knivesforknife

[knivesforknife]

 HEY! MAKE A GAME!

Here’s my new free 8-fold I was handing out at the SCAD Minicomic Expo! I’ll have more free copies with me at future shows.

I’ve been dabbling in game making lately using open source & free assets so I wanted to collect everything I’ve learned so far in one place. Coding has been really fun as a hobby since it marries skills I already have with an entirely new way of thinking.

This zine was put together with Electric Zine Maker which I highly recommend to everyone.

EDIT: I have been warned that OHRRPGCE is not good for those with photosensitivity, as it contains huge contrast and flashing. Sorry for the oversight, stay safe.

Transcription in read more

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[knivesforknife]

god my audio processing is so shit i was in a call with a friend and she said something and i have no idea what she said. i would say its just bad tech but this morning my mom literally talked to me standing in front of me and i heard like none of it and it took me half a minute to register one of the words and piece it together

[knivesforknife]

ive been looking up on autism related resources almost non-stop for the last two days and i took a couple of the tests on embrace autism but the imposter syndrome comes and goes

like im not always sensitive to things

but sometimes bright lights hurts my eyes

and i hear sounds like electrical whines that no one else seem to hear

and some sounds hurt to even think about and they seem so overwhelming

and it hurts when people grab me even though i know its not supposed to hurt

and i cant answer yes or no questions and my parents complain about why i must always provide alternative answers

and i know i used to bite through most of my clothing up till i was high school

and when people touch me without me initiating it my whole body feels like it wants to escape

and when things get overwhelming talking feels so hard and every word takes effort

and i can remember people but i cant see faces in my memory and i dont know if this is normal at all

the first time i saw a psychologist i ran away after the first session because i was laughing while talking about my depression and the psychologist said she hasnt seen anyone like me

and ive had trouble sleeping at night since at least 7 yrs old (by the time i was 7 i was coming up with imaginary scenarios and adventures in my head to occupy myself while everyone else slept)

and i have family members who are nd so it could be genetic

but my brain is still like what if you're faking it. what if its just some sort of sensory disorder, do those also fade in and out i dont even know. ive been going through a bit of an emotional rollercoaster lately i think, and i dont know what i am supposed to do or who im supposed to talk to.

[knivesforknife]

Apartment hacks masterpost

Kitchen

How to clean up kitchen (particularly the sink, burnt pots and small aplliances)

How to take care of kitchen stuff so that it lives longer

10 commandments of a clutter-free kitchen

Organizing kitchen mini masterpost

5 things to do in the kitchen before you go to bed

What is soapy bowl and why it’s awesome

How to organize your fridge (also here, here and here)

Thins you should know about your fridge

Adding more storage space in a tiny kitchen

Cleaning

Lots of cleaning tutorials and tips. And some more

How to clean up pantry

How to make your house look cleaner than it really is

How to wash pillows

Cleaning the bathroom

How to clean the nastiest places (and get rid of bad smells, etc.)

Floor-to-celling guide to spring cleaning

Recaulking your bathtub

Cleaning grout

How to dispose of toxic waste

Cleaning the medicine cabinet

How to make chores more fun

You mustn’t skip these chores, but you can delay these if you’re busy

Easily forgotten things that you should clean/replace

Why you need a catch-up day

Small cleaning tasks to do in under 15 minutes (also here)

Looking for a flat/moving

First apartment checklist

Where too look during an apartment hunt (and some more tips)

Negotiate these things with your landlord

What to do first in a new place

What do clean before moving out

How not to get crazy during moving flats

How to downgrade to a smaller place

Organisation, storage

10 habits for better home organisation

How to store off-season items

10 storage ideas for small spaces (more here)

Storage secret weapons

How to organise your closet

Things to do before twice-yearly closet switchout

How to store and maintain your sweaters

Decluttering

Why it feels great

How to get rid of clutter

How to declutter (not only a flat)

