#our families our neighbors

[hotvampireadjacent]

https://x.com/treborrhurbarb/status/1819855330232480252?s=46&t=kvJFP3BjKnMEl5NO2bJUMA

[liriostigre]

If praying has ever worked for any of you, can you please pray that Jeremy comes back home. He ran away a few days ago and I'm heartbroken

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

Something about how Fire & Ice give up on going after Pearl directly, and instead both arrow in on dissing Marina-

Something about, Pearl having no shame at all, outright telling Frye right off that Off the Hook is here to “take control” and then literally talking over Frye’s turn. Frye’s snarking on how Pearl isn’t the boss here and no one’s cheering for her, ignored. How she goes after both Frye and Shiver asking where Frye’s big friend is to help her pass this test, moving right on to saying they’re both just goons making a mess anyway, little fish who should stay in they're bowl, but

that seems to give Frye the idea of hitting back with the “who’s backing you? Imaginary friends?” line… like Marina doesn’t even count as a music partner- or a friend?

Pearl literally yaps about Marina being divine, one of a kind, voice so fine, big mind- raps the lines off her cuff and the heart that's proudly pinned there

And Frye and Shiver go TARGET DETECTED. They lock onto Marina.

Shiver doesn’t bother trying to needle Marina about Pearl, the way their partners were each doing- if Pearl has no shame then at least she DOES still have a weakness, a soft spot, a thing she openly cares about- something they can try riling her up over

(problem: Pearl actually has all the confidence in Marina as a musician, partner, and performer. She's WATCHED Marina be all those things for YEARS now)

In the end Frye and Shiver just rile up the gay feels. Because Marina’s been living with a rapper who LOVES hyping her up even when they’re not on stage- Pearl who said she’d cut a fish for Marina. And if you don’t come to Inkopolis with a lot of self confidence, well then getting some from your girlfriend is fine too  

But it’s cute that Pearl’s still so obvious about being Marina's no. 1 fan that Fire & Ice thought they could use it against her XD

[hazel2468]

Okay no I need to ask. Jews who throw their lot in with blatant bigots and antisemitic racists-

Do you think it will save you?

Do you think that when they scream for "Zio" blood, they do not mean you? Do you think that when they cheer the rape and kidnapping and murder of Israelis, they do not mean you? Do you think when they come into the inboxes and DMs of random Jews to tell them that they "deserve it" and that the world would be better without Jews in it, they do not mean you? Do you think that when they assault and beat and stab and kill Jews in the name of their so-called "activism", they do not mean you?

They DO mean you. You are not exempt. You will not escape this. No matter how much you throw your own tribe under the bus. No matter how much you swear you are not like those other Jews, the Bad Jews, the Zionists, the Yids, the kikes. No matter how much you get up on stage and disavow your Jewishness to them, no matter how much you wail that you're on their side.

No matter how much you betray your own people. No matter how much of your sibling's blood you have on your hands.

When the time comes. When the people you have been working so hard to please file into that meeting room to discuss their triumph, to sing praises of Jewish blood in the streets.

You will find a hand on your shoulder and a voice saying "Now, hold on a minute, Jew."

[catscraftsandcommentary]

Neighbor (that my parents have known for 40+ years): There's a stray kitten in my yard, do you want it? If not, can I borrow a cat carrier to take it to the shelter?

My mom: "We already have 3 adult cats. (...) I texted my [craft group] friends to see if anyone wants the kitten."

Also my mom, one hour later: "I'm in your front yard trying to catch the kitten & put it in our cat carrier."

Mom: *catches kitten and takes it to Walmart to buy kitten supplies*

Mom: *brings the kitten to show me* "I've been calling him Corky, after my dad. You can't hog all three cats, I want one that likes ME best."

Mom: *spends the next hour trying to get the kitten to cuddle her and nap on her lap/chest*

Mom: "He looks like Louise!" (Our cat who lived to be 20 years old and was super bonded to both my parents.)

Me, to my dad: If we don't find another home for that kitten in the next few days, he's gonna stay here.

My grandma (86 yo, has dementia, doesn't talk much anymore), upon seeing/holding kitten: *visibly perks up* *starts talking to the kitten*

My dad: *cuddles the kitten for several hours while the baby naps on his chest*

Me, to my dad: *watching Dad cuddle tiny kitten* I don't think he's going anywhere. I think we have a 4th cat.

My dad: You're probably right.

