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Keyboard monster wants to TYPE and he WILL NOT BE STOPPED

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i CANNOT stop thinking about this job ad. i am absolutely losing it over the implication that someone is going to apply to this job who 1) loves chasing birds and 2) is disturbingly competetive about it

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oh, so when other people go outside it’s “good for their health” and “highly recommended”, it’s only when i do it that it’s a “containment breach” and a “high-level threat to public safety and security”, huh?

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Moving!

Hey, y’all (all eight of you, lol,) for the sake of having all the benefits of being a primary blog, I’m transferring over to @TimeTravelingPigeon.

And because of this, I’m just going to clear out my drafts so I can RB them to the new blog. INCOMING!

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Keetah’s guide on bug out / get home bags.

LIKE I PROMISED, here is a bug out bag I designed using Amazon wishlists. Get me one of these and I will be forever happy! HOWEVER, the main purpose is to show you guys what things you may need if you ever want to put together a bug out /get home bag!

A bug out / get home bag is a bag designed to keep you alive during some sort of disaster that can be easily grabbed and carried. A wildfire is approaching out house, civil unrest is in the street, you are somewhere else and you need to get home on foot, or travel somewhere on foot. You need to grab your things and get out!

KEEP IN MIND, THIS BAG IS DESIGNED FOR TEMPERATE FORESTS AND STEALTH. Please keep in mind the environment in which you live and plan accordingly! For example, if you live in the desert, you are going to want to carry extra water. If you live in a tropical rain-forest, you are going to want mosquito nets and rubber treated supplies. 

If you want to be found and rescued, choose colors like SHINY SILVER and ORANGE. Both are bright attention grabbers. If you want to remain unseen, choose colors like olive drab and dark brown. 

Now without further ado, check the cut below to read up!

Keep reading

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For artists who have problems with perspective (furniture etc.) in indoor scenes like me - there’s an online programm called roomsketcher where you can design a house/roon and snap pictures of it using different perspectives.

It’s got an almost endless range of furniture, doors, windows, stairs etc and is easy to use. In addition to that, you don’t have to install anything and if you create an account (which is free) you can save and return to your houses.

Examples (all done by me):

Here’s an example for how you can use it

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“how can you be intimate with someone if you’re aromantic??”

sharing secrets, trusting them with your life, telling them about that stupid thing you did when you were 14 and haven’t told anyone else since, being there for them any time day or night, talking til three in the morning, letting yourself cry around them, sharing grief, sharing joy, getting excited about the things they’re excited about just because you love to see them so happy about something

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Mosquitoes are grossly overlooked as a threat during a zombie apocalypse.

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Q&A: Nature Abhors a Vacuum

timelordwerewolf said to howtofightwrite:

Hi there, I’m trying to write a comic set in a dystopia, and your “feel good violence” post has really helped. BUT!! is there a way around the “killing your way to the top” trope? I can’t think of any other way for my heroes to complete the main story arc. the thing about dystopias is that they don’t change for anything less than a total kill-out, right? Thank you!

This somewhat depends on what you want to achieve.

There’s a real attraction to, “killing the bad guy,” to make the world a better place, it doesn’t really work. That doesn’t mean no one tries. It’s still perceived as a legitimate approach to getting rid of problematic organizations. The issue is, it doesn’t usually get rid of them.

So, let’s work with this in a few less abstract scenarios.

You’re a special forces operator from a first world nation with (nearly) unlimited resources and have been tasked with eliminating the a criminal organization that has overrun a nearby country.

Anyone you kill will be quickly replaced. If you wax someone, everyone below them gets an instant promotion. So simply assassinating the head of the organization would just mean his (or her) lieutenant takes their place. This may result in subtle policy shifts with the organization, but it’s still going to be there, doing whatever it was doing before. You haven’t removed the criminal syndicate. They’ll still be operating unaffected.

Ironically, the best you can hope for in this scenario is to weaken the syndicate. If you were able to sufficiently reduce their capacity (their ability to actually affect change) to the point where they’re no longer functional, you would actually kick off a power struggle with nearby syndicates moving in and trying to pick up their territory. If the leader you picked off was sufficiently prominent, you might be able to provoke this with one bullet. Unfortunately, you’d end up with a gang war in the streets and countryside of this hypothetical nation.