What needs to be thrown away from your flat

How to let go of the things you no longer need

Things you own too many of; you can throw away these too

Decuttering the bathroom

Decluterring masterpost

Decorating

Projects for every room in your home/flat

Add style to your home

DIY decorating ideas

How to use negative space

4 common decorating mistakes and how to avoid them

Questions to ask yourself before buying something new

How to choose furniture that’ll be easier to clean

Season-specific tips

Things to do before the cold season

Household hacks for winter

Preparing for Christmas

Green thumb 101

How to take care of succulents

Never kill a plant again

Living alone / Sharing a flat

How not to be lonely when living alone

12 things you can only do when home alone

What you learn by living alone

Things you learn while sharing a flat

What to pack when leaving for a dorm

How to seamlessly share a kitchen (or a flat in general)

Safety issues to discuss with flatmates

Benefits of living with strangers

And also how to turn a house into a home

[knivesforknife]

this is gonna sound like a shitpost but the best advice i have if youre consistently coming off wrong is to start talking like an elcor

you will feel like a dumdum at first, but once you get used to it youll realize that telling people what kind of thing you're about to say ahead of time flattens their anxiety a huge amount

ive been starting every question with "question:" for awhile now and i almost never get people reading too much into what i mean anymore

it seems super dumb, but "what are your plans tomorrow?" gets people asking me what i have planned despite me obviously being in the process of figuring that out, whereas "question: what are your plans tomorrow?" gets me a quick rundown of their schedule, followed by "why?"

it also makes it really easy to work tone indicators into your verbal speech. if you're always saying "question: [your question here]?" then no one blinks when you say "genuine question: [question that could read as sarcastic]?"

it also gets you out of your own way for any types of things you struggle to say. "can you make sure to do the dishes before you go to bed?" feels like an argument waiting to happen, but "request: can you make sure to do the dishes before you go to bed?" gets the words flowing on a neutral word while making it clear that you're not looking for a fight

so yeah. suggestion: talk like an elcor

[knivesforknife]

So uh....some dude apparently recreated Adobe Photoshop feature-for-feature, for FREE, and it runs in your browser.

Anyway, fuck Adobe, and enjoy!

[knivesforknife]

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

[knivesforknife]

To myself, raised in an environment that glorified and romanticized restriction and suffering:

There is no victory in skipping dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, or morning coffee, or dessert.

There is no victory in refusing heaters and air conditioners and fans and heated blankets.

There is no victory in denying yourself sleep, or showers, or movement, or water, or a comfortable bed, or taking the elevator vs. the stairs.

There is no victory in refusing pain meds and heating pads and ice packs and medical help.

There is no victory in punishing yourself needlessly, in telling yourself that this pain you feel is because you are bad to the core and deserve it.

There is no victory in choking back your laughter and your tears, to keep an imagined equilibrium of safety that is really just a dry, cracked, empty, endless emotional desert.

You are here. You are in this body, and this body is yours. You deserve good things. You are alive, and that is messy and loud, and messy and loud are okay.

It’s okay to live abundantly. It’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to indulge. This paralysis of self-punishment, self-restriction, self-loathing is not healthy or good for you.

[knivesforknife]

i dont think the relationship i had could have worked out, we just had too different needs, but sometimes i miss having someone around who i dont have to mask around, someone who doesnt require eye contact and understands when i am distracted and i dont know.

[knivesforknife]

my niece is staying over at my place for a few days and she is sleeping in my bed and its a new place for her so she is scared and she wants physical touch as assurance of safety but i am neurodivergent and while i can stand short moments of holding hands most forms of physical touch is a overwhelming and negative experience for me and anyways idk how to fix this

[knivesforknife]

a part of me really wants to get diagnosed just so i can make things easier for my twin nephews.

ill be honest at the beginning even though i was saying i might be 'neurodivergent' i mostly thought it was adhd but the more time went on, the more it just didnt seem to fit like, some things fit but some didnt and maybe its ableist but it took me way too long to accept that it was probably autism.

even now i am terrified to get to confirmed by anyone else because if i dont have autism, then it means my periods of being nonverbal is just me. that my sensitivity to textures and sound and the physical pain that some sounds make me feel and my inability to really remember faces once they leave my view and my inability to recognise emotions that arent extreme like it would all be me, and thats terrifying. like what if it was all just me trying to fit into a label but if i was then are any of the feelings i feel real.

