You guys want to play a game? REBLOG and put in the tags why you follow this person
Tags:
#her mental structure is deeply weird and it’s great #I’m glad she exists‚ and I’m glad I get to be friends with her #memes #the wondrous variety of sapient life #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
If you’re writing something that involves an aspect of life that you have not experienced, you obviously have to do research on it. You have to find other examples of it in order to accurately incorporate it into your story realistically.
But don’t just look at professional write ups. Don’t stop at wikepedia or webMD. Look up first person accounts.
I wrote a fic once where a character has frequent seizures. Naturally, I was all over the wikipedia page for seizures, the related pages, other medical websites, etc.
But I also looked at Yahoo asks where people where asking more obscure questions, sometimes asked by people who were experiencing seizures, sometimes answered by people who have had seizures.
I looked to YouTube. Found a few individual videos of people detailing how their seizures usually played out. So found a few channels that were mostly dedicated to displaying the daily habits of someone who was epileptic.
I looked at blogs and articles written by people who have had seizures regularly for as long as they can remember. But I also read the frantic posts from people who were newly diagnosed or had only had one and were worried about another.
When I wrote that fic, I got a comment from someone saying that I had touched upon aspects of movement disorders that they had never seen portrayed in media and that they had found representation in my art that they just never had before. And I think it’s because of the details. The little things.
The wiki page for seizures tells you the technicalities of it all, the terminology. It tells you what can cause them and what the symptoms are. It tells you how to deal with them, how to prevent them.
But it doesn’t tell you how some people with seizures are wary of holding sharp objects or hot liquids. It doesn’t tell you how epileptics feel when they’ve just found out that they’re prone to fits. It doesn’t tell you how their friends and family react to the news.
This applies to any and all writing. And any and all subjects. Disabilities. Sexualities. Ethnicities. Cultures. Professions. Hobbies. Traumas. If you haven’t experienced something first hand, talk to people that have. Listen to people that have. Don’t stop at the scholarly sources. They don’t always have all that you need.
I … LOVE reading the replies and tags for this post! I’m happy that, out of all my posts, this is the one that’s blown up so quickly.
I love the people who are a part of a minority, that are gushing about their favorite fics or books that seem to have done this and offer proper representation.
I love the people who are bringing up the toxic mindset that is very popular on tumblr, the “you can’t write about it if you haven’t lived it” ideology that makes writers feel guilty for providing representation.
I especially love the people who are mentioning how they should start doing this. I love the people who are probably young or inexperienced writers that are seeing this and thinking of doing this for the first time. I love that there are people who read this and then think to better their writing because of it.
i was writing an autistic character and tried looking into firsthand accounts of what a meltdown feels like so.
now i’m here to tell you that you also might learn something fun and interesting about yourself
Tags:
#the wondrous variety of sapient life #writing #embarrassment squick? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
#saw this post shortly after discussing respirator recs with someone #which was an interesting juxtaposition #the wondrous variety of sapient life #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
might start tagging all my shit posts as sexual content. somebody could be into this, you can’t prove to me they’re not
Tags:
#who among us has not been there tbh #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #sexuality and lack thereof #the wondrous variety of sapient life #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
it’s good for your mental health to have mutuals who are wildly horny about kinks which do nothing at all for you
this is both as in. sometimes you will realise that actually these kinks do do something for you and that can be very eye-opening and liberating
and also as in. sometimes you will hear someone decry these kinks as indicative of moral failing, and being friends with people like this makes you immune to that sort of knee-jerk outrage
Tags:
#also I think it can be very eye-opening and liberating even when those kinks really *don’t* do anything for you #infinite diversity in infinite combinations #sexuality and lack thereof #the wondrous variety of sapient life #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
lost media enthusiasts when the 30 second version of a persian dub of a burger king commercial from 1993 is found
We’re the descendants of shepards who would tirelessly look for that one missing lamb.
There’s always joy in finding a member of your lost flock, to have them rejoin the rest, safe and sound.
We invented the written word so that thoughts might live forever. No matter how small or insignificant, when something is lost the universe gets a little dimmer.
We can’t save everything. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to try. And it’s a good day when there’s a victory. Even a little one.
Tags:
#the wondrous variety of sapient life #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #amnesia cw
There are manmade joys beyond my comprehension, too. The horrors aren’t special.
Tags:
#I don’t know that I *wholeheartedly* endorse this post #but it occurs to me that nightclubs sure do qualify as a manmade joy beyond my comprehension #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #the wondrous variety of sapient life
With almost everything on earth there’s someone that’s dedicated their entire lives to it either through hobby or career and I’m so glad that there’s someone thinking about everything.
I’m glad that there’s people that travel around Tokyo taking pictures of trains and I’m glad that there’s people that design printers and I’m stoked that people like hiking down abandoned trails and reading old scientific texts from 400 bce. It’s cool. I’ve got my own corners of stuff I like. I hope I’m adding to something when I read ancient literature. If nothing else it makes me feel connected to everyone else with really specific interests.
Once on IMDB I saw a “goof” which was that during a scene set in India(?), the light flicker was at the wrong frequency (in hertz). I wish I knew what movie it was to show you guys, I want to say it was some Marvel shit.
I always wondered how this person knew that. Was there an amazing Indian electrician who just instinctively felt the flicker rate was off? Did they go frame by frame and count the flickers per second?
Brinens and Things 