Perception

My brain doesn’t work right.  I have trouble communicating with other human beings.  I perceive the world differently than most people.  Or maybe everyone feels like that, but I don’t hear them talk about it.

I don’t enjoy discussing my hobbies.  “Riiiight,” you say, having read my past blogs.  But it’s true.  I like lecturing about my hobbies, but not really discussing them.  I’ll write long-winded blogs, or have mostly one-sided conversations, but I have difficulty engaging in two-way dialogue about activities I love.  On some level, I view all conversations as instructive.  If the other person knows more about the subject than I do, there’s no point in me speaking except to ask questions.  If the other person knows less than I do, then I have the compulsion to share all my knowledge to the point that they can’t get a word in edgewise.  It’s not healthy, and I don’t know how other people enjoy two-way conversations on a more equal basis.  I’m afraid I might be alienating people, alternating between being too quiet and being a know-it-all.

When I play D&D, I take notes so I can post session recaps on my blog.  But multiple players have told me that I always get the details wrong.  This bothers me because I’m writing down what happens as it comes out of the DM’s mouth.  Sometimes I even read the published module to confirm some of the events (I never read past our current spot, scout’s honor).  If my memory and another player’s memory disagree, it seems like mine would be the right one; I have the notes to back it up.  But even the DM has said to me, “I always love reading your blog the next day so I can see your version of events.  I’ll read it and be like, ‘That’s what happened?  Cool!’”  He’s nice about it, even complimentary – “That’s way more exciting than the way I remember running it” kind of thing.  But you don’t know how frustrating it is that I take all these measures and still get the details wrong.

I know part of it is that I don’t always catch sarcasm.  If a player asks if the vampires we’re fighting sparkle, and the DM says “Yeah, sure,” then guess what’s going in the blog.  This is made worse by the fact that, in my experience, D&D players tend to be unusually sarcastic people.  Some of this would be rectified if I interacted with people more.  I would eventually get used to all the verbal inflections that indicate sarcasm.  But in-person social interaction gives me anxiety, and being around too many humans makes me tired.

I’m also not good at reading between the lines.  Some DMs will describe exactly what we see, but let us draw our own conclusions about what it means.  Sometimes it’s intentionally obvious that A+B=C, but I still end up with W.  If the DM describes a fountain surrounded by corpses, I’ll be the one assuming that the water tastes so good, even the dead want to try it.  If our characters find themselves locked in a room while a two-headed ogre bangs on the door, I’ll be the one asking if we should let him in, because maybe the two-headed ogre is in trouble and needs our help.

I recently realized that I had a major misconception about a plot point in Avengers: Infinity War.  Gamora says something along the lines of, “I found the map to the Soul Stone, and I burned it to ash.”  I always interpreted “it” to mean the stone, not the map.  Meaning she destroyed the stone.  And that’s why Thanos had to sacrifice her to get the stone back, because that’s how you reforge an Infinity Stone that’s been destroyed.  And being the Soul Stone, it requires the soul of a living being to be recreated.  I talked about the scene to several people and in a couple of blogs, speaking as if everyone shared my interpretation of the scene, because I had no reason to believe differently.

But that’s not what happened.  She burned the map to ash, so Thanos needed her memory to guide him to the stone, and the only reason he has to sacrifice her is because (as Red Skull explains if I would just listen) obtaining the Soul Stone works differently than the other stones.  Honestly, I like my version better, but I’m still embarrassed by my misconception.  And I have these misinterpretations All. The. Time.  I know I’m not the only one to make these mistakes, but they just seem to happen more to me than anyone else I know.

I don’t know where to go from here.  I don’t feel like an adult, but a lot of people say that.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m actually mentally handicapped, and the rest of the world is just humoring me.  I’d think I have Imposter Syndrome, except those are people who don’t believe they deserve their accomplishments.  I have no accomplishments, so I can’t say I don’t deserve them.