Writing What You Don't Know: The Assistants

Okay, first of all, I've only ever seen what you describe in divorced parents. I don't know how much of that is single parents having by definition fewer resources and so more likely to be out of their depth, and how much is just coincidence, because the sample size of my personal experience is pretty small. With that caveat, parents such as you describe are:

• Kinda stressed out. Not necessarily all the time, but at least sometimes. For decent parents, parenting is a very important job and they care a lot about getting it right, so if they're out of their depth they're probably worried and wish they could do better, though they may not know how or may not have the resources.
• Focused on the essentials. These are not your helicopter parents (always hovering over the kids and getting into every part of their lives). They tend to be putting their energy into high-priority goals: making sure the kids are housed, fed, clothed, educated, not sick or injured (or if they are, that they get treated), and emotionally functional.
• Trying not to transmit the pressure they're under to the kids. Parents under pressure tend to either lash out at their kids, or rely too much on them, or both. Decent parents under pressure will have noticed one or the other or both of those tendencies in themselves, realized it's not okay, and will be trying to control it.
• Happy when their kids engage positively with them. There may not be time or spoons for Big Planned Family Activities, but when there's some little connection between parent and kid (one side takes interest in the other's current activity, say) it's a good day.

 

Pushing this back onto the first page since each time I do it seems to get more people talking to each other about ideas they have and need info on.
Y'all gots a TON of expertise available here on almost every topic you could ever want to write about. Feel free to ask here - we only bite if you want us to.

 

If anybody wants to hear about space-related worldbuilding, there is now a specialist thread for that, Welcome to the World Factory.

 

Oh wow that actually worked! I can now link things with a title! :D

 

Ok I have a question that I am 89% sure is a physics question. The starting setting is a circular region with about a 40 mile diameter (20 mile radius). The region is surrounded by giant, violent dust and lightning storms. The world at least acts like it is the same size and such as earth. If you were at a point nearish the center of the circle, and you looked out the window, what would you see on the horizon? Would you see the storm? Would you be able to see the sky at the horizon at all- specifically, would you be able to tell if the sun is rising before you are able to see it in the sky.

 

This question requires math that I don't have time for just now, but I'm interested and will work on it tonight.

 

Thank you!

 

To clarify, the horizon itself would be clear at that distance from the storm (assuming whatever creates this inhabited bubble keeps the air inside relatively dust-free.) You'd be able to see the land normally, out to the horizon, unless you were pretty high up yourself. But the bottom 20 degrees of the sky (by area, the bottom third) would be dust and lightning. The sun would be behind the storm for more than an hour after sunrise, gradually becoming visible through the clouds at the end of that time before rising out of them, and then the whole thing would happen in reverse before sunset. But as snitch alluded to, the sky above the storm would be normal day-sky blue at about the earth-normal time. You could easily read by daylight an hour before you could see the sun.

Assuming earthlike axial tilt, if this place is as far north as Minneapolis or as far south as Christchurch, New Zealand, there would be days in winter where the sun never rises above the storm.

There would be effects on climate in the bubble, probably big ones, but I hesitate to guess what they would be... cool and very dry, maybe?

 

:D Thank you so much oh my god! This is so helpful. I'm not very worried about climate bc it's just a ghost of a world and kinda works by "yeah that seems right" but I was having a very hard time wrapping my mind around how the storm would effect sight and horizon and such, so this is amazing :3

 

Right so writing a character with aspd, but finding personal anecdotes and information that isn't tainted by ableist shit about how evil these people are is really hard?? so um. Does anyone have any tips/advice/info to throw my way? I just wanna make sure my research is accurate.

 

I would ping @ASPD Anon for a perspective on that.

 

I've been meaning to ask for a while for help de-ableism-ing a character I came up with years ago. The tl;dr is that she's a ~10-year-old kid with a psychotic disorder- she has intermetamorphosis delusions and has trouble communicating because she often slips into word salad- and in my original concept notices a lot of things that the other characters don't because she spends a lot more time looking at a magical realm that the others could see, but don't usually keep a close eye on because it gives them a headache. (Technically it gives her a headache too, she just doesn't care because she thinks it's cool.) Does anyone have any advice on how to make sure I keep her out of sounding Generic Cartoon Crazy(TM) and the Mad Seer trope?

Should note that the setting doesn't have antipsychotics and that one of the other characters is her caretaker, who could reasonably have figured out generally how her brainweird works. I figured it'd help if he just said straight-up, "Yeah, she might think you swapped bodies with someone else when she wasn't looking, get me if she gets upset, and if she starts talking about something you can't see check the otherworld, it's probably there," but if anyone has any advice for how to make sure she comes across like a kid with severe brainweird and not a 2edgy lolrandom "crazy" OC, I'd really appreciate it.

 

Does anyone know how restaurant reservations work? Not so much making the reservation on the phone or whatever, but how it works when the person actually shows up for it? Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but I've never been to a $$$ restaurant or made a reservation ever.

Like, I don't know, maybe there's a secret code to it all, who's to say.

 

Generally, when you go in there will be a host station. You go up and say "hi, I have a reservation for (name)" and the host will escort you to the table the restaurant has saved, or booth if that's what's requested.

 

Aww, no fancy rituals? Not even a secret handshake or code word? Boooooooooo.

No, but this helps. Mostly sounds like I was mentally complicating it for myself, for something that's not more than 1-2 sentences. Thank you!

 

I also did reservations for restaurants as part of an answering service, so if you want the logistics on that end, I can help you out, but yeah, if you show up on time it's fairly simple! If you're late, it's different.

 

i am currently not doing hrt nor have i ever, how does one like... do that? i don't really know a lot about hrt and how it works and how one takes hormones, any help would be appreciated.

(the character in question is a trans man though, if that helps)

 

Well a lot of that depends on what kind of hrt we're talking about. How old are they, what's their gender identity/goal for transition?

 

15-16ish, he's afab, identifies as male, and pretty much wants to head off that puberty thing as best possible?

i'm kind of curious in general what options would be available for someone who came out at a young age and wishes to prevent puberty/transition to their preferred gender, as well as how one in general does the whole hormone replacement thing. i have pretty much very little experience with any of it. (although i'd like to maybe someday)