The best piece of advice I ever got was not meant as advice, but as an edict. If I was going to threaten people as a joke, it had to be so far out of proportion with what happened that it would be obvious I was joking. This changed how I expressed frustration with others. It then changed how I expressed frustration with myself.
Not “I’m going to hit you” but “I am going to buy a tuna sub from the gas station and hide it under the seat of your car”
Not “I’m going to kill myself” but “I am going to walk into the desert and let the scarabs take me”
The other side then happened. When I mess something up, instead of saying it’s bad and perpetuating negative thoughts, swing hard the other way.
Not “this art is terrible” but “this shall be framed and mounted on the wall in my museum exhibition as testament to the suffering I had to overcome”
Have been doing this since high school. It was my drama teacher who asked me to please stop scaring the actors. The other half of the edict was that I had to say it in a polite tone, and end it with either please or thank you.
Life changing. 10/10 Mr Muëller. Highly reccomend.
sick of hearing about "healing crystals" that "cleanse your mind and body of negative energy" i want to know which rocks can hurt you and fuck up your vibe so bad
Please enjoy a goofy little comic I made last year that became something I'm quite proud of! A combination of Wallace and Gromit and the hit webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons- Kill Six Billion Gromits!
EDIT: This post continues to blow up every so often so I'm dropping my commission info down here at the bottom- if you liked this comic, get in touch and you can get your own weird little comic or illustration!
Pro-writing tip: if your story doesn't need a number, don't put a fucking number in it.
Nothing, I mean nothing, activates reader pedantry like a number.
I have seen it a thousand times in writing workshops. People just can't resist nitpicking a number. For example, "This scifi story takes place 200 years in the future and they have faster than light travel because it's plot convenient," will immediately drag every armchair scientist out of the woodwork to say why there's no way that technology would exist in only 200 years.
Dates, ages, math, spans of time, I don't know what it is but the second a specific number shows up, your reader is thinking, and they're thinking critically but it's about whether that information is correct. They are now doing the math and have gone off drawing conclusions and getting distracted from your story or worse, putting it down entirely because umm, that sword could not have existed in that Medieval year, or this character couldn't be this old because it means they were an infant when this other story event happened that they're supposed to know about, or these two events now overlap in the timeline, or... etc etc etc.
Unless you are 1000% certain that a specific number is adding to your narrative, and you know rock-solid, backwards and forwards that the information attached to that number is correct and consistent throughout the entire story, do yourself a favor, and don't bring that evil down upon your head.
ok i keep seeing the “if this gets to 5K” trend on here and i thought i would give it a try
if this gets to 5K notes i’ll start reading again
if this get to 6K notes i’ll actually try in school
and finally
if this gets to 10K notes i’ll talk to my crush
BEFORE FEBRUARY!!!
good luck one and all
Scissor Wizard and Paper Wizard
It’s probably fine to leave them alone together.
Everyone knows that on Uber/Lyft you should always give the driver five stars unless they, like, drive the car into the ocean or something, right? You can’t say “the ride was fine, nothing special, so I gave them three stars,” because the company will punish them for being anything less than perfect.
Well, you should know that the same rule goes for any kind of customer service survey. Unless the service you received was unacceptable, give them 5/5 or 10/10 or whatever. It’s annoying, because it ruins the sensitivity of the survey, but it’s how it’s gotta be. 9/10 gets treated like a problem and 6/10 gets treated like a disaster. Understand this and do the workers a favor by grading easy.
Have you seen this rat? Now you have