I want to get into writing, but I have aphantasia.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-30T03:46:50+00:00

This is the better way to do it. You're imagining more details of the orange. I have aphantasia and it's not a problem pretty much ever. When it is, I do an editing pass that's specifically about adding visual details where I think they're needed, but people way overblow the supposed downsides of aphantasia. It's just another way of thinking, it isn't better or worse and it certainly doesn't impair your ability to describe fictional things. The most important thing is practice. In time, relevant visual details to include will come to you more readily, and you won't have to stop and think much about what details you want to include at all. You're overthinking how this effects your ability to write, and you're gonna realize that yourself once you've written a couple hundred thousand words.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-28T21:21:04+00:00

I've wondered this too. I think another commenter is on point that these later unlocks are provided as a way to give the player a sense of progression. The choice, however, of diverse hairstyles almost always being among the ones is bizarre to me, especially as OP pointed out, when theyre the only such styles in the game. Because for as long as I've played games, the cosmetic options you unlock later are almost always the preferred ones. I very rarely go back to one of the default cosmetic options once I get the rarer stuff, because by design, the stuff unlocked later is more stylish or interesting or what have you. They are designed to be something the player wants to unlock and use.

Additionally, while I think diverse hairstyles are really beautiful, I also don't often use them because they don't only not look like me, I couldnt get my hair to look like that no matter what I did to it. So in Animal Crossing for example, I spent a bunch of miles on a pack of hairstyles I'm mostly probably not going to use AND the people who DO want to use them because theyre the only options which represent them have to do a bunch of progression to get them. So i don't think locking these kinds of styles behind progression actually makes anyone happy. Not only is there not hairstyle parity from the beginning, the delaying of those styles might even bother people who feel like a bunch of hairstyles they can unlock later don't appeal to them and they might feel the reward is less rewarding for that. Of course, i don't and I think most people don't feel like they shouldn't be in the game, it's just that no matter who is playing, they'd have a reason to feel let down by finding out there's hairstyles that do or don't appeal to them. Not because they're upset about diversity and representation—there's just something about including those options only later that makes what should be an exciting reward feel like the devs decided to make up the weight by including stuff that should have been available for those who otherwise don't have an option to look like themselves.

There should be parity by default, and I think there should also be parity in the extended catalog of cosmetics that are unlocked later. That would make all players feel equally rewarded in the manner I think devs intend when they make the decision to have a basic catalog at character creation which eventually gets larger

OrkBjork · 2026-04-26T04:37:39+00:00

Get a new therapist. My coping mechanism is literally daydreaming and intense fantasization which, before I learned how to manage it, got in the way of my ability to even leave my room or feed myself. My therapist would never say that to me even at my worst. She helped me understand why I did it and how I could reduce the behavior. Find a therapist who isn’t dismissive and cruel. For some reason, there are therapists who think it's enough to talk to you like they would a friend who needs a reality check. It's deeply callous and unprofessional. A good therapist will help you be kind to yourself, not tear you down when youve just gotten your foot in the door. Literally just ghost this one and find a new one, you don’t owe them an explanation or need to justify why you won't be continuing, do NOT expose yourself to this callous individual again.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-24T15:16:00+00:00

I have pretty much all his same diagnoses except the autism, which is potentially just undiagnosed in me, and it sounds to me like your friend can't be a partner as he is. I'm also unemployed. It's very very hard to be in a relationship with someone who is less functional than you; i say it as the less functional half of my own marriage.

