Songs and Magic

Do people still do Mermay? Whatever, I'm doing it anyway 😂💖

I feel like @ggcrono would appreciate the cuteness here

those posts criticizing common writing patterns in fanfiction are so fucking harmful and they ruined me

so like yknow what??? People tell you to avoid “smirk” and “chuckle” as descriptors because no one does those things (???) but then when I need to use those words I have a ten minute crisis about how I’m a shitty writer. So heres my unwarranted writing advice: If you want your characters to smirk and chuckle fucking let them and don’t let anyone tell you that no one smirks or chuckles because I do both on a daily basis whenever I tell a shitty pun, bye 

Edgy fanfiction critics can eat my entire ass.

Like y’all have never had a chuckle? For shame

” nobody does that”, Well sure, maybe nobody does that when YOU’RE in the room, buddy…

I smirk and I chuckle and I toe off my shoes and I card my fingers through my own hair (don’t have anyone else to do it to, but if I had, I would) and when I’m angry I growl (or wish I could, at least) and I pop the P when I say Yep. And even if I DIDN’T do all those things, the characters I write do, because fuck the language police, it’s my fic.

I honestly hated those BS things when they started coming out of not just fanfic but pro writing advice back in the 90s and 00s.

That’s how long I’ve been holding a grudge against Blanket General Absolutist Writing Advice, by the way. Thirty years now. People would post it on writing lists, or on message boards and I would be the only one going “okay except how the fuck else do you describe that”. Certain Fucking People’s much-vaunted “lists” of how a whole bunch of shit was stupid. Endless complaints about “emerald eyes” with “lololol so sharp edged and glass-looking?” and oh my god how about you fuck off.

And yes, before you go there: I do know the stuff they were reacting to, and the overwhelming trends, and the so forth and so on, and this was still the stupid, wrong way to approach the issue.

Potentially useful advice on the subject is going to a) come from someone whose taste you care about (ie this is the kind of person you’re writing for), and b) is going to be specific - “I think this piece of yours is using this kind of thing too often and it’s getting distracting” or “I feel like using ‘chuckle’ here gives the wrong vibe/imagery” or whatever. And note I said POTENTIALLY. And that’s for EDITING.

For writing use whatever word is gonna get you to the next word, you can fix it later.

You can take my purple prose from my cold, dead hands.

It's useful to learn rules and guidelines so you are more intentional and thoughtful about your writing, if you have any interest in improving the quality of your prose! (It's also totally OK to say "fuck it" and write for fun and not care about any of this!)

But these are useful tools to put in your toolbox and then adapt to the way you personally write. Your own unique voice is special and wonderful and it doesn't have to match everyone else's!! Figure out how to be the best you that you can be, as a writer.

That's what critique should be. Trying to help the writer be the best version of themself, trying to help the story be the best version of itself.

Break the fucking rules, and screw anyone who says you can't.

Happy MerMay 🧜‍♀️

I placed transparent @reallyndacarter in her natural habitat.

Brava

I can't imagine that much 20th century Terran media still exists by whatever time period *The Murderbot Diaries* takes place in, but if it did, one work that I bet would make MB need to go off somewhere and have several emotions is *The Iron Giant*.

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😳 <- this emoji but without the blush or romantic connotation. im not blushing im staring you directly in your fucking eyes

if you excuse the bad editing it would look like this

can we hit 150k before this piece of shits one year anniversary

u know before yellow emojis took over as automatic, the one we used for this exactly was O_O . which has unfortunately become the shortcut for the stupid blushy one. but we also used to emphasize the emotion by making the mouth bigger, O_________O . there was also o_O , for when you're weirded out, and o_o for small weirds or intrigue. you could use a period instead of an underscore for the mouth, o.o, O.O, which was a little more like shock.

there was also -_- for when you're annoyed. -_-* for pissed. the asterisk is a forehead vein. a very bad day or very bad joke could result in -___________-********** .

anyway that's your history lesson for the day, dont forget your roots.

let us also not forget the meekest of them all: ._.