@everything-but-the-not-natural @0dde11eth @help-help-i-need-an-adult @thequeeninyellowlace

[besnouted]

neighbor’s duck dog who is now an old man keeps getting into our yard to try and harrass the ducks (he’s too elderly to be an actual threat anymore so like it’s fine) BUT it is just very funny because we will usually hear his owners yelling for him over and over and over before we realize he’s here

meanwhile as soon as i walk out and call him over to take him back home he comes lumbering over immediately even with overwhelming duck temptation

[frances-baby-houseman]

We are still trying to finalize a contract on this house (a 100yo house has a lot of problems, my friends!) and there are TOO MANY LAWYERS involved. Adam is a lawyer, and he asked his uncle for a recommendation to represent us, so we have that lawyer (Steve) plus Adam's uncle has not excused himself so we also have him involved (Kenny). This is too many cooks! (too many cooks!)

We had a zoom with our inspector yesterday and he said be careful, a lawyer can protect you right out of a deal and YEAH. Kenny you need to stop asking questions! Adam put what we wanted for credits with the advice of the inspector (who I love and is my friend Marti's husband, he is GREAT, if you are buying a house in the chicago area I cannot recommend him more highly), Kenny does not need to keep offering his thoughts!!

Ugh I just want to start decorating!!

[stlamb]

i know no family is "normal" but omg i'm looking over the ruins of this post-holiday family get together like what a mess lol

[bunny--manders]

When I went off to college I gave my dad my passwords so he could have access to the databases that my university had access to that he didn't have through the university he worked at. And before I had even started classes, the IT department called me to ask if my account has been hacked because he had downloaded so many early 19th century newspaper articles about his hyperfixation they thought there had been some kind of massive data breach.

[tealmoth]

so, the post-rebels languor has turned to post-rebels derangement. earlier today she was showing me these cute rebel insignia flags she found online, and she’s like “we could get one of these and write KALLUZEB SUPPORTERS at the top and bottom” and i’m like. that’s funny. and then you can put it up on the wall in your room or something. but then she cuts me off with “and THEN, we put it OUTSIDE.”

no the hell we do not!!!!!!!

[dumbandpoetical]

rating: T

word count: 4,429

summary: Steve has just moved to a small town on the outskirts of Chicago and his closest neighbor is an extreme recluse. In order to get to know him better Steve decides to take drastic measures...

excerpt:

Steve wanted to hold him close and never let go. Instead he turns around, walks down Jonathan’s driveway, and doesn’t look back. He can’t look back. He looks back. Jonathan’s still standing where he left him. Illuminated by the moonlight. A lost look on his face, one of his hands outstretched towards the empty air.

read the rest on ao3

[lesboylycan]

https://www.tumblr.com/wolfboy-butch/745437590649520128/anyways-someone-should-feed-our-npd-and-ask-us

B in the tags is interesting because some other system clocked us as having a more anarchist system structure (<- we had not thought about this before!!!) and it feels like a lot of other systems who have more stratified systems are some form of Asshole, something we have figured out You Are Not so please tell us about that! We are begging you. We wish to understand others further whilst we're feeling good.

C in the tags is interesting because that feels so far beyond us it makes no sense and we literally just NEED to know more. If you're sapient and share our brain in our system you're a headmate and part if the system. We believe we have talked to one other system with a situation like Tag Option C but it wouldn't hurt to have the information.

~ Kirbopher (would it be better to use "Kirb" here so people know I'm a fictive/fucktive/not-the-guy-Im-sorry?????)

Hi thank you for sending! Now, warning, you have unlocked a Major rant, so readers beware, click the read more at your own discretion.

So basically, when we first became partitionary, we ended up in Madeline's (aka Aaron; he/him as Madeline and she/her as Aaron, not in a plural way but in a bigender anarchy way) house. We could not see outside of the windows of this house, it was basically just blank void to us, and us four ([original headmate with the IRL name we use, later forged with several others into Summer], Madeline, Cale, and Em) lived there.

Fast forward a month. A few new folks have joined in (Roman, Grimble, Shark), aaaaand they don't exactly want to live with us in the same house. Especially not Shark, since he was a semi-feral fish man who uh, needed water to live. Suddenly, we can see the beginnings of a town surrounding a lake.

