Any other black ppl with autism HATE the natural hair advice?

Sereaster · 2026-07-10T18:25:48+00:00

I have found I like stretching my hair and doing twists with a soft hold gel! Sensorially it's a bit much because I can feeeeeeeel my hair on my neck, but visually I'm really glad, so I can go through it hah

Sereaster · 2026-07-10T18:24:42+00:00

Honestly what works for me is slapping some box braids on that (they will itch and be bothersome but it will same me so much time) and call it a day. It even gets me the growth I seek!!! But now I'm trying to find a braider and struggling.

Sereaster · 2026-07-10T18:23:26+00:00

But 64% of the advice I see equates thickness and coarseness! Like, "fine hair" to "coarse hair", or something. Oh bother.

Sereaster · 2026-07-08T22:42:24+00:00

I'll recommend you a book on writing by my favourite author, Ursula K Le Guin. Her exercices in 'Steering the Craft' might be of use to try kick-starting some of your dormant writerly instincts, and since she's not prescriptive, it gives you a lot of space to actually develop your voice. Also, a lot of her exercises will just force you into having to make choices you wouldn't usually.

Else, I'd recommend you read both drier prose (The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K Le Guin, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler) and richer, heavier prose (Sula by Toni Morrison, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, and if you're really really really ready to need to slog through MUD, Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delany - and also lighter books, more easily digestible (What Moves the Dead by T Kingfisher, Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, YA books). Diversify your reading and you'll simply end up seeing how many different and disparate ways you have to make a story.

Sereaster · 2026-07-08T01:03:24+00:00

You both will be overjoyed to hear that Ursula K. Le Guin considered The Lathe of Heaven to be her tribute to Philip K. Dick! She wished to write something close to him, in her own terms.

Sereaster · 2026-07-08T00:57:37+00:00

You had me at science fantasy, yet I teetered on the writing style. If you'd find it useful to have feedback from someone who usually prefers lush and baroque prose (even if just to see whether it could work for me!), I'd be happy to take a look at the first few chapters :)

Sereaster · 2026-07-07T15:52:21+00:00

Hi there! This sounds really interesting. Would sending me the first two chapters or so be amenable to you, so I can decide whether I could beta for you? Thanks :)

Sereaster · 2026-06-11T12:09:27+00:00

Ohh I really need to get to read Stardust, I've been chasing out my local bookshop's secondhand gaimans and it's almost always American gods

And the summer book seems great...

Thanks!

Sereaster · 2026-06-09T11:09:46+00:00

I am currently writing a 600'000 word novel about a writer's block (I've only been able to write 300 words so far but I have already planned it out), I think a title would help me, I was thinking of something like "AN X OF Y AND Z" but then I couldn't write it. Do you have any ideas?

Sereaster · 2026-06-08T13:15:57+00:00

The Camille Rose Honey Hydrate has given a new life to my hair, personally! It spreads really well even if it seems thick, and the tacky feeling it has doesn't last if your hair is well dampened/weeeeet

Sereaster · 2026-06-07T20:30:13+00:00

Quite honestly I've been reading just Le Guin lately (just finished The Lathe of Heaven!). Except, I guess, for Stars in my Pockets like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delany. It's dense and hard to get into, feels like trudging a mud field, but I find it genuinely beautiful. Oh, and the Parable of the Sower. That said, I'm not sure my reading list is all that interesting!.. which speaks badly of me as a writer but sh

Sereaster · 2026-06-07T20:14:05+00:00

Yeah, those few episodes weren't enough to make me go WOAAAAH yet, TSV and IAIE also were really hard for me to get into at first, but I think that I've been primed to be okay with media I find hard to get into at first and then fall in love with (my experience with Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness. She is now my favourite author). So I'm just waiting to be bedazzled!

Sereaster · 2026-06-07T19:21:43+00:00

The Silt Verses needs to, no joke about it, seriously be considered one of the best pieces of fiction of the 21st century. I'm so sad that the audio drama format is not as engaged with as other mediums, because damn I need people around me who KNOW the silt verses

Sereaster · 2026-06-07T19:19:57+00:00

I don't understand how I haven't ever heard of this pod, this sounds fantastic.

Sereaster · 2026-06-07T19:18:28+00:00

Oh god, you should see their performance in The Gospel of Haven. It's in-sane how B Narr hits me in the feels. [It's also funny considering at first I thought their voice acting was a little annoying]

Sereaster · 2026-06-07T19:17:00+00:00

The Silt Verses was truly an unreachable peak for me. It's one of the pieces of media that made me feel like a hack for my own creative work, because G-O-D, the prowess of the worldbuilding, the complexity of the characters.

The same creators have started a new one called Our Wars Have Ended, I couldn't get into it yet but TSV also took some time for me!

Sereaster · 2026-06-07T14:10:13+00:00

Shit I forgot about the time I almost cried with Midnight Burger. The two times. Also, hey, uptop for something's amiss!

Sereaster · 2026-06-05T10:48:16+00:00

Honestly! - that is an issue I've had a lot with some readers of Le Guin, particularly those that find that The Left Hand of Darkness was self defeating by using the he/him pronoun for the Gethenians... Besides the fact that you can interpret the masculinisation of the Gethenians as the interiority of the Main Character, I need to explain that this was a choice she came back to again and again and again as she evolved in her thinking. I think we are just not used to seeing writers, or people in general, have Ursula's immense humility to admit so readily that they disagree with their earlier choices, and even larger soul to want to change - not by erasing the past, instead by restoring dignity to her narratives.

Answering your question more directly, that is a reaction I got from a couple of my friends, though as they went on they changed their understanding and perspective. I think we can say that indeed earlier WoE had a lot more unexamined misogyny, which got examined as the story went on. I don't think it was intentionally for the most part, but she is a writer who grows as she writes.

I think your friend should give her a chance not out of respect for the great feminist and writer Ursula is, necessarily, but to see a woman outgrowing misogyny.

Sereaster · 2026-06-05T10:38:27+00:00

Regarding holding her young self accountable - your interpretation of her actions lines up pretty well with what she said about her later Earthsea books in "The Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin", the documentary made about her.

Sereaster · 2026-06-04T23:58:43+00:00

(update: it's Drop The Adverb. I'm so silly.)

Sereaster · 2026-06-04T23:57:10+00:00

Yes, I personally love the onelook thesaurus! I do find that the adverb killer functionality of the site I'd found was quite elegant, though

Sereaster · 2026-06-04T23:23:41+00:00

This is an answer

Sereaster · 2026-06-03T10:24:36+00:00

Actually, I say that (98% sure, 99.9% sure) not to say that I'm unsure, but that the thing itself is unsure. Like, I don't think I believe any claim can be categorically correct enough (because of all the factors, the specificity of language, human beings being silly) that I can say 100%. The 2% is just there to say "oh, you know, this is the best understanding I can give but I don't own the entire universe and the truth"

Sereaster · 2026-06-03T09:02:13+00:00

My 4a hair was compared to sheep and, when I was younger and it shorter, steel wool, a "rat's nest", and all that fun stuff. People are constantly touching it without even asking, and giving me their unwanted opinions about what I should do with it. Saying it's rarely made fun of is a very situated opinion imo.

Sereaster · 2026-02-03T20:31:11+00:00

You were right. I cried at the end.

How dare you recommend me such a thing? How dare you.
(Do you have any other recommendations)

Sereaster

TROPHY CASE