Writing What You Don't Know: The Assistants

This is late but like I have a bunch of obnoxiously visible stickers on my wish list specifically to go on my cane, and my joint tape is on purpose very loudly patterned. Some people like very pretty mobility assistance - I think some of the like, chain mail finger and wrist braces are GORGEOUS - some people want to minimize the visibility, and some people are like me - want to shove it in people's faces because it's not going away any time soon. All these approaches are valid but having a more fun, colorful thing to go with my disability makes it less of a lifeless drag for me. Just some things to think about.

 

insulin pump user here to bring up insulin pump-style devices that u wear practically all the time and you can put cool stickers or skins on it (eta: oh geez i didnt realize the last post on this topic was 4 days ago oops)

 

Is there a specific name for a form of psychosis/delusion/hallucination that causes someone to believe animals are talking to or otherwise communicating with them? I know there's one for a type where the person believes inanimate objects are.

 

I have a transfem character who’s had bottom surgery. Would she still be taking hormones, and if so what would she be taking and how often?

 

You no longer need to take testosterone blockers if your gonads are removed, but you take estrogen (and progesterone if desired) at the same dosage/rate as presurgery.
update: partner says some folks actually need to take a very low dose of testosterone after removal of testes! not everyone though, depends how your body handles hormones

 

yeah it's important to have some hormones going on so you don't get osteoporosis, but the exact mix varies a lot

 

anyone got recs for reading on early childhood development, especially language? I want to write a character who was raised by members of a different sapient species whose language is partly vocal and partly telepathic (he can't access or perceive the telepathy at all). when he was about 5 his settlement was destroyed (either by violence or plague, i haven't decided yet) and he was the last survivor. a village of the other species had been trading with the settlement and they find him and take him in. at around age 10 another human finally stumbles across the village and ends up taking the kid on the road with him.

I want to know if 5 years of language acquisition plus 5 more years of weird language acquisition will be enough for him to pick back up learning human language, or if I'll have to change some things. also, the village that raised him were loving guardians, but they do have different psychology than humans and there will have been a lot of mutual confusion. does anyone know of any articles or other reading that would be relevant to any of this?

 

so if he's only 10 when he starts learning human language again, he should be able to pick it up extremely easily, though if he's much older it would rapidly start getting harder. child brains soak up language (and other skills) INCREDIBLY effectively, and this only starts slowing down around puberty. after that it's still possible of course, but it takes more effort. in an immersion environment like that, he would probably be able to get almost to native speaker levels of human language again. i don't have any good readings to suggest about this, because even the wiki article on child language acquisition is written with incredibly dense technical language. but, the section on the "sensitive period" and the following sections on "vocabulary acquisition" and "meaning" might be helpful, if you can pick through the jargon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition#Sensitive_period

 

it sounds like at the very least it'll be close enough for me to fudge things, especially since he had SOME exposure to language by people who were trying their best to teach him during the 5 years. thank you!

 

Seconding @hyrax on this--I don't have much more to add, he covered it pretty thoroughly!

However, one interesting thing there is accents. I'm not sure of the exact point at which kids stop...kinda absorbing accents I guess (and obviously it's gonna vary from person to person), but it's definitely a phenomenon amongst immigrant children--like, my dad knew two brothers growing up who were only a few years apart in age, who had immigrated to the US from (IIRC) somewhere in Asia, and the younger brother wound up with a very American accent but the older brother kept his homeland accent. At ten...I think there's a chance the kid would end up very much fluent in human language, but never be able to fully take on the accent of his new home, which could be an interesting character detail!

 

oh that is good to know, thank you! he already has a slightly weird affect and accent so that info will fit in perfectly.

 

Background: Sighted character was blinded by her mother because said mother needed people to think her own blindness was hereditary (and having a sighted child would result in a huge risk to quality of life for the infant). As a result of this happening shortly after birth, would her muscles develop more like someone who was born blind (lids usually being closed, eyes unmoving, etc)?

