hairless. Did not matter wether you were size 0 or size 20. Your entire ass and belly were required to hangout. And you couldn’t buy a long waisted shirt for like an entire decade. That’s why we started wearing dresses over pants. Fashion was cruel for anyone who wasn’t rail thin in the early aughts. I had to start wearing men’s clothes just to not to be miserable.

what-is-it-to-be-pk-esque

This is all true. also like…. we used put on makeup so stupidly. All your makeup was from the local drugstore; nobody went to Sephora or could afford “high end” stuff like MAC unless you were that bitch Hannah with the belly button ring. No brushes unless you count these dollar store little plastic nub applicator things with the white triangle tip that came with every eyeshadow or lip set you got from claires.

But yeah all the pants were as low as you can go and every fucking t shirt had a butterfly or empire-waist and peasant shirt nonsense. If it didn’t have a butterfly, it instead said Angel or Princess in rhinestones.

Also can we talk about LAYERS? whyyy was everything layered like this, especially those dumb shrugs that were a tiny useless piece of cloth that covered nothing but your shoulders.

Can’t forget about those juicy track suits either

And the notes talking about frosty eyeshadow and craft glitter everywhere is no joke. All of this shit could be bought at your local DEB or Gap and every look was layers upon layers of DISASTER.

And nobody was wearing ANYTHING high-waisted

paterchristi

oh the glory days

ellynneversweet

Look at Britney walking on her pants. All our pants were that length. Everyone’s jeans were frayed at the hem from being stepped on all the time. If you went out in the rain or even post-rain water would wick right up to your knees.

faintlyradiantish

I feel personally attacked by the accuracy of this post.

glumshoe

You wake in the night with your arm hanging over the side of your bed. It is still dark, and your bedroom is shrouded in deep shadow. Something unseen seizes your hand.

You grasp it tightly, knowing that first impressions are important and a firm, confident handshake will establish dominance.

incog-nemo-deactivated20200628

A hollow voice echos under your bed, shaking you to your core, “You’re hired.”

inkskinned

my dad has been riding me for, like ever. get a job, ash. like, okay but. have you even heard of summer. plus i’m tired. plus i literally don’t want to do anything but wear a rainbow bikini and bake on beaches.

“i’m serious,” he says, in Serious Voice, his hand on the door handle with white knuckles. “you can’t waste your time like this.”

“ugh,” i say, because, like ugh. he slams the door. i bury my face in pillows and like, “ugh” for a solid thirty second, limbs spread akimbo all over the place. without meaning to, i fall asleep. i told you i was tired, dad.

i don’t know what happens. maybe it’s all those times i had to stand in his office pretending to be official in white shoes and a pink skirt but when somebody grasps my hand, i grasp back. like lizard-brain response, i’m still half-asleep when i’m full-on up-and-down single-pump professional-style handshaking a demon. by the time i have bolted upright in bed and retracted my now-sticky (yet somehow also soggy?) hand, the voice is already speaking.

“you’re hired.”

excuse me? “I’m what now?” my voice in comparison is weak, slippery with sleep and fear, dancing all over the place.

i hear something shift under me. my heart is caught in my throat while there’s chuckles from the owner of the handshake equivalent of squeezing a taco bell meal. i’m having flashbacks to french kissing h.p. lovecraft in a bathroom in high school grade and i’ve never even done that.

“i’ll have to look at your references, obviously, but that’s a hell of a handshake. i like you, kid.”

like but. for some reason, a giggle rises in my throat. like okay. like. this is normal. i’m like. it figures there’d be something under my bed. like, with how much time i spent in the closet? who am i to even, like, judge.

“of course, orientation will be difficult,” the taco bell meal tentacle continues, “but you wouldn’t be the first we’ve hired like you.”

