Gecko’s Most Popular Posts

After that meme asked how many notes my most popular post had, I was forced to go check The Best Of Tumblr to see more. (I added “&onlyPhotos=0” to the url after it started searching, because I barely ever post images.)

Here’s all the posts I’ve every made that have over 50 notes. (Unless there were more than one in a single month. I haven’t found a way to search for “all posts over a certain threshold.”)

mikkeneko:

bitchjerked:

do you ever get mad because there’s so much wasted potential in characters and relationships and plotlines in some shows

i basically divide up fandoms of continuing media into Fandoms Of Potentia and Fandoms Of Re.

i’m still developing this theory, but it sort of goes like this: there are some pieces of media that attract enormous followings not necessarily for what they are, but what the watchers think they could be,  and build castles basically on those dreams of potential.

whereas a fandom of re is a fandom of what the work is, oftentimes a finished work to which no more will be added, which has proven itself in entirety.

And the interesting thing to me is that Fandoms Of Potentia are oftentimes bigger  than Fandoms Of Re, bigger and more active, and there’s a couple of reasons for that – one is that a finished work leaves less room to add onto, and a finished work also leaves less need  to add onto. The primary driver of fandom works is incompleteness, whether because the work is not yet finished or because it is finished in a way that the audience feels is incomplete.

Fandoms of potentia also have the bigger drama, because the fact is, not every content creator is up to living up to the potential the fans see. Creators are only human after all. So when the story doesn’t live up to the big finish the fans dreamed of, there’s a lot of disappointment, anger and hurt. You see less of that with Fandoms Of Re.

I guess where I’m going with this, is that whenever I see a huge fandom gathering for a work that I think is absolutely not deserving of it, I stop to ask myself whether it might be a Fandom Of Potentia. In which case, they’re fans of something I don’t see at all – they’re fans of the dreams of what might be.

Re: Hair & eye color in early comics – It wasn’t so much that it was the easiest to color & more that it was cheaper. Modern comics are printed in 4-color process (CMYK) so no matter how many colors are on the page there are only 4 printing plates, but old comics were printed in spot color, meaning each additional color on a page meant burning another plate & the max number of colors per page was determined by the number of print heads on the press. This info courtesy of 15+ years in printing.

unpretty:

yeah! i thought it was some weird limitation of the medium, thank you!

so that explains all the black hair and blue eyes all over the place

Also, there was no one keeping track of things, because it was assumed readership changed every 2 years, and they’d have never seen the older stuff. So names, appearance, backstory/family info – stuff was thrown in without much thought to if it contradicted or didn’t match older stuff.

And people like Stan Lee, et al., were making too many comics to pause and think about continuity! They couldn’t even consistently remember their main characters’ names.

You don’t have a bad kid.

Neither do I.

Does/did your kid:

  • Attack teachers and throw things in class?
  • When invited to a party, punch a kid and then run into the
    establishment’s kitchen and start attacking stuff?
  • Refuse to listen to the bus driver?
  • Run away from school and scream any time an adult came near?
    (Many, many times?)
  • Scare the other kids to the point that they are out of class
    more than they aren’t?
  • Hit other kids for no reason they can explain?
  • Do complex math at home but refuse to do any school work at
    school?
  • Require a full time EA, their teacher, the resource teacher,
    and sometimes even the principal working together to calm them down about
    perceived injustices?

That’s what the last two years have been like for my wonderful
son and I.

That’s what the next decade might have been like if the
school or my husband and I had decided he was a bad kid. My son was definitely
starting to think he was.

I’m not going to go in to everything we tried over the last
two years. My husband and I got parent coaching. The school requested every
specialist they had access to, and tried dozens of strategies. My son watched
social skills videos, and walked through how to respond to different situations
with every adult available. We changed doctors.

As I mentioned, it took two years.

Results:

  • Our new doctor finally confirmed EVERYONE’S suspicion that he
    had my ADHD (in addition to the autism we all knew about). She prescribed
    Concerta.
    • Apparently, trying to do school work, getting distracted
      after 10 seconds, refocusing, getting distracted after 10 seconds, and
      repeating for hours a day, every day, is VERY FRUSTRATING. You get nothing
      accomplished. It’s exhausting. Adults keep pushing you. Finally, you get to the
      point where you Can Not repeat the futile cycle. Your EA insists you do. But failing
      again is too awful, and you either scream, or throw things, or run away.
    • Now that he can focus for several MINUTES at a time, he’s a
      lot happier and hardly ever lashes out.
  • We also discovered that he didn’t listen to the bus driver
    because the guy would grab him and try to force him back into his seat. We
    changed busses.
  • We got him a raised garden and let him tend it and play
    outside in the mud all evening. While relaxed and happy, he’s slowly started to
    interact with the next-door kids and get invited over.
  • The school provides fidget toys, headphones for noise,
    rocking/bouncing chairs, a trampoline for when he needs to regulate, and so, so
    much more. He uses them as needed, which is getting to be less and less often.
  • He’s jumped 7 reading levels in a month. He’s still a little
    behind, but we remind him that the other kids have had a lot longer where they
    could concentrate.
  • He’s doing the math work, and then doing actually FUN math
    with his EA during transition times. Exponentials, multi-step algebra, division
    of triple digit numbers – stuff like that. Before, he only did it with US. (He’s
    in grade 1.)
  • When I tell him to have a good morning, he says, “I probably
    will!”

I’m so, so proud of him, you guys. He’s worked so hard, and
finally he doesn’t HAVE to. He doesn’t have to work twice as hard to get one
tenth of the results.

Don’t think the worst of your kids. Believe in them. Figure
out the ‘why.’ As people get older, they can learn that bad behaviour gets them
what they want, and eventually they have to be held accountable. But kids, even
older kids, are almost always doing the best they can with what they got.
FIGURE OUT WHAT’S WRONG. Don’t tell them they’re bad, don’t give up on them or
force them to figure it out on their own.

If they lack empathy, teach them how to work around whatever
aspect of empathy they struggle with. If they’re angry, teach them to channel
it, and try to find and fix things causing that anger. Give them medication,
counselling, allergy-free diets, assistive tech – whatever is in your power.
(And I know that for a lot of people, some of these things aren’t in your
power. That’s not your fault.) Explain the extra challenges they have, so they
don’t blame themselves.

Above all, tell them that they’re good kids.