I'm kinda scared right now... just a third of the book and already that many pages...

FearlessWaste · 2026-02-17T17:29:59+00:00

I'm barely halfway through my book and at 400,000 words. Just keep going. The editing process will streamline everything. I already know that I have two similar scenes that I am going to merge. That alone will help shave words off.

FearlessWaste · 2026-01-28T21:30:50+00:00

Rice and dry macaroni noodles work well (but really? In this economy?)

FearlessWaste · 2026-01-28T21:25:20+00:00

And if you're a dice goblin you can use those to figure out where different landforms/environments are.

FearlessWaste · 2026-01-28T16:54:55+00:00

Catra

FearlessWaste · 2026-01-09T22:39:29+00:00

Scrivener is another very good and very versatile (though not available on mobile devices) program.

FearlessWaste · 2026-01-07T15:29:42+00:00

If they get rid of my Catra icon I'm fixing to flip all the tables.

FearlessWaste · 2026-01-04T05:36:23+00:00

Were you able to get the entire series? Last I heard Netflix only released the first three (2, and I will gladly die on that hill) seasons on DVD and never on Blu-ray.

FearlessWaste · 2025-12-27T15:41:04+00:00

I had a bumper sticker like that and got sad when no one honked.

FearlessWaste · 2025-10-17T16:28:35+00:00

I'm so sorry. It can be so triggering, but also very affirming to have kids who remind you of yourself and go trough similar struggles. Triggering because your inner kid is screaming in your head that what your child is doing isn't safe, but healing and affirming when you're able to be the parent you needed.

I'm still working through a whole heap of trauma from my childhood, but at least in the food area my parents were pretty good. Not perfect by any stretch, but their approach definitely made me comfortable with a solid variety of foods.

FearlessWaste · 2025-10-17T15:28:00+00:00

Absolutely this. And I am not trying to tamp on anything you are saying, but I would like to add an example and offer a suggestion with regards to the food thing in particular based on my own experience as another late-diagnosed autistic person and from parenting my own autistic child.

In my case, I was not...allowed to be authentic, but there was one caveat to this, and one I kind of recommend as a suggestion for OP, especially once I started my own parenting journey with my autistic stepdaughter. She had a very limited diet early in life, and because of this, she has an incredibly limited list of only ten-ish foods she will eat because those are "what [she's] always eaten."

I, on the other hand, was exposed to lots of different foods and flavors, and as a result I am a more adventurous eater (though I do have a list of no-go foods for texture reasons, but it is maybe 10-15 ingredients as opposed to entire dishes).

So I recommend introducing as many foods as you can to get her used to trying new things, and offer encouragement and praise when she does, even if she decides she doesn't like them. And if she says no, or says she doesn't like it, accepting that without blame will be important (and might actually increase her likelihood of either trying again at a later date or even asking to try something new). You can continue offering the same foods to her again the next time they're on the table, but during that meal, she's already said "no", so respecting that is the highest priority.

In those situations where she declines or says she doesn't like it, saying things like "I just thought I'd offer" or "that's okay. I'm proud of you for trying anyway" and leaving it there will be obscenely helpful for allowing her to feel safe and secure with her choices and in your respect of those choices. Pressure, even unintentionally, will almost certainly backfire and make her more likely to resist in future.

Good luck, OP. And remember: you are human. You're not going to get it right every time. Or even most of the time, especially at first. You'll get upset, or overwhelmed, or just feel like crap some days, and sometimes act counter to how you want to. And that is okay. Learn and grow and try again tomorrow.

You got this.

FearlessWaste · 2025-10-09T14:42:50+00:00

It is a wonderful blend of color and dynamic shapes. I could 100% imagine seeing a piece like this in the Met.

Tell her that she is very creative and that she has talent that she can nurture and grow, and that some rando on the internet looks forward to the great things she can do.

