Ask Game

dealing with the worst case scenario

your condom breaks

you feel a lump on your breast

your friends are ignoring you

you’re stranded on an island 

you got rejected by a crush

you get into a car accident

you got stung by a bee/wasp

you got fired from your job

you’re in an earthquake

your tattoo gets infected

your house is on fire

you’re lost in the woods

you get arrested abroad

you get robbed

your partner cheated on you

you’re on a ship that’s sinking

you fall into ice

you’re stuck in an elevator

you hit a deer with your car

you have food poisoning

your pet passed away

you fall off of a horse

you or your friend has alcohol poisoning

you have toxic shock syndrome

your house has a gas leak

✨soft asks✨

What song makes you feel better?

What is your go to comfort show?

Reading or writing? Why?

Whats your favorite feeling?

How do you like to take care of yourself?

What’s your favorite candle scent?

Who do you feel most like yourself around?

Whats a fabric/texture that’s nostalgic for you?

Best childhood moment?

When was the last time you laughed so hard you cried? (or just felt really good afterwards)

Do you have a comfort item? Tell us about it!

What calms you down?

Bath or shower to relax?

Whats something upcoming that you’re excited for?

Comfort food?

What’s something you want to create soon?

How do you feel best loved?

What age in life do you think you’ll feel most yourself at?

Have you ever written or received a love letter?

Tell us about a memory you hold close to your heart.

Tea, Coffee, or hot cocoa?

Name of your favorite playlist?

Have you ever received flowers?

Who is your bestfriend?

If your soul was a color, what would it be?

If you could live anywhere with anyone you want, where would it be and who would you bring?

Do you like to garden? Have you ever grown something?

What are you proudest of?

Are you a kind person?

What do your hobbies look like?

For no reason, here is Art Spiegelman's 1991 graphic novel Maus, for free on the Internet Archive.

Homemaking, gardening, and self-sufficiency resources that won't radicalize you into a hate group

It seems like self-sufficiency and homemaking skills are blowing up right now. With the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, a lot of folks, especially young people, are looking to develop skills that will help them be a little bit less dependent on our consumerist economy. And I think that's generally a good thing. I think more of us should know how to cook a meal from scratch, grow our own vegetables, and mend our own clothes. Those are good skills to have.

Unfortunately, these "self-sufficiency" skills are often used as a recruiting tactic by white supremacists, TERFs, and other hate groups. They become a way to reconnect to or relive the "good old days," a romanticized (false) past before modern society and civil rights. And for a lot of people, these skills are inseparably connected to their politics and may even be used as a tool to indoctrinate new people.

In the spirit of building safe communities, here's a complete list of the safe resources I've found for learning homemaking, gardening, and related skills. Safe for me means queer- and trans-friendly, inclusive of different races and cultures, does not contain Christian preaching, and does not contain white supremacist or TERF dog whistles.

Homemaking/Housekeeping/Caring for your home:

Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen [book] (The big crunchy household DIY book; includes every level of self-sufficiency from making your own toothpaste and laundry soap to setting up raised beds to butchering a chicken. Authors are explicitly left-leaning.)

Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust [book] (A guide to simple home repair tasks, written with rentals in mind; very compassionate and accessible language.)

How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis [book] (The book about cleaning and housework for people who get overwhelmed by cleaning and housework, based on the premise that messiness is not a moral failing; disability and neurodivergence friendly; genuinely changed how I approach cleaning tasks.)

Gardening

Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale [book] (Really great introduction to urban gardening; explicitly discusses renter-friendly garden designs in small spaces; lots of DIY solutions using recycled materials; note that the author lives in England, so check if plants are invasive in your area before putting them in the ground.)

Country/Rural Living:

Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler [book] (Memoir of a lesbian who lives and works on a rural farm in Maine with her wife; does a good job of showing what it's like to be queer in a rural space; CW for mentions of domestic violence, infidelity/cheating, and internalized homophobia)

"Debunking the Off-Grid Fantasy" by Maggie Mae Fish [video essay] (Deconstructs the off-grid lifestyle and the myth of self-reliance)

Sewing/Mending:

Annika Victoria [YouTube channel] (No longer active, but their videos are still a great resource for anyone learning to sew; check out the beginner project playlist to start. This is where I learned a lot of what I know about sewing.)

Make, Sew, and Mend by Bernadette Banner [book] (A very thorough written introduction to hand-sewing, written by a clothing historian; lots of fun garment history facts; explicitly inclusive of BIPOC, queer, and trans sewists.)

