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When I was a kid, the most aspirational adult to me in my family was my uncle Larry. He’s about fifty-something now, married with two kids, above-middle-management businessman who owns a very nice house. And in that house, since I was a child, he has several museum-style freestanding glass pedestal display cases, which showcase his massive complex fancy LEGO Star Wars sets—the Death Star, Star Destroyer, Millenium Falcon, all of them. On public display.

I was ten the first time I saw his legos, and I was a lego-loving child, and the first time I saw this it was glorious. It was such a cool thing to see that the stuff I loved would stay cool to me even when I was thirty, forty, sixty, a hundred years old. I would even be able to give it the fancy place of pride I thought it deserved if I wanted to.

And now I’m thirty, and I have a glass display cabinet full of tarot cards and D&D miniatures and vintage shakespeares, and my spouse’s entire in-box main series Pokemon game collection, and our Critical Role liveshow VIP paraphernalia. We have plans for a library someday full of all the manga I’ve owned since I was a teen. I inherited a whole pinball machine from my grandfather that’s going to be in our home by the end of the week. Everyone we know thinks we have the coolest apartment and they’re right. It brings me unending joy to live in a home that feels like a shrine to everything I love.

Don’t let go of the things you enjoy. Grow up with them, celebrate them, and when you have the liberty to, give them the place of pride in your hearts and homes that they deserve. You’ll be so happy for it.

Being in fandom spaces is so surreal-

Bc once your age hits a 'serious' number, you start to think - "damn, I should probably stop geeking and get more serious." But then you scroll and see a 34y/o woman writing fics after driving her kids to school, a 40y/o dude making fanart of his fav super heroes and you realize - "nah, I'm actually good"

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The problem with commercial F/M romance is that it's written by the most heterosexual women alive and reading it you feel yourself slowly suffocating from the Gender of it all like a fish in a eutrophying lake. And what we actually need as a culture is F/M written by insane bisexuals violently allergic to heteronormativity

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ROMEO + JULIET (1996) + IMDb Trivia

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ACLU is already suing the Trump administration to fight the deportations as well as the repeal of the DEI laws. Here's a donate link if you would like to help

-fae

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In case anyone finds it helpful because mobility aids are horrifically expensive and inaccessible…

And for those people who have access to mobility devices but might benefit from a second chair they can abuse without risking expensive damage…

Erik Kondo has made a website, Open Source Innovations, that details plans for DIY wheelchairs. These wheelchairs can be made from common materials like wood, plastic, and pvc. They are lightweight and can be custom fit to the user allowing from the same degree of movement you would get from a custom chair. And they are durable and easily repairable. (he has been stress testing his latest design by dropping it down stairs, dropping it out of a car, launching it across a driveway, and throwing it off a deck). Its 12lbs and I think he said its was in the $200 ish range for parts.

He also is working on cheap, open source, accessible designs for beach chairs, off road chairs, motorized attachments (think smart drive), and so on. Plus he skateboards in his wheelchair. Cool dude, helpful info, pass it on.

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Food for thought

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Funny about that...

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So wait are livestock guardian dogs to their flocks like… Clark Kent among the residents of Smallville? He’s been here since he was a baby, we all know him, and he’s… generally one-of-us shaped, uh, approximately. And then when something goes wrong he suddenly leaps into action and does some terrifying impossible shit none of us could do. And then comes back home and settles in like nothing happened and he’s one of us again.

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do you ever think about dead versions of yourself that are fossilized in someone else's mind

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I love using "by the way" as a segue into topics that are completely unrelated to the matters at hand. it isn't remotely by the way, quite a ways out of the way in fact. a little adventure

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idk thinking about how sometimes you have to show up for people you aren't that close to, because sometimes you're just the person who's there. sometimes you invite a new friend to a party and end up having to sit with them through a panic attack. sometimes you run into an acquaintance on their worst day and they need to talk about what happened. sometimes someone is crying in a stairwell and you're the only one around to ask if they're okay. and none of this is "trauma dumping" or whatever the fuck it's just being there for people because you're the one in the room with them.

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"Les Jardins de Nuit" (censored version) - Mixed media: colored pencils, pastels, ink, and gold leaf on paper. I created this artwork in 2020 for my book Forgotten Gods.

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I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

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Something like this would be so colossally helpful. I'm sick and tired of trying to research specific clothing from any given culture and being met with either racist stereotypical costumes worn by yt people or ai generated garbage nonsense, and trying to be hyper specific with searches yields fuck all. Like I generally just cannot trust the legitimacy of most search results at this point. It's extremely frustrating. If there are good resources for this then they're buried deep under all the other bullshit, and idk where to start looking.