Like to charge reblog to cast

You’re not casting

the way this is phrased to avoid confronting the reality that people can’t afford food anymore

As a writer, and someone with both a professional writing degree and training in writing news pieces, I want you all to read this again.

And I want you to pay close attention to how they phrase things specifically to avoid saying that people can no longer AFFORD to pay for food.

Phrases like "slashing spending" and "buying less" are meant to dance around an ugly and harsh reality... and instead allow you to focus on those poor brands and their 40% 'loss' of foodstamp money.

And you'll notice that there isn't a WORD about the brands' considering something crazy like lowering their prices... Instead of pointing THAT out, the author instead gives it a positive-seeming spin. The brands are "offering deals" and "new sizes" (ie, smaller sizes that are less money, but actually end up costing more $$ per ounce of food for the customer), and "overhaul their products and strategies."

It's written to make the whole thing seem bloodless.

Like brands are really out there just trying to help.

And the way it's written is VERY intentional....

why are you calling him green shrek?? shrek is already green??

No one is regular, everyone is extraordinary

Fixed

This post is a train wreck.

Why do you need to put ordinary? Shouldn’t it just be the words without the adjective?

There's a lot of things that point to neurodivergency not being a bunch of discrete conditions, but rather a range of symptoms that are given names based on how they affect other people. (But since this post is about autism and ADHD, I'm going to focus on those two.)

-

1 in 5 ADHD people are also diagnosed with autism. 1 in 3-5 ADHD people are also diagnosed with learning disabilities. Similar numbers for ADHD and mental disabilities or Tourette's. Personality disorders, mood disorders, and sleep disorders are also much more likely to be diagnosed.

Similar numbers exist for autism co-occurring with other neurodivergencies.

Being autistic/ADHD increases BOTH your chance of having kids that are autistic, AND kids that are ADHD. Doesn't matter which one you've been diagnosed with.

And most of the experiences that are central to the the ADHD or autistic experience are actually considered separate conditions likely to co-occur (''co-morbid'). Hyper/hyposensitivity, sensory processing disorders, emotional regulation problems, etc. are co-morbid with BOTH conditions.

Even the diagnostic criteria (things that get you a label) are frequently just different presentations of the same thing.

We've known autistic special interests and ADHD hyperfixations are the same thing for at least 20 years, now. Not being expressive 'enough' is stereotypical of autism, being 'too' expressive is stereotypical of ADHD, and both come from the exact same root. Trouble focusing affects eye contact and attention. Difficulties with social skills lead to talking 'too much' or 'too little', interrupting, difficulties forming and maintaining relationships, etc. Both groups stim, though ADHD people are likely to have it attributed to hyperactivity. Both experience meltdowns and shutdowns.

And both groups tend to end up masking and suffering burnout.

Many of the ways to support ADHD and autism are the same. Explicitly teaching social skills. Allowing stim tools. Finding ways to control stimulation levels and support emotional regulation.

-

There are reasons for having different diagnoses. ADHD meds don't help most autistics very much, for example. Even if the two conditions were combined, it would definitely have subtypes with distinct management plans. (Probably a lot more subtypes than we currently have!)

But the overlap of autistic and ADHD symptoms is way higher than in anything else I've studied. And, as an ADHD person with 6 of the 8 people closest to me being autistic (and 2 of them being ADHD), the overlap is way higher even than the literature suggests. From the outside, we look different. But we really really don't seem to be from the inside.

Listening to Artificial Condition again, it strikes me how much Murderbot uses empathy reflexively as a survival skill. Look at this bit.

Upon meeting it, ART allows it on board and then announces that it knows that Murderbot is rogue. Then ART threatens to destroy it if it hacks ART's own systems. Murderbot is immediately terrified and shuts down all inputs, gives serious thought to spending the entire three month journey unconscious, and then considers the potential avenues of damage from ART's drones. ART, not realizing why Murderbot had suddenly gone silent, tells it to quit sulking, which understandably pisses off the still-terrified Murderbot. It dumps a bunch of memories of coercive treatment into ART's feed, and ART goes silent.

