@benroyce @crow i think there is a significant and unjustified shifting of blame going on when people say that normal posts have 'caused' panic attacks, nightmares, and so on.

non-extreme posts are not the primary cause of mental health tailspins. a picture of a sandwich does not 'cause' someone to spiral into an eating disorder relapse. if something so innocuous sets that person off, they were already on the brink, and it's unfair to blame the sandwich poster for severe mental health issues that were actually caused by something else.

i must interact mostly with women and other queers because i always get a dumbfounded moment of culture shock when i encounter these attitudes in the wild.

'they'll think i'm gay' is such an overarching fear with certain kinds of men that it must make their lives miserable. it has to warp you when you're constantly anxious about liking anything too pleasant.

hetero adventures: husbands who are anxious when driving their wives' cars, in case they are perceived as gay

there is almost always a better solution than surveillance. like those stupid Ring doorbells—get your packages shipped to a pickup point. the risk of someone porch pirating your new dildo doesn't justify putting everyone in your neighbourhood on Amazon's spy net.

age verification is only episode one million in the saga of surveillance being snuck inside the Trojan horse of 'safety' and people keep falling for it again and again

#ScribesAndMakers 14. How are things going for you this month, creatively or otherwise?

i uploaded the 2nd last chapter of Venus Verticordia this month, which was a long time coming. i had some difficult creative problems that took me a long time to solve, but i think i solved them effectively. https://archiveofourown.org/works/62147545/chapters/206684441

this chapter contains both the emotional and plot climaxes of the book, so it has both action & romance. i posted some action snippets in previous prompts, so for this one i included some intimacy.

'[Eleanor] moved her fingers deftly amidst the feather shafts in search of the right quill. Her first thought had been to choose one of the pinion feathers, but when she saw them up close she marvelled at the size of them, each one as long as her arm, and curved like a sabre. The smaller feathers near Luce’s shoulders were more suitable, and as Eleanor gently tested their connections, they transmitted subtle movements of the muscles underneath, a feeling of coiled power just beneath the surface.'

i wish i could get people the fuck off facebook by screaming into the void about it. but judging by what i see at work, the average facebook user is barely tech savvy enough to use their own phone, so yelling at them about decentralization, federation, and instances is going to get us exactly nowhere

#WritersCoffeeClub 13. Do you use maps as reference materials as you write?

online maps are readily available, and necessary when i have to plan character journeys through real-world regions that i can't visit in person. (for instance, the parts of the story that are set in ancient Israel.) it would be geographically illiterate of me to *not* consult a map in these cases.

for the fictionalized locations, i have not needed to create maps, because the geography is not described in enough detail to need them. this may change when i have to start planning more journeys again.

people think that secretary jobs are unskilled labour but i have seen what happens when the consultant class fills in on a sick day.

appointments squashed to half the length you need, appointments cutting into lunch time or past 5:00 without approval, no useful information gathered beforehand, total bewilderment when handling people's devices. we had some hearing aid industry consultant fill in one day and she didn't even know the difference between a hearing aid and an earmold. and this is a class who thinks they can tell us how to do our jobs.

#WordWeavers 3. Share a vivid sensory description from your story. What was writing it like?

my favourite sensory description is from early in the WIP, when Eleanor tries some of Lucifer's cooking for the first time. i was trying to imagine something like the best boeuf bourguignon you've ever tasted.

'[Eleanor] chewed quietly for a moment. At first the feeling was unremarkable. But gradually her little mouth began to come alive with a peculiar excitation she had not felt in years, a feeling she mistook at first for sorcery but which was really just the taste of food with an actual flavour in it. It was delightful; it was electrifying. She felt the sensation slowly building, spreading outward like the seeping of some invigorating potion, until her entire body seemed to brighten with the feeling. She peered down at her plate, the workings of her face and brow conveying some silent inward struggle, as if she were confused by the experience. My God, she thought—was this how food was supposed to taste?'

when your reward for improving efficiency is to be given more work

@yatagarasu it's too bad that 'google the task you want to do' is becoming obsolete advice with the enshittification of search engines. now you can't turn anyone loose on a search engine without having them download some scam app or follow malicious instructions.

on the other hand, the internal 'search' option in settings menus still seems to be valuable. looking to disable notifications? type in 'notifications' and start looking there.

(i should mention that i am not a tech expert by Mastodon standards, and the extent of my tech support amounts to trying to teach clients how to use their own phones. this takes up a nontrivial amount of clinic time.)

#WritersCoffeeClub 24. Share something you’re proud of but had to cut from a work.

i have a section of one chapter that is vulnerable to getting cut, even though i like it, and it has some thematic significance. it's a little over a page.

in this chapter, Lucifer and Eleanor are on a midnight stakeout, watching a flock of sheep for signs of demon activity. they're sitting in an ancient oak tree, with Eleanor inside the tree cavity, and Lucifer perched on a thick limb above her. so far, the mission has been a dud, and they are passing the time with storytelling. after a few rounds, Lucifer decides to recite some ancient poetry.

'When Luce would speak at length like this, the idiosyncrasies of her voice were given greater space in which to reveal themselves, and in the occasional rounding of a /th/ or rolling of an /r/ there lay a trace of something unaccountably ancient and mysterious, as though within her very breath a wind still blew from a world of dunes, red cliffs, and a sun that shone without mercy.'

one thing i notice about people with low tech literacy is that they don't have a basic problem solving logic for approaching technology. i.e. they don't think 'oh, i need to change a setting, let's search for it in the Settings menu.' instead they try to memorize the steps to do every individual task on their phone or computer. (they seem to think i've memorized all these steps as well?)

i don't know how you would teach this problem solving framework to people without just turning them loose on tech and encouraging them to learn. there is a significant hurdle of fear that they would have to get over first.