If you wanted to destroy this syndicate, the best route would be to cut off their financial support. That may mean destroying their supply lines, or production supplies. It may mean picking off their logistical experts, to reduce their efficiency. That said, even this approach isn’t 100%, and some of the most crippling blows you could inflict would be at a policy level, legalizing and regulating the behavior they’re exploiting to make money.

If the goal is to “send a message,” and your nation is seeking retribution for some previous harm, then the goal of assassinating the person who issued the order is… I don’t want to say, “legitimate,” but, killing them will achieve your goals. Unfortunately, it won’t discourage future violence. The people you’re killing are already under threat from their competitors, by joining the fray, you’re not doing something they weren’t prepared to deal with.

So, new scenario: same background, but you’re dealing with a warlord in a failed state or feral city. Ironically, a lot of the same issues apply. If you assassinate them, you’re not going to bring order back to the place. That would involve a full occupation, and a prolonged campaign to rebuild the local government.

Again, simply killing a warlord would mean their lieutenant would take control, or if they had multiple lieutenants and no clear line of succession, it may result in further violence as they fight with one another in an attempt to assume control. Again, if there are competing warlords, they’d be inclined to move in and try to expand their territory.

Now, it’s worth noting that not every nearby warlord would look at this situation and say, “yeah, don’t I want a piece of that,” however anyone who did would simply ramp up the bloodbath.

Again, this is a situation that can be handled with force, but it’s going to involve years of concentrated work, and a lot of troops operating as domestic police, while you rebuild the civil government. There’s some debate if this is even a possible solution.

Okay, new scenario: You’re tasked with suppressing a political movement. It has a clear, prominent, figurehead. Killing them is probably the worst possible solution to the problem. For one thing, it won’t remove the organization. The actual followers will still be out there, believing what they did (more or less), before the bullets started flying. So the organization will go on. At best nothing has changed, except the person rallying the people. You created a martyr who is now immune to character assassination. Good job.

However, it’s far more likely that the actual organization will radicalize. You’ll have members from that organization operating covertly against your interests. This could range from their own assassinations to bombings targeting civilians.

Using violence to suppress politics only leads to stronger, more aggressive, and often violent opposition.

If you’re wondering how that makes sense, when I just said engaging in violence will empower your foes, but lead your own faction to violence, it’s worth remembering that this is behavior that can easily consume both participants in a conflict. Once either one abandons discourse and turns to force in order to push their ideals, they encourage reciprocation.

To quote Babylon 5:

“You don’t have to respond in kind.”

“Of course we do. There’s a natural law. Physics tells us that for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. They hate us, we hate them, they hate us back. And so, here we are: victims of mathematics.”

This is a pattern you’ll see frequently in sectarian violence and civil wars. There may have been political disagreements or grievances, but once the knives come out, the violence become cyclical. There is also a constant, direct, risk of escalation, and it’s often the civilian population that bears the greatest costs in these conflicts.

New scenario: You’re dealing with the CEO of a megacorporation that has marked your characters for death because of an off hand comment in a chatroom six years ago.

Yeah, killing him will remove him from the planet. You’re also now going to be going up on murder charges in a highly corrupt system, assuming corporate security doesn’t simply execute you on the spot. So, good job hero.

Killing him won’t take down the company. It probably won’t even change the company’s policies. You may have even done the board of directors a favor, allowing them to use the corpse as a scapegoat for any politically questionable choices they may have engaged in, while still keeping their hand firmly in the cookie jar. Not that said favor will buy your characters any clemency. They’re still looking at 25-life for murder.

Does any of this matter?

Yeah, kinda. If you’re going to use those characters or that setting again. Even if you’re just wrapping up the story, it’s probably worth remembering that surgically removing people from an organization doesn’t mystically cleanse it of all evil.