“like me?” like a woman or a gay woman or like a gay woman who’s really good at making hot cocoa or like

“a human,” taco bell says.

i’m actually almost awake now. like i’m pretty sure i’m awake and i’m talking to the CEO of creepy, incorporated. certified possible demon. sock eating friend of cerberus.

for a second i’m about to call for my dad but then i remember those white knuckles around the door handle and my white shoes and how much gas money is and how he once made me shake hands for an hour but didn’t give me a hug for the next four years.

i clear my throat. like, abuela told us about devils since she was old enough to threaten me with them and like technically i can’t “commune with spirits” but i also know enough not to upset a creature like this so i figure it’s in my best interests to take this in stride and maybe tomorrow throw a little bit more salt over my shoulder than usual. and like, i mean, at this point it’s just negotiating right. and if there’s something i understand from dad it’s negotiating business.

“hours?” i ask, sitting up straighter. i can’t see more than a writhing something that barely extends beyond the edges of my bedframe.

“night shift, obviously.”

“salary?”

“competitive.” a pause. “lucrative, even.”

well like. what else is there. “i’m in.”

“wonderful,” says taco bell, expressing with an accent i’m unfamiliar with and a form of joy that i’m uncomfortable with, “i’ll go get the contract. be back in a jiffy.”

like, the sound of hell opening up isn’t exactly a slurp-pop, but it does sound a lot like the way my seventh grade math teacher’s tongue used to sound when she was about to make a harsh comment about my homework. and like, for a second there i’m like. wait what the fuck did i just agree to am i in a horror movie is chucky gonna be my roommate now like does dracula sign my contract as a witness like am i really doing this. like? i’m a smart girl (don’t look at my love life) how am i even considering this.

it’s also when my dad opens my door. “ash?” even when he’s just woken up, he looks tidy. he’s wearing his wingtip shoes. never slippers on this man.

i’m like. coming around to my senses at this point. i hallucinated all that. i ate too many crackers with cream cheese and guava before bed. i listened to too many of abuela’s supernatural sightings. and like, i told you, i’m tired.

“dad,” i say, blinking in the light from the hallway.

“you were talking in your sleep, ” he says.

“oh,” i say.

“it is keeping me awake,” he says.

“sorry,” i say.

“you know i am a light sleeper,” he says.

“yeah,” i say, “sorry.”

“please control yourself,” he says.

“yeah … i… okay.” i say. “sorry again.”

“goodnight, ash,” he says, and he turns to go. he looks back at me and says “and ash?” and for a second, because i always have this moment, because i never learn, because i’m not a good learner, for a second i’m thinking - oh, he’s gonna say something nice, “in the morning, please get a job.”

“yeah,” i say, and my voice cracks and the door closes, “sorry again.”

i sit there, staring at the wall, saying nothing for a long time, or maybe no time at all. thinking about nothing. like the feeling you get when you’re thinking too much so it all just sounds like white noise.

then i hear it again. the crack-slurp of hell. i jump about like twelve feet. when i return from the space station my soul ascended to, i see the barely-defined outline of something, like the leg of an insect outside of a tentacle inside of a crab leg outside of the right back support beam of the eiffel tower. and like, a sphere of dull green light radiates directly above it, which, like, isn’t even the weirdest part of my night.

“howdy!” taco bell nacho supreme is back, “sorry for the delay, i was checking with management.”

“uh,” i say.

“just insert your hand into this here contract and you’ll be employed part-time, pending references.”

“hang on,” i say. i swallow. “you said the rate is… competitive?”

“we got wishes, monkey’s paws, souls, video game cheats… you name it, we pay it.”

“…. USD?”

“666 an hour to start. we do love tradition.”

i choke. “like six dollars and sixty-six cents?”

taco bell laughs. “you know what i meant. and we do direct deposit!”

i swallow. i think of my dad.

words tumbling out of me. “do i have to hurt anyone? is my soul forfeit? can i ever get out of this? am i gonna turn colors how many days a week do i work is there a retirement plan can i readjust the terms after signing is it permanent will it harm me in any way how many people die doing this when do i start what’s orientation who writes the checks and” i take a breath “is the boss nice?”

“no, no, yes! but two weeks notice. no, usually five, if you sign up for it, yes, no, probably not, not many people are doing it mostly we’re non-physical or extra-corporeal so you’d have to ask H.R? tomorrow if you want, loads of fun and free sushi, H.R again, and” taco bell takes a breath, “usually but particularly on wednesdays.”

i sit there and curl my knees to my chest.

