or it could be a terrible curse that would provide the premise for an ominous moral parable...

[cimorene]

You know sometimes you dislike something but you don't know what about it you dislike? Wouldn't it be an amazing talent to always be able to figure it out? Like debugging a CSS problem, if all you had to do was inspect the page source and then dig through some layers of stylesheets looking for the rule that did it.

Comments

[yvannairie]

*claps happily because I absolutely love that metaphor*

Also, I just bemoaned this exact same thing!! There's a lot of really nice meta out there that's helped me work out the reason why some things that make me happy for No Reason, but there really isn't the same kind of... troubleshooting guide for negative responses.

I usually just put it down as some kind of emotional allergic reaction. That would be Very Bad for me, so I'm retreating to where it can't get to me, while maybe holding up a can of Plot-B-Gone with shaking hands.

[cimorene]

I mean, being violently allergic to something when you know what it is is better though! Because it's much harder to avoid in advance when you don't know which ingredient is doing it!

This isn't a disagreement with your comment I guess. I just wish I could always avoid stuff in advance instead of having to, you know, plot-spray a bunch of different things after the fact.

[yvannairie]

You're fine, that didn't sound like disagreement at all. Like, to extend the metaphor, it's like a hidden allergene of some kind, I guess, like having trace amount of almond in a chocolate bar hitting you out of nowhere.

And sometimes you can anticipate it and sometimes you can't, but.... sometimes it's something so specific you basically had no idea it had a chance to crop up and yet here you are with your skin crawling.

Been there, definitely.

[cimorene]

Yeah... it is (although, like, not as dangerous). I really need to go ask a doctor to do some tests😓 - I have an allergy to some rare ingredient in perfumes that occasionally makes my throat swell most of the way closed. That has only happened a few times, but as you can imagine, I'm the Paranoid Perfume Avoider now.

[anatsuno]

I DO know enough CSS to grasp at this metaphor! *g*

[cimorene]

That's +1 for me, but I noticed you didn't say it was an apt one... of course, you never know exactly how relatable something is until you check!