doll

"Yeah, I'm going to teleport to Europe for a bit, but I'm cursed to lose something that I had with me in transit every time. So I always carry like two hundred little paper stars with me."

"And that works?"

"Usually. I have an extra pairs of glasses too, and a burner phone. I thought about carrying a shirt and like... leggings or something I could roll up real small, but so far it's never taken my clothes and anyway I could always teleport right back to my room to grab more if I need to."

"Still, it means you can't carry anything expensive with you."

"What? No. Expensive is fine. I just avoid carrying sentimental stuff. Why would I care if it's expensive?"

"Because you don't want to lose expensive stuff?"

"Oh! Oh, no. No dude. Dude. I rob banks like... all the time. Also rich people."

"Wait. The thing with Elon Musk... did you... kill him?"

to draw this was a very impulsive decision

I think we should go the other way around.

make more and more weird false dichotomies in greetings. "gamers and pianists". "oil painters and swordsmen". "vexillologists and entomologists". "chess masters and diamond artificers". "accountants and gendered individuals".

Honoured guests is the formal gender neutral term

And this girl's mom comes in, hears what we're playing and gets all MAD and UPSET. She says that if we play act something, it's because we want it to happen. So her daughter must WANT HER TO DIE.

First off lady, we were 6 year year olds, so take it down several notches. We barely had a concept of mortality for fucks sake. She made us feel so guilty and ashamed, because she was taking our game personally.

Now I have a 5 year old. And sometimes she looks at me and says "pretend you're dead, and I have to -" Whatever it is. Some adult task she's assigned herself.

And it's just so transparently obvious that she's practicing the idea of having to do things on her own. Which is exactly what 5 year olds are supposed to do. I actually find it very flattering that the only way she can envision me not being available to help her is to be literally deceased. Otherwise, obviously, she wouldn't have to do scary hard things alone.

It's a natural coping mechanism. She's self-soothing about what would happen if I wasn't there by play-acting independence in a perfectly safe environment. She's also practicing skills she needs, and making up excuses for practicing them on her own, without taking on the responsibility of being able to do them by herself all the time yet.

Humans mentally rehearse bad this in their brains all the time. We can do that by ruminating- going over worries over and over again, which tends to lead to anxiety and helplessness and depression. Or we can do it with a sense of play- by recognizing that the fiction is fiction and we can dip our toe into these experiences and expose ourselves to bad things without actually being injured.