Whatever Catches My Attention @idlebeks - Tumblr Blog

Masterlist of SVSSS Fic Recs

Updated Sept 2024. Mix of all ratings and themes. All Lou Binghe/Shen Yuan. A couple WIP but mostly completed works. This fandom truly is a treasure trove of great fic.

#svsss fic recs #bingqui fic recs #dont forget to feed the authors

transmigrationisunderrated

i love aus where Luo Binghe learns the truth but you know what's even better? aus where Luo Binghe thinks he learned the truth.

transmigrationisunderrated

Some examples: Prophets On Hold by nex_et_nox

What Is Seen by CaveteDracones

Heaven Is A Language We Both Speak by Emily_Was_Here_23

Inappropriate Use May Result in Strange Side Effects by AceOfDivineChlorophyll

Just Following Instinct by AceOfDivineChlorophyll

#SVSSS #scum villain's self saving system #other peoples recs #svsss fic recs

My Hero Academia Fic Recs

I have wandered back into the anime world. These are mostly Dadzawa, all complete. As always, please remember to feed the authors

Complicated Creation by Elemental

Midoriya Izuku is medically quirkless, not technically homeless, perpetually exhausted and doing his damned best despite it all. He also sees spirits, which might be cool if not for the fact that a) no one else does, b) they really don't like him very much, and c) he's pretty sure the heroes now think he's a villain working for the League. Aizawa Shota just wants to take down Overhaul, rescue Eri, keep his students alive, get some rest, and find out how this Deku kid knows things he absolutely should not know about his personal life and the Shie Hassaikai case. Unless Nighteye's right, and the kid really is a villain.

#my hero academia fic recs #boku no hero academia fics recs #dadzawa fic recs

catasters

#cat #cats of tumblr #law of gross tonnage

bestcadaverinthejujutsumorgue

the thing about jujutsu kaisen is that it’s a story with a big, hulking, heaving child exploitation machine in the center of it. all of the grownups are well aware it’s there, they matriculated from the damn thing, and even the children are fairly certain something is grinding up their bones for porridge, but no one can stop it so they all just adapt. “how do you react to the child exploitation machine” is in fact one of the defining character questions on the human side. some people, like nanami, take the high road and refuse to enable the machine and always treat the children inside it as if the machine is nonexistent—this is very noble but does nothing to ultimately slow the machine down. lots of adults go “well, i will be a firm but fair authority figure to the children in the child exploitation machine and get them ice cream.” yuki and gojo are very sure they have the juice to ultimately stop the child exploitation machine… but it turns out that bitch is hard to dismantle so they’re left going “hang in there, children! you’re doing great! mommy’s proud of you! i will definitely save, if not you, then one of the next generations of children!”

meanwhile the beast just keeps on chugging.

mandaloriandy

#you also have ie mei mei Who loves child exploitation so much she’s going to do it more and better than the standard #and Geto who thinks he is blowing up the machine but is in fact recreating an artisanal version of it #the curses barely recognize the child exploitation machine running in the background #except to occasionally go ‘hey there’s kids here!’ in the tone one might take #finding chocolate in trail mix #tasty little crunchy bit for them #<- ops tags were too good to go ignored #same with voxofthevoid's. 'it's still chugging!'#the fun thing is that even the adults interacting with the child exploitation machine were once also children being exploited by it #still are children being exploited by it #are somehow convinced they are no longer being exploited by it because they are no longer children

#jjk #fandom meta #sort of

realtimelbd

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog - Act 1

HAHAHAHAHA!!!! I have successfully hacked realtimelbd and now everyone will watch Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog in real time on the 17th anniversary of when each part originally aired!

tanoraqui

I'm into it. Highlights from this video that I did not remember or anticipate:

the unpleasant squishy noises every time Moist moves

the jumpscare of the singing cowboys

how truly, I mean utterly, disastrous Billy is at attempting to say his first sentence to Penny.

I held it together for 2 solid songs then started really enthusiastically gesticulating and singing along under by breath at the first chords of "A Man's Gotta Do"

Captain Hammer smacking Dr. Horrible against the car with the beat

how wonderfully and entirely straight the entire thing is played. This was THE superhero parody of the 00's, but there is NO winking at the camera. "Bad Horse is legend. He rules the League with an iron hoof."? Deadpan. Captain Hammer flexing in his costume, ie black gloves + a t-shirt they definitely got silkscreened for $20? Deadpan. I love everyone in this bar so much.