“all this… because of a handshake?”

taco bell is silent for a moment. well, like, kind of. if eerie silence had a twin brother, or like the silence of a fast food restaurant exactly four minutes before the lights are shut off.

“usually, we come if we’re called by darkness. we deal in darker things than needs. i don’t tend to show up when someone needs something. but sometimes… the lines get crossed, that’s all. instead of your need heading on upwards, it called me instead.”

“uh,” i say, “are you admitting to the existence of like… angels?”

“anyway,” says taco bell, “yesterday Georurng self-terminated.”

“oh my gosh,” i say, “is he okay?”

“oh yeah, no, he retired to live with his six hivenests in west Berlin. we need new blood,” taco bell says. “of course, metaphorically.”

okay. okay. like. i could say i was bartending? in a few weeks i could buy a used car. out of pocket. like. if i needed to i could always quit. and like. honestly, again, how many chances to make closet jokes. plus, time at the beach. plus like. okay like how cool would it be.

“okay,” i whisper, “okay.” i try not to shake as i reach my hand out to the contract. it feels like dipping my hand into the inside of a cold turkey. i repress the shudder that runs up me.

in an instant, the specifics of my job write themselves over my eyes. they burn into the back of my brain. everything is spinning.

“see you tomorrow!” taco bell is saying. i want to puke. my ears are ringing. i barely hear the portal to hell open again.

the fire of the contract’s words fade slowly until i am staring into the dark again. it’s not what i expected. it actually appeals to my sense of justice. taco bell was right about being called by something. i’ve just agreed to be the thing that goes bump in the night. the one thing left against the people nobody else can fight. i’m gay dracula. i’m both a lesbian dementor and the boggart. i’m a rainbow-flag-flying boogeyman and i have a long list of people who i got a bone to pick with.

it takes me a moment to realize i’m smiling. sorry, dad, i’m gonna be like. ultra mega tired. but i got a job. doing what? oh, nothing.

just being the creature that lives under your bed. when bad men have darkness, we come haunting.

suzakukururugi-deactivated20190

I don’t often see abuse posts about the opposite spectrum of post-abuse behavior, and it’s. Kind of a bummer bc those are still things people experience.

So shout out to :

people who feel like they have to aggressively defend the things that are important to them because they’re so used to it being torn down and taken from them - even if a friend was just kidding, it’s so hard to see it as just kidding.

People who are constantly on high alert for a fight and had to learn to treat everything like a debate because it was the only way they could stand up for themselves. People who have a hard time rationalizing not everything is an attack because everything used to be an attack.

People who are mad and furious over what happened and get completely consumed by rage no matter how hard they try to let it go. And who have to deal with people telling them they’re making it bigger than it was.

People who have to constantly front as being a badass or aloof because they can’t be seen as vulnerable in any way.

People who constantly fear they’re just like their abuser because they lash out at a moment’s notice to defend themselves

There’s a ton more things but I’m on my break and these are just things I experience that I know a lot more people relate to omg. It’s hard to unlearn aggressive means of self preservation and it hurts to hurt people after you’ve had to experience that hurt and it seems impossible to get over or unlearn those things but you’ll do alright it just needs time and patience and there’s nothing wrong with being angry.

kendrixtermina

THANK YOU

myautisticjournal

Where are the guides and tips for adults with sensory issues that make it difficult to eat healthy foods? All of the ones I find are for kids with sensory issues that say things like “make eating fun!”

tanishasoldaccount

I’ve had very SPD my whole life and now I’m in my early 20s, and I have learned the only way to get your nutrition in is to do it your way

Smoothies

Fruits and veggies can be awful and gross in their natural forms, but when they are blended to a pulp in a smoothie, they can actually be so amazing and tasty. Especially when you disguise the bitter taste of veggie with sweet fruits. Not enough spoons to cut up your own fruit and clean a blender afterwards? Buy pre-made smoothies. My favourite is a brand that can be found at Walmart (and a lot of chain grocery stores) called Naked. I like the green one (spinach, kiwi, and pears), but they also have a strawberry banana one, one with mangoes.

