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So your kid’s autistic: A handy guide to not being a dick from a mom of an autistic teen daughter

1. Stop calling yourself an Autism Mom and making it all about you. 2. Meltdowns suck, but they’re harder on her than you. Work with her to figure out her triggers and don’t dismiss them. 3. Some types of behavioral therapy which focus on emotional regulation can be beneficial but anything that rigidly demands forced eye contact, forbids stimming, or aims to make her act “less autistic” is abusive. 4. Autism Speaks is garbage. 5. Vaccines don’t cause autism. 6. Focusing on causes and cures is both ableist and pointless. 7. Listen to and respect your kid as a valid human being. 8. Make whatever accommodations she needs to function optimally without making a big deal about it. 9. Be prepared to fight if school is unwilling to make accommodations. 10. Know your kid’s educational rights as a disabled person and make damn sure her school honors them 11. Don’t just rely on teachers and therapists to understand autism. Talk to actually autistic adults to gain a better sense of what to expect for your child’s future. Don’t know any? Follow blogs with the tag #actually autistic. And encourage your kid to do the same, especially as she gets older. 12. Your kid is capable of a lot more than you may think and she’s growing up. Stop infantilizing her and let her make mistakes.

Any and all constructive feedback from the #actuallyautistic community is welcome. I’m trying to continue to grow as a supportive parent.

Hey Lynn, sorry to bother but does anyone know how old the SLBP lords are?

It’s all speculation & pulling clues from routes to try to map out ages. None of their ages are directly stated, I think to make it easier to self insert & play around with the suitors ages to your liking in your imagination. 

((None of what is stated below is based on their historical age differences. This is only what I’ve inferred from playing SLBP.))

_____

According to Saizo’s route, MC is at least 20 (or early 20s). She explains an event that happened to her when she was around 5 years old & later in the route it is said that event happened over 15 years ago. Shingen has said in a few event stories that MC & Yukimura are close in age, so she may be closer to mid-20s.

Saizo & Yukimura are 4 years apart; Saizo is 4 years older. They met when Yukimura was 10 & Saizo was 14. In an event story, Yukimura said they have known each other for 16 years. That puts Yukimura at 26yo & Saizo at 30yo. 

It is said several times that Masamune & Yukimura are the same age. Masamune is 26yo.

Shigezane is a few months-one year younger than Masamune. Shigezane is 25yo.

Shigezane teased MC in route by saying if Kojuro had been her father, he would have been a teenage dad, implying Kojuro is at least 13 years older than MC. Kojuro is likely in his mid-30s.

I don’t remember if it was an event story or an MS, but I read that Inuchiyo is 6-7 years older than MC (she said she was about 7 when they met, Inuchiyo was around 13), putting him around 26-27 years old.

Mitsunari is said to be younger than MC. He is the only one expressed as being younger than her. This likely puts him at 19 or very early 20s. 

In an event story, MC was told it will be good for Ieyasu to have someone his own age around him. He’s the second youngest suitor, in very early 20s most likely. 

Shingen & Kenshin are the oldest, but no hints as to a range is given that I recall. I just imagine late 30s for Kenshin, early-mid 40s for Shingen. 

All we really know about Mitsuhide is that he’s older than Nobunaga. There was an event story where he was briefly worried about his age, so I assume once these men hit 30 they all start seeing themselves as “old.” My best guess is Mitsuhide is in his late 20s or early 30s, I’m leaning more toward early 30s for him.

Hideyoshi is depicted as being older than Inuchiyo, as for how much, I never read a mention of specifics in the game, but I assume it isn’t more than a year or two at most.

I don’t recall reading any specific hints regarding Nobunaga’s age, but I know he’s younger than Mitsuhide & likely older than Hideyoshi, which probably puts him around 28-29yo.

TL;DR 

Mitsunari ~19-20

MC/Ieyasu early 20s

Shigezane 25

Masamune/Yukimura 26

Inuchiyo 26-27

Hideyoshi 27-28 

Nobunaga 28-29

Saizo 30

Mitsuhide 31-33

Kojuro 33-35

Kenshin late 30s

Shingen early 40s - ?

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Seasons in Japan

The Royal Signs III:

Aries: An exile. As close to a leader as anything. Decades of experiments. Inhuman flesh. A blank porcelain mask, inscribed with a single symbol. The only thing left untouched is her hair.

Taurus: The Knights Captain, daughter of the high priestess. A martyr. A township saved, burning like a star in the dry autumn heat. Blazing wings. 

Gemini: The King Under The Ice. A stolen childhood. Small shoulders for an impossible burden. A desperate bargain to contain an ancient evil. 