Dr. Horrible's white gloves vs Captain Hammer's black gloves! Gotta love simple imagery.

I was saying just the other day how great it is that Nathan Fillion has really settled into an acting niche of charming douchebags, something about his jawline + the attitude he brings is just so perfect.

Truly, for the youngsters, I cannot emphasize enough how cool this project and every person involved in it was in 2008 when it came out.

#dr horrible #17 years of these songs getting stuck in my head

catasters

#cat #cats of tumblr

fishtrouts

Always a good time to burn down yet another village!

Patreon

#comic #dragons #love this so much

phantomchick

Naruto Fic Rec Masterpost!

Adoption by Defenestration; or, A Family Can Be A Fox Demon, Its Jinchuuriki, and Three Dozen Highly-Trained Assassins by elumish Oneshot, Gen, Fluff, child neglect, Naruto gets unofficially adopted by his anbu guards and it’s incredibly cute Summary: He will not be the ANBU who let the jinchuuriki plummet to his death out a fourth story window. Let that be another ANBU’s legacy.

Being Over-Prepared is Impossible (and other mottos) by Pleasedial123 Longfic, Gen, Team Seven, team as family, Bamf Kakashi, Bamf team 7, au, kakashi pov, Complete but part of a three part series and the third part is still ongoing, still highly recommend, what team 7 should have been, Skilled Teacher! Kakashi Summary: In one world, Kakashi awoke, felt grieved at being assigned a team he sees his own in, and he let that grief make him a lazy teacher. He saw himself in Sasuke, Obito in Naruto, and Rin in Sakura. He woke, saw himself in them, and took a large step back, regretting accepting them as his new team. In that world he was quite hands off - merely a watcher because it was so very painful to watch. He saw himself and all his mistakes in this new team of his.

In this world, Kakashi awoke, saw the similarities, and instantly panicked.

He suddenly realised what he had done, passing a team. Kakashi was left scrambling not to repeat old mistakes and regrets. This team would not suffer the fate of his team.

In this world, simply put, Kakashi became a teacher. This is the beginning of a new team seven.

Something in the water by maldoror_gw Oneshot, Gen, Teen and Up for language, hilarious, Tsunade pov, fluff, mild crack, pre-shippuden post naruto,

Summary: “Sakura…what is that man reading?” Tsunade asked in a dangerous voice. Sakura’s gaze twitched away from her ex-teacher to her new - and temperamental - mentor. “Erm…a book…written by a…well-respected member of the community…about…romance?” Tsunade noted with passing approval that Sakura was demonstrating both loyalty and quite a lot of imagination in defending her one-time team leader (who was now trying to edge around a pillar to get away from Tsunade’s venomous glare).

backslide by blackkat Time travel, time travel fix it, mature, fluff, team seven, m/m, slow build romance, Naruto adopts himself, Uzumaki heritage, bamf Naruto, complete longfic, Summary: Naruto’s friends are gone, his lover is dying, Konoha is destroyed, and Madara’s second return has pushed the entire world to the brink. Hunted and harried, Naruto is sent back in time to upend Madara’s plan before it even starts, and sets about changing everything. Butterfly effect nothing: the world is at stake, and Naruto is hardly about to let it fall to ruin once more. Not while he’s still breathing.

Tobirama Kicks Some Sense Into Konoha by allseer15 Hurt/comfort, whump, emotional whump, time travel, fix it, time travel fix it, The ‘what if Tobirama came to the future saw an orphaned Naruto and adopted the shit out of him’ Fic, Iconique, child neglect, child abandonment, fluff, so much fluff, completed longfic, look I have a weakness for the time travel fix it trope at the best of times but this fic is good even looking at it without focusing on that! Prolonged Tobirama content, Senju lore, senju feels, Summary: The Hidden Leaf Village in Naruto’s time seems to have forgotten just why the village was founded and have lost their way. Through a mishap with a hiraishin seal, Tobirama finds himself during Naruto’s time and he is having none of this nonsense. His brother may be gone, but he won’t stand to have Hashirama’s dream trampled so. And if he has to cause a civil war or burn the village down to the ground? Well that depends on how much resistance he meets. All Tobirama does know for certain is that no child will suffer underneath the protection of Konoha and if he has to take them in and care for them himself, then he will.

