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@coffee-complainer

it's facial equality week with changing faces because obviously no such thing exists anywhere else. nonetheless, i have a lot of thoughts

growing up i did not know i looked different. i didn't understand the way the other kids bullied me, i didn't know what it meant when they hit their hands against their chests, or that they were making fun of the way i walked. i didn't even realize until yesterday when the thoughts "someone thinks peter falk's eye makes him look menacing" "i always get treated like i'm norman bates" and "the other kids called me demon and said i looked like a serial killer" all crossed my mind at the same time and i connected it to a selfie i recently took where my eyes are shadowed, because they're sunken, and my right eye is partially rolled back, which makes me look like i'm glaring

my childhood friend recently said "you just always look sad", and i think when my mouth is slack, and especially when both of my eyes cross, i look dazed. when i saw myself in a mask in the bathroom, for some reason it made me look like i was mocking. this is just my face but nobody thinks that, so

then, yesterday i was thinking about how my parents have x symptoms like i do, and in fact they're much louder with their cruelty and insensitivity and anger, they make fun of everyone, but i'm the only one who's treated like i'm deceitful, manipulative, and "superficially charming" by authority figures. and then i remembered that my eyes shadow and my eye rolls back, and i have flat affect, and my face is potentially partially paralyzed on the left side, because i often only blink my right eye and talk out of the right corner of my mouth. oh. they treat me like that because i'm visibly different. i don't express emotions. i stammer. my body language is either flat or nervous, even though i'm not nervous, abled people just think shaking your leg or rocking back and forth means you're guilty. what are you guilty of? uh, everything. lying about vulnerability, emotions, trauma. they think you're completely empty and you just want people to think you're a compassionate, polite person so you can roll them around in your hand like clay. patrick bateman norman bates hannibal lecter

i think about all the adults when i was little who thought i was a mustache twirling villain who was only pretending to be frail and sickly to take everything all the hard working able bodied people deserved more than me. i don't really understand how you can look at a child and just think the absolute worst of them, yet i had so many fucking adults do it to me. they don't see me as a person. they see me as an npc who only exists to make their life harder. they're the hero, i'm the villain

interestingly i never really saw genuine superhero comic villains in media who looked or moved like me, it was mostly in crime shows, namely criminal minds. i don't care how autistic reid is. i absolutely cannot stand how many stammering, eye contact averting, wrist drop having mostly fat people the show turned into either a stalker or an actual serial killer, and then on top of that the cops who interrogated them would often do so until they had like an actual meltdown and it was supposed to make you even more suspicious of them and lmao didn't i fucking see that from my teachers when they harassed either me or some other visibly disabled kid in school. it was like, no matter what, we can only have ill intentions. we're not real people

also saw a fucking weird amount of antagonists in power chairs growing up to the point i am afraid to use one because if abled people already treat me like i have everyone wrapped around my finger, then how are they going to treat me if i'm rolling around in what they see as a throne and not someone's fucking legs

because visible difference has historically been seen as a punishment for internal evil, or as a marker for it, which is why my FACE and my body are a kick me sign to abled people and there's nothing i can do about it

there's a lot more i can say about this. there's so so so fucking much more i could say about this. but my brain just scrubbed itself, so whatever

You know, it occurs to me that the known internet phenomenon of Reddit “am I the asshole?” posts having completely misleading headers is actually a really great example of a far less known but far more common practice of extreme journalistic spin in cases where there are large monetary incentives to diminish the story in question.

Like, if you see a Reddit post titled “Am I the asshole for buying my wife a new dress?”, the post is pretty much always something totally deranged like: “I (48) really dislike the way my wife (20) dresses, because I think it’s too revealing and makes her look slutty, which was fine when we started dating five years ago, but it makes me feel like she’s going to cheat on me now that we’re married. I’ve politely asked her to get new clothes multiple times, and every time she refused because she said she liked her clothes, and didn’t want to waste money buying new ones. Yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore so I threw out a bunch of her old dresses and bought her a new one that was more modest looking. She started crying because one of the dresses I threw out had been left to her by her mom who died when she was a teen, but I couldn’t have known that it had sentimental value. She said that I should have asked, but obviously if I asked she’d have just told me not to throw out any of her clothes, including the ones that weren’t sentimental. Also, the more modest dress I bought was pretty expensive, and she never thanked me for it. Am I the asshole here, or is she being unreasonable?”