Cancer: The first queen. A woman more scars than flesh. Respect commanded by tooth and claw. Legend says even the beasts bowed their heads when she spoke.

Leo: The High Priestess, come to make good on an old covenant. Thunder on the mount. Eyes burned by sights from the land of the dead. A flash of thunder revealing the legions of ancestral dead, come to heed her call to arms.

Virgo: A young princess, currently being carried to safety in a backpack. She wraps her tiny hands around the shoulders of her bodyguard and tries to sleep.

Libra: A empress by title, an alchemist by desire. Long trips to the countryside spent foraging in swamps and mountain caves. Jars of exotic insects displayed proudly to less than excited diplomats.

Scorpio: A general. Born with an ancient and rare gift. A man who could speak to beasts. Said to be the first to harness the great wild things and drive them for war. Legends of an army of half-men, half-beasts.

Ophiuchus: A prince fallen prey to an old and terrible sickness. An inexplicable whistling cry that only he can hear, calling him to the mountains. There he sits, preserved in the abandoned aeries, decked in scales.

Sagittarius: The renegade prince. Palace finery and lavish parties forsaken for nights of adventure and intrigue in the city streets. Scandalous tales of cross-dressing and romance and baffled police.

Capricorn: A king of blood and stone. A menace to some, a savior to others. To carve out a space for his people against impossible odds and overwhelming enemies. Rites finally conducted in service of a god that was long thought to have abandoned their worshipers.

Aquarius: A queen burdened by loss. A pilgrimage to the ancestral mesa. She sits under the night sky. A low, droning tune on a horn carved from an old tree. The stars mourn with her.

Pisces: A queen of many eyes. Networks of spies that span the kingdom. A diplomatic party approaches, an assassin among them, unaware of her own assassin that already sits perched in the rafters above them. 

It’s a common theme in fantasy, that assassins are fed poison from young age to train them to become immune to poison. This is scientifically not possible, as human antibodies/immune system does not work this way.

This practice is known as “Mithradatism”, named after King Mithradates (King over what is now Turkey), the man perhaps the very source of all the legends. As the story goes, he feared assassination by poison and thus started consuming poison to make himself immune, as well as experimenting with medicines to further improve on it.

In the end, after his defeat King Mithradates tried to commit suicide with his family by poison. However, it was said that while his family died, he himself remaimed alive, and either was killed by his enemies or committed suicide by sword.

Since his survival seemed to prove that “poison immunity training” works, the legend might have spread to nearby regions. It’s also bolstered by the fact that snake handlers in India seem to be less affected by snake venom after working with snakes for so long. Still, even if one can build immunity against one type of poison, it’s not possible to train to be immune to any and all poisons that exist.

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Writing vs Storytelling Skills: Improving Storytelling

Though “writing skill” is often used to refer to all aspects of story crafting, it can be divided into ‘storytelling concepts’ and the ‘actual writing’. Addressed in the previous post: Writing vs Storytelling Skills (link embedded), now I’m here to tell you how to work on that specific storytelling skill.

1. Read a variety of books. Various authors, various genres, the more you expand your examples the better. Variation of reading means you’ll be exposed to more ideas, more ways of thought, more storytelling patterns, more everything that you can critique and help make decisions on how your own stories will unfold. Even take up books you may not like. Give them a chance, and if you still don’t like them then at least be able to explain why.

2. Learn genre expectations (and that tropes aren’t bad). Genres exist to classify stories into familiar concepts. Sometimes, novice writers try to throw out genre ideas because they’re all “cliche” or they want “something different”, yet they fail to grasp why those patterns exist in the first place. Familiar storytelling concepts (tropes) can be cliches, yes, but more often they fulfill one or more of these requirements:

A way to fast-track info to the reader without having to explain every ounce of meaning (Color-coded symbolism, character archetypes, etc.)

To create a familiar base, allowing for further growth of the concept with less time than it would have taken to set up something new. 

Promises to fulfill a certain type of story (You can’t say you want to write a romance, but with no romance)

Those things only become cliche when executed poorly or if they cause predictability when the story is trying to rely on unpredictability. A story full of tropes is not automatically a bad story. Writing in a way that subverts expectations well requires having a strong understanding of the genre you’re trying to twist. A genre is a promise of a specific type of narrative– you can’t just throw it out the window and expect readers to be satisfied. It’s fine to write cross-genre or mess with tropes, but be wary of it coming from a place of “it’s all the same so I’m going to do it completely different!”.