Hardest of hearts by blackkat Oneshot, Gen, look I really like blackkat’s naruto fic okay, part one of a completed three part series, all three parts are great, Fix its are the best, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix It, Orochimaru redemption story, the sheer shadenfreude of one baddie fucking over another baddie, in this case Danzo, Obito has a ‘bad guy but not that bad of a guy’ solidarity moment with Orochimaru at the start and I loved it so there’s that, featuring a low key constantly horrified at this turn of events Minato,

Summary: Orochimaru gets one more chance. Just maybe, it will be enough to save him—and the entire world as well.

A Snake In the Grass, a Wolf At the Door by blackkat Mature, Completed ten chapter fic, Orochimaru redemption story, Orochimaru/Kakashi’s dad, you read that right, quality Sakumo content, Families of Choice, Humour, Fluff and Angst, somewhat crackish, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, baby Kakashi being a cutie Summary: Orochimaru is on the edge of breaking when someone unexpected pulls him back to solid ground. When the time comes, he returns the favour.

Nukenin by WhisperingDarkness Gen, dimension travel, team seven, team as family, Kakashi actually being a good sensei even when he’s not a sensei at all, possessive kakashi, Team Seven is his team, Kinda Fluffy, Protective Kakashi, the ‘this might as well happen’ adaptability is real, Kakashi adopts team seven and team seven adopts kakashi, even though he’s illegal, 4 chapter fic, marked as complete as author doesn’t plan to continue it, but even taking these chapters as stand alone this fic is great,

Summary: In the sealed scroll he finds a Bingo Book – his own page marking him as an S-class nukenin with flee-on-sight orders. “Ok. That is definitely different.” In his head he blames Naruto – even if his number one unpredictable student had been nowhere near him on this mission. When things go this stupidly impossibly wrong it must somehow be the future Hokage’s fault.

Ear to the Wall by Vodkassassin Ongoing, it’s really really good though! great Kakashi content, Minato is very stressed and I love him, Sickfic, Hurt/Comfort, whump, PTSD’d Kakashi gets to relive his childhood but gets a little bit of a real childhood along the way, ADHD Rin, time travel fix it, look I like what I like and what I like is fix its and time travel apparently, Kakashi adopts Orochimaru before he descends into douchbaggery, Orochimaru Redemption story, everyone is alive, Summary: The Minato-sensei beams at him, and replies, “Kakashi! I’m glad you’re awake,” and, yup, that’s Minato-sensei’s voice. Kakashi falls back down against the bed, closing his eyes. It’s too short of a way down, and he clenches hands that are too tiny and feeble and not his in dog-print sheets he hasn’t owned for decades.

How To Save The World With No One Even Realising by IncompleteSentanc (Erava) Gen, Teen and Up, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, time travel fix it, Canonically Accurate OP Team 7, SuperBadass!Sakura, SuperBadass!Sasuke, SuperBadass!Naruto, RegularBadass!Shikamaru, Canonically Violent Sasuke, Equally Violent Sakura, Saving The World One Murder At A Time, Various Jinchuuriki, Team 7 As Super Villains, Doing Super Villainy Stuff, Like Murder, And Professional Eyeball Removal, Poor Obito, Poor Minato, AKA The Worst Four Months of Minato’s Life, And Everyone Else’s Too, Dark Humor, Bittersweet Ending, Dark Comedy, Crack treated seriously, completed 3 chapter fic, Well worth the read, Team 7 To The End! Summary: Minato knows at the beginning of the week that it’s going to be a hellish one. Mostly because it starts with the kidnapping of one of his two remaining students, only a year after they’d lost the first one. He just doesn’t realise at the time that it’s not going to be a hellish week - it’s going to be hell for quite a bit longer than that. It all starts with Rin’s kidnapping, and her subsequent rescue at the hands of a mysteriously appearing, monstrously strong, murderously violent woman. A woman with cotton candy pink hair. It only devolves from there.

Just Killing Time by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling) Gen, Oneshot, Short and Sweet, Classic of The Fandom, Ficlet, Team 7, Kids being Kids, Fluff, Fluff and Humour, Slice of Life, Cute Kids

Summary: After Wave Country and before the chuunin exam, Team 7 kills time while waiting for Kakashi to show up.

there lies a trail of fire behind us by BowAndDagger Gen, Madara is extremely confused but mostly on board, Time Travel au, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bamf Naruto Uzumaki, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Except Zetsu, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Fix-It, Founders Era, clan wars era, Pre-Slash, POV Uchiha Madara, the Completed part one of an Ongoing/Incomplete series, completed 4 chapter fic, Summary: As he returns from a mission, Madara makes a strange encounter with an even stranger shinobi. Then, he’s summarily kidnapped to go on a quest to save the world by said weird shinobi. (He absolutely did not choose to follow the stranger on his own free will. He was kidnapped. He did not give chase. He did not.)

