Jordan S. Brock

i have literally no idea how i feel about this but i feel it

Every time i start a new vido game:

I always do two things when I start a new game:

1. Go to settings and turn on ALL of the subtitles

2. Invert the damn y-axis because I am an Old Gamer and I can’t function any other way

Subtitle + y-axis-inversion solidarity.

Asexual Awareness Week has been formally recognized by the Governor of the State of Washington!

This is BIG.  As far as I have seen, this is the first time Ace Week has ever been recognized anywhere.  This is like an 8.7 on the Awesome Scale big.

I want to thank everyone in the Seattle Aces & Aros for helping to bring this together.  And I want to thank Gov. Inslee for making this happen!  From the Palouse to the Pacific, from the Columbia to Canada, the Evergreen State rocks!

Full text:

More details:  http://www.seattleacesandaros.org/2019/10/20/asexual-awareness-week-in-washington/

How does reading about the same two fuckers falling in love over and over again make a person so goddamn happy.

writing tip: don’t tell us your character’s backstory. don’t tell us what your character is thinking. don’t tell us what your character is doing. don’t tell us anything. the reader should simply look at a blank page and be suddenly overcome with emotion.

Good tip. I know a lot of writers who cry uncontrollably when they see a blank page, so I’m sure that feeling will translate directly to the reader.

Inktober 21: Treasure

When you’re so eager to mansplain the joke goes right over your head.  

That actually caused me physical pain.

I see so many authors bagging on themselves like “why can’t I ever finish anything, I’m a terrible artist and a terrible writer”, and what I want to say based on my professional assessment of their work and where it tends to fall apart is “your art and writing are fine, your real problem is that you’re a shitty project manager” – but of course you can’t actually say that, because while it’s true, it’s almost never helpful to tell someone out of the blue that their real issue is that they entirely lack a critical skill-set they didn’t even know existed.

(This is, of course, complicated by the fact that the culture of art-as-a-hobby – particularly on certain popular social media platforms – seems to encourage artists to internalise the belief that people are either intrinsically good or intrinsically bad at completing long-form projects, so they’ll tend to actively resist the idea that project management is a skill that can be learned.)

I think a factor that also plays into this is that project management is seen as something only an essentially organized person is capable of, and we separate people out into organized or disorganized, which is an unhelpful and also totally false binary. 

A person who thinks of themselves as fundamentally disorganized can still be good at managing large projects and can in fact still present and function in an organized way if they have the right workarounds in place. The problem comes in where nobody else can give them those workarounds – it’s a matter of understanding how oneself functions, which is not only difficult but also time-consuming and painful. It took me ten years to figure out how my brain works, minimum, and I’m still adjusting things ten years after THAT. But the end result is that I am an incredibly mentally chaotic person who happens to appear to be highly organized because I’ve built a lumpy but functional container for every cupful of hot mess in my brain. I’m still chaotic, I just have an system.

So if you think of yourself as someone who can’t be organized, and most large undertakings require some form of organization to complete, it feels like a super hopeless task. 

Okay, but how do you build the skillset you need to be a good project manager?

OP may have a different take, but if you don’t mind I’ll offer some input. Ultimately, you only build the skills by using them, so practice at project management is going to be the best way to build those skills. Games that require you to look both at details and at individual parts, like sudoku, help, but are not really necessary.

A good project manager is nothing more or less than someone who can look at a whole project, break it down into necessary (not always sequential) steps, and then assign those tasks in a way that works for their team. The catch with this kind of project is that you are your entire team, but you don’t really have to think about it that way. After all, the mode you go into when you’re daydreaming about your story is going to be better at laying out scenes than the mode you’re in when you make moodboards (which is a great mode for laying out themes and characters and settings) or even the mode you’re in when you’re actually writing (concerned with sentence flow and grammar and such). If you are the type of person with perceptible modes like that, then treat them as members of your team and understand which is going to handle what and the resources each requires.

Each of those are necessary tasks, and there are times of day or locations or environmental factors or whatever that help you settle into one or another. Figure those out, then start using them. Figure out each of the steps you need to finish and write those down. With each one, write down the things you need to be able to do each step, which may include things that help you switch modes. Then come up with a rough schedule that allows you to move at a comfortable pace and change steps often enough to keep everything together and far enough apart to actually get things done while working on each step.

I read in the afternoons. I do this because my writing involves research and my chronic headaches prevent me from writing around that time, but they do allow me to just shovel info into my brain to sort out later because I know that’s how my mind works. Everything needs to sit and ferment for a bit, the actual act of reading isn’t my research as much as the letting information stew and interact. I know that gathering information to process later is a necessary step in my project with the ‘team’ I have, and I figured out that this is the time to do it. I have different playlists for writing than I do for thinking through scenes and plot, because I need thematic lyrics for the latter but I need a total lack of lyrics for the former. Find things like that that work for you. And the more you do it, the easier it will be to do.

My problem is, I’m a fantastic project manager for everyone and everything except my own ADHD brain.

Me and the Girls Going Out for a Swim

Girls night! Girls night! Girls night! Girls night! Girls night! Girls night!

not voting isn’t refusing to play the game. You’re in this country, you’re subject to the game whether you like it or not. The only way not to play is to leave, and the vast majority of us don’t have that option.

Not voting is playing the game but saying ‘pass’ every time your turn comes up and then wondering why you lost.

Making young people not vote is actually a tactic used in politics to keep the satus quo. The young vote is always the one for change, so dissuading them from voting at all is actually a political tactic used by the people in charge to keep themselves there. Voting is rebellion.

Art by  CottonValent

when i was a baby i thought big words and oxford commas and kcup coffee machines make u smart. you know what makes you smart? loving ur friends.

and the oxford comma.

Making sure your friends also love the Oxford comma helps.

if a demon possessed me I’d just b like ok take it from here good luck man

Will the demon finish my wips?

how do I grow a set of antlers and become a deep forest mist deity within 5 years

Gods become gods through the power of belief, so first step is you gotta believe in yourself

Once you start doing that, up your calcium intake or your antlers won’t come in right.

Does ice cream count?