By learning genre expectations, you can gain that knowledge that lets you subvert better, or the knowledge to play into it better. You can figure out where the true heart of the stories are and why readers care. You can figure out how to write in a genre that works with your personal goals and desires for the story. 

3. Learn best practices for different storytelling mediums. “I saw this awesome scene on TV and I want to write it in my story, so I imagined how it’s going to play out and it’ll be perfect!” No, it won’t, because what works in visual media isn’t the same for books and what works in your head isn’t a clear idea of how it would work on paper. (link embedded)

TV, and other forms of visual media, are presented very differently than the written word. They can rely on music, camera angles, subtle background events– and endless list of things that writing cannot replicate and isn’t made to. Becoming a better storyteller means learning the strengths and weaknesses of different media so you can tailor stories to best fit how they’ll be told. The imagination is similar to visual media, but better and worse. Better, because you can learn over time how to tailor your imagination for the written word. Worse, because it can create unrealistic expectations and is harder to look past.

It’s natural to want to mimic what you see in other forms of storytelling, but one of the most important things a writer can learn is to get over the fact that they can’t translate ideas in every situation. It’s fine to be inspired by other forms of storytelling and what your imagination creates, but don’t become a slave to the unrealistic expectations. Learn to work with the paper, not against it.

4. Stress test plot ideas to catch issues before they become a problem. While this isn’t going to always work and there will still be times that you have to adjust in the middle of things, stress testing your ideas can help teach you where you keep going wrong so you can work on fixing it. There are two main things to keep in mind when doing this:

The plot structure (link embedded): Overarching plot concepts should fit into a specific structure. The structure can have small variations, but there should be an average line of best fit that naturally overlays against the story. The higher your skill, the more you can mess with the lines and have it not blow up in your face.

Plot is essentially cause-and-effect (link embedded): The events of a plot should be a relatively smooth slide from start to finish. Not “smooth” as in “no conflict or tension”, “smooth” as in “logically glides from one point to another”. Make sure you can connect the dots.

If you catch and fix enough of your own mistakes then you can start teaching yourself not to make them. 

5. Critique the storytelling of others. What did you like? What didn’t you like? What choices did the writer make and what were the consequences of those choices? I’m going to repeat that last one again because it’s one of the most important things a writer can learn: Every story is made from a set of choices and those choices have consequences. Not all bad, not all good; it’s a neutral term that just refers to outcomes. One of the biggest separators of storytelling skill is how well a writer can work with the natural consequences of their choices. 

When you critique others, you look at those consequences and weigh them against what you consider to be a “good story”. While a writer can only critique at a close level to their skill, the more they critique, the higher skill climbs, and the better they get. To become a better storyteller, you should get used to tearing other’s, and your own, work apart. It can help to keep a journal or some kind of record of critiques, since writing thoughts down helps bridge the gap between the mind’s assumptions and reality (just like the bridge between an imagined scene and actually writing it down).

6. Brush up on literary concepts. They’re not just for English class! While some are more technical in nature, there are plenty of storytelling-inclined literary techniques that gaining a better understanding of can improve your own work. Also, literary concepts are just tropes that happen to apply to “work of literary merit”. They’re not fancy or pretentious to include– just study and practice them well so they work with your story rather than against it. (Study tropes too!)

All that said, there’s no such thing as a “perfect storyteller”. Brushing up on storytelling skills isn’t about being perfect, it’s about getting better relative to where you were before (and potentially helping close the gap between writing and storytelling skills). 

Keep writing, keep practicing– keep storytelling.

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Lessons to learn from the SLBP Lords:

Nobunaga: Never give up, no matter the odds or what others think, they don't know you.

Mitsuhide: Stop trying to do everything for everyone, worry about yourself and your own needs too, they will understand.

Inuchiyo: Stop blaming and punishing yourself for things you can't change. It wasn't even your fault in the first place.

Hideyoshi: No matter how low you are to the ground, you can always rise to greatness.

Mitsunari: You deserve love, you are more than worthy of being loved.

Ieyasu: Don't be afraid to trust others, not everyone is out to get you.

Kenshin: Don't let the scars of the past stop you from living in the now.

Shingen: Letting someone help take care of you doesn't make you weak.

Yukimura: Life is precious, don't be so willing to sacrifice your own.

Saizo: it's okay to forgive yourself, move on, and find your own happiness.

Masamune: Always try to find it in your heart to forgive those who have hurt you.

Kojuro: Don't focus so much on the future that you can't see what's going on in the now.

Shigezane: Don't feel like you are less than someone else, you are the only person like you that this world will ever have.

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