#but that's gone now

[lostlegendaerie]

Sunday blues under the cut

I'm going through my Google docs and my favorite (recs) AO3 bookmarks and like. there's something about the nostalgia here that's making me really sad for some reason and maybe it's because I've been so much less engaged with fandom stuff since I left Twitter.

Like I still read constantly and comment when I can, but maybe it's because of the culture that tends to softly discourage reblogs with comments (as opposed to Twitters endless streams of little public discussions, at least back in like 2019-2021) that I feel extremely disconnected.

I've got my little pockets of two or three friends here and there but a group? A fandom? A place where I felt like part of a community of likeminded people?

I don't know. I think I'm just back on that same old "I want to write something that matters to to someone" train and the only thing I've written with that level of plot and teeth is the fucking Genshin fic and I'm just. I wish I didn't care so much about making friends! I wish I didn't have to fight so hard to feel like I belonged! But Katsucon put into sharp relief that I don't have nearly the amount of IRL support that I need to be okay. I'm the mom friend to 80% of the people I know, and the other 3 individuals cannot be expected to keep helping me out of every crisis I have.

I don't know what happened to me in the past few years. I know some things have gotten better. But I miss so, so much just having a group of people to get EXCITED about creative projects with - or even just being able to hang out in person and not worry about how many annoying stupid things I've done in the past hour. God. GOD.

I know that I'm still talented. There's still something worth keeping in this body. But I feel like I've lost my ability to showcase it or share it in a way that isn't just Laurel (whom I love) doggedly trying to keep my sense of worth above water.

The only thing I feel like people like me for is my credit card. And it's something. It helps the people I love. But. God, I wish I could be something else.

[kyuusei-shadowleaf]

A Time Capsule

A stroll down memory lane took me back to @enigmatic-elegance's Mas’ Must Follow MASterpost, a list of what that player (the very active at the time GM of Coldwall Collective) considered must-follow accounts in Oct. 2019. Back in those heady days before COVID and at least a year before the wholesale migration of Alliance RP from Wyrmrest Accord to Moonguard (though some cracks were starting to appear, even then). Back then, WoW tumblr was still in full swing - if a bit diminished after the porn ban of late 2018 - and Mas' list caused a small flurry of drama from people who weren't listed, or who thought that any such list by a well-followed account was inherently elitist. I didn't agree with everything on the list, but it was Mas' list and anyone could make their own list (with blackjack and hookers if they wanted!)

But it's fun to look back at that post as a snapshot of the community at the time - and bittersweet to see how many of those accounts have been fallow for years, or much less active, and those that are active are either on Epsilon or MG-A (and more than a handful have transitioned to FFXIV).

Take a look and see who - if anyone - you still know today.

[freepassbound]

11. what’s your ideal date?

17. fairy lights or LED lights?

29. morning, afternoon or night?

30. what reminds you of home (doesn’t have to mean house… just things that remind you of the feeling of home)?

(#11 and #29 answered previously)

17. fairy lights or LED lights?

...are fairy lights not LED lights? Aren't fairy lights like... a fancy string of lights? Whereas LED lights are just... a lighting technology?

Regardless, I guess the answer is neither? I actually have no extraneous lighting in my home, just fixtures and table lamps.

30. what reminds you of home (doesn’t have to mean house… just things that remind you of the feeling of home)?

That's a really good question. I don't know that I know the answer - I don't know that it's anything quantifiable.

I feel a frisson every time I've been away and I see the sign welcoming me back to the Mitten, and then the sign entering the county (and usually I do, because I'm generally coming home the fast way, which means interstates or state highways).

I feel something every time I see a Great Lake (even the one that isn't ours).

There is something about walking in the front door.

I love that first night sleeping in my bed again.

I suspect this is all rather banal and near-universal, though.

Home... I don't know. It's where I can be myself, I guess? I don't have to worry (or at least get to worry less). ...I hope I get to experience that feeling with someone someday.

[azure-steel]

I am here for a lil bit. I am way too sporadic I know!! But if I found a meme to reblog would people send fings in for Khum'a maybe?

[r0semultiverse]

Like music to my ears

[hinamie]

to moving forward

[symphonyofsilence]

Let the poor man rest.

[qiinamii]

we'll do fine.

[junewild]

what do you say to a trans person who’s sharing after-surgery pics?

[blueskittlesart]

Dear Big Brother

kind of a sequel to this comic

[hussyknee]

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.¹

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats.² The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine that, five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything, the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems are all purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government under a pro-union left-wing President and an unmarried female LGBT rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history. (Edit: She was knocked off first place by a dude in the final result. Boo.)

(On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state. Uh.)

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points (Edit: from the previous 5% to 10% in the final result!) but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! There Is a representative for Malaiyaha Tamils in the Central Province for the first time in history and it's a young woman! (Edit: now it's two female Malaiyaha MPS!!) This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, the NPP coalition formed around the nucleus of the JVP that used to be communist but haven't been in 30 years, they're now just social democrats who are left of places like the US and UK, whose "left" is now center-right. They're only threatening to the Western mainstream media for some reason who can't stop bleating about how we have a "Marxist" government now. In reality, the actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is quite high with a super majority government regardless of affiliation.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

---

¹ Well, nearly. There are a few career politicians and a nepo baby but they aren't so bad either.

² Goddamn it, Baby Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka's answer to JD Vance have wormed their way in using the list of Constitutionally reserved party seats for non-elected members. FUCK the National List.

[qualityrain]

[bastardiando]

posting across the targetverse here bc it did numbers on twitter

[z13lovebot]

🪲🐟

[rlyehtaxidermist]

archangel michael, brandishing his trumpet, ready to play the song that signals the end of the world: who are you and what are you doing here

weird al yankovic, accordion in hand, ready to play the polka that signals the end of the end of the world:

[akanemnon]

Shouldn't there be a minotaur in the labyrinth? Who put this goat here? This is not accurate to the mythology! /j

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