OKAY I WORK IN A FABRIC STORE AND ONE TIME THIS LITTLE OLD LADY CAME UP TO ME AND SLAMMED THE INDEPENDENCE DAY ONE DOWN ON THE COUNTER AND SAID, “THIS. THIS IS WHAT OUR COUNTRY NEEDS.”
I had an older man come into the fabric store that I used to work in and dropped 3 bolts of the firefighter one on my counter and said, “I need this. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it, but I need it.” a man behind him then yelled, “Pyjamas!” and the first man said, “My husband recommends pyjamas.”
It’s a real strange experience to find out what other people’s favorite pictures of you are. You get so focused on the right angle and how sharp your jaw is and if you look like you’re posing naturally. Your favorite is where you’re ethereal or otherworldly or just the best version of who you want to be.
But then your best friend says it’s the one where the two of you are looking at a flower, the one you hate because your arms look bad and your chin is one with your neck. And your sister likes the one of you in the car, asleep with your mouth open, with greasy hair. Your mom likes “all of them, sweetie” but she particularly likes any you smile in.
It’s strange because what we want to show the world – perfection, beauty, effortless picturesque moments – they’re not what our loved ones look for.
They like what they see because it’s usually the real you, the one they love, the ugly unkempt unposed one. They love that you get so excited about nature and that you fall asleep on every car trip. They love your joy, and the way real smiles look, the silly moments and unflattering angles and all of it.
For a long time this plagued me. I can’t fucking take a good picture of myself.
But the other day I was looking through photos of my friends; thinking about what I liked and they didn’t. I liked the one where, yeah, she wasn’t quite twisted to the camera – but there was this glint in her eye I’m so familiar with. The one where he’s blurry in the snow but his smile is obvious anyhow. The one where she’s dancing in her bathing suit, full of abandon. The ones where it’s the memory that matters; candids under out of focus fireworks, overexposed kisses, left-the-flash-on at the top of a mountain.
I mean, I don’t think I’ll ever love my friends less just because they post an ugly picture. They could post a million of them and I’d still be down to hang in the morning. The idea that I’ll somehow become disgusted with them just for an ugly selfie is silly, selfish. Shallow. And not gonna happen.
So how come I expect them to leave just because I don’t always photograph like the epitome of beauty.
What’s a player to a god, what’s a god to a DM, what’s a DM to a nat 20
this is funny but I’m going to be a Joke Ruiner here in hopes that this might be useful to anybody looking to run a D&d game sometime for the first time.
A natural 20 always ‘succeeds’ but does not always do what the player intended to do. If a player attempts to do something Impossible, then a Natural 20 cannot make it possible, instead, have the Outcome of their Attempt be helpful in an obvious way, without being necessarily a magical Super thing. Greg the ranger attempts to climb an 80 foot smooth marble wall with no handholds? Greg is level two? Greg does not climb that wall with a Natural 20, however, while looking for good handholds Greg spies an important clue reflected in the mirror-like surface of the wall, perhaps finding a secret catch to open a hidden door in the wall granting the party entrance to the dungeon?
Even though Greg didn’t search for the door, his incredible Luck granted him the opportunity to succeed anyways. Because that’s what a Natural 20 is. It’s Luck. A lucky swing catches an opponent off guard, even if they’re a seasoned fighter. No amount of luck will allow Susan the 1st level barbarian to shoot the God of War in the eye, but if she is Lucky enough, then he’ll be amused and impressed by her brash valor, and grant her a boon or a gift, rather than be insulted by her attack.
Keep in mind that a Natural 20 should align with what is best for the player, not necessarily what the player wants. If a player rolls a 20 while attempting to do something you know will end badly for them? Take advantage of your knowledge and have their roll instead indicate that not only does their attempt fail, it does so in a way that alerts the player to the danger of their attempt.
For example, they try to shoot a guard under the assumption he’s alone and it will be a sneaky quiet attack? Have the shot miss in such a way that the guard tells his friends just around the corner to “knock off all that racket, some of us still have jobs to do tonight!”
This kind of thing helps create a believable, consistent world for your players. Something that has rules and laws of physics of it’s own, even if those physics are a bit more fast and loose with thermodynamics than ours are. If a Natural 20 Always Works, then the world quickly loses credibility, because in that world, not only can literally Anything Happen, it has a 5% chance to do so All the Time
A world like that doesn’t really make much sense, and wouldn’t look at all like our world, and is therefore really hard for players to get attached to.
This is really good. I’d just like to add that you also have the option of just saying “That’s not going to work.” So many tales of DM woe could be averted by just being aware that the DM can not let the players roll dice in the first place.
First off, you need to stop fearing you are making someone else suffer. You need to respect your own feelings enough to allow yourself to be the way you are. You are not a burden, or something to be tolerated. Your own suffering is just as worthy of attention.
Next look at your sex repulsion and examine if there’s a why. There might be, there might not be. I’ve noticed a few years into healthy relationship that I didn’t like changing for bed in front of them because it was as a safely thing I did when I was in an abusive relationship. Those behaviors can change if you trust your partner and are in a good place. That can lower your sex repulsion without triggering it or forcing yourself to get over it.
Once you allow yourself to be depressed and sex repulsed, I’ve personally noticed that the weight of those two is more bearable because you stop shaming yourself for it. Once you stop fighting yourself, you can mess around more with your partner //if// that’s what you really want. This will likely be in the form of finding things that don’t trigger your sex repulsion and/or first healing from abuse before you force yourself into a situation you don’t want.
Again, start at a place of self acceptance. You aren’t ever gonna be able to “”fix”” yourself. But you can find a way to live a life that makes you happy.
