whetstonefires

[whetstonefires]

I was just reading an ADHD post about breaking tasks up into smaller chunks, and I wanted to share something that helped me.

Once upon a time, I was sitting at my desk at 3am, having procrastinated all day, and finally got to the stage where I was so desperate to meet my 9am deadline I made an itemised list of every single thing I had to do, to the level of "1) Open this document. 2) Open this web page. 3) Arrange the windows so you can see both at once... Etc." It took me hours, and I was beating myself up the whole time because I knew I was spending three times as long making the list as I would doing the task, good god, what's wrong with me, this is so stupid...

I finished the list. I went through it step by step. And then I was done.

It was a revelation. It was so incredibly easy, once the list was there.

Since then I've thought: so what if making the list takes three times as long as doing the task? That's what it takes. That's PART OF THE TASK. It's the most important part, because it's the bit that means you can start at all.

Now if I'm struggling I give myself permission to use the most time consuming strategies, to hold my own hand like I'm a two year old, to guide myself through the tiniest of baby steps, because that's a skill I've fought for and it works.

Maybe this is obvious to everyone else. But if there's anyone out there like me, perhaps not yet diagnosed, beating themself up for not being able to just get things done like a normal person, I want to say this: make that list even as the clock ticks down to your deadline. Its not a waste of time. It's part of the task.

[whetstonefires]

[whetstonefires]

let’s settle this shit but do NOT reblog if you’re gonna be modest about it like a little BITCH. anyway privilege check tell me which ones apply to you: hot, funny, can dance, can do math, can spell, can drive, can cook

#depending on your rigor i am all of these #only serious prigs would disqualify me from being able to cook or drive #but you could make cases against the others probably #these being highly subjective

[whetstonefires]

Screeeeching at this meme a girl I went to high school w posted recently

[whetstonefires]

✨

✨ A game I wish more people were talking about.

Okay SO I seriously SERIOUSLY don't know why people aren't talking about or playing GODSEND. I crash into people's conversations all the time with HELLO HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT GODSEND ITS GREAT WHAT YOURE TALKING ABOUT IS IN GODSEND LETS PLAY IT.

Godsend is cool for SO SO many reasons but here are a few bullet points:

The premise of the game is that the world is coming to an end: there are only so many ages of divinity and humanity left before the apocalypse. So as gods and avatars, you must do what you can to make things go your way, and there is nothing left to lose.

Everyone plays two characters! You play a god, but you also play the human avatar of another god PC of another player. I have seen AMAZING moments when players have acted AGAINST THEIR OWN OTHER CHARACTER because of the DRAMA and it was AMAZING EACH TIME.

But why two characters? You play as one God that sees through all the ages and will be there at the end of days. But with each new age, you play a different human avatar, one who carries out the will of another god. So TECHNICALLY YOU GET MORE THAN TWO CHARACTERS EVEN HOW AMAZING IS THAT.

In general, why aren't there more ttrpgs where you get to play more than one character? Why does the GM get all the fun, huh?

This is a PbtA game but it is DICELESS. DICELESS PBTA. DO YOU HEAR ME. The vibes are impeccable, the execution breathtaking. Basically as gods and avatars, it is not a question of if you are able to do it: you do it! You perform miracles! You defy destiny! You see the threads of destiny! But at what great and terrible and EPIC cost?

Here are examples!

A couple of BASIC moves you can do as a God:

A couple of BASIC moves you can do as an Avatar:

So your stats as an Avatar are how many narrative bonuses or penalties you get when you make a move. DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN. WHY AREN'T THERE MORE GAMES DOING THIS. I AM LOSING MY MIND.

Anyway every time I have read/played this game I have turned completely feral, and I don't know why we're not talking about Godsend. Please go check it out, you may already have it if you bought the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality three years ago.

[whetstonefires]

reminder to:

straighten your back

go pee goddAMN IT STOP HOLDING IT

go take your meds if you need to

drink some water

go get a snack if you havent eaten in a while

maybe wander around the house/stretch a little if you’ve been sat at the computer a while (artists especially: sTRETCH THOSE WRISTS)

reply to that text/message from earlier you’d forgotten about

maybe send a nice lil message to someone having a bad day?

[whetstonefires]

[whetstonefires]

Today's aesthetic: cosmic horror tabletop RPGs from the 1980s whose creators wrote the "madness rules" by simply plagiarising a list of disorders and their descriptions from the DSM-II and turning it into a d100 lookup table, except the DSM-II still listed "homosexuality" as a mental disorder (it wasn't removed until the DSM-III), with the result that there are several published tabletop RPGs where there's a small but non-zero chance that seeing Cthulhu will make you gay.

[whetstonefires]

can i ask you about the 1970s?

Have you ever heard of the Kent State Shooting? Basically in 1970, The Governor of Ohio sent to Ohio National Guard to end anti war student protests over the expansion of the vietnam war into Cambodia which were taking place at Kent State University due to fears that a student strike would lead to violent revolutionaries taking control of the city of Kent and by the 4th day of protests which was may 4th, the protests and tensions had escalated to such a degree that the university and town both decided to shut down the student protests, but when the protests happened anyways the National Guard fired tear gas from a grenade launcher into the crowd and when that didn't dispell the protests, the national guard began to advance on the protestors leading to 10 to 50 of the protestors throwing rocks at the national guard leading to more throwing of tear gas at the crowd. Later due to unknown causes that lead up to it, at least 29 of the 77 the national guard members present shot their 66 rounds into both the protestors and students not involved in the protests who were passing by, injuring 9 students and killing 4.