Then this happens:

The thing about Murderbot's survival is that it clearly involves quite a bit of negotiating with other constructs and bots. That's how it talks its way onto cargo hauler bots in the first place. It uses empathy--envisioning the emotional and cognitive context of the individuals it encounters--to work out what different kinds of people want, so that it can offer them fair trades. It also uses empathy to consider what humans might be looking for, so it can practice blending in and hide.

Murderbot would never have survived so long if it wasn't capable of assessing the individual desires of the people--human, bot, and construct--around it. It thinks about ART's probable fears and motivations so that it can consider whether ART is inherently an ongoing threat or a potential ally.

When your survival depends on evading detection, you get really good at assessing perceptual biases so that you can shape yourself to fit into them. People talk about murderbot being radically empathetic as a choice it makes, or as a feature of its personality that makes it a good person. But I think murderbot would be the the first person to tell you that this empathy is part of its threat assessment suite, a skill that was developed out of necessity in order to allow you to survive.

It is also a trait that makes murderbot a good person, of course: it chooses very carefully to try to survive by doing as little harm as possible and by offering things, like media, that buy it access to things it needs. But it started as a survival skill. It's part of hypervigilance.

I think one of the strengths of this series is that so many of the things we love about SecUnit are traits developed for survival in an inherently threatening world. The shape of its mind and heart have been changed by the trauma of its origin--but they don't make murderbot less good for being altered, even if that skill was developed in a traumatic context.

I like that.

What the sneef? I'm snorfin' here!

Hey? You doin alright @ghost--bot ??

someone with a major in literature and/or poetry tell me what's so poetic about this that it captivated me because i have no idea honestly

hey. what if i just cried on a train. what if.

Is this your type of thing @amtrak-official?

That flower is so pretty and so strong, it's indomitable

Even if they say it can't be done...try flowering where you are.

Especially if they say it can't be done. :)

It’s interesting to see this in the framework of a flower (politically defined as: charming, pretty, femme, frivolous, victim) and/or a weed (politically: outsider, indomitable, back-to-nature, resistance, rebellion) and seeing it as a slightly underdog, “nature thriving in adversity” “beauty thriving in industry” “persistence and hope” story. It is and it isn’t! It’s still poetry.

This looks like oilseed rape, a crop plant that provides a bright yellow field of flowers. The flowers become the seeds that are pressed to make a cheap and common cooking oil. Rapeseed is considered a mildly unattractive name so it was rebranded as “canola,” thus the product of oilseed rape is canola oil. Still, a field of these yellow flowers is somewhat awkwardly called a field of rape. The heavy, sweet scent hovers for miles. The United States Canola Association, a lobby professional advocate for the plant , says “the small yellow flowers [also] beautify the environment,” as they try to market something that doesn’t need much marketing.

Rapeseed is hot at the moment - carrying a heavy load. The obviously competitive plant-based oils at the moment - olive oil and sunflower oil - are both embroiled in geopolitics. Sunflower oil was dominated in global production by Ukraine, currently under invasion, and olive oil - a key export of Palestine, and the European trees smashed hard in recent years by the droughts - is a tricky product that relies on ancient little olive trees growing in climate-change-affected deserts in years of unprecedented bad weather. It takes years for an olive tree to make a single olive. So geopolitically, people are clinging a bit to rapeseed - a sturdy and unbothered workhorse of the temperate climates.

Rapeseed’s a brassica, part of the same family as those shape-shifting sisters who are all Basically The Same Plant: broccoli, cabbage, mizuna, pak choi, turnip, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts - let any of those sisters go over, and they’ll all develop the same cheerful yellow flowers. Oilseed rape has an instant and obvious kinship with them. The thick, dusty slightly blueish color to the fat juicy stem and the broad leaves on the bottom giving way to the smaller ones along the distinctive stalk - you can ID a brassica from just a few characters!

Brassicas, most amusingly, like hard going. One wild ancestral brassica, to whom the broccoli sisters strive to return, is Wild Cabbage - it likes to live on rocky sea cliffs, growing on rocks and battered by salt; sea kales, another offshoot of the family, like to grow on beaches. If you see plants growing on a beach, drinking saltwater and digging their roots into sand and rocks, they’re brassicas - that’s it - that is how they like it. It’s completely mad! but it works for them! Other plants probably make memes about brassicas: choosing what is (to plants) a barren alien landscape, whipped by toxic winds, drinking poison, gnawing sustenance from actual sand - and then being so vigorous and juicy, and carefully constructing a crown of yellow flowers. Absolutely wild!

