FM reblogs Art 'n stuff

TTRPG systems are like tools And the stories they produce are, like, work projects or whatever you use tools for D&D is like a really specialized tool that marketing has convinced a bunch of people is a do-everything multi-tool It’s like a potato peeler It can peel potatos really good

You can also peel an apple with it too if you want Or a few other things But people are creating unpaid full-time jobs for themselves trying to carve a wooden chair, tighten a loose bolt, or pound a nail with their really overpriced brand-name potato peeler and getting offended when you try to hand them a chisel or a wrench or a hammer.

“You think I can afford to spend $200 on another tool???”

“N-no, this hammer is like ten–sorry, HOW MUCH did you say you spent on that potato peeler???”

not to be controversial but i hope ur having a nice day and if u aren’t i hope it gets better

used to think advertisements were just annoying but harmless but more and more every day i am growing to consider them a great and terrible evil

i see a post talking doom and gloom about how we'll never escape toxic masculinity. i think about back in 2017 when american girl released their first boy doll, and a review for him went viral in the collecting community. the review was written by a mom, who said they went into the store to get their daughter a doll, only to see their son's eyes light up like fire when he saw a doll that looked like him, and now every night he puts his doll in pajamas and rocks him to sleep. i think about the toddler in my daycare room a few years back who was obsessed with baby dolls, carrying them everywhere, and his mom proudly told us he uses his sisters' old baby dolls and wants to be just like them. that toddler saw another toddler crying one day and gave her the doll he had to cheer her up. i think about the eight-year-old boy i saw a few years back, excitedly waving around raya's sword in a target checkout line like all his dreams were coming true. there was a video on my instagram the other day of a little boy at disneyworld crying with joy upon meeting his hero, mulan. i think about the voice actor for bow in the she-ra reboot saying his nephews only wanted adora action figures. celebrity men are wearing dresses on tv now. last halloween i saw a little boy dressed as elsa. i went to go see spiderverse over the summer, and in the line ahead of me was a boy who couldn't be older than twelve or thirteen, bouncing and beaming, giddy with excitement over getting to see the female-led romance movie elemental. i think about the five-year-old boy at my library who breathlessly asked me where the pinkalicious books were, eyes widening when i had more on my cart, his mom explaining that he is all about pinkalicious and fancy nancy. i saw so many pictures online of boys and men dressed in pink to see barbie. teenage boys are gonna open their phones and see the man who wrote fucking game of thrones dressed in pink to see barbie. when i was a kid, a boy dressing in pink was practically a social death sentence. there are boys running around in pink on my street right now.

flashback to when MLK Jr said the worst group in the US for black rights wasn't the lawmakers passing Jim Crow laws or the KKK but the white moderate. That it was the white moderate who was forcing the country to find a middle ground between civil rights and genocide which allowed the continued systematic mistreatment of the African American community

Milkweed update !

This is what I've got so far. Hatefully, my landlord has started trimming the stalks herself and I have no idea where she's put them. So I've been doing some trimming as well in the hopes that I can beat her to it. I have unfortunately discovered that milkweed sap makes my skin feel like it's being stabbed millions of times, which is unpleasant.

However ! I've been retting the stalks (all the green ones are new, the yellow ones are a few weeks old now) by just watering them when I water the garden. Seems to be working--the fiber is definitely coming out. I read about someone doing it in one of the comments of. Somewhere. I was just looking through all the links that @frogeyedape kindly gave me and I didn't find it there, but I know I read it somewhere. Point is, it does seem to be working.

I also have lots of pods and silk. I've been picking them as they open. I'm going to get some babies going with cold stratification in the winter and plant them around the neighborhood hopefully. When they open on their own the overwhelming majority of the seeds end up crushed in the street, so.

Lastly, the little sample of 100% showy milkweed silk that I spun is still very soft and supple. I have no idea how long it should take to dry, but it's certainly not dry yet. Nor is any of the silks I've cleaned. Really hopeful that this particular strain has good spinnable silks--that would be so cool.

tim gets de-age-beamed and jason is forced to stay at the manor because timmy only wants to hang out with his favourite robin

Renfield stop fighting people these scuffles take so long to sound design

When Renfield says "I'll frustrate them!" on 9/20 he's actually talking about me.

ACTUALLY. anyone up for a survey poll?

(the choices are calibrated based on my immediate circle, i know they're biased) (that said anyone is welcome to answer and/or reblog)

i don't want a career, i want to do crafts

While I understand this is probably venting, I have some thoughts I wish to share.

If you don't want a career, you want to craft, maybe look into the trades. I've started working as an elevator mechanic recently and, holy shit it's changed my life.

Like, seriously. While the work is tiring, it's deeply satisfying too. To me, very similar to getting a pattern in crochet or sewing figured out. It involves using your hands, using your brain in a similar way crafting does, and it can also pay incredibly well (meaning you can use your left over pay from making things in your day job to making things just cause you want to with your evenings and weekends).

With fewer and fewer people going into trades, there's more and more demand, making it easier to get in. My province is currently paying eligible students to become trade workers, so you can see if you have a similar program where you live. (if there are any Quebecers here interested, check out Operation Main D'oeuvre and call your local Emploi Québec office for information).