Additionally, once the immediate risk of discovery has passed and the child is old enough to understand that she needs to keep her sense of sight hidden, her mother offers to reverse the damage via Magical Means. Character agrees to this, so at the age of about 9 or so, has technically regained her sight. She still does her best to keep up the image of being blind and is comfortable navigating the world in that regard.

Considering this is a solely fantasy scenario because of limitations in current medical technology, how long do y'all think she could feasibly keep this up? How overwhelming would a sudden sense of sight be? Would her body try to utilize the muscles in her eyes and strengthen them to receive more visual stimuli, thus making her quickly blend into a sighted society regardless of her own attempts against it for her own safety?

 

Newborns do not have perfect 20/20 vision when they're born. Babies can only see aboooout a foot in front of their faces and it takes months for all of those pathways to develop.

 

Yeah, I know their color vision also takes a while to develop.

Age of the initial incident is mostly because it's a homebirth with a midwife who can be sworn to secrecy; the need for privacy and for it to be as normal as possible for the child growing up are her largest priorities to keep it from being discovered.

By 'immediate risk' I mean more around the three year mark, which is arbitrary but if the child wasn't responding to visual stimuli before then, the mother's hoping people will be convinced enough to not follow up on it further until the child can choose to keep up the ruse on her own or continue living the life she knows (or come clean about it all but again, being outed as sighted to the people her mother's protecting her from means the odds aren't in her favor for a high QoL).

 

two questions about hair-cutting:

1. how possible/difficult is it to learn to cut and maintain your own hair w/o help from someone else?

2. I'm having some trouble getting into the headspace of someone having an unwanted, traumatic haircut. what does it feel like, generally, to have one?

 

So I'm not sure about #2, but for #1: it's definitely very possible, although it would likely take a decent while for them to get good at it. I'm admittedly not super well-versed in cutting my own hair (I do have some experience there, but not a ton), but I have over time gotten pretty decent at bleaching and dyeing it myself, and I suspect that the cutting aspect would be very similar--my first several attempts were definitely kinda sloppy, but over time I learned what to do (and what NOT to do). I'm still far from the level of someone with actual cosmetology training, but I can do a passable enough job that I don't think people would notice unless they were actively looking for imperfections.

So basically, for haircuts...I'd expect the back would be a definite issue at first, but they could absolutely work around that through trial and error, plus creative use of mirrors. (Seriously, having multiple mirrors at different angles can be a total lifesaver there.) It'd also likely look kinda choppy overall until they got more skilled. But it is a skill that can be developed over time if you're determined to learn.

EDIT: Also, it would probably depend on the complexity of the style they're going for? Some cuts are definitely easier (and quicker) than others.

EDIT 2: Texture is also a factor--curly hair tends to look much shorter than it actually is, for instance, so if they have curly hair they'd have to take that into consideration.

 

well I experienced #2
I think all I can really say is that, at least in my experience, it feels like a violation
like....your ability to decide what you want to do with your body is being taken from you, and while this may not be true for everyone, having long hair was (at the time) in some ways part of my identity
so it also felt a lot like part of who I considered myself to be was being stripped from me
it's upsetting
it hurts a lot
someone else's choices are being forced on you without regard for how it makes you feel, or, at best, they're going "this is the best choice and you need to stop whining" without caring or listening to why it's....actually really fucked up and hurting you?
also because I cried a lot and refused to sit still it was not the most painless of experiences physically either

 

I gave myself a fairly nice looking clipper cut first try, with the caveat that I worked in a hair salon and saw how they worked. Scissor cut, depends on what you want to do. Just trimming the ends, usually it's a bit messy the first time and then after that it's fine. Layering really takes some time to learn, anything at an angle instead of straight across maybe a few months?

 

ya'll what would be a good gender neutral form of Prince/Princess, im planning like 6 years ahead but i feel like i should have something in mind. The Crown Prince/Princess is known as the Heir regardless of gender and i dont plan on changing it because Tradition, but i like having a gender neutral form of stuff cause every now and then i write a character and they tell me they're not the gender i started them as.