u/novafuquay

It’s been over a decade so probably unlikely but that manga was so formative for me growing up. I really wish… 😭

Any similar Josei you’d recommend while I languish?

As an autistic woman originally from the South, I have a lot of thoughts about cultural differences between the Northeast and the Southeast.

New Englanders have this reputation in other parts of the country for being jerks, so I was a little worried when I moved here. But that hasn't been my experience at all. What people here are is direct and I honesetly prefer that.

In the South, there is a cultural expectation of being “nice,” but sometimes that means someone will smile in your face while stabbing you in the back because being nice elevates their social status. Gossip also elevates their social status. So now everyone is smiling, nobody is saying what they mean, and somehow I'm supposed to decode the real message underneath the sweet tea and passive aggressiveness. (Not gonna lie, I do miss proper sweet tea, though.)

Meanwhile, in New England, people will help you out. People care about each other. But they are not fake nice about it. They're also much more likely to tell you where to shove it if they don’t like something, but that's refreshing to me.

A guy in line at Market Basket the other day kindly offered to hold my milk for me because I was struggling while waiting in line. We joked about the lack of open lines that day and then parted ways. What he didn't do was start asking me personal questions as small talk that I was not comfortable answering,  or telling me his whole life story, which is very common behavior in the South.

Another time, my car ran out of gas, and a cop stopped to help me. He didn't have to help me push my car in the parking lot and get gas, but he did. Then he said, “There’s a little light shaped like a gas can on your dashboard. Ever seen it?”

And I understood it was sarcasm because he was also actively helping me. In the South, I feel like I either would have gotten a long, sweet-sounding but condescending lecture, or I would have had to solve the problem myself and then only gotten someone to nod along and say, “Oh, you poor thing,” after it was all over.

I think that's the big difference for me. I don't need your fake warmth. I need actual help, clear communication, and reasonable boundaries.

Weirdly though, New England culture is also surprisingly collective in a way people do not always talk about. Spaces here are built more around close living and communal spaces, especially in towns and cities. People are physically near each other a lot. But socially, people seem to have more respect for boundaries. They don't bother you unless you look like you are looking for help or socialization, and then it stays at a comfortable level for both parties.

In the South, people often have more individual space that they own (or at least occupy) so it can be easier to be physically alone but social gatherings require more energy because there is a deeper expectation of intimacy and social rituals, even with casual acquaintances.

I notice this at work too. At my workplace, I am a professional. I like my coworkers. We enjoy each other’s company. I admire my bosses. They are great professionals. But we are not family. They are not my besties, and they do not pretend to be. I am judged on my competence as a professional more than whether Jose and Sally Jo and Billy Bob all want to invite me to their cookouts.

I'm given more concrete metrics, but they're not impossible to meet. They are respectful of me, my time, and what I'm worth as an employee because they know I have the option to go elsewhere if they are not. In the rural and struggling part or the south where I grew up, that is not always an option, so employers can be much more authoritarian even while they claim to be “like a family” socially.

My husband, who is not autistic, or at least has traditionally been more socially open and competent than me in the South, has had a harder time adjusting socially here. He says he does not like how people compartmentalize. He thinks people seem like assholes, and to be fair, other parts of the country seem to agree with him.

But that has not been my experience. It has also not been the experience of my kids (19, 10, and 8) who have lived here for the past five years. To be fair, that makes my younger ones practically native. My youngest was three when we moved here and was speech delayed, so I joke that New Englander is his native language. Like, this kid unironically says “lookit.” I honestly thought that was just something Stephen King invented until I moved here.

So maybe New England feels rude to some people but it has been so much more comfortable and safe to me than the south ever did.

Agree? Disagree? Do yall find you vibe better in certain regions or cultures than others?

I'm currently working on my clinical supervision hours to become a BCBA and I've been using Ripley to keep up with my hours. It's great that it's free and I don't have to come up with my own spreadsheet system to keep track of everything, but the ads can be really annoying. Especially this month, when I tried to print the monthly summary and somehow the ads printed onto the PDF. I'm considering subscribing to get it ad free, and think I might even be able to convince the company where I have my apprenticeship to reimburse me for it as a business expense if it offers any additional value beyond ad free being less annoying to me personally.

So .... is there any additional value offered for subscribing to Ripley or is it just to get away from the ads?

Also, are there alternatives to Ripley with less intrusive ads becuase they seem to have gotten worse since I started using them last fall.