Dreams unto Empires

Hannah - She/Her, 20, Slytherin, writer with a grudge against life, it’s never too late to get better

[swordtsukiyama]

I was at the Museum of Natural History and there was a section to draw stuff and I fell in love with this…….

Toger

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

Devastating to have more evidence that done IS better than perfect

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

Additionally, findings indicate that the act of doing shows you that you were not seeking perfection, you were fearing inadequacy

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

@grey-and-lavender

#oh that last line gutted me #is there a place between perfect and failure?

Good news! There is!

Bad news! It is called 'done'

[grey-and-lavender]

✨ fuck ✨

[emmastory]

alla mingalёva

[writer-ace]

I'm trying to figure out a good way to say "you really should actually learn the basics of small talk" with sounding like I'm biased against autistic people.

[writer-ace]

So here's the thing:

I see a lot of neurodivergent people talk about small talk as this baffling and meaningless waste of time that neurotypicals do for some unknown reason, and as an autistic person in an industry that is extremely based on building relationships and engaging with others, I've actually found a few really key important pieces to small talk.

1. Small talk can make interactions feel less mercenary or transactional. Having even brief exchanges about something beyond the reason that you're interacting can make it feel less like the only goal of the interaction. Especially for relationships that are not fully transactional (e.g., coworkers), this can help build a relationship with them.

2. Small talk can be a way to find commonalities and help bridge cultural or power divides. Recently I was on a call with a couple of Indian colleagues, and while we were waiting for everyone else to join I asked them where they lived in India. They didn't expect that I had heard of it, but I knew it because my dad had traveled there for work every couple months for a year or so, so we could chat about it briefly. Even for a couple of minutes, we were able to connect on this unexpected commonality. If I hadn't had that connection, I would have been able to learn about somewhere, helping narrow the privilege gap of them being expected to know more about where I live than I am about where they live.

3. Small talk can show knowledge about a person, which both builds connections and indicates that you see their life as important enough to remember about. The stereotypical "How's the wife?/How are the kids?" shows that you know the person has a wife/kids and have enough interest in their life to even ask.

4. Small talk can ease tension and reduce pressure from others, especially in a professional setting if more junior members are expected to speak. Especially for junior staff members, it can be difficult to be the first person to talk and break the silence, so engaging in small talk beforehand allows for a lower-pressure transition from silence to whatever the presentation is about.

5. Small talk provides a low-risk way to identify commonalities. While conversations about religion, politics, etc. may lead to tension or discomfort, even if they bring out commonalities, small talk is specifically structured to minimize tension while still providing the opportunity to learn more about each other. A conversation about the weather can reveal that you both like hiking when it's nice out; a conversation about the weekend can reveal that you both have family in the same state.

Small talk in many cases is signaling, a way to indicate certain things to people. It's a more indirect version of it than many autistic people like, but it is one.

But, you cry, I don't know how to do small talk!

Small talk actually has some pretty clear guidelines, even if they are often unspoken.

You are generally always safe starting with a question.

Weather, traffic/travel, and non-political events are generally a safe bet, because those are commonalities even if you are in different locations. "It was so nice out here this weekend. What's the weather like near you?" "I got stuck in that big traffic mess on my way here. Did you get caught in that?"

If you have some knowledge about that person, use that to inform further questions. I knew my coworkers lived in India, so I asked where in India. If I had just known that they didn't live in the same country as me, I could have asked where they lived.

Let them offer information about their family before you ask about it. Family can be complicated, and if you wait for them to offer that will indicate what sort of information they are comfortable sharing. You can then mirror their language (e.g., if they mention a wife then you can ask how their wife is doing, if they mention a partner then you can ask how the partner is doing). If "how are they doing" feels too personal, language like "what are they up to these days?" can be a bit more neutral and feel less invasive. If you're really not sure, feel free to avoid questions about family altogether.

When asking about where someone is from, don't ask "where are you from originally?" unless you know for a fact that they are not from where you are. Instead, you can ask things like, "Did you grow up around here?" which is a more neutral phrasing. This is especially common for the area where I live where a huge percentage of people are transplants (including me) and so people who actually grew up in the area are a bit of a rarity.

Politics, religion, and money are generally not good starting points for small talk

Weather, traffic/commutes, non-political events, and weekends/time off are generally safe bets

[bramble-berries]

your writing does not have to be outstanding or exceptional. seriously, I read books all the time with just average writing, maybe some of the minor characters are one dimensional and cliched, maybe the dialogue is a little cheesy, maybe the plot is a little shaky, but the characters and their dire situation have hooked me. your story doesn’t have to be 5 stars to be worth writing and sharing and it will find the people who will love it.

[obstinatecondolement]

I think the thing is that writing fiction isn't one skill, it's like twelve plus skills in a trenchcoat. Characterisation, prose, plot development, pacing, dialogue, general premise, world building, knowing where to start, the list goes on. And that's not even getting into stuff like SPAG, editing your own work, research, catching plot holes, and other more nuts and bolts stuff.