Try eating vegetables cooked vs raw

Many different veggies have many different textures, and some veggies are great cooked, some are great raw, and some are just horrible. I love baby carrots raw because I love the snap, but I can’t stand them cooked because they are horribly mushy. I love broccoli cooked, but I can’t stand it raw because it tastes like grass.

So remember to try things that you have never tried before at least once before dismissing them completely. If you find at least one thing that you like, that’s one source of nutrition that you weren’t getting before.

Eat products that are marketed for children

When I say this, I am specifically thinking of yogurt, and those pediasure drinks. Yogurt, because children’s yogurt is always smooth (where as adult’s yogurt comes with chunks of fruit in it, which I hate) and sometimes has extra vitamins in it. And pediasure drinks have lots of vitamins and nutrients, and because they are marketed toward children, they have a mild, unintimidating taste. (I was actually instructed by a doctor to drink these at the height of my ED, because it disguises a lot of nutritional value and calorie filler for a diet in an easy to consume package. Very autism friendly.)

Eating something (like junk food) is better than eating nothing at all

This is just generally good advice. If you have a hard time eating chicken right off the bone because it has fat and grizzle, eat chicken nuggets. If you don’t want to have a normal meal, just have cereal. Hell, having cookies and milk for dinner is better than having nothing at all. If you are feeling hungry - eat something.

On really bad days, eat very calorie dense foods

I know that SPD can be worse on certain days, and this can mean that eating is more difficult on certain days. In this case, you should eat denser foods on these days to help fulfill your calorie requirement. My recommendations are - chicken fingers, pasta, egg mcmuffins (which are very calorie dense for what they are, but I find them very easy to eat), or anything from mcdonalds in general, smoothies - and use sauces to make your meals more calorie packed if you feel like you can’t eat as much that day.

Don’t be afraid to drink your calories

If you drink soda, drink full calorie soda instead of diet. If you drink coffee or tea, use whole cream or milk in your cups. If it’s a meal time and you’re not feeling hungry, and you’re not feeling hungry, or you’re feeling repulsed by food, get a smoothie or some other kind of drink just to get something in your stomach.

Don’t be afraid to take vitamin supplements (pretty self explanatory)

Remember that getting the proper amount of calories is probably more important than getting all the balanced nutrition, because if you get really sick (the flu, pneumonia, something like that) and you wouldn’t be able to eat for days at a time, your body can eat off the fat. If you don’t get enough calories, then you will lose weight on normal days, and if something happens and you can’t eat, then you won’t have any fat stores to keep you safe.

I have had problems in the past with accidentally losing weight from not eating enough (partly due to my SPD) so I know how important it is to get in all your calories and your nutrition. Just remember, no matter what you’re eating, every time you eat, you are nourishing your body.

-Tanisha<3

elidyce

Soup!

1. Find a stock you like the taste of.

2. Cook meats, vegimables, tofu, whatever in it until soft.

3a. If you don’t like lumpy soup, put it in a blender. Even beef lumps can be blenderized if you really put your heart into it. (I learned this for my sister’s root canal) If it’s too thick, thin it out with more stock, milk, water, whatever takes your fancy.

3b. If you don’t like soup that is too liquidy (my ASD child had this problem), rice or noodles help a lot. If you want it thicker, some flour and water will serve you well.

4. If you have trouble cooking for yourself, but have a dog, follow this recipe:

1 kilo of lumps of chicken. Breast, thigh, whatever’s on sale, your choice.

1 quarter of a Kent pumpkin (or squash of your choice) cut up into slices.

1 carrot, grated or chopped as you prefer. (Or substitute zucchini or whatever you fancy)

1 cup brown rice.

2 tsps of bone marrow stock, the good stuff. (optional)

Bring 1 to 1.2 litres of water to the boil in a large pot.

Put everything in.(you can sear the chicken in a pan or the bottom of the pot first, but it is by no means mandatory)

Simmer until done, IE when the vegetables and rice have softened up.

