Oh, The cleverness of me

@madelineshrimp has done a gorgeous job! The book is so beautifully made, with loving details and a great cover (using the illustrations by @sunshine-dies ).

Madelineshrimp has allowed me to share the pics they sent me!

"a vague disclaimer is nobody's friend"

Fiona is married so it's time to reunite with her parents. But instead of marrying a prince, she's married to an ogre. Not just that, but she's also an ogre. (Yes everyone knew she would sometimes be an ogre but that was when she was a child, she didn't know she would be an ogre for the rest of her life, and besides once she met the right prince she would stop being an ogre. She was supposed to stop being an ogre.)

But okay they're both ogres. We can still ask about when they'll have children because even if they're ogres they can still have kids, right? That's what married princes and princesses do so naturally that's what everyone does. Even if ogres might not be great parents (I've heard that ogres eat their young, is that something you people do?) it's still something that should be discussed.

And okay you can stay in Fiona's childhood bedroom filled with all the reminders that hey, everyone thought she was just a princess and princesses marry princes. Her toys left out from the last time she played with them. The prince slays the ogre. The princess offers a token of gratitude for slaying the ogre. Fiona wrote Mrs. Fiona Charming a million times in her diary because what else was she supposed to grow up to be?

And Harold you have to fix this, your country can't be ruled by ogres. You were unfit to rule when you were a frog but I changed you, I made you better, I made you a prince. You know how this works. Think of your daughter's safety.

-  Velký noční hlídač / Watchman

- author of the videomaping Milan Cais 

Wood-burning permanent settlements of any scope tend to both run through available wood of this kind much too quickly to depend on it, and to have much higher standards wrt wood quality than most modern campers.

Also someone tends to wind up owning rights to literally all wood resources including 'the trimmings from these small shrubs,' even if the 'someone' happens to be all citizens of the nearest settlement.

Which is to say 1) 500 years ago a majority of firewood in much of the world was commercially sourced in some sense, to keep up with demand, so 2) opportunities to be Those Two Guys weren't that thick on the ground, since the scenario proposed does in fact vaguely suggest a hunter-gatherer scenario of some kind, making the figure indeed kind of humorously low for the premise that going back that far would naturally deliver communal fires fed by forage, but 3) those absolutely still existed in 1525, so it's not necessarily wrong even if we assume that implication was intended.

some exist now also, though, so on that basis op didn't even need to posit any amount of years ago, just 'if i lived in a hunter-gatherer society' or something. but that wouldn't read as well.

This sounds so harsh, but please bare with me.

I procrastinated a lot growing up. I still procrastinate today, but less so. And yet, I got good grades. I could write an A+ paper that “knocked [my professor]’s socks off” in the hour before class and print it with sweat running down my face.

I was so used to hearing from teachers and family that if I just didn’t procrastinate and worked all the time, I could do anything! I had all this potential I wasn’t living up to!

And that’s true, as far as it goes, but that’s like saying if Usain Bolt just kept going he could be the fastest marathon runner in the world. Why does he stop at the end of the race??

If ANYONE could make their top speed/most productive setting the one they used all the time, anyone could do anything. But you can’t. Your top speed is not a speed you’re able to sustain.

Now, I’ve found that I do need to work on not procrastinating. Not because the product is better, even, but because it’s better for my mental health and physical health to not have a full, sweating, panicked breakdown over every task even if the task itself turns out excellently. It’s a shitty way to live! You feel bad ALL the time! And I don’t deserve to live like that anymore.

So all of this to say, I’m not wasting a ton of potential. I don’t have an ocean of productivity and accomplishments inside of me that I could easily, effortlessly access if I just sat down 8 hours a day and worked. There’s no fucking way. That’s not real. It’s an illusion. It’s fine not to live up to an illusion.

It shows that we are conditioned from a young age to believe that if we don't do what is expected of us, that it is a personal failing, regardless of if those expectations are actually achievable without inflicting harm upon ourselves.