Rapeseed, therefore, scorns the idea that it has to be kept locked up in a comfortable field and farmed. When it leaves its fields and starts wandering, it is called an “escape” - a cultivated plant that’s gotten away. Escaped rapeseed yearns for the beach, or at the very least, the romantic dusty road. It usually lives alongside roads, on waste ground, and in other places where it can find gravel: as you can see, this includes perching jauntily in the gravel of train tracks. Wind? Rocks? Trains? Are you kidding? This is not adversity to oilseed rape. This is what it leaves home for. It’s going to the beach. It’s LEAVING. Farewell, suckers.

In general, people do not actually like this.

Escapes aren’t quite invasive - although that term itself is a little tricky; if the photo is taken in Europe, an escaped brassica has every right to say that it’s had ten thousand years of being perfectly native - but they’re still not-really-wild and would-you-please-stop. An escaped food crop is not the cute underdog kind of weed, not the political lapel pin kind of weed, not the oh-look-it’s-thriving-in-adversity-feeding-the-bees.

Environmentalists don’t want them. They’re not weeds in the sense of Daddy-hated-the-pretty-dandelions-in-the-lawn-wasn’t-Daddy-mean, they’re weeds in the sense of one-step-further-out-of-place-and-you’re-spoiling-the-whole-ecosystem-bucko. The politics of invasiveness hold a finger over the button that says “condemn,” and the moment the rapeseed escape leaves the undisputed unwanted waste ground, it becomes a weed in the sense of deleted-for-the-greater-good. As long as they’re in the waste ground that nobody wants, it’s fine - but watch out! The tolerance is very conditional.

But is it (politically) weed, (politically) flower? I’m always interested in the political projections we put onto plants. This, to me, is funny, like a cow at IKEA; a fancy breed of chicken ordering a drink at a bar. Somebody escaped the grind. Somebody is off to the beach. Farm boy escaping to the bright lights over here. How are you going to keep them down on the farm when they’ve seen gay Paree! It isn’t starving or struggling baby, that’s oilseed rape seeking enrichment! Don’t feel bad for it! It’s escaped! It likes this shit! It’ll be shot down by farmers or environmentalists alike - you’re it’s only friend. Don’t tattle on it, it’s not meant to be here, it barely even Feeds the Bees. It’s taking the midnight train going anywhere!

That’s no delicate flower! That’s a brassica! They’re from the EQUIVALENT OF THE MOON. That’s one of the oldest plant allies we have! And not even because they taste particularly good (debatable) just because we can’t stop them and it’s better to be allies than victims, really. It’s awfully pretty and funny to be flowering (love that for it) but it isn’t precisely in adversity, the mad bastard! it’s about as uncomfortable there as a cottagecore influencer.

That’s no weed! It ain’t the wild! That’s a purebred domestic farmchild with ten thousand of years of genetic engineering behind it! It’s more domesticated than YOU are. And it’s going on holiday. Becoming ungovernable.

It could be a villain! We don’t know! The seeds from that plant - which are happening because it was fit enough to flower- just might get on a train that takes them to INVADE A NEW ECOSYSTEM bahahahahaha! What matters is going on your WAY.

To me it’s the poetry of spotting a friend, the recognition of seeing a dog. The humor of a fancy fluffy chicken living its life. The pleasure in seeing a brassica living in conditions that are a bit like its ancestral wild. The enjoyment of having a bit of knowledge, like hearing a bird song and being able to tell someone, wisely, that it’s a chiff-chaff because it says chiff-chaff. A reminder, once more, that the natural world is full of infinite stories to tell and be told: the most worthy stories that there are. The poetry of it. I don’t see triumph-in-adversity, but a guy having fun. I see human engineering hanging out with human engineering. I see classic brassica behavior. Classic. What a guy. What a legend.