Being just okay at all of those is still very fucking impressive! And a writer being really good at one of them has carried me through a lot of books where other parts were significantly weaker.

[buddhistmusings-deactivated2025]

There's a phenomenon in left-wing circles where initially reasonable statements and concepts get repeated ad nauseum until they not only lose their meaning but transform into deeply bigoted ideas.

The idea "there is no single white culture," is true because white is a concept created to describe the powerful position in Western societies. There are many different cultures, who's members are often white. But this idea became "white people have no culture" which is just not true, deeply dehumanizing, and harmful, especially to people who look white but experience marginalization because of their culture.

Another example might be cultural appropriation, which perhaps should be understood as a misrepresentation or exploitation of the cultural practices of another, especially where the person exploiting does so for personal gain, without acknowledgment. But now, people have basically transformed this into "when somebody does something from a culture they weren't raised in" or "when a particular race or ethnicity behaves in a way that's different from how they normally do" which promotes racial and cultural stereotypes and attempts to control the behaviors of people based on their race, ethnicity, and culture.

[kindermaus87]

Adding to this, the sentiment that white people "have no culture" is based in the idea that culture is a deviation from whiteness. "Cultural" food, "cultural" dress, etc., is all shorthand for "things done by people who aren't white". To say that white people have no culture is to further other non-white people, making them the deviation from the "norm".

White people do have culture. Rich white people, poor white people, white people from Canada and the U.S. and Great Britain all have cultures that are different from one another. Claiming that they don't is a tool in the furthering of white supremacy and we (leftists) gotta knock it the fuck off.

[nothorses]

what happens when people learn the buzzwords without unpacking the underlying ideology is that they take words designed to challenge the status quo that they don't understand & reinterpret them in the context of the white supremacist values they do understand.

[scallioncreamcheesebagel]

i'm not the guy who always has mini bagels in his purse but today i happened to and, by some stroke of god, today also happened to be the day my brother declined a bagel in front of me with the statement "i'm not hungry enough for a whole bagel." so obviously i ask "would you be hungry enough for a bagel if it was like, a miniature version of one?" and when he said yes, miraculously pull a mini bagel from my purse. so now i seem like a guy who always has mini bagels on him

[kiragecko]

The Tiger Poem in Classical Maya!

The Tiger He has destroyed his cage Yes Yes The tiger is out By Nael, Age 6

Literal translation:

he-destroyed his-captive-place the-tiger yes-yes he-came.out the-tiger his-writing master-Na'el man[of]-6-years

Transliteration:

ʔu-jomow ʔu-baaknal ʔu-balahm xt xt Joyoy ʔu-balahm ʔu-tz'ibaal Aj-Naʔel Aj-6-habiy

Character Transliteration (ALL CAPS are characters that stand for full words, lower case are syllabic):

ʔu-jo-mo-wa ʔu-ba-ki-NAL ʔu-BALAM-la-ma xa-ta-xa-ta jo-JOY-yi ʔu-BALAM-ma ʔu-tz'i-ba-li AJ-na-ʔe-le AJ-6-HAB-bi-ya

[foxssleeplessness]

[sosuperawesome]

9jedit on Instagram

[plaguedocboi]

Twitter and tiktok are like a coral reef

It’s loud and bright and productive and glamorous. It’s fast-paced and things cycle through the environment in hours. Everyone is trying to fight for their position in the food chain and stay Relevant. There are lots of pretty things to look at. If something gets Popular it has an impact on everything around it, for a brief time until the next big thing arrives. To an outside observer it’s chaos but to those involved it has order, reason, a Purpose.

Tumblr is like a deep-sea ecosystem.

Things are slow and weird. Memes bounce around for years and even decades. People exist in their little isolated hydrothermal vent communities of mutuals. Sometimes something big happens (suez canal, November 5th, Queen Lizzie kickin’ it) and we all gather around like a whale fall but for the most part we’re just snootling around in the sand doing whatever the fuck. Occasionally someone comes down and shines their flashlight around and immediately leaves and tells their friends about what freaky shit we have going on in the depths. We don’t care. We’re very busy talking about Our Friend Jonathan from a book published in the 1800s like worms slowly digesting the bones of a long-dead organism.

[inqorporeal]

Sometimes you'll be drifting around minding your own business, and something massive and horrible will drift past just out of sight range and you'll know it feom the way the current changes. And you'll be glad it didn't see you.

[overthinkinglotr]

One thing I feel people miss about lord of the rings is that it’s sort of……….post-apocalyptic?

Like– the world already ended, a long time ago, and the characters are surrounded by the ruins of dead countries. They spend most of their time journeying through places that are either abandoned (Moria) soon to be abandoned (Rivendell/Lorien) or half-destroyed and falling into decay (Rohan/Gondor.) The villains are creatures that Used to be Human; I feel like Lotr’s orcs/ringwraiths have more in common with zombies than they do with DnD-style orcs, because they’re a state that “normal” people enter when they’re corrupted by a supernatural force.