[knivesforknife]

ill be honest at the beginning even though i was saying i might be 'neurodivergent' i mostly thought it was adhd but the more time went on, the more it just didnt seem to fit like, some things fit but some didnt and maybe its ableist but it took me way too long to accept that it was probably autism.

even now i am terrified to get to confirmed by anyone else because if i dont have autism, then it means my periods of being nonverbal is just me. that my sensitivity to textures and sound and the physical pain that some sounds make me feel and my inability to really remember faces once they leave my view and my inability to recognise emotions that arent extreme like it would all be me, and thats terrifying. like what if it was all just me trying to fit into a label but if i was then are any of the feelings i feel real.

[knivesforknife]

Dear Ms D - as a former Scooby Doo writer, was Velma being gay a thing back in the year? I'm not suggesting that it's "less canon because it wasn't in episode 1" or that it's a bad decision (or that you, personally, might have any issue - I've read the Middle Kingdoms!) just super curious if the Writing Staff of Yore were thinking about it at all?

I... don't think they were. Nor do I recall the concept ever coming up, even in casual conversation. (And it seems likely enough that it could have, as at least one of my story editors was gay.) ...So I think we have to mark this issue as "insufficient data." Sorry not to be able to cast more light on this.

[knivesforknife]

i was streaming on a friends channel today and one of my viewers was like u bastard stream on ur own channel i have a sub message im missing out on and im like LMAO but my friend was like U CANT CALL YUMI A BASTARD HOW DARE U and im like aksgaksvsk so tru i am at worse a whore and shes like bro u are the furthest thing from a whore and i just had a lot of fun today. not to encourage my viewers to like call me names but being called a bastard for streaming on someone elses channel and not my own is honestly pretty funny

[knivesforknife]

i often see people say they can't go to the library because they lost/never returned/dropped some library books in a bath or something, and now view themselves as heinous library criminals who would be yelled at and/or hit with a huge bill if they ever went back

and obvs i can't make promises unless you came into my specific library and were served by me but here are 10 reasons i think if you went in and politely explained the situation to a member of staff it'd probably be fine:

consider this from the library's perspective. those books are probably never coming back regardless. that value (having the books back), which is probably the reason the library has a fines system to begin with, is not gonna happen. the value of retaining you as a customer though is right there in front of them

if you explain that a fine is too high for you to pay and that that is keeping you from coming back to the library, what you've basically said is that there is an impediment to your library access. part of the job of anyone who works in a library is to remove that impediment

library computer systems will vary hugely and if it's been a long time there is a significant chance there isn't even a record of your lost books anymore

the pandemic affected library access significantly and a lot of libraries will have had amnesties once they reopened to get people over the hump of oh god oh god i've had these books FOREVER i can never show my face again. even if that amnesty is officially over, the fact that there was one helps the person in front of you justify waiving the fee (which, if they're like me and you aren't being cruel, they are probably looking for a reason to do!)

a lot of libraries have reduced or no fines for children, so if you lost books as a kid there's even more of a chance there won't be a fine

the person you speak to at the front desk at a library is probably not an accredited Librarian TM but a nice underpaid person who has to deal with a lot of difficult customers going off on them for no reason (also accredited librarian tms are also pretty nice usually). i would take 100 people politely explaining that they've lost books and are very embarrassed over one person whose purpose that day is to belittle me, a captive audience who has to be nice no matter what. library assistant jobs are often not that different from customer service jobs! a lot of library assistant jobs now explicitly are customer service jobs! it is so so likely that that person wants nothing less than to have an adversarial conversation with you

if you haven't been to a library since you were a lot younger, it is almost certainly no longer what you're picturing. most modern libraries are actively trying to move away from the image of severe quiet building where you will be shhhhed and sternly told to look after your books or else. we're trying to be vibrant community hubs full of friendly people who will do their best to help you