Similarly, whenever you see a headline like “Woman Wins Millions From McDonald’s Because Her Hot Coffee Was Too Hot”, if you dig a bit, you’ll almost always quickly find out that what actually happened was: A 79-year-old ordered coffee which, unbeknownst to her, was being served extremely dangerously hot, because McDonald’s was trying to have coffee that stayed warm over a long commute without spending any extra money on cups with better insulation. The coffee spilled on the old woman’s lap, giving her severe third degree burns over a huge portion of her body, including her genitals. She got to a hospital and they managed to save her life with skin grafting, but she became disabled from the accident, and her genitals and thighs were permanently disfigured. She tried to settle with McDonald’s for her medical costs, and McDonald’s refused to cover any portion of her medical expenses at all, and so she sued. At trial, the jury discovered that this same exact thing had happened seven hundred times before, and McDonald’s had still decided not to change their policy because paying out individual suits was cheaper than moderately reducing their coffee profits. As a result, the jury awarded punitive damages designed to penalize McDonald’s two days worth of their coffee profits, in addition to the woman’s medical costs.

I think it’s largely the same phenomenon, but I know a lot of people who are familiar with the first case, but don’t know to look for the second. If you see some totally outrageous “how could a person ever sue over this stupid thing?” case, you should immediately be incredibly suspicious that that’s all that actually happened, because a lot of the time, it absolutely isn’t. The people who have the most incentive to make their opponent look not only wrong, but completely crazy for having any sort of grievance at all, are often the actually unreasonable ones. 

Anyway this is all to say that if I see ANY of y’all automatically siding with McDonald’s over the recent case where 4-year-old girl was severely burned by their chicken nuggets because “hurr durr dumb kid didn’t know that chicken nuggets were hot, people sue over anything lol”, I will grab that McBoot you’re licking and shove it all the way up your McFuckingAss.

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Trying not to dwell on the ai dude, but it has kind of shed some light on the different reasons people make art. Because his whole attitude seemed like... he was superior for taking advantage of a technology that automates the creative process and outputs a sellable product. And in the end, that was what he wanted: a product.

The times that I've attempted to make things 'as a product' have historically not gone well. As an example- doing fanart for a Fandom that im not part of, but is massively popular at the moment. People can tell when I'm not being genuine, and the thing that connects fanart to its fans is the fact that it was made by someone with a shared interest. People can tell that love is in the art. And they can tell when love is not in the art.

I'm a 'product second' person. I draw moths because I think moths are beautiful. I make cartomancy decks because I want to see what happens when I put two arts next to each other. I make erasure art because I enjoy tearing that bitch of a book apart. I write stories because I love stories. I take photos because i love taking photos. I do things because I enjoy doing them, then sometimes I make them sellable, and sometimes they sell.

Maybe that's not great business sense, but I didn't set out to be a business person. I set out to make things because it's fun to make things and business followed after. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but at least I'm having fun.

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I have a job because I need money.

I craft stories, write comics, and make things because I have a driving need to create stuff. And while I definitely want people to like what I make and consume it... making money off of it was never my goal. The fact that I make enough off of it where it's effectively revenue neutral for me is just a bonus.

I'd be making this shit no matter what.

when charles schulz said "all you need is love. but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt" and anthony bourdain said "your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. enjoy the ride" and mark twain said "part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like." when erma bombeck said "i am not a glutton- i'm an explorer of food," voltaire said "ice-cream is exquisite. what a pity it isn't illegal" and when kurt vonnegut said "you can't just eat good food. you've got to talk about it too. and you've got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food."

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Spuffy is what happens when you play Russian roulette with your audience and lose

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in the replies: Drew Goddard was on some radio interview (Succubus Club? Can't remember) shortly after S7 concluded and the host asked him what he'd learned writing the show, and he thought for a minute and said "No matter what you do, the audience is still gonna love Spike."

I have a barely formed meta concept in my head about "the gambit gambit" being in play here. Trope named after X-Men's Gambit character, to describe the propensity of misogynistic male writers to lash out at female audiences for daring to like a male character misogynistic men can't project themselves onto, by trying to spitefully render the character unlikable.

Their attempts to render the character rarely work because those attempts are predicated on the assumption that emasculation is the key to rendering the character unlovable. Naturally this manifests as queercoding and has the opposite effect.