Even the Shire is surrounded by ruins– the ruins of watchtowers, the ruins of the old Northern Kingdom, the ruined city near the Grey Havens. The people around there have an idiom “when the king comes back” that means the same thing as an idiom like “when pigs fly”–  “when a completely ridiculous improbable thing happens.” They’re so used to the disintegrated state of the world that the idea of a central government is fairy-tale-like and bizarre. They have their little mayors and thains; they don’t need anything else.

So yeah! I see people try to “modern-real-world- au” versions of Hobbiton by making it “a peaceful suburb” but to me, a modern au version of Hobbiton would be more like…….

You are a hobbit.

You don’t know much history, but you understand that there were Wars a long time ago that destroyed a great amount of life on earth.

You live in a little hole in the ground. You don’t know that long ago these holes used to be called “bunkers;” you decorate them with flowers.

When you want to say that something won’t happen, you’ll sarcastically say things “lol yeah SURE that will happen! And tomorrow pigs will fly, Parliament will come back into session, there will be a president in the White House, there will be a prime minister making speeches, and diplomats will intercede between all of them! ha! XD”

If you journey even a little outside of your home, you’ll find the ruins of old cities and skyscrapers. There are messages in the ruins that are written in languages you don’t speak. Human beings used to live here; they don’t anymore.

And you’re not supposed to leave the Shire because sometimes you’ll meet the things that used to be human, but aren’t anymore.

[toshsato]

とらドラ！// Toradora! - 9. 海にいこうと君は // Let’s Go to the Ocean, You Say

Have you ever seen a ghost? What? No, I haven’t. I believe ghosts exist, even though I’ve never actually seen one. But I don’t believe any of the people who claim they have.

[nandomando]

[headspace-hotel]

Fiction is disappointing in its portrayal of…people’s weirdness. Just how weird people really are in real life.

So many books have all their characters be incredibly normal and I’m like ????? You guys can go outside and not run into someone who is even slightly strange? Or act like “quirks” are only for characters who are explicitly supposed to be eccentric instead of just…people being people.

like, my neighbor sunbathes in his driveway in his underwear and builds coffins in his spare time. My OTHER neighbor just sets things on fire whenever he needs to relax so at random times he’ll be out burning his deck furniture or something. I knew a guy in high school who woke up every morning at 3am and could lip sync flawlessly to every veggietales song. I knew a girl who collected hand sanitizer and wore bright, glittery green eyesore alligator earrings after she got her ears pierced. our family friend back in Tennessee owns six pugs and an unbridled pug obsession. My brother (13) aspires to be a hobo and calls himself Moped the Cheapskate. My grandma reads ya novels (she loved six of crows btw), determined that she was a ravenclaw through the internet, is responsible for me learning my first curse word, and flips off trump when she’s watching him on TV. one of my high school friends was a conspiracy theorist who did intense research about chemtrails. a member of my squad when I was like 14 was referred to by us only as Poodle. the guy who taught my public speaking class in high school moderated a doomsday prepper forum and would talk wistfully about how he would like a bunker. I used to work out with a guy who worshiped Thor smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt. today my best friend literally just ate dirt while we were hanging out and I can only be just like “whatever, he eats leaves, the little packets that say do not eat, and food off the floor of restaurants, how could a little dirt hurt him?” because that’s just what he does he just…eats things

The sad thing is that almost everyone I know would be The Weird One if they were part of the cast of a book?? But it isnt weird to be weird or eccentric or the opposite of normal. people are just…that way. books drop any somewhat unusual quality as a marker that a person is “eccentric” and I promise you can’t make your characters too weird

Because I write down people that I meet and hear of: my dad met a lady at his work who claimed to be psychic and talked at length about how ghosts would watch her shower (“I hope you like what you’re seeing!” she would tell them) and about the ghost-seeing party she was planning. He talked to a woman who was a sonographer and who had an enormous tattoo of a dragon all the way up her leg and thigh. “Organs move. Babies don’t,” was her wisdom. He met a guy with a phobia of glitter. People are weird. There’s no excuse to make stock characters and people who are average and without quirks. To me it just makes them seem undeveloped because EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING.

People are just weird. let them be weird pls

[sotrias-labyrinth-deactivated20]

Does free will exist?

[catgirltoofies]

yeah

[sotrias-labyrinth-deactivated20]

[unexplained-events]

The Enigma of Amigara Fault

This short story by Junji Ito is about a fault that appears in Amigara mountain after an earthquake. The earthquake exposes countless human-shaped holes in the mountain which seem to have been made about a thousand years ago. People, intrigued by these  silhouettes, gather at the site and that’s when things get creepy.

It’s about a 15-20 min read, but if you haven’t read this before, you’re in for a treat. Link above.

[gnars-house]

i mean it’s not like i can just NOT reblog amigara fault. what if one of my followers is one of the lucky ten thousand who HASN’T been unutturably altered for life by it yet? go read it! it’s creepy, but trust me, it was made for you.