Geek parables

There are places on the internet that are exceptions to the don't read the comments rule. LJ/DW is definitely one, and well-moderated blogs with real communities are another. I've recently seen a couple of really good stories in comment discussions, where the OP gives some sensible advice and the comments illustrate the general principles with a story that is likely to appeal to readers with a rather geeky mindset.

Captain Awkward has a really cool discussion about a relationship between someone who likes to talk things through and someone who likes to take time alone to come to a conclusion before communicating it. Some of it gets side-tracked into debates about the technical versus popular definitions of introvert and extrovert, but it's still very chewy and interesting. Jennifer describes the situation thus:

It’s like if The Doctor were dating Batman. The Doctor needs to let Batman know “I want to hear what you have to say even if you aren’t sure about it, ‘haven’t decided yet’ would be an acceptable answer if that’s where you really are with things” and Batman needs to let The Doctor know “Hey, could you think out loud somewhere else right now? I have important brooding to do.”

And someone in the comments fleshes that out with an imagined discussion between the two: If The Doctor were dating Batman.

Me, I'm intensely a Doctor in my approach to handling emotions and communication. When I was younger I tried to avoid Batman-ish people altogether, because I just didn't know how to deal with people who go silent when they're upset or dealing with complicated situations. I soon learned this was causing me to miss out on some really awesome friends, so it was worth learning to communicate across that divide. I don't claim I'm completely wonderful at it, because I am still Doctor-ish by nature and I definitely do fall into doing the bouncy enthusiastic must talk about everything thing with people I like. What I do have is a good group of friends who are more like me and like to talk through and analyse everything, and I have my lovely DW where I can process stuff out loud and people can choose to read and comment or not depending on whether they feel like helping me think. Notably it's not just one person, so if any given person doesn't have time or energy for that kind of conversation, they're not massively letting me down.

And this makes it much more possible for me to be friends with more Batman-ish people, because I can get that particular kind of support elsewhere. My husband is not my extreme opposite on the spectrum, by any means, but he does find talking directly about feelings more of a chore and less enjoyable than I do, and needs more quiet time in general. Of course my immediate response to having a slight mismatch in communication styles is to have a big discussion about how best to deal with that mismatch, and there's an obvious flaw in this!

siderea posted a story of a guy spotting a security vulnerability and treating it as a test, and followed this up with a very pointed retelling of the Daedalus story. I am definitely very much prone to the sort of flaws / errors Siderea's interpretation of Daedalus shows. Not that I'm a super-genius, but that I am liable to look for technical solutions to problems before I stop to think about whether solving this particular problem is actually a good idea. And I have most certainly been accused of being a high INT low WIS sort of character, aka "you may be very intelligent but you have no common sense".

I'm also someone who learns well from stories with characters I can relate to. And these stories are cool, so I thought I'd draw attention to them.