Divide into 2 portions.

Portion A - nourishing home-made dog food, hurray! You have done something good for your dog that they will love. If the dog doesn’t like food that’s too liquidy, thicken their portion with 2 tbsp of flour mixed to a paste in half a cup of cool water. Give it some time to thicken up.

Portion B - add some seasonings to taste. A nourishing home made people food, hurray! You have done something good for you, too! If the human doesn’t like food that’s too liquidy, thicken as above.

No, really, I got this recipe from a vet and it is really very tasty with just a few extra seasonings. (I like soy sauce and some stock powder) It can be blenderized, or just eaten as a chicken stew. Even when I do NOT want to cook for the people, I can’t let the dog down, and the excited way she prances around the kitchen when she smells boiling chicken (that’s for me! I know that’s for me!) is a real dopamine booster.

bemusedlybespectacled

The main thing it boils down to, for me, is figuring out why I don’t like a thing and then seeing if adjusting that thing fixes the problem.

For example: raw carrots are “squeaky” and steamed carrots are mushy. But roasted carrots, carrots that are cooked at a high temperature and extremely caramelized and seasoned well, have the same texture and taste as french fries. Same thing with mushrooms: if I blast the absolute shit out of them at high heat, then they aren’t mushy and slimy and taste more like seared meat. As a kid, I didn’t like the stalks of broccoli (bitter and hard to chew), but I did like the “leaves” and would just bite those off. I don’t like my food touching each other. Okay! Then they don’t touch! I make my own food and that means not having things touch if I don’t want them to!

This takes a lot of trial and error, so I only introduce new foods to myself on my own schedule over time. If I have seven dinners every week, only one of them is going to introduce a new food, and if the way I made it doesn’t work this time, then I eat something else.

Also, and this is a big thing: you don’t have to like everything. Even neurotypical adults have tastes and preferences. I don’t think I will ever like zucchini or avocado, but over the course of my life I’ve worked on liking broccoli and carrots and snow peas and green beans and corn and mushrooms and spinach, so it’s not the end of the world if there are a few vegetables I don’t like.

intersexfairy

sensory issues be like *turns up phone brightness to hear better* *turns off light to see better* *socks don’t have to match but they MUST be the same length and texture* *washes hands out of no where because they don’t feel clean* *oversensitive to one sense but undersensitive to another, related sense* *unlocks phone to concentrate*

jumpingjacktrash

“i can’t hear you, your lunch smells too loud”

faintlyradiantish

I... Feel personally attacked by this.

monochrome-in-madness

I did a thing 🌚

autisticchangeling

I've seen discussions sometimes about how fanfiction-based fandom culture is heavily influenced and dominated by people who are not cis men.

One thing I haven't seen discussed as much though is how much of fandom in general is shaped by neurodivergent people.

I mean, you have autistic and ADHD people with special interests or hyperfixations collecting information and writing detailed meta, connecting very strongly with characters and fandoms. I would not be surprised if the percentage of autistics in fandom communities was significantly higher than in the general public.

And that's not even getting into other types of neurodivergencies and how they influence fandom culture.

I sometimes see people try to divorce fandom culture from the idea of being a "geek", and I understand that this is sometimes because of the association with the sexist geek stereotype, but I also know that there is a connection between the two concepts, and it's probably us neurodivergent people.

autisticchangeling

I also think this is why at first I was like "my fandoms can't be special interests, that's just how fandom is"

Yeah, because a lot of people in fandom have special interests

mycroftrh

I’ll go slightly further here, and say this (well. this plus ableism) is the root of a lot of current issues in fandom.

Back when I started being in fandom, a couple decades ago, I’d argue that damn near every single person in fandom was autistic or ADHD. You’d only join fandom if you were obsessive and were chill with doing things that weren’t socially acceptable. (Because being a fan absolutely was not socially acceptable at the time! We went to ridiculous amounts of effort to hide that we were fans!)

