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Wonderful Starfish

@wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social
315 followers 250 following 5.9K posts

Psych RN, writer, gamer, parent. Up late on the socials while rocking a fussy baby. #ReportableEvents- a horror/comedy flash fiction project. Also, don't use ChatGPT for therapy.

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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 10h
Do you ever think about the alternate universe where you went into twitch streaming instead of blogging and/or academia?
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 11h
Yes but we need either a new word or to change what the acronym stands for. Bigots don't get credit for being feminist.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Jesus fucking Christ, how are we still making games like this?
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Zeus: and then you'll have to push it up again! Sysiphus: bro, you're just describing regular life.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
So what I'm hearing here is that given the option he would refuse artificial respiration
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Have you found an uncanny valley for sleep / rest? Since the baby start sleeping (slightly) more consistently, I've found that 6 hours of sleep is actually worse for me than 5.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Have you considered bringing more Tod? That might help.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
"First, kick some ass."
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Reposted by Wonderful Starfish
IGN @ign.com · 07/10/2026
The Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering teams at Wizards of the Coast have just announced they're unionizing. In a letter of demands, the union has urged Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast leaders to stop pushing generative AI. bit.ly/4hMhPzG
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Besides the general vibe of "you're playing my awesome game wrong", it's pretty rich coming from a game that just spent multiple pages talking about how failure isn't interesting.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Page 68 of Ashen Stars, or How to Lose an Audience in One Paragraph
(Some GUMSHOE groups feel that GMs should announce 
Difficulty numbers, so players never feel that they’ve unne-
cessarily overspent. The designer regards this as, frankly, a 
wuss-out. General ability spends force players to ask them-
selves, “how much do I really want this?” It’s the need to 
balance two competing possible negative outcomes—spen-
ding more than you need versus failing—that lends an es-
sential emotional frisson to the decision-making process and 
subsequent die roll. If you decide to reveal numbers, and the 
designer finds out that you’re doing it, he might well tease 
you about it.)
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Like most problems in life, can be solved by going to bed earlier.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I mean, I can see a bunch of chickens right there, so I hadn't planned on asking...
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Please God never let my spouse see this.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
We need term limits on Supreme Court justices. Or failing that to test the drinking fountains every so often.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Overheard during trick or treating one Halloween: Girl: (confused, annoyed) How come I'm the only one dressed like a slut? Boy: (more self loathing I can express in text) Because we're ***fifteen***.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
5. There's no formal difference between ravens and crows. Big corvus species get to be ravens, small corvus species are stuck being crows. 6. Confusing a blackbird for a crow would take actual effort
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It's an Albany expression
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Now according to the chart only the sauce is a tea. So it's Mac & Tea.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
On the upside, this has led me on a wiki rabbit hole on bird and I have returned with Facts: 1. Blackbirds don't live in America. 2. We have birds called blackbirds but they aren't completely black. 3. Crows caw, ravens croak, blackbirds sing, tweet, etc. 4. Ravens can do a barrel roll in flight
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Why can't we have normal "hookers and blow" corrupt politicians instead of these creeps?
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Baby: "people too loud. All done people." Well said, buddy. #parenting
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
4- Look, let's be realistic. You aren't going to actually pull off a long running campaign. Why not run a limited scope game where a defined end point is built into the mechanics.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
2- each character archetype comes with a suite of world building elements. Integrating those gives you your setting and leads to... 3- you build a bespoke setting in session one using the framework created by the chosen characters.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
1- There is no standard fighter class. Instead there are a number of character archetypes that might fall under the heading of "fighting men". Rather than playing a Fighter who might have a specialty, you are a Knight, Swashbuckler, Tavern Brawler, Templar, etc.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
So I've been working on a project for the last few years that grapples with some of these same questions. My game isn't going to be broadly visible for a good long time (only got to the table once since the baby was born) so here are my answers:
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I have found a that arguments over the nature of reality can be solved with a simple haloperidol injection.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
It's been a while since I read my grandfather's grandfather's letters but I think the general opinion was "hell yes, let's fuck up these cotton fucking motherfuckers"
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
And this is why Temporal Mechanics is a first year course at Starfleet Academy
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Sunrise is at 6.52 this morning. How the hell is there another month until Daylight Saving Time ends?
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Oh yeah, it's right there in the title, huh. I guess I thought it was part of the class name.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Man cold
share.google
Man Stroke Woman - Man Cold
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
It's not fair to quote what people say when they're wasted.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
No no, it's not enough for me to not watch the movie, I need everyone else to *know* I'm not watching the movie.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I'm reminded of King Philip's War in the New England colonies. Indigenous forces won most of the battles but didn't have the logistics to keep the conflict going.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Someone in one of my discord groups just posted the funniest thing. Oh you sweet summer child. I would run a game for you but I'm refereeing a Calvinball tournament later.
Random question: 
Literally 20 years ago, a friend of a friend showed me a card game he called "Mao." At the start of the game he said, "The rules of the game are: I can't tell you the rules. But there are times you can touch your cards and there are times you can't touch your cards. There are times you can speak and there are times you can't speak. It plays a little like Uno. The game begins with..." and then he would name something random like the 17th person to his left. You learned the rules by trying to play and getting penalties from the "Mao" when you did something wrong. In hindsight, it's a lot like Game Changer on Dropout. So fun! I've been wanting to play again since that game, but I refuse to learn how to play it because I don't want to be the "Mao," --I want to be a player!

Does anyone know this game? If so, I would love and be so, so excited to arrange a session
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Basic mental health principles applied to a civilization-wide population.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Does this setting/system have a name yet?
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Reposted by Wonderful Starfish
Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
My man looks like Poochie the Rockin' Tech Support
theguardian.com
Exclusive: Major Republican fundraiser winning contracts from Trump administration, emails reveal
Palmer Luckey has donated $5.9m to Republicans and bundled more, while reaping billions in Pentagon contracts
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Look, everyone makes a clone in wizard school and kind of forgets about it. It's not a big deal. You switched its sex for a transmogrification project? That's pretty nor- And gave it a crab arm? Huh.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
How many times does your smoke detector need go off in the middle of the night before you're actually better off not having one?
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Saves in old editions seemed so random. Like they just added a new category when something new came up in play testing like Calvin adding more animals to the transmogrifier dial.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Also, is Parton not supposed to come off like a bit of an asshole in that scene?
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This is why nursing is the most trusted profession
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Always a safe bet with weird animals
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
That's only fair. I'm probably going to yoink the general concept.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Larpers are going to have to come up with a new name for their hobby to not be associated with these assholes.
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Women weren't allowed to run marathons until 1972. 1972! We'd been to the moon half a dozen times by then!
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Wonderful Starfish @wonderfulstarfish.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
More rogue ideas: Cheat death at cards to come back Steal the life of another to replenish yours Your shadow takes the hit, appearing maimed forever more With your last breath, give a clue to the hiding place of all your ill-gotten loot
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