library employees, bizarrely enough, probably don't think of each individual book as being that valuable compared to other readers. if you own a book and keep it forever and read it maybe twice, barring any crazy accidents it'll probably last decades. if a book is on the shelves of a public library and is regularly borrowed, it'll last...3-5 years, maybe. a busy library will discard large volumes of stock every year because that's just how it works. you lose that sense of the sanctity of every copy of every book pretty fast in these kinds of jobs

libraries need people to use them! a huge huge part of getting library funding is demonstrating how many people use and value your service. you and the library staff are on the same side: they also want you to be able to use the library again

a public library has witnessed behaviours the likes of which you cannot imagine. people have shoved books down our toilets. people have looked at porn on library computers in full view of everyone around them. people have thrown chairs out of the window. losing books happens all the time and is so unlikely to phase staff who are probs a little bit dead inside

tldr: come back to the library, we need you visiting and using the service more than we need the books you accidentally lost, also if the person you talk to is anything like me they're probably just glad you aren't yelling at them

[knivesforknife]

today is my birthday! i’m 33 today and i have done an ungodly amount of stupid shit in my life that honestly probably should have gotten me killed. so here are 33 hard-won things i’ve learned that i wish someone had told me sooner.

whenever you buy an object, you are going to own that object for your entire life unless you make the conscious decision to throw it away or give it a new home. maybe other people don’t struggle with this as much as i do, but i’ve grown to become a little exhausted by finding a thing and realizing i don’t want it anymore, but i don’t have the energy or motivation to do anything with it. signed, a woman with a packed 10x10 storage unit who is now extremely hesitant to buy new things.

food, and by that i mean good food (and by that i don’t necessarily mean healthy food, but food of good quality that you love), is necessary to live, and buying it, preparing it, and eating it is not a chore. the sooner you accept this and make food a priority in your life, the healthier you’ll be. 

speaking of food, not everything you buy should be the cheapest version of it. personally i’ve found it’s always worth it to splurge on good olive oil, butter, and canned tomatoes. for years i thought i was an awful cook because i was cooking with cheap, disgusting olive oil that made my food taste like shit.

speaking of food part 2, i can’t BELIEVE how long this took me to figure out, but mise en place is the real real. get your shit out and organized and prepped *before* you start cooking, even if it makes things take longer. and yes, it is always worth it to do the dishes as you go, which pisses me off.

when i was teaching myself how to cook and feeling daunted about it, the best advice i ever got was to aim to learn 15 recipes and then put them in rotation.

this is the most horrific and awful truth i have forced myself to accept: there may come a day you can no longer digest your favorite foods, and you will either have to stop eating them, or remain very close to a toilet. i’m sorry.

other people are always going to misperceive you and misunderstand you, sometimes willfully. other people’s opinions of you don’t actually have anything to do with you. they’re not your business, and you don’t have to worry about it or change yourself.

when innocuous or neutral things make you irrationally angry or upset, step back, realize you’re having a big reaction, and then when you’re ready, pay very close attention to the thing that upset you, because you’re about to learn something important about yourself.

a pill sorter can save your life. i don’t know how i managed my meds without one.

sometimes college is about learning stuff, and not about becoming something.

no matter how many perfectionist tendencies you have, it’s worth it to remind yourself that no matter how much of a mess you actually are, you deserve to be loved.

if you’re always forgetting to do important but tedious things, set an alarm and set aside one hour of each week, not to do the important tedious things, but to assess what needs to be done, and *schedule* the important tedious things for the following week. this literally changed my life.

during that hour, make a meal plan too. the point of doing this is condense the time in which you’re making decisions (what to do, what to eat, etc) so you don’t have to burden yourself with them throughout the week. decision fatigue is real. any way you can alleviate that is a good thing.

learn the difference between aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, and assertive behavior. recognize when you’re being one of the first three, re-assess and aim for being assertive, even if it’s hard.

you can tell you’ve processed trauma, not when the traumatic thing stops upsetting you to think about, but when the traumatic thing takes up the same size in your brain as all your other memories.

