iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Good catch! It is the speed the Delorean had to reach to go back in time, which started a whole chain of mishaps for Marty McFly & his pal 'Doc' Brown. Anyone who thinks that is worth celebrating is Bad News

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 1h

I particularly love it when someone says they learned something they don't know, or that they want to go & find out more about oware or kyogi karuta (or play them!). Tipping folks off to interesting, shiny possibilities in the world is the best.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 1h

The book has 'found an audience', which is, you know, without hyperbole, the fulfilment of my lifelong dream. I write books! Wow! The Game Changers has the most translations & most international editions of anything I've ever written. I would never have guessed.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 2h

There's a lovely review of The Game Changers up on Cards or Die. Ann is a friend & someone whose work running game events I find inspirational, but I'm actually quite annoying in real life so in a sense this is even more impressive than praise from a stranger: cardsordie.com/the-game-cha...

cardsordie.com

The Game Changers - Tim Clare | Cards or Die | Horsforth

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I love board games and I find the history of them fascinating.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 18h

Slick corporate AIs are always evil but capable of responding 'just peachy - thanks for asking!' Techno-speak AIs are always neutral-to-good & secretly like sarcastic butlers

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 18h

I'm sorry you both had such a rough time of it. It sounds like you made mistakes then did the really painful work of trying to do better while not being able to undo them. & I suspect you were already carrying pain accumulated from other people's treatment of you.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 21h

These were all topics that prompted sustained, directed investigation, most often through reading, exploring via multiple sources, a desire to learn & talk about them & understand them, & they commanded my daydreaming time too.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 21h

Previous special interests brief & major include Mao Zedong, creative writing pedagogy, 1930s Britain, secret societies, the Tiger Economies, shotguns, beetles, fungi, psychology, parapsychology, UFOs & the Beatles

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 21h

Toads in myth & folklore, Blade Runner, Super Mario & Nintendo, boardgames, monsters & monster theory, The Wind in the Willows, etymology, the history & sociology of autism itself. I'm not an expert in any of these topics but anything related to them glows for me like an NPC with a quest.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I would love to one day be in a place where I have a healthy relationship with myself, in a way that allows me to pass that on to the people around me.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Lots of feelings don't necessarily have an instrumental use, per se. But they're understandable & appropriate. So my differing with you on this is just about wondering if usefulness is not the only metric for emotions. Thank you for being so friendly & sensitive about your suggestions.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I've heard this distinction, & I struggle with it just because I'm mostly a descriptivist in my heart (albeit not always in practice) & to me it's not a definition of the words that holds with common usage. Are there actions where shame is appropriate afterwards? I think there are.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I share all this partly because I am autistic & splurging is part of my MO, & partly because, over the years, many people have written or messaged me saying my openness around mental health has lessened their suffering somewhat. That seems to me a social good, even if I look a bit daft doing it.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The latter can feel like dangerous, indulgent self deception. I believe, like many people, that if I were truly seen, I would be rejected.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It's hard for me to distinguish between appropriate shame & destructive shame, to accept love without thinking I've tricked someone, to accept criticism without thinking it will destroy me, to exist in that complicated space where I push myself to do better while sustaining myself with love.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

A lot of neurodivergent people develop shame around shame. Shame at the size of our emotions. Shame that we can't let go of self hatred. It seems self indulgent, irrational, childish. So we hide it or make jokes, & that gap makes it worse. It's terribly hard to unpick & heal.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Rejection sensitivity can make important, justified criticism almost impossible to hear. It can activate a state of paralysing overwhelm. That's no good. There's dignity & better tomorrows in being able to listen, work on stuff, make repairs. That's hard in a state of abject terror.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I have days when I feel like change is impossible. I have shame that is inappropriate & inherited, & shame that comes from real ways I fail & cause harm. I can look at myself sometimes & feel convinced I am incapable of doing better. Which might be true but is a self fulfilling prophecy.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Having those people for when you're struggling, for when you fall short & the shame rises like floodwaters, for seeing the best in you & holding you to account & reminding you of the small, boring tactics that add up to better outcomes for you & those around you - this can make all the difference.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Having people in your life - & being that person in others' lives - with whom you can share the small victories no one else sees - the week you brushed your teeth & did your laundry, the time you didn't drink, the argument where you de-escalated instead of exploding - can be a big thing.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I have not drunk alcohol for just over 14 years. But stopping does not fix the emotions that drove abusing alcohol in the first place. I have never been part of a programme but I understand the cycle of shame, stuckness, desperation for absolution, & the unliveability of life.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