I’m glad someone pointed this out because yes!! Honestly, it goes even beyond emasculation--they do everything in their power to break down whatever mystique and coolness Spike ever had. I am convinced this is why Spike’s backstory is that his whole persona was fake and he was actually an upper-class Victorian poet. He cries openly, he stops winning fights, he’s effectively completely disempowered for the entire run of the show. And you will see in a lot of Gen spaces, like the reddit or certain facebook groups, that this method of “making Spike unlikable” did work on some people.

Often the take that “Spike was only good in s2″ is floated in these spaces. And I don’t want to generalize but.......... this is a take I see almost exclusively from Dudebro types. Straight dudes who think Angel is the epitome of cool or who don’t get all the hate Riley gets. But all this did was make Spike not appealing as a male power fantasy, and Spike’s female fanbase couldn’t care less about that.

They didn’t like that Spike was a good fighter, that he’d killed Slayers and had a rockstar swagger. They liked that as soon as Dru walks into the room in School Hard, he drops his routine and rushes to dote on her. They liked his softness and devotion and the contrast it has with his persona.

The misogynistic male writers never thought to discard that part of his character because they already thought it was a pathetic, unappealing trait.

Years on the internet and somehow i still click on comments sections with the insanely optimistic idea that I'll learn something new instead of being subjected to the dumbest motherfuckers online typing like their sole purpose in life is to make me want to end mine

"Wow, what an interesting post! I want to see what sort of fascinating discourse is being generated by the idea posited by the original poster" <- Me, operating under levels of delusion yet unexplained by modern science

Applying for jobs is a hell designed specifically to torment autistic people. Here is a well-paying task which you know in your heart and soul if they just gave you a desk and left you alone and allowed you to do it you would sit there and be more focused and enthusiastic and excellent at it than anyone else in the building. However, before they allow you to perform the task, you must pass through 3-4 opaque social crucibles where you must wear uncomfortable clothes and make eye contact while everyone expects you to lie, but not too much (no one is ever clear exactly how much lying is expected, “over” honesty is however penalized). You are being judged almost entirely on how well you understand these very specific and unclear rules that no one has explained. None of this has anything to do with your ability to perform the desired task.

It is hell! I want to acknowledge that the original point of the post is NOT fixed by my providing solutions (the way jobs are filled makes no sense), but also I want to leave some notes for folks struggling with these unspoken rules. 

Some brief notes on the correct kinds of “LYING”:

  • Always use “I” expressions, instead of “we”:
  1. eg “I created a solution to a recurring problem by doing [x].”, even if it was really you and two others in a group
  2. If you LED the group (or did project-management), you can say, “I led a team to create a solution to a recurring problem by doing [x].”
  3. This is because employers like to know that YOU can do, and they also value team-leadership. If you say “we”, they may stop you and ask what You did specifically. You can avoid this by just saying “I”.
  • Someone asks if you have experience in a program (like excel):
  1. If you feel confident using it:  “Yes, I am very proficient.”
  2. If you have used it a few times, and could at least google what to do next: “Yes, I have good experience.”
  3. If you don’t have any experience: “I have used it before. I generally pick up programs very fast, and I’m a quick learner.”
  • Mistakes (some interviewers may ask about a time you made a mistake, or a weakness of yours):
  1. Good answers are those with solutions.
  2. Bad answer examples:  “Sometimes I don’t catch mistakes before sending things.”  OR  “I don’t like working with other people”
  3. Good answer examples:  “I had a problem catching typos, so I implemented steps that force me to check my work.”  OR  “I prefer to do things on my own so I know it’s done right, but I’m working on trusting my teammates to take on pieces as well.”
  • Someone asks if you’ve ever led a team / managed a project:
  1. Try to say YES to this question (even if it is a lie)
  2. If you have, say yes, and say how many people were on the team. 
  3. If you haven’t, but you played a large role in a group of people, say yes, and talk about your primary role on the team. 
  4. If you haven’t, but you worked solo on something that needed input from other people, say yes, and say what the project was about. 