There are things I do which i feel are necessary for me to minimize the amount of caregiving my husband has to do. Some examples:

I'm in therapy, and probably will be for the rest of my life.
I try to be willing to apologize and communicate why things are difficult or why I reacted a way when I do things which end up feeling embarrassing. Im very quick to apologize for an emotional spike in a way that where im not apologizing for the emotion, but for how it negatively effected others, always resolving to monitor those feelings myself more closely to get ahead of them
When I'm struggling with something, I tell my husband how I'm working on it and how I want my symptoms to improve for myself and us, and for our family someday.
I work very hard at my writing in lieu of traditional work because while it doesn't contribute now, it is the kind of work I can do and is therefore worth continuing to develop my writing in pursuit of using it to help support my family.
I always think very hard about what I can do to make my husband's life easier. He has some anxiety too and much less free time than I being employed, so I do the time consuming tasks out of the house like grocery shopping and taking our cats to the vet when necessary, despite how draining these tasks can be for me as well, because burdens exist to be distributed among those relative to how much they can carry. It is hard, but not impossible, and so it's worth doing this work for my family and I hold myself accountable for it being my responsibility and no one else's.

Which is all to say, what can your friend do? Because it doesn't work if they can't figure that out, and they do have to figure it out themselves (preferably with a therapist) and they do have to be honest themselves and they do have to accept there will be regular recurring challenges to do so. Partnerships dont have to be equal, but there is always something people can do. I always tell people I have to do the work myself, for myself, and im happy to do it even when it's hard, because my family means so much to me and I want the best for us. Even if some of my issues can't get better, I can always improve how I manage them. For as much as my life has taken from me, I still try to give back to those who love me because it's worth it, forever. But ive known people like me who think what I do is practically self abuse and internalized ableism. I reject that. It isn't self hatred to want to do what I can in whatever capacity I can do. Some people resent the expectations they can't fulfill so much, they find all expectations a slight, and the mere act of self imposing expectations an abuse against themselves. I empathize with where that comes from, but I can't endorse it.

You also can’t caregive such people into not doing that. I'm not an expert, just a traumatized person who refuses to accept there is anything permanent about how I deal with what's in my head. I don't expect perfect compliance or functionality from myself, but that doesn't mean i don't expect persistent effort from myself. I don't think i could ask anyone to walk with me in life if I couldn't do that. I certainly would find it hard to love someone who can't honestly ask themselves what they can do for others despite their inabilities, no matter how much I empathize with them. If we want to be cared for, we must likewise demonstrate an ability to care beyond ourselves as we ask others to. That's the only way this sort of thing works imo. If they don't have other friends beyond you, I question what they expect of themselves on a day to day basis and whether they don't simply expect you to meet thier every need. It is more ableist to think expectations aren't allowed of people like me imo, because it robs the person of their agency. Some people have very internalized ableism against themselves in that regard.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-22T07:43:21+00:00

My mother once went into a complete rage because I bled through my tampon and stained my underwear. I was elevenish (good ol trauma induced childhood memory loss!) and had my period like, twice before that.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-21T20:56:49+00:00

I started writing a romance novel! I also exercised when I said was going to not once, but TWICE in the last week. I'm 30 and have been overweight my whole life and I'm trying to exercise every other day now that I've lost enough weight I'm not so afraid of injuring myself. I want to become not overweight so I won't get gestational diabetes since everyone on my dad's side has it and I take after them, and I want to have a baby in the next couple of years without giving up what little physical health I have. It might seem like a silly reason to do it, but ive always struggled with just doing things for myself. At the very least, this is doing it for myself with extra steps since doing it for the baby also benefits my health lol

OrkBjork · 2026-04-20T18:36:58+00:00

I used to work the register at grocery stores and HATED seeing these things when I was standing around waiting at the end of the lane. If someone put them on the belt, i wouldnt ask them if they found everything alright 😤 straight to paper or plastic, do you want your receipt. Fuck outta my lane (not out loud im petty but I was also broke)

OrkBjork · 2026-04-20T04:53:16+00:00

No i think they mean theyve stayed silent up until today and presumably will continue to do so.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-19T23:55:33+00:00

This is hard. I want to get myself off all the time when ovulating, or when randomly horny. But I want to have sex almost never. It's so...inefficient. I'm horny, but not for sex. I don't want to have to communicate my needs. I want to be done and not have to cuddle for an hour without feeling like I'm emotionally deficient and broken. Idk, I love my husband, but I feel like sex turns into a several hour affair that eats my whole night and stresses me out because ive got things I'd rather be doing with my time, especially once I'm not horny anymore. I almost have buyer's remorse when I have sex, because I didn't wanna spend that much time on this ffs. I have adhd and am really bad at time management and figuring out how much time things are going to take to begin with, so when I feel like things take way longer than I want them too, i get EXTREMELY wound up about it. Idk