A Political Perspective by VJ Riddle / MueraRashaye Ongoing, Possibly (Probably) Discontinued, Teen and Up, Gen, Team 7, training montage deluxe, Konoha is a murder village, Good Teacher! Kakashi, AU, slowly developing into Bamf team 7, Bamf Kakashi, slowly developing into Team as Family, lots of fun ideas, not crack, Minor Spoiler: Zabuza and Haku get x’d before their character development gets its chance to shine in this fic, Sometimes people don’t warn for that in the tags and it can be a dealbreaker in fic for me as I love those two, not a dealbreaker in the case of this fic though! Really good fic so far, kind of verging on dry in places but it always stays fun in the end with lots of interesting elements, I enjoy the character insight from the pov switching, and also how much of a headcase Kakashi is, graphic depictions of violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence,

Summary: Hatake Kakashi was a shinobi, and as a shinobi, the only people who could give him orders were his military superiors. The idea that a Council made up of civilians and peers was under the impression they could give him orders…displeased him. Or: He was ordered to pass Team 7. He was fine with that, until they actually passed.

Integrity by Liz_Starling Oneshot, Gen, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon Compliant, Integrity, Child Neglect, BAMF Uzumaki Naruto, Reflections on Naruto’s inner workings as a person, promises,

Summary: Naruto keeps his word. Some people are loyal to their families. Some, their orders. Naruto is loyal to the only thing he’s been able to count on; the promises he makes.

Foundation (Build It Higher, Bury It Deeper) by RayShippouUchiha Ongoing, BUT EXCELLENT, it made me cry, Naruto feels, 6 chapter fic thus far, Bamf Naruto, Bamf Tsunade, Naruto deserved better, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mature, Team 7, Uzumaki Feels, Abandonment, Tsunade gives Naruto the personal talk he deserved instead of finding out from a chakra imprint when he was dying, so we stan, I love this fic

Summary: It’s just… he’d thought, given his fight against Neji and then his confrontation with Gaara, that someone would finally really acknowledge what he’d done. That beyond Iruka-sensei’s crushing hug and Kakashi-sensei’s absent pat, someone would actually notice that he’d won against both of them.

That he’d beaten a genius on his own and then had battled another jinchūriki to a stand still.

So while he hadn’t really expected to be promoted too he’d still …

¦ part 1 ¦ part 2 ¦ part 3 ¦

#Naruto #fic recs #other peoples recs #new to this fandom #but there's some gold here for sure

smoreofbabylon

this is not a comprehensive tutorial, but it is an intro to some things that have made my life so much better. you may have already heard of these! but every time I talk about them in a group-chat or whatever, someone learns of one of these for the first time, and I want to share the good news. so here are

the Four Simple Tools Which Have Most Improved My AO3 Experience (on the computer, at least):

FIRST, for writers: the AO3 posting script google doc.

if you take nothing else from this post, let it be this. let the blessed light of the ao3 posting doc shine upon you.

okay so you know how if you copy your doc into the rich text editor on AO3, it will fuck up your formatting? just a little. like, if a word is italicized at the end of a sentence, but the full stop isn't italicized, there'll be a space between them and it looks weird? or it'll insert extra line breaks between paragraphs?

that's because the rich text editor takes what's copied into it and converts it to HTML, and I guess weird stuff can happen in that process, e.g. the rich text editor interpreting every line break as a new paragraph, including blank ones, thus the weird extra line breaks.

thankfully, there's a way to convert your doc directly to HTML that doesn't run into all those problems! it's the AO3 posting script. you make a copy of that google doc for yourself, so you have editing privileges. then you copy your fic into it, hit "post to AO3" -> "prepare for pasting into HTML editor" and boom, it will do the damn thing for you. it has saved me so much time and energy and annoyance. lots of people know about this, but every time I bring it up I find someone I know has not yet heard the good news, so: now you know!

okay, for the rest of these you need a userscript manager for your browser, like greasemonkey or tampermonkey. a userscript manager is a browser extension that lets you run a userscript (a little program, usually written in JavaScript) to modify particular webpages. I use firefox, so I use the greasemonkey browser extension linked above, but there are others out there! they should have their own installation instructions.