Sustainability/Land Stewardship

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer [book] (Most of you have probably already read this one or had it recommended to you, but it really is that good; excellent example of how traditional animist beliefs -- in this case, indigenous American beliefs -- can exist in healthy symbiosis with science; more philosophy than how-to, but a great foundational resource.)

Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer [book] (This one is for my fellow witches; one of my favorite witchcraft books, and an excellent example of a place-based practice deeply rooted in the land.)

Avoiding the "Crunchy to Alt Right Pipeline"

Note: the "crunchy to alt-right pipeline" is a term used to describe how white supremacists and other far right groups use "crunchy" spaces (i.e., spaces dedicated to farming, homemaking, alternative medicine, simple living/slow living, etc.) to recruit and indoctrinate people into their movements. Knowing how this recruitment works can help you recognize it when you do encounter it and avoid being influenced by it.

"The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline" by Kathleen Belew [magazine article] (Good, short introduction to this issue and its history.)

Sisters in Hate by Seyward Darby (I feel like I need to give a content warning: this book contains explicit descriptions of racism, white supremacy, and Neo Nazis, and it's a very difficult read, but it really is a great, in-depth breakdown of the role women play in the alt-right; also explicitly addresses the crunchy to alt-right pipeline.)

These are just the resources I've personally found helpful, so if anyone else has any they want to add, please, please do!

very fun review of my panel with buckaroo TJ KLUNE today at EMERALD CITY COMIC CON what a great trot

I took my second ADHD pill a little too late I guess because it was suddenly 4 am and I made this thing about why parasitic organisms are shaped like ways and how to consider that for your fiction settings. Raw text version below the cut for people with busted seeing:

Keep reading

i dont think i posted these but here i made a little frog pattern to make tiny frog toys with my grandma

this is the first lil guy I made while still learning how i should sew it

apparently we r doing this again

Selective Mutism: an anxiety disorder. The inability to talk is caused by social anxiety due to the people and/or situation around the selectively mute individual. Often starts in childhood.

Speech Loss: a term for being unable to speak for a certain period of time, usually due to autism-related reasons (e.g. being overwhelmed or burnt out). Can overlap with Selective Mutism, the disorder, but it is not the same thing. (For one, SL is a trait; SM is a whole disorder.)

Nonverbal/Nonspeaking: a term for people who are always or almost always unable to talk. If you're unable to talk for an hour/day/week, you're not "going nonverbal"; you're "losing speech". If you've never been able to talk more than a few utterances, that's nonverbal.

Semiverbal/Semispeaking: a term for people who struggle greatly to speak to communicate. This might include taking awhile to form sentences, speaking with very few words, relying on echolalia, using gestures to communicate, and not always making sense to others.

Hyperverbal: people who speak more than what's typical, though we can still experience speech loss. This can include things like having a large vocabulary, using more words than necessary/usual to say something, talking to ourselves, talking for the sake of talking, using a lot of non-communicative echolalia, not realizing we're talking, or rambling often.

A Note: over time, your place on the verbalizing spectrum (nonverbal, semiverbal, average, hyperverbal) CAN change, but that's not, like, "oh i was hyperverbal this week and nonverbal last week"; it's about overarching patterns. Additionally, Selective Mutism does not inherently put someone at a certain spot on the verbalizing spectrum.

Favourites and superlatives music ask!!!

[info in brackets is to be specified by the asker]

In your opinion, what is:

The best song of [band/ artist]

The best album of [band/ artist]

The best 'era' of [band/ artist]

The best song of [album]

The best song of [genre]

The best album of [genre]

The best band/ artist of [genre]

The best 'era/ generation' of [genre]

The best song of [year]

The best album of [year]

The best song of [decade]

The best album of [decade]

The best band/ artist of [decade]

The best genre of [decade]

The best song of [language]

The best album of [language]

The best band of [language]

The best genre of [language]

The song with the best vocals

The song with the best instrumental

The song with the best [instrument]

The song with the best melody

The song with the best intro

The song with the best outro

The song with the best bridge

The song with the best verse melody

The song with the best chorus

The song with the best pre-chrous

The song with the best structure

The song with the best rhythm

The song with the best sound effects

The song with the best lyrics

The song with the most poetic lyrics

The song with the best rhymes

The song with the most relatable lyrics

The song with the most inspirational lyrics

The song with the most meaningful lyrics

The song with the most blorbo/ AMV-able lyrics

The best song title

The best album title

The best band name

The most well-known song you know

The most well-known band/ artist you know

The most well-known genre you know

The most unknown song you know

The most unknown band/ artist you know

The most unknown genre you know

The saddest song you know

The most emotional song you know

The most nostalgic song you know

The most awe-inspiring song you know

The most energising song you know

The catchiest song you know

The most badass song you know

The funniest song you know

The happiest song you know

The most inspirational song you know

The most romantic song you know

The most chill song you know

The angriest song you know

The weirdest song you know

The creepiest song you know

The most unique song you know

The most shocking song you know

The most comforting song you know

The softest song you know

The softest song of [band/ artist]