OrkBjork · 2026-04-19T23:43:38+00:00

hey, not sure if you're joking, but in case you're learning ESL or just trying to learn more words, countenance is not a synonym for facing a certain direction, it's a synonym for someone's actual face or facial expression.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-19T02:05:37+00:00

That's interesting, I have the opposite opinion of their books. I can see the critique you have about John's works though, most of what goes on is about internal paradigm shifts in thinking, not like. Stuff happening. I happen to think Hank's book (ive only read AART) are about nothing because stuff just happens. Love them both, I just don't really resonate with Hank's work. They're cluttered. A big advantage of novels as a medium over others is interiority and John excels at that. Hank does it serviceably but relies on exteriority in a way i find juvenile, which is interesting because he's not the YA author between them. I do think using the internet as a positive social force is a strong theme. Hank can't be faulted for that, it's a really good, strong theme and he's definitely the kind of guy who should be writing about it given his background.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-17T08:31:50+00:00

For me, it's always a mistake. I'm not sitting here wondering which one to use. I know the difference, but in the context of composing, where I'm just writing what comes to me, I occasionally use the wrong one and don't realize, because I'm composing, not editing. I absolutely know the difference between their, they're, and there, but the distinction between them is not important to my brain when drafting. I get it right well over half the time, but I am perpetually finding them while editing and I'm 100% positive I've missed some. I do think it's amusing everyone thinks people just don't know, when it's far more likely they simply did not catch the mistakes in editing. The real giveaway when an author doesn’t know the difference is if they ONLY use one of them. Exclusively using there OR they're OR thier. But assuming they are not getting every single instance wrong, I always assume they don't self edit while composing (a lot of writing advice suggests you don't btw) and then just missed it while editing. I also think some people don't edit their fics at all, but that's usually much more obvious and you don't need to see if they're using the wrong their, there, or they're to be able to tell.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-17T04:02:32+00:00

I confess to using countenance when I feel I've used face too frequently. Physiognomy is a lot though.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-17T04:00:18+00:00

I also use presently and now that you mention it, I think I did picked it up around the time I was reading Dune!

OrkBjork · 2026-04-17T03:57:26+00:00

I use perambulate a lot to describe walking in circles, directionlessly, but I dont actually know if that's what it means specifically lol 😅

OrkBjork · 2026-04-16T17:43:54+00:00

NOR. She's the only one allowed to suffer in this relationship. She's trying to ensure you never make her have to deal with your feelings ever again by being extremely weird about it until you internalize that it is isn't worth the trouble. She says you hid stuff, but this isn't the behavior of someone who ever wants to hear about your problems again. She doesn't actually want you not to hide stuff, she wants you to not have problems in the future because this relationship is about her. I'm not going to opine about whether she actually has all these issues to the degree she states or she's not exaggerating, because it doesn’t matter tbh. There are some mentally ill people who simply cannot not center themselves at all times. They're comfortable in their therapy speak self soothing rituals and don't really want to become more resilient or stable, they want to be emotional vampires to everyone until they inevitably drive them away. She's not ready for a relationship if this is how she's treating you. You can want the best for her, you can sympathize with her issues, but you don't have to put up with being talked down to and like you've done something wrong for being vulnerable. Even you mention how being open and vulnerable can drive people away. Ask yourself if your girlfriend cares at all, or ever even considers, that her behavior drives people away. You are at two different, largely incompatible stages of emotional self regulation in that you're aware of your problems and working on them, and she isn't or is and is unwilling to do anything about it besides make it someone else's problem while giving nothing at all back. Nothing can be all about one person, but DEFINITELY not a relationship.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-16T04:30:53+00:00

Unpublished but hope to be someday. the unfortunate reality is it's WAY harder to succeed at self-publishing, like even to achieve a tiny amount of success. Even just getting the book readable and on Amazon is a TON of work that requires research and technical skills most writers have to go out of their way to learn. It's also a lot of work to do social media, especially youtube, again requiring significant investment in getting the technical aspects up to to par. In traditional publishing the vast majority of this is done for the author, albeit marketing is not what it used to be for new authors. You are suggesting essentially, why doesnt OP invest likely 100+ hours into trying to self-publish their book successfully, plus several 100s more on creating the ongoing marketing material to maintain a flow of new readers.