SECOND, for readers: the floating comment box.

wish you could write up comments while you read instead of waiting until you get to the end of the fic/chapter? this script creates a way a, well, floating comment box that you can access while you read! you access it by clicking this little "O" button in the upper left-hand corner of the brower.

when you do that, a floating box pops up, into which you can type your thoughts in as you read! you can also highlight text and click "insert selection," and that text will show up in the box, italicized, for you to tell the author what your favorite lines were!

hitting "add to comment box" will make the contents of the comment box at the bottom of the page match the contents of the floating box.

THIRD, for readers: ao3 savior and ao3 savior config.

is there shit you just never want to see again? say, for instance, you'd love to never see a harry potter fanfiction again. ao3 savior can help!

the way this one works is that you install the 'ao3 savior' script and the 'ao3 savior config' script separately. then when you want to add something to your blocklist, you go to your userscript manager extension (e.g. greasemonkey), go to the ao3 savior config script, and hit edit.

there are some default/example tags included to show the various ways to blacklist or whitelist works, but, for instance, here I've added "Harry Potter*" to the list of tags to exclude. (the * is a wildcard, so it will include "Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling" AND "Harry Potter - Fandom" AND any other tags that start with "Harry Potter".)

now, if I'm looking through fics and there's a Harry Potter crossover in the list, it will be hidden, and I'll be able to see why! and if I look at the tag itself...

ah! what bliss.

and FOURTH, for readers: ao3 tweak formatting.

finally: say there's a fic posted by someone who has not yet seen the blessed light of the ao3 posting script doc, and you want to read it, but the extra paragraph breaks really annoy you. or they learned to type in 1931 and so they double-space between sentences. or... various other common typing quirks! this script creates a handly little dropdown that will remove those quirks, just after the notes, after the beginning notes and before the chapter title.

click on "remove line breaks" or whatever, and poof! the extra line breaks are gone.

it's like magic.

I know installing scripts might seem a little daunting if you've never done it before! but it's actually really easy and handy. I know there are other, more in-depth tutorials for installing/using these scripts out there, too, if this is confusing. and probably there are other great tools out there that I don't even know about! I'm just writing this up quickly while I was thinking about it, so I can go to dinner.

I hope at least some of this is useful to you. happy writing, reading, and commenting!

#ao3 #yesss

someawesomeamvs

Warning: Major spoilers, violence, flashing lights

Title: In the End

Editor: girlmeetsfandom

Song: In the End

Artists: Tommee Profitt feat. Fleurie & Jun Youth

Anime: A Silent Voice (film), Angel Beats, Attack on Titan, Banana Fish, Berserk, Beyond the Boundary, Black Butler, Blue Exorcist, Blue Spring Ride, Bungou Stray Dogs, Case Study of Vanitas, Charlotte, Death Parade, Demon Slayer, Devilman Crybaby, Dororo, Erased, Fairy Tail, Forest of the Fireflies (film), Fruits Basket (2019), Fullmetal Alchemist, Given, Guilty Crown, Gurren Lagann, ID: Invaded, Jujutsu Kaisen, Kiznaiver, Mob Psycho 100, Moriarty the Patriot, My Hero Academia, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Noragami, Patema Inverted (film), Promised Neverland, Psycho-Pass, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Re: Zero, Rising of the Shield Hero, Seraph of the End, Sk8 the Infinity, Terror in Resonance, Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun, Tokyo Ghoul, Tokyo Revengers, Violet Evergarden, Weathering with You (film), Your Name (film)

Category: Drama

Award: Anime Banzai 2022 - Best in Show

#anime #art #fanvid #oh wow

redlipstickresurrected

Léo Forest (French, b. 1985, based Paris, France) - Chat, 2024, Drawings: Pastel, Charcoal, Pencil on Paper

#art #cats #completely accurate

myosh-i

Link Click season 2 Op.

This is pure art 🤌🏻

#damn #time agents #no idea what this is #but im gonna find out now

juniperandthistle

This is more than Spock and Kirk, "going canon."

It is two characters who were irrevocably influential to science fiction, to fandom, to media at large, getting a beautiful and poetic ending.

This is layered in Star Trek canon, but more than that it is Kirk and Spock reuniting.

Against all the odds in the universe, ours and theirs.

