Half-assed hyperfixations central

/deep sigh yeah I'm just vibing at this point She/they|INFP|Gemini|Very Tired|icon: @masonorwhatever|header: @luthien

[magicalhideoutengineer]

Finwë vs Fëanor: Dust and Ash

Yet after the slaying of the Trees it did so while Melkor remained there; and the body of Finwë, slain by Melkor, was withered and passed into dust, even as the Trees themselves had withered.

- Morgoth's Ring: Laws and Customs Among the Eldar

Then he died; but he had neither burial nor tomb, for so fiery was his spirit that, as it passed, his body fell to ash and was borne away like a smoke, and his likeness has never again appeared in Arda, neither has his spirit left the realm of Mandos.

- The War of Jewels: The Grey Annals

[oneheadtoanother]

[promptcalender]

How to show loneliness in a character rather than tell it:

lots of internal monologue and even dialogue with oneself

social awkwardness

despite longing for connection, avoiding it because they are not used to it

or: seeking connection anywhere they can, even in the tiny interactions with employees and strangers

making their home a very comforting space since they spend so much time in it

not feeling invited to activities unless explicitly told they are, and even then doubting it

not even considering the possibility of talking to someone

feeling warmth in their chest after a good talk with someone, only for it to twist into dread and doubt later on

[Prompt Calender: June 13th, Loneliness Awareness Week]

[elodieunderglass]

Mouse, aged 3.5, has been requesting The Book Of the Earthworm as their toilet book, although I abridge it as I read aloud - maintaining interest and speeding the process up. This was summarised as “earthworms are slimy,”

“WHAT,” barked an outraged Mouse.

“earthworms are slimy.”

“Earthworms NOT slimy,” Mouse said carefully.

“If you touch one, you’ll find they are slimy.”

“Mummy,” Mouse said, needing some clarity, and betraying a faint concern; “earthworms is turn into pepperoni?”

“What?”

“Earthworms is salami? If you touching an earthworm, and it is turn into pepperoni?”

“Oh,” I said. “No. No. Slimy. Not salami.”

[elodieunderglass]

There’s probably an interesting linguistic thing happening here. Mouse knows perfectly well that salami and pepperoni are different but similar. They come in the same sort packet, packaged in the same way, have similar texture, are interchangeable on crackers, and so on. Mouse clearly has a testable schema for “cured meats”.

So, collecting this knowledge:

Sometimes a mouse can hear things wrong, or somethings a word has two meanings, like chicken (bird) and chicken (meat), or knight (fighter) and night (time).

Pepperoni and salami are similar

If earthworms are salami, they must be enough like pepperoni for Mummy to understand what Mouse means by it

This is distressing, and doesn’t sound RIGHT, but it’s sensible enough to question further (salami DOES have some earthworm-ish qualities)

Armed with all that, Mouse came up with a little test

[snowgray]

But chicken (bird) and chicken (meat) very much are the same thing???

[elodieunderglass]

Well, true! And Mouse does know that - they’ve grown up with pet chickens, and eat quite a lot of chicken meat. Their other favourite toilet book, the New Complete Guide to Self-Sufficiency, contains fascinating diagrams for killing and dismembering a chicken (bird) to make chicken (meat).

But what I’m getting at here is the Mouse-ear soundscape of the world. When grownups are blathering on and the word “chicken” floats past, you have to scramble to work out if they mean your pet or the food.

It’s okay to attack your meat with a knife and fork, but not okay to attack your pet, even if they are the same word. You are not allowed to put ketchup on the “pet” category of chicken, even though it is THE SAME. You can put both things in the compost when finished, but only one event is Death and therefore Sad, and the other is Mouse Why Did You Do That To Your Dinner; Now We Can Only Feed It To the Earthworms. When your chickens die, they don’t come back, but the chicken you didn’t eat at dinner mysteriously presents itself again as lunch. Chicken is food, but not “chicken food”, which is apparently the pellets you feed to chickens. (Despite sounding very similar, chicken pellets and chicken nuggets are not the same thing at all.) Chickens quite like eating chicken meat; it’s impolite for humans to bite pets. Eat your chicken / be gentle with your chicken. Okay, you can play with your chickens / Don’t play with your food. Sometimes chicken is a pet, sometimes food, sometimes cowardice, sometimes an abstracted flavour of instant noodle. Yes, they’re the same thing, but they’re not the same THING - Mouse is three and sees right through that argument.

The world is terribly complex, and often seemingly hypocritical; and learning other complex things at the same time - English; decorum - is a bewildering task.

what’s cute to me is that Mouse recognises the same spoken word can have different contexts and meanings. mouse was checking a few things at once; testing if they’d misheard; testing if “salami” has multiple meanings and nuances that they don’t understand yet; testing if earthworms are connected to salami (and by what process does this alchemy occur? The mental picture is immediate and worrisome.) I loved their method of politely checking out the possibilities!

[oatmealaddiction]

So I've seen the post going around that's kind of like "kids should be able to read whatever they want and not have their choices censored by adults" and I largely agree with one caveat which is that children need to be able to opt in. I remember being 12 and sneaking some dirty books, and being interested and excited to read a book with something more sexy in it, and no one died, and everything was fine, and I was not forever scarred. However I do remember being shown a a horror film at seven by a babysitter and not being able to sleep for three weeks, and if I'd known how scary the movie was I wouldn't have wanted to watch it.

Kids can usually know what they can handle. Kids cover their eyes at scary points in films, kids read past stuff they aren't ready for. But it is good to be clear like "Oh that book might have some scary parts you might not like, are you sure you want to get that one?" Or "Oh this book has some grown up things in them that you might have a hard time understanding, I want to check that your okay with that." Like give kids the warnings and options and they will probably make a safe and informed decision. It doesn't have to be either or.