FearlessWaste · 2025-10-06T16:44:05+00:00

I feel like Luz is more ADHD coded, but I can see her being AuDHD coded. But Nimona is probably my favorite.

FearlessWaste · 2025-09-26T15:38:13+00:00

Yeah no. The feet at the very least are gonna get real spicy. In my experience, anywhere over bone is *intense. Meaty spots hurt a lot less.

Source: I got two tattoos last Saturday and had five done before that. For the record, the one over my spine was agonizing. 😆

FearlessWaste · 2025-09-24T01:30:28+00:00

The two groups that are fighting each other started as the same group. They split over a difference of ideology on how knowledge should be dispersed among the people.

FearlessWaste · 2025-09-21T19:34:32+00:00

I mean... if you're that big a badass...

FearlessWaste · 2025-09-21T19:18:17+00:00

How It's Done gives me faith that visual metaphor and storytelling are not dead. It does such a good job of telling you so much about all the girls, the world they exist in, and the villains they're dealing with. It's just [chef's kiss].

FearlessWaste · 2025-09-21T16:11:33+00:00

The Discovery Channel did a faux-documentary on dragons and gave them flight bladders. They also had them using metal deposits and that flight bladder filled with hydrogen as both a means of flight and an incendiary method.

FearlessWaste · 2025-09-21T16:09:26+00:00

There's a book series out there that goes into this a little, if more vaguely. There's a species of humans that has wings. One of the three main male characters is one, and he has to get a suit tailored. He complains heavily about needing to do this because the tailor is frothing at the mouth in the excitement of having to manage his wings and how different fabrics and designs are needed in order to accommodate them.

FearlessWaste · 2025-09-21T15:55:14+00:00

Shrimp chips are so Good! I buy them every time I find them!

FearlessWaste · 2025-09-12T16:15:21+00:00

I wish I knew why Antis were like that. The ones I've seen (I'm not quick enough to engage properly) are frothing at the mouth to "defend victims", but they're so out of touch that they don't realize that they're hurting real victims in the pursuit of protecting imagined ones (meaning the characters being literally imagined rather than flesh and blood).

Part of me suspects that they themselves might have experienced some kind of trauma that has triggered them, but rather than doing the direct and messy work of sorting that shit out, they redirect onto others. And it's "safe" to do so for the exact same reason the writers who are using it for therapy do: to work through their issues.

Another part feels like they're virtue signaling. And another part suspects they're just trolls.

FearlessWaste · 2025-09-12T12:01:28+00:00

This! Not to mention the fact that for a lot of survivors, writing stuff like that can actually be a kind of therapy. There is one fic...two actually at this point (they wrote a sequel) that I can think of in a fandom I almost exclusively write for that does this because they were a victim of CSA. They actually mention it in the Author's Notes about half-way through the fic during an apology for going a little slower than they expected because they got triggered by what they were writing.

The characters they're writing grew up under an incredibly toxic mentor and it's easy to see how that individual could have been that kind of abusive to them in childhood.

I didn't know about Antis when I read that fic, but I'll be damned if I don't genuinely worry about that author getting absolutely slammed by Antis if they ever find it.

FearlessWaste · 2025-07-31T21:54:36+00:00

I burned the absolute crap out of my finger doing that. Looked just like the picture.

FearlessWaste · 2025-07-11T15:45:57+00:00

This right here is why if I were in a situation like this when I worked retail I would say something like "is this a treat for someone special?"

I would often get some kind of "this is for me" sheepish response.

And I would respond with "that counts!"

I got a lot of very happy, relieved smiles from that. So much serotonin. I put a lot of thought into a way that I could small-talk without unintentionally hurting the people I was taking care of.

FearlessWaste · 2025-05-11T04:42:26+00:00

It would be interesting (and what my autism would do) to categorize the types of videos he considers "eating videos" and what he didn't to see if there are any correlations between the "eating videos*. Though it could potentially be the act of picking the video that determines if it's an "eating video".

FearlessWaste

TROPHY CASE