Additional:

  • Misc Rules
  1. You can ask people to repeat interview questions
  2. You can write down interview questions while they’re asking (write the basics of the question down for yourself, like the top things you have to answer). People will wait for you to finish writing, you don’t have to answer Immediately.
  3. Try to keep your answer to questions somewhere between 30 seconds to 1 minute and 30 seconds. You don’t have to time it, but if you find that your answers are taking 3 minutes, you might lose interest.
  • Have a list of projects / bragging points to talk about in advance
  1. Try to make sure they at least answer the core question asked, don’t just bring up a completely unrelated topic
  2. Example: if you are really excited to talk about a program you wrote, and someone asks about balancing projects, you can say you are good at AUTOMATION, and an example is this program you wrote
  • “Do you have any questions for us?” (A question asked at the end of most interviews.)
  1. “What has been your favorite part of working at [company]?”
  2. “What’s been your favorite project to work on?”
  3. People like talking about themselves
  • Thank you emails
  1. Some employers care if you send them a thank you “letter” (email). Sometime by the end of the day (you can do it right after the interview if you think you’ll forget), send a thank you email like this (you can look up other templates, or ask a friend for help):
  2. Subject Line:  Thank You
  3. “Hi [interviewer name], It was great speaking with you. Hearing more about the role, as well as what you said about [their answer to a question you asked them] has made me even more excited for this opportunity. Thank you for your time today, [Your Name]

Good luck!!

Im gonna need this in 2 years!

Honestly the “applying and interviewing for a job” is harder and more stressful than actually doing the job 999% of the time for me. I hate it so much.

Wait they ask about mistakes and weaknesses because they want to hear about solutions?! That makes so much more sense! Why dont they just verbalize the solution part!

I will add that a lot of companies really value the you asking questions part of the interview.

its a great opportunity to get information on what questions they will ask at the next interview if the job is a multi interview process type job, OR to figure out what the typical day to day work is like at the job which will reduce the uncertaintiy of new company culture when you start.

And! they love it when you ask this because it makes you sound smart, prepared, and like you already work there.

questions like “what will my first 30, 60, 90 days look like as an employee?” or “what is your new employee onboarding process like?”(now you know what to expect if you work there.“

"what is the typical timeline like for project deliverables in this role?”

(shows you care about deadlines and deliverables, gives you insight into how fast they work/ and a way to frame your experience to match it)

“what does the average day look like for this position/on this team?” (haha you’ve fallen into my trap now we’re both imagining what me working there would be like)

“how does this company measure success in this role?”

(gives you an idea of the kind of metrics or indicators of success from previous roles you should bring up)

“what opportunities or processes does the company have for improving my skills” or “what opportunities or processes does the company have for advancement and promotion?” (gives you insight into their benefits which might not be public. gives them something to brag about, makes you sound ambitious and driven)

“what are the most important qualities that would make someone succesful on this team?” (this one is great because now you know what to emphasize about yourself in the next interview, and/or the thank you letter)

A QUEEN

Okay, I don’t normally add on to posts but in this case I’ve got to.

Rachel Ann Bovier is a Pittsburgh legend who has been publishing her poems in city newspapers for decades. In more recent years, she started putting up these bill boards along major roads. For what reason? I have no clue. But I would often pass them on my way to Oakland for therapy. They never failed to cheer me up.

As a young trans writer, they gave me this precious little spark of joy. There was someone like me, a writer, a Pittsburgher, a trans person, who was confident enough to put their face on a bill board! I would always smile as we passed by and my mom took note.

Fast forward a few years and it’s my 21st birthday. My mom has been super excited about my gift and teased me about it over and over again. She said it was the best gift she’d ever gotten me and in many ways she was right. It was a custom poem she commissioned from Miss Bouvier! It congratulated me on my birthday, my academic success, lots of little stuff. It was simple and sweet and perfect.

I’m still not out to my parents about being trans, but that poem serves as a reminder to me that trans people are every where, they are artists, they are all ages, and their visibility is essential. So thank you to Rachel Ann Bouvier for being a great poetess and a Pittsburgh treasure!

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there's literally no universal human experience. and i'm not just talking about love but like literally everything. even if 99.8% of the population has a common experience that's still 7.8 million that don't. there's no universal experience

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okay you know what i will elaborate because people seem to take this the wrong way. there is no universal human experience. only humans. yes humans all breathe and are born. guess what? plants and animals also breathe. not a human experience. dogs are born. cats are born. the things you are naming are not HUMAN experiences they are universal experiences for many species.

this post was originally made for an aspec audience. i think it may have gotten a bit farther than i intended.

the point i am trying to make is that to find a universal human experience you have to break it down to processes that keep us alive, processes that other animals also perform. i am trying to tell all of you that you cannot always apply your experiences to others. it will never be the same. we are all different. humanity is not a monolith. you are missing the point if you are finding things that are supposedly universal.