The heaviest song you know

The heaviest song of [band/ artist]

The best cover of another song

The best live version

The best demo/ alternate version

The best acoustic version

The longest song you know

The shortest song you know

The most prolific band/ artist you know

The least prolific band/ artist you know

The best love song you know

The best break-up song you know

The best party/ dance song you know

The best song with a social message

The best narrative song

The best song about friendship

The best song about family

The best song about loneliness

The best song about childhood

The best song about inner conflict

The best song about interpersonal conflict

The best song about suffering

The best song about hope

The best song about forgiveness

The best song about the band's/ artist's experiences

The best song of a genre you dislike

The best song of a band/ artist you dislike

The best song of an album you dislike

The worst song of a band/ artist you like

The worst album of a band/ artist you like

The most overrrated song of a band/ artist you like

The most underrrated song of a band/ artist you like

The most underrated song of a genre you like

I’ve already reblogged a link to this entire article by @crimethinc, but I wanted to highlight the excellent ‘resources’ section on its own as we approach the election. For an anarchist take on the current climate, a list of upcoming actions, and a dope-ass poster to print and distribute, please do check out the full article as well

Trump’s term is ending as it began, with a likelihood of street conflict. The following guides offer a great deal of information about how to participate in effective protests while protecting yourself and your community.

Getting Connected

How to Form an Affinity Group

Find a Local Mutual Aid Network

Where to Find Your Local Medic Collective—This is not comprehensive, but offers a good starting point.

Security Culture

What Is Security Culture?

Bounty Hunters and Child Predators: Inside the FBI Entrapment Strategy

When the Police Knock on Your Door—Your rights and options: a legal guide

If the FBI Approaches You to Become an Informant—An FAQ

You can find a lot of important information about general security in protest situations here.

Digital Communications and Security

Your Phone Is a Cop—An OpSec/InfoSec primer for the dystopian present.

Communications Equipment for Rebels

Burner Phone Best Practices—A user’s guide

Doxcare—Prevention and aftercare for those targeted by doxxing and political harassment

This thread spells out how to protect your privacy via proper phone safety at demonstrations—before, during, and after the protest.

Dressing for Success and Security

Fashion Tips for the Brave

The Femme’s Guide to Riot Fashion—This season’s hottest looks for the discerning femme.

Staying Safe in the Streets

Blocs, Black and Otherwise

Safety Gear

A Demonstrator’s Guide to Helmets

A Demonstrator’s Guide to Gas Masks and Goggles—Everything you need to know to protect your eyes and lungs from gas and projectiles.

You can read some more tips about protest gear from protesters in Hong Kong here.

Strategy, Planning, and Tactics

A Step-by-Step Guide to Direct Action—What It Is, What It’s Good for, How It Works

Tools and Tactics in the Portland Protests—This text offers an overview of a wide range of options from leaf blowers and umbrellas to shields and lasers.

Creative Direct Action Visuals—Making banners and more.

Blockade Tactics—courtesy of the Ruckus Society

Tips about Blockading—from Beautiful Trouble

Lock Boxes—How to blockade with

Jail Support

Jail Support

Jail Support form from Rosehip Collective—Fill this out in advance of any event at which you might be arrested and leave it with your attorney or a support contact.

NLG National Support Hotlines and Other Resources

When Things Go Badly

Making the Best of Mass Arrests

How to Survive a Felony Trial—Keeping your head up through the worst of it

I Was a J20 Street Medic and Defendant—How we survived the first J20 trial and what we learned along the way.

Basic First Aid in the Streets

First Aid for Protestors

Eye safety at protests—You can read more on how to do an eye flush here

How to Protect Yourself from Audio Attacks—LRAD, sirens, etc.

COVID-19 Safety at Protests

You can obtain more graphics on this subject here.

For Experienced Medics

Protocols for Common Injuries from Police Weapons—For street medics and medical professionals treating demonstrators.

A Demonstrator’s Guide to Responding to Gunshot Wounds—It can also be useful to read these accounts from people who have experienced gunfire at demonstrations.

These four zines from the Rosehip Medic Collective include a range of useful information.

This collection of resources that appeared shortly before Trump took office includes more topical material, addressing non-violence, solidarity, white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and more.