Kirk was dead. Spock was dead in ANOTHER DIMENSION. They died alone and without each other. This was their unbelievably tragic and canon ending UNTIL TODAY.

Now their ending is this.

Reunification, connection, crossing time, space, and reality itself to be together again. Because that is how important they are to one another. Because that is how important they are to Star Trek itself. Because that is how important James Tiberius Kirk and S'chn T'gai Spock are to media at large, Star Trek fans and beyond.

This is monumental to a degree that I truly do not know if people can understand and I will NEVER get over it.

#star trek tos #tos spirk #amazing #well worth the 10 minute watch

stealingpotatoes

Tucker isn't a fan of thunderstorms.

sw-or-gtfo-deactivated20211219

my bf has many interesting stories and observations from his new job as a 911 operator

my favorite is how meandering people are, even in the midst of a terrible emergency

they respond to “what is the emergency” with “well, the thing is, four weeks ago–”

and then he’s like “WHAT IS THE EMERGENCY RIGHT NOW”

and they’re like “so what happened this morning was, i said to my wife, i said–”

“WHAT IS CURRENTLY HAPPENING AT THIS MOMENT”

“oh i’m having a heart attack”

my second favorite is how specific he has to get sometimes

like, “what is your emergency?”

“i’m sitting in a pool of blood.”

“… is it… your blood?”

“yes i think so”

“do you know where it’s coming from?”

“probably the stab wound”

“have you been stabbed?”

“oh yah definitely”

lizawithazed

In all fairness shock is a hell of a drug

slatestarscratchpad

#MedicalHistoryTaking

lasrina

Slightly related true story from my family:

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“My house is on fire, but it’s just one wall and I have a fire extinguisher, so I think I can put it out.”

“Sir, please get out of the house. The fire engines are on their way.”

“I will in a minute, but I really think I can–”

“SIR. PLEASE. LEAVE THE HOUSE.”

“Fine.” [beat] “Okay, from out here I can see that the whole roof is on fire.”

the-haiku-bot

“Fine.” [beat] “Okay, from

out here I can see that the

whole roof is on fire.”

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

findingfeather

I spent a bunch of time watching nearly every “follow-thru-a-shift/day/whatever” First Responder show that I could find because they turned out to be such a great way to watch how humans actually behave under intense stress/distress and what contributes to each kind of reaction.

One of the things was that anything with a cognitive effect - cold, head trauma, hypoglycemia, stroke, alcohol, drugs - can make you not just really “stupid” but really weird-stupid, really fast.

And cold will do it faster than you think! My favourite example was a British one where the person who needed rescuing was actually an off-duty police-constable who had gotten into danger on the water, and he actually had done everything right, except that he hit a point of being Too Cold from the cold water and became absolutely obsessed with getting the car-keys out of the little single-person boat that was actually Stuck. And like, obsessed, unreasonable, blankly-not-comprehending-arguments, “I got to get my KEYS”.

You could see the first responders pausing and being like how do we deal with this, as he wades back into the cold water to try to haul the boat out. Eventually they decided it was worth giving freeing the boat a shot as clearly their next step was physically dragging him away.

tl;dr they did eventually get the boat out and he got his keys and stomped off to his car - they stayed on-scene to monitor him, since he also started otherwise-rationally changing into the dry clothes that he had in his car, because like I said he had prepared properly etc, and then we cut to the interview afterwards.

And the guy is like: no actually I have no idea what the hell came over me. That was 100% the stupidest, most dangerous thing (the going back for the keys) I have ever done in my life, and I realized it as soon as I’d got the dry clothes on and sat in the warm car for about ten minutes - I stopped shivering and then went what the hell was I doing?

The interviewer was like, was it at least a nice car?

And the guy was like NO IT WAS NOT. IT WAS NOT A NICE CAR. IT’S A COMPLETELY MEDIOCRE CAR AND I’VE GOT ANOTHER SET OF KEYS AT HOME. But at the time I absolutely and without even a hint of doubt knew that I had to get my keys and I was willing to fight everyone there if they tried to stop me. I remember that clearly, I remember that it was the absolute most important thing that ever existed, and then as soon as I got warm again I realized that was absolutely absurd.

He noted it had completely changed how he understood and approached interactions with others in altered states of consciousness, because he now fully understood that they could not be rational and they simply were seeing the world through a completely different window and it wasn’t their fault.