But the pain of those shames can lead to lashing out at others who remind you of the feeling. Anything to not feel it. & I think it *is* appropriate to feel ashamed of having passed it on to someone else. The danger is the latter triggers the former & the spiral deepens, harming everyone.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Shame around, say, not having read certain works of literature, or enjoying a children's TV programme, or your income or appearance, is obviously misplaced but not easily released. Shame around a harm someone did to you can be a way of maintaining a sense of control, through imagined culpability.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Shame doesn't, in itself, generate positive change. & I think there's a lot of evidence that it can arrest change & trap people in a spiral. But you can feel shame for something that wasn't your fault, or is not shameful, & you can feel shame for acting in a way inconsistent with your values.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

As someone who has big emotional reactions to things, I have a lot of feelings about shame, self-hatred, alongside acknowledging real failings, mistakes, harm, & changing behaviour. I don't think self hatred accomplishes anything positive, but shame is sometimes appropriate, understandable.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Pathfinder has a monster entry & stats for the little flying silver balls

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Did you know the first level in the 1997 FPS Blood is modelled after the funeral home in Phantasm? I did not, played the game first then felt like I was having a reality crisis watching the movie & feeling like I'd been there before, & then I correctly *knew what was round the corner*

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Well this was the lesson of Citizen Kane, right. Devote your time to developing monetisable skills, & foreswear joy in order to do so. This is the essence of a meaningful life. That's why he cried out on his deathbed 'I wasted my life fucking sledging'

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

That's a uniquely Australian thing poms don't get

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Mate have you tried bungling boobs? Clods? Ninnies? I was let down on a big batch of snivelling I needed doing recently & they knocked it out the park

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Well, not all of it Chris. Unless those cars are running on solar

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

They have holidays & jobs & ice cream shops in the first Mad Max

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

In my first published book, We Can't All Be Astronauts, I describe Jeffrey Archer as an 'arse-countenanced hack'. The book went through a legal read & it wasn't flagged as libellous so we can assume it is a defensible statement in English law.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I bet I can if I try hard enough

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

What does that mean? I mean it's day time where I am but are you saying it will be interesting to see Jupiter go behind the moon or are you saying the astrological effects are what are making my mind go loopy

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I wound up staying up writing because apparently I can write like mad when I know it will have adverse consequences for my mental health the next day

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

If Derrida starts sounding like straightforward common sense, that is like suddenly smelling toast. Go to bed!

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I done a blunder late last night, & read a bit of Jacques Derrida's talk 'Some Statements & Truisms About Neologisms, Newisms, Positisms, Parasitisms, & Other Small Seisisms', & started to feel I sort of understood it, which is the cognitive equivalent of paradoxical undressing in extreme cold.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Ah! Immediately after I thought no wait Tim it probably really is a lyric not just a happy accident

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

This is a good point & also sounds like the beginning of a Noel Coward verse

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Feels like an experience that might strain their belief in a loving God tbh

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Hark at you, familiar with his ouevre

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Something that sounds made up but is true is that the first money I ever got for my writing was from Jeffrey Archer, & when I met him just over ten years later he asked for it back.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It's not always til we're miserable! Sometimes someone moves away or dies

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I make a boardgame agony aunt podcast with @giantbrain.co.uk & @ava.foxfort.net - we've made 16 episodes so far with a new one out soon. I hope you've enjoyed it if you've listened to it, & if you haven't (& you play games) why not give 1 episode a try? podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/b...

podcasts.apple.com

But Why Vikings?

Games Podcast · Updated fortnightly · Any unanswered questions at your gaming table? Ava Foxfort, Tim Clare, and Iain McAllister mull over tabletop conudrums: from etiquette at the table to recommenda...

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

'slams' is my favourite from local papers. My dream is to one day be someone who 'breaks his silence on' a topic

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Today I discovered a bunch of notes files for the book I'm working on that ended up in another folder. Trying to write with ADHD feels like being the protagonist in an amnesiac thriller some days, I swear. Discovering archives on the exact subject I'm working on... written by me.

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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The Frankfurt Book Fair is basically the Wild Hunt of the publishing industry. Everyone vanishes without explanation, swept up into this mysterious boozy revel, then reappears 3 weeks later, exhausted, unable to account for their absence except for a few enigmatic fragments.

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