Welcome to the Stone Soup Weekly Digest! This is where I share what I'm up to and some of my favorite things from around the internet. Subscribe to Stone Soup to get this in your inbox every week.

I'm still on sabbatical, so some of the weekly digests will be from the Stone Soup archives! I hope you enjoy these old favorites as much as I do.

Also, here are some things that may interest you:

ICE raids are in progress. Know your rights.

Learn about and participate in the Tesla Takedown movement. A disruption in Tesla’s profits represents a massive blow to Elon Musk’s power and wealth. Also, their cars suck, their factories are notoriously dangerous, and they poisoned the groundwater in my hometown. So, y’know, fuck ‘em.

How to call your reps: A step by step neurodivergent-friendly guide General Community Support Resource Links

-gailey

Marathon Lessons

First published on October 12, 2022.

Early in the month of August, I took a hard look at my writing responsibilities and my utter failure to meet them. Honestly, I don't feel like reflecting here on the reasons I've been struggling – I'm sick of thinking about burnout. That frustration was with me on the 5th, when I examined my schedule, realized I was behind, and decided to say 'fuck it.'

Working at a generally sustainable pace is an important part of my life as a disabled person. But the thing is, so are unsustainable bursts of effort. My sustainable pace keeps my house tidy, but every now and then, I set aside a day for a deep clean that I know will leave me exhausted because the satisfaction of having a well-scrubbed house is, to me, worth that exhaustion. This is not advice on how to live. These big bursts of effort are probably not good for me! But I do all kinds of things that aren't good for me, that's life. Sometimes I'm going to push myself a little too hard in the interest of something I want to accomplish. I'm learning to be realistic about that, to plan for it, and to accommodate it.

This is the mindset with which I approached a twelve-hour writing marathon on August 6th. A heady combination of frustration at burnout, fear of the Deadline Pile, and cussedness led me to turn to my partner and tell them my plan: a twelve-hour writing marathon, 8am to 8pm, uninterrupted. No admin, no housework, no domestic logistics – just writing.

Alasdair Stuart Reviews: Warframe Diaries 2

The incredibly insightful Alasdair Stuart is a regular contributor to the Digest. Be sure to subscribe to The Full Lid for more brilliant pop culture analysis.

Warframe is a completely standard SpaceMurders Game for the first four hours or so. It's fun, and it's very slick and easy to pick up but a lot of those first four hours are a tutorial disguised as various funnels you walk down and do murders in. It's very good fun, but there's a nagging sense of this being an unusual aesthetic wrapped around a very usual mechanic.

Then you arrive at Fortuna and this plays. 

And, if you're me, you know you're going to be just fine.

Fortuna is a corporate debtors prison on Venus, and they treat those workers with the same offhand contempt that’s led us to company towns, scrip, NFTs and cybertrucks on the White House lawn. The inmates are all various levels of robotic but fizz with individuality and charm. Body shape, size, age and build all vary wildly (There’s a later quest involving the hoverboarding kids who hang out in the ducts and the comic they idolise and MY HEART MY GOD MY HEART). They’re chipper robo socialists, crumpled, imperfect, cheerful and beaten.  

Thursby is a joyously dodgy vendor who sells you components for your possible robotic doggo (ROBOTIC. DOGGO.) and who embodies the Jake Peralta 'head down, eyes closed, can't lose' school of problem solving. He is, to borrow a beautiful descriptor of Dimension 20 player Lou Wilson's characters, the embodiment of 'I'm young, I'm beautiful and I can never die' and the plot challenges every single one of those beliefs.

Thursby is Fortuna's heart. Eudico is its soul. Eudico is the head of Vox Fortuna, a group described as rebels but who are pretty clearly a union. She's everyone's big sister, especially Thursby, and she's haunted by the lives lost when Vox Fortuna stood up. Where Thursby runs in, she hangs back. Where Thursby believes, she doubts. He's cheerful. She's beaten. 

At first.

Warframe introduces Fortuna, wraps its concept around its fists and punches space capitalism in the face. It's still a space ninja murder party but the ridiculous exceptionalism at the heart of all murderparty games is warped into something much kinder. You're a warframe, a Tenno, the embodiment of compassionate strength in resistance to evil. You show up. That changes things instantly, especially Thursby and Eudico.  

I didn't expect to find a game like this moving, but I'm writing this in the middle of March 2025. My government seems poised to announce Austerity: The Next Generation and has already floated benefit cuts which will penalise people who need help to appease people who deserve none. A friend reports the US is asking for residence details for domestic flights.  The worst are full of passionate intensity and venture capital funding. The best are terrified. We're all Eudico, exhausted, bitter, frightened, furious. We're all Thursby, determined not to be broken by what's being done, working to help our communities, digging to find joy even in the frozen dirt of Venus and the freezing dirt of 2025.

It's time to be each other’s Tenno. Be the determined compassionate strength that your community needs, not to be saved, but to save itself. It’s terrifying. It’s possible. It’s time to all lift, together.

Warframe is free on all platforms now.

If you’re a paying subscriber, come say hello in the Supper Club and share the ways you’re connecting with and supporting your local community. Remember to drop your local mutual aid networks so we can put them in future issues of the Digest. 

If you want to support Stone Soup without a regular subscription, feel free to drop a one-time donation into our tip jar.

In the meantime, do what you can. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up.

—gailey