if you’re one of those people who never seems to finish projects or follow through with things, there’s a chance you may just grow out of it naturally. until then, follow your interests and don’t feel bad about putting down a hobby to pick up another.

if you love stickers but have sticker anxiety, buy vinyl stickers. you can re-stick them.

there are only a few careers i can think of that you have to commit to early in life because getting the undergraduate credentials is a pain in the ass (teachers, doctors, and engineers, from my research). nearly everything else you can switch to later, which takes a LOT of pressure off having to figure out what you want to do with your life.

people say there’s no money in becoming an artist, writer, musician, etc. actually there’s a ton of money in all of those things, it’s just in the stuff other people want you to make and never what you want to make. it’s still worth it to develop the creative skill and not force yourself into business school because it’s more “practical” or whatever. 

sleep when you’re tired. SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE TIRED. don’t beat yourself up about it, don’t tell yourself you shouldn’t be tired or that you’ve already slept too much, just take a fucking nap. you would never say “hm i’ve already had enough water today, therefore i should not be thirsty” so don’t treat sleep the same way.

when you build a piece of furniture from target or ikea or whatever, the first thing you should do is count all the little screws and things to make sure everything’s there that should be. it sucks to get halfway into putting something together only to find there’s a piece missing and you have to go buy it.

learn to travel by yourself, go out to eat by yourself, see a movie by yourself. in my early 20s i was scared to do these things, but i do them so often now i don’t even think about it. it’s the most fulfilling skill i’ve ever learned.

adding to the above, if you’re a people-pleaser, being alone is especially important, because you’ve probably developed the habit of making the people you’re with more comfortable and happy than yourself, and you’re missing a lot of the beautiful and interesting things around you. when you’re by yourself, you can focus on what *you* want without guilt. 

sometimes you’ll want to break things off with a friend for reasons that are no one’s fault, and you don’t want it to be volatile or make a big thing of it, in which case the goal is to simply fade out of their life. it is okay to let people go.

shame is useless. get rid of it.

no matter how much of yourself you put into your art (or writing, or music, or whatever), when people criticize it, they are not criticizing you. they are having a reaction colored by their own tastes and perspectives. their opinion of your work has nothing to do with you. you don’t have to take everyone’s feedback. in fact you don’t have to take anyone’s feedback. the other side to this coin unfortunately is that compliments don’t have anything to do with you either. it’s good to accept this because it means you’ll stop seeking validation from other people and won’t let anyone else’s perspectives impact your work. anything nice anyone says about your work is merely a bonus to an already good thing.

if you’re an artist of any kind, take one day a year to look up opportunities like grants, funding, residencies, workshops, whatever. put the due dates of all of them on a calendar for the year following and get into the habit of applying for stuff. getting rejected sucks, application fees suck, but in all the years i’ve been doing this, it has always, always been worth it. these things give you a chance not only to help fund and support what you’re passionate about, but they force you to take your own work seriously, and that is something that’s absolutely necessary in order to be successful.

you must become your own greatest advocate. in all respects–in health, in love, in happiness, in freedom, you must. no one will ever fight as hard for you as you will. this in turn will give you the strength and motivation to help others fight for themselves too. the only way the world will ever get better is if every person on this planet learns to see themselves as equals to everyone around them.

brag about yourself as often as you can. for one, people develop their perceptions of you based on how you treat yourself and speak about yourself. but for two, it’s the fastest way to figure out which people to keep in your life, because they’re the ones who are going “oh hell yeah, you’re awesome.” 

be the person other people want to brag to.

at some point in your life, someone is going to hurt you, and it’s going to be willful and intentional. it is not worth it to waste brain space figuring out why they did it or why you think you deserved it. all you have to do is let yourself feel that pain, acknowledge it, and try to move on.

no matter how bad off you think you are, recovery is possible. the first and hardest step is to learn you’re worth the time and effort it takes to recover from the awful things that have happened to you.

developing an expertise does not mean you’re getting objectively better at something. becoming an expert is only the process of seeing your mistakes and having the patience to sit in the discomfort of not knowing how to fix them.    

[knivesforknife]

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free