[whetstonefires]

their height difference is actually insane

#lmaooo i like this #it's a romantic pose #but the possessive grip aerith has on sephiroth's chest strap #makes it look like she's just gonna pick him up and haul him away #like a pumpkin

[whetstonefires]

We laugh at Sauron for not realising a golden-haired Aman elf with the audacity to challenge a fallen Maia with song can only be Finrod at this point, and conclude that Finrod's spell must have worked in part -- but I've never heard anyone ask how on earth did he never come up with the idea that Celebrimbor might have given the three rings to his three remaining family members!

Who made the spell this time?

[whetstonefires]

Tumbleweed needs everyone to know that I am his most cruel and heartless mother for decreasing the amount of food he gets due to him gaining a third again his body weight over the last year no that is not all fur Tumbleweed you are shaped like a pregnant sheep!

He has spent much of the day stomping from room to room while yelling his immense displeasure.

[whetstonefires]

[whetstonefires]

Donation Commissions

If you've been here a while you know I did this before. For health reasons I couldn't start again before now.

Here are links to donate, collected by a Palestinian person. Please consider donating even if you aren't telling me and getting art for it. Even 1$ from each of us can accumulate.

Art I made for this before:

These are sketches, flat colors, around 5$ for each character in the drawing, or just in general smaller donations.

For larger donations I can offer things like this:

And there's plenty of space in between, feel free to message me.

Your money doesn't need to pass through me, just show me proof you donated it.

[whetstonefires]

“Americans believe in big portions! That’s so crazy.” Look at this European getting scammed into paying for 100 calories worth of food. Fool. Idiot. You wish you could have this 16 ounce Big Gulp and this serving of rice I will eat off for three days but you can’t. Cope and seethe.

[whetstonefires]

Look. The age we get at Cloud Recesses is 'fifteen or sixteen' and then there were two about-a-year timeskips. They are seventeen-or-eighteen and that's as certain as we can be. They might even be nineteen, the timeline is so vague.

We don't even know they were on the same side of that line! We are deliberately denied that information.

Besides that, you are displaying really poor reading comprehension and not engaging with the point of the post, as well as being rude.

They were in the cave for a lot more than three days and it was a complicated experience we as a fandom do a lot of analysis of, but there was an entire three day period that consists of just the statement that after that exchange Wei Wuxian left Lan Wangji alone for three days.

Because it's just one sentence, it gets passed over and given way less weight than the bits that are described in more detail, which is natural but often a mistake. Especially with Wei Wuxian, who avoids acknowledging things he doesn't like.

For Wei Wuxian, who thrives on casual social interaction, that's a three day period of getting nothing while facing the prospect of death.

After all the boundaries Lan Wangji tried to set that he trampled right over because he didn't consider them serious, he holds himself back to that degree, for that long? This intensely social person who only denies himself anything if he has what he sees as a very good reason?

That's a big deal. There's no way that didn't leave a lasting impression! Wei Wuxian's understanding of how Lan Wangji sees him was heavily affected by this blink-and-you'll-miss-it description of his accepting a rejection and then spending, again, seventy-two hours in a horrible hole in the ground with only one other person, hungry and thirsty and scared, controlling his own impulse to reach out for social contact.

Because that was what he could do, for Lan Wangji. The only thing asked of him.

This is literally the same class of 'setting himself aside under extreme conditions to focus on what other people need' behavior that comes out later and more dramatically in the core surgery.

It would be way stranger if this didn't affect how he thinks Lan Wangji sees him, going forward--for example, during the war, when he keeps trying to get him to come to Cloud Recesses.

But it's one sentence, so it gets overlooked and minimized and not given the weight it deserves.

When we're looking at why Wei Wuxian took so long to even consider that Lan Wangji might really like him, I think we should maybe place more weight on that time when they were trapped in a cave together at around age eighteen, and Lan Wangji told him his dad was dying and started to cry and Wei Wuxian was like SHIT and fidgeted awkwardly for a while like ahhhhh I hate when people cry especially men what do I do????

And then he tried to find something to say and Lan Wangji was like 'shut up' and he shut up, and Lan Wangji said 'you're a loathsome person' and he shut up so hard he left him alone for three entire days.

Like if I spent three days trapped in hell with someone, restraining myself from reaching out for human interaction because not subjecting them to my personality was literally the only thing I could do to help with their state of misery.

I would have a real hard time letting go of the understanding that the thing this person wanted from me was not to have to deal with me.

#if you're going to come on someone else's post being condescending #at least get your facts straight #and tbh #it's really reductive to the text to try to make EVERYTHING about the queer elements and only them #like that's the only thing in the book #gay people are shockingly also still people with a full range of human experiences and feelings #and mxtx works really hard to make sure her characters have that kind of depth #don't be rude to me or the novelist ffs #imo wwx is well above average as teenage boys go in terms of not being insecure in his masculinity #the narration about his discomfort with men crying is actually really interesting because #it says at least with girls *he can cheer them up* #that is he's allowed to #there's a social script #his struggle with men crying seems to be as much about the fact that *they* are ashamed of it and he doesn't have any socially acceptable #method of distracting them from their feelings #he also seems to suggest that if he hadn't already been bitten for fake sexual harassment and sincere attempted platonic skinship #he'd be across the fire attempting comfort through physical touch #which is kind of the opposite of being restrained by the fear of seeming gay lmao #even if it would probably have been Very Many Shoulder Touching #and given his focus on 'cheering the other person up' i think he's a lot more driven by #the way avoidance and repression are his main trauma responses #and other people's grief fucks with his compartmentalization #than being strictly and only a gender thing #but like i don't require you to get the same thing i do from the text #just to not be a prick about it #i actually made this post looking at how when they get to Yiling before the Second Siege #he spends a while chatting and shopping with random townspeople explicitly to recharge his social battery #after several days with just lwj wen ning and little apple #all entities he likes! but still below his preferred contact threshold #so three days in a cave Not Talking

[whetstonefires]