That said, people do look at this as a solution, and it makes perfect sense for someone to think, “yeah, that’s all we need to do.” It also creates a rich tapestry of interconnected consequences, which can really help if you’re setting stories further down the line in that setting, (regardless of if you intend to use your original characters or not.)

I mean, did they turn around and try to take the place of the crime lord, or warlord they waxed? It’s certainly possible, and they may well have become as bad or worse in their goal of doing something noble.  Did they turn a politically unstable metropolis into a feral city? Is that someplace you want to go back to, with new characters, because they need to get something, or rescue and extract someone?

There are a lot of potential ways to play it, and many of those could prove very interesting.

It’s also worth remembering your characters may not care what comes afterwards. If this is a personal vendetta, then the goal is to kill the guy. God, bad, doesn’t matter, they need to die. Everything that comes afterwards is unimportant to that motivation.

Also worth remembering: A lot of people genuinely believe this approach works. “Just go in and kill the dude, how hard can it be?” Only to be confused when the resulting consequences start kicking in. This applies to people who are relatively well educated, and know what they’re doing, so it’s not just some trap for the uneducated getting out of their depth.

If that’s the end of your story, so be it, but, I’d honestly recommend you keep pushing past that, and play with the aftermath. Probably with a new cast of characters, and after a few months or years, to let the new mess fully ferment.

-Starke

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Q&A: Nature Abhors a Vacuum was originally published on How to Fight Write.

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The lottery was invented to catch time travelers

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I’m, I’m at my capacity, 

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things abuse survivors think/say

maybe my trauma wasn’t bad enough

maybe what happened was just my fault??

but what if I can’t hold that person accountable? what if they meant well

what if I don’t have the right to be angry?

but what if they didn’t know they were hurting me? maybe its my fault for not saying it

it’s my fault, i’ve always been hiding how badly things hurt me

i’m just weak and pathetic and everything hurts me it’s not their fault i’m like this

hey this this thing actually happen or did i make that up

if i ask abuser they’ll tell me i made it up that must be true they do say i’m delusional

maybe if I’ve done something differently this wouldn’t have happened

guilt guilt guilt guilt

what if abuser is right tho? what if they’re telling the truth and it’s okay to tell it in insults then?

i’m garbage, i knew it

yeah everyone deserves compassion and comfort but me? no.

I am the sole person who is just bad enough to deserve everything that has happened to me

no this person didn’t mean to hurt my feelings i’m just too sensitive!!!

maybe someone else wouldn’t be hurt by this, this means its my fault

i hate myself

how long until everyone realizes i’m just a fake and there’s nothing valuable inside of me

yeah they like me now but i’m going to fuck it up and they’ll hate me like everyone else

was that abuse? no it can’t be. its my fault. if I wasn’t the way I am it wouldn’t have happened

everything people do to me is just what I deserved

what this person is doing bothers me so I have to try harder not to be bothered by it

this person is wrong but everyone believes them so it must be okay

yeah they hate me but i don’t want them to leave me maybe i can get them to hate me less

yeah this person is hurting me but i still need them in my life maybe if i change myself

it doesn’t matter if they hurt me, i’m used to it

what if everyone abandons me and I die alone

this person scares me but I can’t let that affect me

I shouldn’t be feeling this way, I need to get over my feelings

I can’t let anyone notice how I feel or they will hate me

how does everyone just stay calm? why can’t I do that

I’m a burden on everyone, I bet they’d all be happier if I wasn’t there

if I disappeared right now wouldn’t everything be better?

*these are not truths, this is after-effect of long term abuse

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the best revenge is living well. the second best revenge involves a hell of a lot more explosives

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It’s not easy making friends. (via miminaonao)

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I’m not saying I fucked up, I’m just saying that maybe, I didn’t think this shit through. There’s a big difference.

Half the characters in this damn book

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I think a big part of why I read way more fanfiction than books is that there’s just a hell of a lot less exposition

the first 10 pages of most books are always “these are the main characters and here’s some background on each of them and this is the setting etc etc” and it’s such a fucking hassle getting to the plot sometimes

fanfic is just like “fuck it you know all of this already let’s go”