And for Mentally ill people, I've found construction insanely helpful for managing my conditions. Like, regular exercice helps the management of so many conditions, right? But I've always hated exercise for the sake of exercise. But now my work has me moving every day, making my depression and ADHD way easier to manage. Nothing like beating a recalcitrant rail support into place to help work off the nervous energy creates by anxiety either. I've been struggling with my mental health for well over a decade and I do not have words to describe how good it feels to wake up and have no dread about the work I have to do today. I might be tired and grumpy, but even then, there's no soul crushing dread.

I've also found it empowering and it helps me with my crafting (it teaches precision and gives you a really good eye for measurements, depending on the trade). It gives you financial power as well as power over your space (I've changed all the switches in my apartment for dimmers, easy peasy).

So yeah, TLDR, don't want a career, want to craft? Maybe manual trades are the route for you. I know they were for me

Computer repair was easily the best most fulfilling work I ever did. Just me and a little puzzle I knew how to solve.

if you have autism please look into welding. you get earplugs and gloves and a cozy helmet. you do the same shit the same way every day. you are surrounded by the weirdest and most dysfunctional men ever invented and you don’t have to respect any of them. you go to your little horse stall and glue bits together until it’s time to go home. it’s exhausting and sometimes painful work but i have worked retail and i have sucked dick for money and i can say with my whole chest that welding is significantly less stressful in terms of time, effort, pain, and dealing-with-people.

if you have ADHD i do have to warn you that welding gets boring after awhile and you are discouraged from making little bugs out of scraps. you can do it anyway. but you have to hide them from your boss.

you get it?

Just another Stephanie Brown drawing

You know what… This really is one of the only alignment post that get the chaotic and lawful descriptors correctly aligned.

On the Lawful side: the two people who have to follow the recipes nearly exactly for the results they want - baking isn’t quite am exact measurements process but the margin of error for experiment is very, very thin. Tempering chocolate for use in structural works even more so.

On the Chaotic side: cooking and mixology where the margins of error for ingredients and portioning are so broad “whatever feels right” is almost never the wrong answer. The same recipe could be done a dozen different ways for a dozen different people and all of them would be a great outcome with minimal disaster in their wake.

This could also be an allegory for the difference between wizards (bakers) and sorcerers (cooks) - they’re all magic users (chefs), but the type of magic the weild and the source of their power is vastly different

You know, I was originally thinking that Dylan and Shiadanni should swap, but this convinced me they were properly placed, well done.

How is Dylan evil though? That’s either nonsense or worse.

Don’t look at it as a description of them personally, but rather the things they create. Dylan isn’t evil in a traditional sense, any more than the Tipsy Bartender is, but the things they create provoke a very visceral “Oh no what the fuck?!?!” sense of horror.

He’s called his own creations Abominations and War Crimes so i think he’d agree with this assessment

one of the more valuable things I’ve learned in life as a survivor of a mentally unstable parent is that it is likely that no one has thought through it as much as you have. 

no, your friend probably has not noticed they cut you off four times in this conversation. 

no, your brother didn’t realize his music was that loud while you were studying. 

no, your bff or S.O. doesn’t remember that you’re on a tight deadline right now.

no, no one else is paying attention to the four power dynamics at play in your friend group right now.  

a habit of abused kids, especially kids with unstable parents, is the tendency to notice every little detail. We magnify small nuances into major things, largely because small nuances quickly became breaking points for parents. Managing moods, reading the room, perceiving danger in the order of words, the shift of body weight….it’s all a natural outgrowth of trying to manage unstable parents from a young age. 

Here’s the thing: most people don’t do that. I’m not saying everyone else is oblivious, I’m saying the over analysis of minor nuances is a habit of abuse. 

I have a rule: I do not respond to subtext. This includes guilt tripping, silent treatments, passive aggressive behavior, etc. I see it. I notice it. I even sometimes have to analyze it and take a deep breath and CHOOSE not to respond. Because whether it’s really there or just me over-reading things that actually don’t mean anything, the habit of lending credence to the part of me that sees danger in the wrong shift of body weight…that’s toxic for me. And dangerous to my relationships. 

The best thing I ever did for myself and my relationships was insist upon frank communication and a categorical denial of subtext. For some people this is a moral stance. For survivors of mentally unstable parents this is a requirement of recovery. 

If you struggle with writing image descriptions for any reason, don't worry, you can still do things to make your blog more accessible for screen reader users and low vision folk! Here are some ideas:

These are all things that personally help me navigate tumblr and can make the difference on whether or not I follow a blog, so please consider trying at least one. The first is the most important probably.

Ads for weight loss should be illegal. Hope this helps.

I had a thought while I was washing dishes (not yet finished) and now I'm making a poll about it bc this is the mental unhealth site, so I feel like this audience won't make me feel too bad

No cop out option on this one. And it's not about WHY you need that long. Serious mess or can't move fast or hot weather or leg broken or adhd or depression fugue. Reason doesn't matter. Only thing the poll wants is how long it would take.

enjoy my cultural-xtianity annoyance poll for today. plz behave in the notes.

I avoid writing the word "christ" where possible bc I am jewish and using the word that indicates Jesus is the moshiach and possibly devine is, for me, a form of idolatry. thanks.

Can you do something for me, please?

I want you to reblog this if you believe that two people can be very close and physically affectionate with one another, but still have a completely nonsexual, non-romantic relationship. 

Even if the two people in question are capable of being sexually or romantically attracted to one another. 

Because the friendship I share with someone I consider family in a way that transcends blood has been typecast as a romantic relationship ENTIRELY too many times, and I’m beginning to get sick of it.