And fandom culture was absolutely shaped by this. The standard behaviors in fandom were those of happy autistics. That’s how you were expected to act. You remember “squeeing”? The visual image of it is generally someone so happy and excited they can’t physically contain it so they make a high-pitched noise and flap their hands and - a squee is literally just a happy stim. And so many fans at the time did happy stims that we gave it a special fandom name! So even if a neurotypical person happened to stumble in, they’d learn that the “social norm” in a fandom space is basically just “act autistic/ADHD” and assimilate.

But then... fandom got mainstreamed. It became socially acceptable. And then the neurotypicals started showing up in large numbers. And instead of assimilating like they did before, when they were the minority, now that there were a lot of them they started going “what the heck is this! why are people here acting so weird! this is embarrassing!”

...and then we got cringe culture within fandom.

No one says “squee” anymore not because fans don’t squee anymore - happy stims don’t just go away - but because the neurotypicals showed up and told us “squee” is a cringy word and concept. Which they had ALWAYS told us out in public, but we used to have fandom as an insular autistic/ADHD-dominated space where we were safe and free to be ourselves.

You know how everybody talks about how cringy and embarrassing 2012 tumblr was? Dude. We were literally just acting like happy autistics, because that’s what we were. It’s just that - like you always have - you think autistic/ADHD behavior is cringy and embarrassing.

This isn’t new. “Cringe culture” isn’t new. It’s just a new euphemism for the exact same ableism that’s always existed, with the only difference that now it’s coming from inside fandom.

All those posts saying “if these people were bullied more they wouldn’t act like this”? They’re not just bizarrely tasteless jokes. They’re because the people making those posts were bullies. Are bullies. Fandom used to be where the sort of people who were victims of peer abuse went - where we went to be safe from bullies and be openly ourselves - but now the bullies are in here with us.

On the happier side, while mainstreaming has resulted in a lot of neurotypicals showing up, autistic/ADHD people are absolutely still the backbone of fandom. We’re the ones collecting tiny bits of info and connecting the dots to write galaxy brain meta. We’re the ones churning out new content every single day, rain or shine. We’re the hyper-verbal ones writing 250k fics and the ones who hyper-relate with the characters and make incorrect quote posts so spot-on they sound canon. They may think we’re embarrassing - but they still need us.

azcrowleyfell

SO MUCH THIS!!!

Fandom would be nothing without neurodivergent people. Because there’s nothing on this earth that can rival the white-hot intensity of an Autistic or ADHD person in full-blown hyperfocus or special interest mode.

faintlyradiantish

🖤🖤

radatav

A comic about Seagulls. If you feel like this comic doesn’t accurately represent you, and that you personally don’t act like this, good. That means this comic isn’t about you.

If you DO act like this, and are working on a counter argument about how not all _____ are ______ , well that’s just disappointing.

faintlyradiantish

Metaphors are important.

catchymemes

faintlyradiantish

Oof. Right in the gut.

jenroses

Have I told y’all about my husband’s Fork Theory? If I did already, pretend I didn’t, I’m an old.

So the Spoon Theory is a fundamental metaphor used often in the chronic pain/chronic illness communities to explain to non-spoonies why life is harder for them. It’s super useful and we use that all the time. But it has a corollary. You know the phrase, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done,” right? Well, Fork Theory is that one has a Fork Limit, that is, you can probably cope okay with one fork stuck in you, maybe two or three, but at some point you will lose your shit if one more fork happens. A fork could range from being hungry or having to pee to getting a new bill or a new diagnosis of illness. There are lots of different sizes of forks, and volume vs. quantity means that the fork limit is not absolute. I might be able to deal with 20 tiny little escargot fork annoyances, such as a hangnail or slightly suboptimal pants, but not even one “you poked my trigger on purpose because you think it’s fun to see me melt down” pitchfork.