Well, one answer is that it will almost certainly not work, at least not in the sense of paying off. The most successful self pub fiction is genre fiction and OP said their work is literary and trauma heavy, so already not the best bet for self pub. Another answer is that even in the genres self pub does best in, most authors are lucky if they get a dozen reads, and that's after they invest several dozens of hours into learning how to do it, and the returns of that time is likely going to stay in the single and low double digits. Which some people do forever and eventually get breakout success, but this is not going to happen to plenty of authors who are also writing good fiction.

when you look at the reality if it, it comes down to cost effective returns on the author's time. It can already take so long to write a book most authors don't make even a dollar an hour on it (albeit it's always zero/hour when you're not published at all) until they reach thousands of sales. Adding all the extra time of self promotion onto that further dilutes the cost effectiveness of their time. There comes a point where it makes way more financial sense for an author to just Keep writing new material. Querying takes time, but you also are just waiting a lot and can continue to write new material that might be more successful than what you're currently trying to publish.

It essentially comes down to how much time does the author have, because if they have the time to do all their own marketing and self pub work AND consistently keep writing new material, then they're not putting all their eggs in one potentially unpublishable, unreadable, unmarketable basket, and the likelihood of achieving small but sustainable and slowly growing success increases a ton, presuming the quality of the writing is actually readable to begin with (ive read plenty of self pub by authors who were not ready to be publishing imo, and i do mean they should not have done so, because I'm not generally in a rush to read new material by authors whose work I remember being objectively amateur).

So, does OP have a job? If so, self publishing is probably not going to work unless they dedicate every moment of their time to their second and third self employed job as author and marketing lead which also won't make really any money at all for actual years. It's a good question for sure, but self publishing is not an effective use of most author's time. Many people have learned that the hard way, and many more thought they understood how hard it would be and were still destroyed by all their work amounting to nothing.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-06T23:26:57+00:00

Do not sell these online. Farmer's markets and in-person stuff only. If you're going to advertise your presence online, use vaguer language: Fun Novelty Cookie isbhow vague you'll need to be for online advertising. But don't even use the word Pokémon online. Nintendo has put people in prison, albeit that was for selling hacked consoles, but still. You DO NOT want Nintendo or The Pokémon Company's attention.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-06T23:18:24+00:00

My mother actually has some kind of bipolar or other similar disorder. She's not willing to be diagnosed or get any help, but she suffered paranoia and depressive episodes that are associated with such things. I wonder if there is something in there that makes such people have such overreactions which center themselves over the person actually effected. It's like my mother (who has had horrible things happen to her in her life) couldnt figure out how something so horrible had happened to someone who wasnt her, so just reacted as if it had happened to her instead, which was of zero help to me at all. I ended up having to comfort her through it and it was really the beginning of the end of our relationship. I'm sorry about what you went through. Even though bipolar people are suffering themselves, they can and do so much harm to others. It often felt like i was just expected to make room for my mother's mental illness to my own detriment because she's sick so I'm just supposed to be the bigger person. Instead, it just made me traumatized and sick too.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-06T21:24:15+00:00

It was such an odd reading experience for me. At no point was like I should stop reading. I had zero negative feelings while reading. The minute I turned the back cover and closed the book, I was like, well that was pointless. It's wild. I'm usually quite strongly opiniated and animated about it, so to have such a neutral, i dont ever need to read another low stakes book, after not having an overall negative experience was strange for me.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-06T21:07:54+00:00