Things grow from there. What we can see grows, the town grows, and there comes to be another fish man, Caspien, who makes the best god damn iced peach tea you've ever tried. He's mostly notable because the lake is later named after him, along with Another Thing that'll become clear later. Eventually, we begin to see the forest at the edge of our little town that we've built. Everything's cool. (Unfortunately, we don't have the map from this time--we know it existed at one point! But we can't find the file, nor can we find any remnants of it in the Discord servers we were in at the time that we might be able to use)

Then, uh-oh, April of 2021. System collapse. Down from 60 all the way to 15--including Summer, who becomes the new host. As if to put salt in the wound, what we can see expands, and we can now see the coast of the Wirshir'dauwn Sea, along with the edges of what we would later find out are two major mountain ranges.

Note: we aren't creating our headspace. We did not realize, at the time, that most systems created their headspace and didn't simply passively discover it in the same way they may discover old headmates.

Things regrow. Come late May, and the boundaries of what we can see stretch with the arrival of several new headmates at once: the Plainsmen. Unlike the small, incremental changes of before, this change is huge--we can now see double what we used to, it's all to the east, and it's all grassy plains and desert. This is what our map looks like at the time:

(Note: orange dots are settlements, don't recall grey dots are doors to the front room which was essentially a different realm we could enter via those doors, black lines are train lines, and the Winterdown Ocean is called that for a reason. You'll see.)

Now, here's the thing: the only people in the entire system who can go into the plains (as in, beyond the Barrier Mountains)... are the Plainsmen. Even as more headmates form. Our only way to communicate with them is through going to the front room, which is split into two, with a hallway between. We can't even go to their side of the front room without feeling dizzy and foggy. And this isn't a one-sided thing at all, they can't come to our side either!

Thankfully, we get to talk to them frequently, since the front room was the only way we could front at the time, we were in high school, and one of them--Gilan--was a god at badminton and so wanted to front constantly since that was the only thing we'd play in PE at the time.

Then comes along Carmen (zhe/zhem/zheir/zheirs). Who sorta... breaks everything. At first, we kind of just meme on zhem (from fantasy mid-1800s era England, scared of cars, etc), but then... zhe try crossing over to the Plainsmen's side of the front room, against everyone else's advice.

And zhe're completely fine. No ill effects. Zhe start talking to Gilan, they hit things off (and they both hit things off with another person, Jade, who was from our ex-partner system but now lives over here thanks to system hopping stuff), and eventually, zhe get dared to go out into the actual Plains. And Carmen, the bastard, agrees.

And not only are zhe fine, but zhe can still front. Outside of the front room.

And then we can find out zhe can teleport. What in the hell. Who are you. What the fuck.

Well, zhe decide to see if zhe can do something about the "no fronting unless in front room" thing, and zhe eventually end up developing crystals a la the crystals in Dimension20's Fantasy High. They're basically phones, but... rock. Which everyone now has. Carmen settles down by Overdeep Lake because zhe generally dislike people except for zheir partners. Things start to settle in, things get a bit more normal again...

Whoops! New headspace expansion, and not just that, we learn that we're not the only ones here, and uh. We're. Actually gateway. And the reason why our headspace was "passively expanding" instead of us building it was because the whole world already existed. And there were people there. There just weren't people in the area that we'd been settling, aside from in the towns in the Plains--but we'd just figured those were NPCs since we rarely interacted with them! Not full people! And we'd never heard anyone talking about this before, so what the hell is going on? The map now looks like this.

(Note: the mountains along the edge of the sea aren't actually mountains mountains, just cliffside. We weren't great at making maps at the time.)

So as it would turn out. "Winterdown" was a mistranslation/mishearing of Wirshir'dauwn. And Kingdom Omaude exists. And both of these places have their own cultures, languages, accents, etc. And apparently, Caspien was originally from Wirshir'dauwn, had heard of human (or, mostly human) settlement around the lake, and decided to check it out and just... never went back? Alright man, miss you, thanks for the iced peach tea, wish you'd taught someone how to make it properly before you disappeared in the system collapse but whatever, we're cool.

Okay. Okay! This is fine! Everything is fine. Carmen goes up to meet Queen Scethius (he/him) to explain things, and then they hit it off. Carmen had already adopted some kids, and this is where the joke that Carmen (who adopts every sad wet rat zhe see--zheir eldest's words, not mine) has more partners than kids starts to take off. Queen Scethius even sets aside a whole coat for zhem, how romantic.

And then we learn that this isn't it. We just haven't explored yet--because now that we've properly learned about Omaude and Wirshir'dauwn, it's not that the world around us is locked, it's just that we... need to explore more of it.