This is super relevant for neurodivergent folk. Like, you might be able to deal with your feet being cold or a tag, but not both. Hubby describes the situation as “It may seem weird that I just get up and leave the conversation to go to the bathroom, but you just dumped a new financial burden on me and I already had to pee, and going to the bathroom is the fork I can get rid of the fastest.”

cipheramnesia

I like this and also I like the low key point that you may be able to cope with bigger forks by finding little ones you can remove quickly. A combination of time, focus, and reduction to small stressors that can allow you to focus on the larger stressor in a constructive way.

faintlyradiantish

Didn't know how much I needed this addition.

chrishallbeck

Organized.

unkindness-of-lights

Why is this me??? D:

quinintheclouds

It’s called Productive Procrastination! It’s very common among neurodivergent folk, especially those with executive functioning issues, and ESPECIALLY especially among those with Executive Function Deficit Disorder (more commonly known as ADHD)***

With Executive Dysfunction, having a big looming task can feel like the crushing weight of the world on your shoulders. It feels actually impossible. So to avoid focusing all your energy on it and stressing out, your brain decides to get some lower-stress tasks out of the way, because suddenly they don’t seem as insurmountable as the Impossible Task. We distract ourselves with busywork and feel productive doing it, but more often than not, we still feel the background stress of the biggest task.

So the guy in the comic is right: if you have an even BIGGER, more immediately pertinent task with a closer deadline, your brain might see the previous task as simpler, and help you focus on that instead of the Big Scary one. Sometimes it works, but other times executive dysfunction won’t let you be productive AT ALL, but that’s tangential. If that’s the case, it might help to hack that task with a machete and make it a bunch of teeny tiny tasks that are each easier than the things you’re procrastinating with (i.e. instead of “I have to write a whole essay!” try starting with “I have to open Docs”)

So all those times in high school where you had a project due the next day and you decided to clean and rearrange your room? That was your brain protecting you from having to face the stressful task that our neurodivergent (again, mostly ADHD and autistic) minds perceive as literally impossible.

***I just like reminding people that even though it’s only been proposed by leading ADHD experts, EFDD is a WAY more accurate term for what people with ADHD actually experience, NOT just how we bother neurotypicals.

(Semi-relevant rambling ahead): *Cough* Executive Dysfunction can manifest in ways that may look like distraction and laziness or scatterbrained “hyperactivity” to a neurotypical, but that doesn’t mean the deficit is in attention – it’s a deficit in regulating your mental faculties, which results in difficulty directing and controlling attention, emotional reactions, motivation, consistency, perception of time, switching/starting/stopping tasks, and keeping your neurotransmitters (especially dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine) in balance *cough*

thank you for coming to my TED talk

faintlyradiantish

cheshirelibrary

How To Tell If You Are In A High Fantasy Novel

[via The Toast]

The Elders would like a word with you.

The Ritual is about to begin.

Something that has not happened in a thousand years is happening.

You are going to the City. There is only one City. It is only said with a capital C. No one needs to bother saying the name of the City. It is the City.

Certain members of the Council are displeased with your family’s recent actions.

A bard is providing occasional comic relief; no one hired or invited him and his method of earning a living is unclear.

The High Priest is not to be trusted.

Someone is eating an apple mockingly.

There is one body of water. It is called the Sea. The Great Sea, if you are feeling fancy.

You live in a region with no major exports, no centralized government, no banking system, a mysteriously maintained network of roads, and little to no job training for anyone who is not a farmer.

You have red hair. You wear it in a braid. Your father was a simple man, and you don’t remember much about him – he died when you were so young – but you remember his strong hands, as he fished or carpentered or whatever it was that he used to do with them.

You’re going to have to hurry, or you’re going to miss the Fair – and you never miss the Fair.

There is trouble at the Citadel.

Your full name has at least one apostrophe in it.

It is the first page, and you are already late for something. Your mother affectionately chides you as you gulp down a few spoonfuls of porridge; she will be dead by page forty-two.

There are two religions in your entire universe. One is a thinly veiled version of Islam. It is only practiced by villains. The other is “being a Viking.” You are a Viking.

There are new ways in the land that threaten the Old Way. Your grandmother secretly practices the Old Way, as do all of the people of the hills.

The real trouble began the day you arrived at court. Every last nobleman hides a viper in his smile. How you long for the purity of life in your village, which is currently on fire or something.