And like that was one of my favourites but there were lots like that, and as the poster up a few notes, even just emotional shock can have a cognitive-state changing effect - and additionally, both exsanguination (heavy bleeding) and cardiac emergencies (like heart-attacks) have very real potential effects on how for instance if your brain is getting enough oxygen to make you a sensible human vs “that person sure is in an altered state of consciousness, they are”.

People are sometimes more meandering in that state of emergency than they are at any other time … . because bleeding to death can feel a lot like being drunk, and having a cardiac emergency can come with bodily effects that make your brain genuinely stupid.

Plus also we like to believe that adrenaline gives us the power to think really clearly for a moment, and sometimes that’s true, but it’s really more accurate to say that adrenaline gives you the power to think really fast. Which means unfortunately if your brain is firing off along the wrong route, metaphorically speaking, it’s a long way down that route before you even have a moment of “hang on wait - ”

(This would apply to the above anecdote about the fire, for example!)

For me this was amazingly useful for writing because it’s really quite difficult, otherwise, to get portraits of how people react to things that are this intense - and how different and disjointed they can be from how people act when not in those situations. You really can have the calmest, most reasonable, most carefully pacifistic person in the world who then hits their head and becomes a violently combative patient; you can have the most sensible person in the world who does something amazingly stupid because their core temperature dropped too low; you can have someone go from sullen uncooperative non-verbal and hostile to the absolute opposite from the application of a tube of glucose paste.

There are ways to up your likelihood of behaving sensibly under this kind of pressure that mostly come down to “practicing over and over and over in calm and controlled simulations of the thing” as it starts training your automatic reactions - this is why fire-drills work.* It’s why real in-depth first-aid training (rather than the one-day certification) involves endlessly Doing Scenarios - I did a year of Junior Lifeguard when I was a kid and I still can feel those habits coming on when a relevant situation comes up.

But yeah. This is ALSO ALSO why well-trained emergency services dispatch have a rote list of information they ask and just keep asking and asking and pushing at until they get a precise answer to that question - because most of the people calling them are absolutely in altered states of consciousness!

This has the result of creating a quite amusing momentary brain-pile-up if you happen to be someone who was drilled by rote as a child on How To Call Emergency Services back in the days when things like “where am I” etc were not easily found out - I was drilled by first responder family members as a wee thing that the moment they picked up and said hello, you recite your location, THEN what service you need (assuming you’re calling centralized dispatch - otherwise they will assume that since you’re calling fire-emergency you need a firetruck :P), THEN describe the problem, THEN say who you are … .

… so that if the line dropped or got cut off or something bad happened to your ability to communicate by telephone (a real hazard in a small northern town in the late 80s and early 90s) the dispatch had the MOST important information immediately (where to find you), before moving onto the others that were somewhat less important in descending order.

Of course now if you’re calling from a landline they know exactly where you are, and even with an internet-phone or a cell they have somewhere to start (no, it’s not an instant location; no, it’s not totally “we have no idea” either); and the dispatchers are trained to walk people who have not had that same training thru giving them the right info. So if you just respond to their “hello please state your emergency” (or whatever) with the descending order of “I’m at [location] and need [whatever service], [specific details of what’s going on to the best of my knowledge], this is my cell number in case we get disconnected and my name is Meredith” their train of thought skids sideways a bit and they have to realign.

Still saves time! But it’s funny.

*[it’s also why the current form of active shooter drills in eg schools actually doesn’t; the drills themselves are basically designed to mimic the actual event too closely and thus mostly result in traumatic experiences for the children in question, and not necessarily in retained safety habits under stress. Conversely, at least when I was in schools, fire-drills were honestly actively boring: the bell rang and then we had to all line up and our teacher was really anal about Exactly Following Rules and then we all filed out of the classroom and went and sat on the hill and it was all very unrealistic in terms of how a real fire FELT … .which. was the point. Anyway I digress.]

libraryspectre

I’ve had an experience like this! A couple years ago I was flipping a tortilla and dropped the skillet, and the bottom of it hit my thigh and gave me a sizeable second-degree burn.

My wife had to drag me to urgent care, and that was her compromise down from the ER. And I was really insistent that I be allowed to eat my taco before we left. In hindsight, I don’t know why I was so stubborn about this - I think I was in shock a little bit, and the pain I was in just wasn’t processing. Nothing could make me understand that this was a serious problem.

#good to know #emergency services

inkskinned

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

#neurodivergence #autism #things i wish i could send my therapist #get out of my brain

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Whatever Catches My Attention