Let's say there's an online community of people who all have Whatever Syndrome. They talk about all the difficulties and frustrations and issues etc related to Whatever Syndrome. They share advice, they vent, sometimes they just chat and enjoy talking to people who can relate to them properly. Sometimes they make fun relatable observational comedy-style memes about common Whatever Syndrome experiences.
Some of the experiences they make memes about will probably overlap to some extent with the experiences of people who are not on the WS spectrum at all. Let's stipulate (made-up, obviously meaningless numbers incoming) that 10% of the memes they make appeal to a non-WS audience in this way, but 90% are highly specific to the WS niche and won't really be appreciated by outsiders.
In this scenario, the 10% of universally relatable memes will, because they are universally relatable, likely spread far beyond the core WS community. The 90% of niche ones will not (why would they?). From the perspective of someone without WS who doesn't engage with the WS community directly, this will look like 100% of all WS memes seeming to be about things that are just universal human experiences being described as WS-specific experiences for no particular reason. This person might begin to suspect that WS is just a trendy diagnosis that arbitrarily groups completely normal personality traits as a medical issue and that the whole thing is maybe kind of fake. This person is not being unreasonable given the information they have, but for reasons that are hopefully obvious the information they have is very skewed.
On the other hand! If this sort of thing distorts the public perception of what WS is about strongly enough, some people are going to latch onto the relatable memes about it, relate to them (because they're relatable), and wonder if maybe that means they themselves might have WS. This person might do a bit of googling and discover that, in addition to all the relatable stuff they relate to, there are other symptoms that they don't really identify with as much... but then, no one really seems to talk about those things very often, you mostly see people talking about [relatable stuff] when WS comes up, so the latter must be like, the main part, right? So (they think) it can't be too important if the other stuff doesn't apply to me.
[also the whole medical establishment is nightmarishly hard to access and a lot of doctors suck and make diagnoses based on random whims and prejudices, blah blah blah you know all this, the point is that the most obvious solution to "how do I confirm whether I do or don't have a specific medical thing?" is often not reliable.]
Well now, given all of the above... stuff might get confusing huh!
Okay, okay, (you might say), that's all well and good as a toy model of things that might be underlying the discourse you're alluding to, but to what extent is this dynamic actually responsible for what's actually happening? Aha! I have no clue whatsoever, sorry. I'm just the ideas guy.
a cellar spider! they like dusty corners and awkwardly hustle themselves away when you touch their webs. their cobwebs are unusually strong and can hold even large insects like stinkbugs and paper wasps! when something threatens them they whirl their long bodies around and it makes their web tremble. they don't like being outside or traveling long distances, so all the cellar spiders in a building are usually descendants of one founder.
the internet also says that they are good at eating other spiders (which is a shame because i also like the other spiders) and that they tolerate each other and visit each other's webs. i guess that makes sense if they're all related. i once saw a mother and her children all sharing the same web, spaced a few inches apart like Finnish people waiting for the bus
I don't know what's happening or if it's a coincidence or what but three times today the spiders in my home have gotten closer to my personal space than they normally do. I like spiders but I think it's best for all of us if we stay out of each other's way, and I thought we were on the same page about this. Hopefully they resume their established habits tomorrow and we can all forget about this little escapade.
if horses werent called horses what do you think they should be called
being as i am an idiot, and having been one my whole life, i just wanna say that i find it very easy to do nothing, and go nowhere. i eat chocolate late at night in the dark. i stand in the garden also. and i’m often waiting for something to happen. and i’m stupid.
in school they used to call me semipermeable membrane for my habit of allowing some things to pass through me
daylight savings is actually truly one of the most evil things in the world. just casually forcing us to confront the fact that time is fake while torturing insomniacs, autistics and schoolchildren across the globe. when will the agony end
With the new year, I feel the need to make some kind of year-in-review list. So even though I've largely stopped reading comics (the desire to read ebbs and flows every six month), here are the otoisekai that stuck out to me the most in 2024
What can I even say about the GOAT? As we crawl towards a conclusion, the despair only grows. Death is the only answer, death must be avoided at all costs.