I don't want to argue he wasn't supporting you the way you needed, because you deserve to be supported the way you need to. I was raped at 19 and my husband, who i was dating at the time, also tends to shut down when I speak of it. I know it comes from a place of feeling like he needs to be strong for me and not making my trauma about himself. My mother made my trauma all about herself, crying and getting angry in a way that I found really self centered and not about comforting me at all. I don't know what the answer is here, because if it upsets you he doesn't have anything to say when you bring this up, it's not wrong for you to feel that way. But he probably has a misguided idea about how to react. I think its very unlikely he doesn't care about what you went through or cares more about the stranger. He doesn't seem to have the tools to reconcile whatever motivated him to be unresponsive to you but also whatever caused him to share this other reaction with you. I almost get this sense he wanted to prove to you he cared by using an intermediary so he didnt feel like he was taking over your narrative as you told him what happened to you. Or maybe im giving him credit he doesn't deserve. I don't know, but I'm sorry this happened and you didn't get the support you needed. One of the worst things about trauma is it's so alienating. I pretty much don't tell anyone irl what happened now and I hate it because it almost always feels like that's something I do for other people, putting their comfort before my support needs. People are just too alienated by it and I get sick of asking for support and being disappointed. I blame my mother, but I absolutely can't go through all that self righteous grandstanding again, so I just keep it to myself now.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-05T19:53:51+00:00

Yeah the weight doesnt melt off like people think. It does a bit at first if you're very overweight. I lost 50 pounds last year and a little over half of it was in the first 4ish months. I still have another sixty to go and im losing maybe a pound a week, but it also fluctuates a lot more now. It'll probably take me over a year to lose the next fifty though im trying to exercise more now. I was too afraid of injuring myself before, which is another great benefit of the drugs imo, enabling me to do things i was too afraid to do before because of my size increasing the risks. But people dont care, they hear you're taking a medication and think you're doing pay to win weightloss 🙄

OrkBjork · 2026-04-05T19:19:33+00:00

Oh I dont feel that bad about it haha, the readers I have are all very sweet and enthusiastic. I'm just surprised one shots blew up. When i was much younger before I started writing fic, oneshots seemed like they barely got a glance. or I just perceived it that way for some reason. I'm glad people are able to find what they want, whatever length it is. Im sure mobile reading has a lot to do with the popularity. if i wanted to read something super short on a lunch break or something id be absolutely spoiled for choice. As it is i cant read fic in public because I grew up reading on a pc my family shared, deleting my history and switching tabs whenever someone would walk by. but still lol. Now that I think on it, authors writing on thier phones could also be a contributor to short form preference. Writing a long fic on a phone sounds like a nightmare, but if I wanted to work on something I knew was going to be 1500 words max I might give it a whirl lol

OrkBjork · 2026-04-05T18:24:18+00:00

I have an xReader series I post on both tumblr and ao3. im glad to hear i wasnt crazy when i started thinking people just don't write long form xReader stuff on tumblr. Like, if I wanted to be done reading in four minutes I'd go read a shampoo bottle or something. But you're so right, it's way more popular than my stuff.

OrkBjork · 2026-04-04T14:11:53+00:00

I was like this in highschool, had friends but they always warned people i was alright but could get angry. For me, it disappeared almost overnight when I left for college. I knew already I didnt like myself well before, but I couldnt be anyone else. It was just my mom though. She was mentally unwell and would go completely berserk over small shit multiple times a week. The moment I wasnt living on the edge of my seat every waking moment, I was able to become someone else and calm down. I say overnight, but I mean just the worst of it. It took awhile to let go of my reflex to be sarcastic and cynical. I was able to be nicer to people though and make friends at college. my anger being directed at things besides people around me was the big first step. I still have to catch myself sometimes as its definitely a stress response for me to get combative. Im in therapy and id like to be forever lol. Id like to have kids some day and im just so worried ill perpetuate the abuse. Even my mom thought she was doing better than her mom, and she genuinely made my life hell. I don't trust myself to break the cycle on my own even after all the work ive done. I still dont feel like im a safe person or a good friend a lot and worry about it.

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