And don’t be afraid to ask for help. Sometimes depression needs a therapist, sometimes it needs medication, sometimes you can figure out how to stop beating yourself up in the first place. Often times it’s a combination of things.
Please don’t start at a “how do I fix myself because I could annoy someone else”. Work from a “I want a happier life, and to accept myself.”
Me: I don’t know if I ever want to be pregnant, I’d rather adopt a kid or two that are a bit older
Someone: Are you SURE? Older adoptees present UNIQUE CHALLENGES
Me: We are discussing human beings not digital pets
Literally every child every born and/or parented presents unique challenges. It’s like people are unique individuals…..or something………….
An amazing and revolutionary concept
When people ask me, “Why do you want to adopt teenagers?” I always answer, “Because you asked like that.”
I’m real over it.If I become a foster mom to a 17 year old kid and I get the privilege of the option to adopt them? You better believe I am legally making that kid mine.
“They’ll be a legal adult in no time, why spend the money to adopt? They’ll be aged out of the system.”
There’s no aging out of family, Marvin.
“They might be rebellious or smoke or do drugs or steal things! What if they won’t listen to you?”
Then I guess I’ll have to step up and do some fruxking parenting, Stanley.
“You want to adopt problem children then?”
All. Children. Are. Problem. Children. If you’re not prepared to deal with the fact that at some point, any child ever, whether you birthed them yourself or adopted them at any age, could become a problem? Then you are NOT ready to have children, and should really just step off and let the people who actually want to be parents live in peace with their kids.
Like most people don’t like to admit this, but one of the reasons a lot of us have so many mental health issues is because we live in a world that has basically become untenable. People can’t afford basic necessities, let alone to cultivate their interests or take breaks and rest or do any of the things necessary for good mental health. People my age are wracked with debt, working at jobs they hate or studying topics they hate, living in a shitty apartment with five roommates. We live in a world that’s very hard to be healthy in. So while yeah, a lot of people obviously do have mental illnesses that would need medication no matter what, they are greatly exacerbated by these issues, and a lot of people have basically just been thrust into an eternal situational depression. So if that doesn’t change, medication is just a band-aid.
One of the main critiques that I’ve heard from older generations about how our current lives are impacting our mental health is that “Well do you think I liked the desk job/secretary/bank teller/construction job I got right out of college? I hated that too!”
And it’s like sure, that’s all well and good, but you still got paid a decent salary that provided the opportunity for upward mobility and you could buy a home and invest all without worrying about your livelihood, because you were making enough money to pay off the little debt that you had (if at all)and get going with your life! not to mention you all got promoted and moved up in your jobs when I know people around the age of 30 that are still working in retail or fast food or as a server because that’s all they can get
I’m pretending all the time to be, kinder, stronger, funnier, more sociable than I am. I guess we’re all like that but it just feels so inadequate.
What’s the difference?
I know it sounds flippant but… certain things are fundamentally performative. And other things are so close as makes no difference.
Kindness is performative. Actions are kind, and people are kind by performing those actions. You can’t “pretend” to be kinder than you are, you can only perform kindness or not perform kindness, and choosing to perform kindness is always worthwhile, no matter how much you may second-guess your motivations.
Strength is so many things. It takes strength to pretend a strength you don’t feel. And the way to achieve strength is to exercise it, so long as you do it in enough moderation to not strain or break anything. Being able to affect strength when necessary while being able to put it down again when that in turn is necessary is healthy. Everyone starts weight training with the littlest weights. It’s not fake or pretending to do what you gotta do in any given situation.
Funniness lives in the interlocutor, not in the speaker. It doesn’t matter how funny you think you are (or think you are pretending to be) – that’s not how it’s measured. At what point are you “pretending” to be a musician if the music still gets made? And often what it’s tempting to describe in first person as “pretending” is more accurately described in the third person as “practicing” – which is of course the way you cause things to Be.
Sociability is also performative. Pretending to be sociable is just…being sociable, despite a disinclination towards it. It’s making an effort towards something you value. So long as the effort is not so great that it backfires into resentment, there’s no practical difference.
Qualities or activities or whatever are no less worthy because you have to actively choose to perform them. If anything, the worthiness lies in the act of choosing. It’s not “pretending” – it’s agency.
tl;dr: ain’t nothing wrong with “fake it till you make it.” A plastic spoon* holds just as much soup as a “real” one
* I keep wanting to talk about semantic domains! Artifacts are defined by their utility, whereas living things are defined by their identity. So plastic forks are still forks, but plastic flowers aren’t flowers. So there’s two pep-talk messages to take away from this: (1) for certain things, the distinction between “fake” and “real” isn’t a relevant one so long as they still get the job done, and (2) the purpose of a living thing is to be the thing that it is. The idea of a “useless person” is as semantically nonsensical as the idea of “pretend kindness” (or fake cutlery).
I love this post. It illustrates what I think is maybe the key difference between a developing self-identity and a formed self-identity, which is, like…confidence? If you are BEING kind, consistently, if you are prioritizing that over your own comfort or fatigue or even, occasionally, your emotional inclination (because OH MY GOD FUCK THIS GUY, I HAVE HAD IT UP TO HERE–uuughhh, but no, I’m not gonna lash out at him, that won’t accomplish anything, and besides, he’s probably had a bad day, he’s under a lot of stress, I don’t have to be an asshole about this…), guess what? That makes you kind. That is literally what kindness is. Same for patience, same for strength, same for all of this stuff. You got it. You’re doing it. You’re not faking anything. Stop second-guessing yourself and cutting yourself down. Give yourself enough credit to look at your actions and confidently assert to yourself that you are no longer just making things up as you go.
Question of Smoke 