I never talked about this one, namely because I'm not sure how to describe it without focusing on its wokeness. But it is woke. It's bizarrely, strangely woke, as well as genuinely enjoyable, but I keep getting fixated on all the genre-unusual progressiveness, like
BELIEVABLE female crossdressing in a shojo manga
her older brother is fat, a good person, and nobody ever comments on his weight (this point is the most shocking to me honestly)
Older brother is loudly supportive of his gnc sister and male cousin
Unclear if MC is gay, transmasc, or just doing this out of survival, but it says something that becoming a love interest was her *first* response
Boy the MC bewitched in girl form as a child is thrown off by her handsome appearance as an adult, yet awkwardly asks if she wants help breaking her engagement with a man
I forgot, originally he was the stock "sexist love interest who dials it back for his one true love" type, but this one shatters the mold not by making her the one girl he isn't mean to, but instead having him step back from his feelings and step UP as a genuine, actual, fr ally and continuing their friendship. Insane upgrade.
And it all feels pretty organic! They'll hint at complicated feelings from the people around her without grandstanding or molding medieval-y types into 21st century values
Like I can't emphasize enough how weird it is to see a child drawn like this and they're not evil
I never talked about this one for the opposite reasons of the above. Um. Extremely horny ethicsplay* thriller about a mentally-challenged princess forced to marry a duke (who, in turn, was forced to marry a mentally-challenged princess). What if you were the abused sexy sensual prisoner princess forcibly married to a smoldering tall dark-haired duke AND you had brain damage.
Let me say that I enjoy this story sincerely and that her issues are not played lightly, but it is absolutely going for eroticism. Like oh nooo, you're not mentally competent enough to consent 😉😉 the duke could do whatever he wants and you're too dumb and doll-like to do anything about it😉😉😉 also your maids roofied you😉did I mention your sick bastard brother-king made you like this? And that he takes immense pleasure in that fact?🤫
But I know what you're thinking. Because I was thinking it. For chapters and chapters. "Surely this is a ruse. They didn't actually write a mentally handicapped female lead, not when it's already so horny. This is just to add to the fucked up atmosphere that feeds into everything because there's no fucking way anyone would keep to this premise. Wow she's really committing to the bit lol, not giving an inch. If I were gullible, I would believe they're actually going to fuck. Wait. Was that guy supposed to represent the writer talking to the reader? Hey?"
Did they? Read to find out :)
*I've always hated describing stories as problematic (positive). Ethicsplay, like the story is fucked up. They know it's fucked up, YOU know it's fucked up, and that's why you're here reading it.
I don't have a lot to say about this one other than it's a refreshing revenge-centric OI. It's not treading new ground, but it executes the genre's tropes well. The villains are exaggerated caricatures of hubris, brazen leeches who've forgotten whose blood they've been surviving on, each with their own distinctive brand of arrogance introduced at a measured pace to keep the true hero's OPness from getting boring, all with a unique stylistic flair.
Princess revenge stories are frequently derailed by dull romance or the desire to reinvent capitalism, so the fact that Super-Dreadnought commits itself to smiting Lunaria's enemies without straying from the path makes it a high recommend.
I realized I don't have enough screenshots to prove my controversial opinion (that this is less puppy dog bf fantasy and more crypto-age reggressor/caretaker right up until they knew it would mess with the overall light and goofy tone), and I can't say those kinds of things without proof. so. I'll save that for another day.
Anyway. Plot: Priestess Diarin, who is so hot I have more screenshots of her than any of the men, has to tame an abused beast-like 6'8 shredded ex-child soldier into a noble. She's the only one who can change him, she's the only one he can be vulnerable with. Middling plot, heavy slapstick/reaction face-based humor, but everyone is sexy and there are mild to moderate sadist-on-the-art-team impies, so. Recommend.
On an unrelated note can tappytoons please stop picking up manwha with good art? Their translation choices make me unreasonably mad.
If they draw shoes like this, please let Lezhin handle it? I can't take the comma stutters and obvious tone neutering.
Burrowed in the furrows 'tween the eyebrows of the cliff face is a woman, dark and narrow, with her posture like a spiral. "In the furrows," she is saying, "in the furrows."