[helloiamacashier]

I also think kids should be allowed to be wrong about what they can handle without getting in trouble for it. They should be able to go to the adults in their life and ask for help processing what they saw or read without fear of judgement or punishment.

[griseldagimpel]

Tied up in all this is, "Can the child stop engaging with the media?" If a kid is reading a scary book or a smutty fan fic, they have the option to put it down or click the backspace. If an adult takes a child to an R rated movie that's too much for them, the child can't just get up and leave the theater. (Like, they might be able to physically do so, but if they know they'd be punished for doing so, they practically can't.)

Additionally, children don't always have the words/support to tell an adult who has power over them, "I don't want to watch this anymore." And an environment where adults expose children to inappropriate media is probably going to be an environment where children don't feel comfortable speaking up - and where adults aren't going to listen even if they do.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

[makomoriz]

no i don't. cheers

[shamebats]

Gendered parenting is so weird. As a little kid I was a total daddy's girl, I was told I would always try to sneak into the garage, I was always very interested in everything he was doing and would follow him around while he was working, but while my family was never the type to outright say "you can't do that because you're a girl", they simply didn't entertain the idea that I could possibly be interested in cars. Then when my little brother was born, it was just assumed he would become a mechanic like our dad because he was a boy. Even though he, unlike me, didn't like being in the garage much and wasn't all that interested in what dad was doing. Once he got to a certain age, dad started making him help and would drag him away from his actual interests for it, which lead to a lot of arguing and not much actual learning.

Gendered expectations sort of create doubles of children. There's the real child with their actual personality, interests and behaviors, and then there's the Gender Child.

My real brother hated soccer and team sports. The Gender Child that existed only the minds of the adults in his life needed to play soccer because that's what a Boy Child does.

Growing up, I always felt like adults didn't actually know me as a person and they weren't interested in getting to know me. Because they felt they'd already learned everything there was to know about me when they were told "it's a girl".

When I talk about how I never got gifts I actually liked from my relatives (to this day I still don't like getting gifts that aren't something I picked out myself), it isn't actually about the gifts themselves. I don't even remember them. What I do remember is the feeling of being given gifts that were seemingly not bought with the real me in mind. They were for the Girl Child™️ version of me. The me that adults wanted me to be, not who I actually was.

[devilleworship]

saw this on Insta and the idea that people who are anti-AI are just using it anyway like... willing to give it up? I ACTIVELY AVOID THAT SHIT BUD! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT?

ALSO

It's not as if this shit has been around SOOO LONG. We all existed JUST FINE before this shit became THE THING someone decided to shove in our face like...

[itswalky]

you guys there’s a new nancy cartoonist and she’s amazing

[skarchomp]

[tredlocity]

[ayellowbirds]

[tharook]

[thebuttkingpost-deactivated2021]

this art style with modern references is the most jarring thing I’ve ever seen

[imsoweirdimnotanitimanith-deact]

it’s so raw and I love it

[mihai-florescu]

Languages tend to peak at their word for butterfly. Never seen 2 that are the same, either. Papillon. Mariposa. Borboleta. Fluture. Vlinder. Schmetterling. Pillangó. Babochka. Farfalla. Sommerfugl. Perhonen. Farasha. Titali. Chōchō. Nabi. Húdié. Buom buom. Great job guys, i really mean it.

[mysharona1987]

[okiitos]

Rescue professional here:

If you need rescuing or help, DON’T FUCKING MOVE. You are so much easier to find when you stay put.

[thegreenpea]

Credits: @foxes-in-love

Your most important survival skill is asking for help

[existential-dread-in-the-am]

Goddamn preach this

[rogue-cyberman]

"Your most important survival skill is asking for help." THIS, it makes me so damn pissed off when parents try and normalize that asking for help is a taboo thing!

[isthescavengervideocute]

This feels important to reblog

[anexperimentallife]

Dude, all the evidence shows that we as a species put the majority of our Evolution Points/Character Creation Points into things like cooperation and interdependence. We are nothing without each other.

[powerfulwizard]

I had a dream last night that I ran away from fascists and ended up at this farm that was full of this weird but very large prehistoric animal that was like a fluffy Tapir and I want to know if it actually exists. It was about the size of a Dairy Cow.

[powerfulwizard]

Like this but with big fluffy hair with white streaks

[powerfulwizard]

Oh my god

[somepinkthing]

I make fingon just a smidge older than maglor because I think maglor wouldn't care if he was a bit older but fingon? Fingon would be so friend-who-is-a-year-older about it. Fingon would say "when I was your age" and then start describing what he did last week. He would shoo maglor and finrod away on account of "the adults are talking" whenever he and maedhros were hanging out. He would call maglor his baby cousin and talk about how he held him when he was born (i.e. he sat in maedhros's lap and maedhros helped him "hold" the new baby)

[totally-cis-offical]

Wait that explains everything so so much

[rainbow-demoness]

And since we don't face direct punishment for missing positive social cues like we do for negative ones, our coping skills and compensatory hypervigilance don't develop the same way. So we go through a world of never recognising positive signals, sometimes spotting negative signals, and knowing for sure there's more negative signals we're still missing, because those keep blowing up in our face.

Kind of fucked tbh.

[existentialqueer]

I made and wore this shirt to Dashcon 2: 2 and after talking to someone realized that my unknown attribution to the meme photo of Dashcon 2 makes me analogous to the unknown person that took the ballpit picture at the OG Dashcon

[balaclava-trismegistus]

"An insult to practically everybody with any point of view at all" one of the most beautiful sentences possible with the English language.

[ghoulvalentines]

nothing could have prepared me for the context