Blah blah blah, stuff happens, a revolt occurs against the monarchy in Kingdom Girun--Omaude's oldest enemy, historically--and now the folks running the place are generally cool. Carmen had already set up the Rangers in the Forebarrier, which isn't formally a country but still has a seat at the metaphorical table in the world stage now since... people actually live there now? And the Rangers basically just make sure everyone's doing okay, help distribute resources, mediate conflict, stuff like that. Carmen was voted to be the commandant, which basically just means zhe do the most paperwork and talk to the most people, and zheir best friend/subject of many inside jokes, Cordon, is zheir second. We learn about more and more nations and their cultures, and eventually, the map looks like this.

"Where's Wirshir'dauwn?" you ask. Here's the thing: Wirshir'dauwn was a kingdom. Which we hadn't known before. The ocean itself is called Daerk'shyen, and many more people live there! The Great Divide is basically a massive set of mountain ranges and canyons that are largely considered impassable, except for a few things.

Also note: "Tetutlen" is a typo, it's actually Tetlunen. Didn't notice that until just now. Whoops. Also, City Toelit was a former state of Girun, but split off somewhere to the tune of a few hundred years ago due to the corrupt monarchy? But now that things have switched up and stuff is much more democratic, there's debate on whether or not they want to rejoin Girun. Note: Girun and City Toelit are both mostly occupied by elves, who live hundreds of years already.

And, aside from the Shakening n' Quakening [SNQ] (which split up the world into a bunch of floating islands--no clue why or how it happened, not even the Gods know, some suspect it might have been discourse between the Ancients, which are basically the gods of the Gods; we get around both by the magic Saltrock Express (still exists! Still around!) and via sky ships, with there being an official Sky Rider League in the Forebarrier, which is mostly made up of Rangers and heavily tied to them but aren't actually part of the Rangers), that's... basically what our map looks like now. The world is called... several different things depending on the nation, of course, but we in the Forebarrier and Plains call it Yhine, and the continent--since the SnQ--is called [the] Archidivum.

What we suspect happened is that the brain basically latched onto a particular realm, and that realm became an anchor for the colony. As we grew and as our needs shifted and changed, the amount that was "unlocked" for us--as the brain latched more and more onto the world--grew and changed with us, until eventually, it got to the point where we were no longer the only ones we could talk to/no longer the only ones we knew of who had major influence over the world we were in and now part of.

As for why certain folks don't consider themselves part of the collective even if they front, it's mostly cases like General Fenityr (he/him, ze/zim/zyr/zyrs), who is the head of the military in Omaude. He's been around for somewhere to the tune of 650 years, has been a political figure in Omaude for around 400 of them, basically raised Queen Scethius, yadda yadda.

In recent times, though, he's gotten more familiar with the Colony, and even got married to Ramses (one of Carmen's kids, also a former member of that same ex-partner system in the same way Jade (who, along with Gilan, married Carmen) is--they both moved over here (with permission) to be with the people they married, and to hopefully avoid getting accidentally erased, since our collective--post April 2021--was a lot more stable than the ex's and was/is a lot less prone to collapses, resets, etc). Ze's close with Carmen's family (especially since Carmen is also married to Scethius. "Carmen has more partners than kids" blah blah) and would front pretty frequently to talk to Ramses back before Ramses moved over here. So what gives on the whole "not being part of the collective" thing?

Well, one of the biggest reasons ze doesn't consider zyrself as part of the colony is because ze's basically guaranteed to outlive it, and ze's still beholden to the whims of the world ze lives in and not the whims of the brain in which the Colony occupies. Not to mention, ze lived for centuries longer than the Colony had even existed, and grew up entrenched in the cultures of Girun (having originally lived there for around about 160, 170 years) and Omaude (where he eventually settled permanently). While he can front, and he is friends with folks in the Colony, he doesn't consider himself as part of it because he, first and foremost, is attached to and part of and from Girun, Omaude, the Archidivum, and Yhine as a whole in a way that we, the Seal Colony, just... aren't. Just because we're anchored here doesn't mean we're natives of the place the same way they are (with few exceptions, mostly very young kids who arrived in the Colony at the age of 3 or younger who've never known different.)

(Or folks like Carmen. Or, really, just Carmen. Remember how I said zhe can teleport? Zhe also have a bunch of other abilities that zhe flat out should not be able to have and should not have been able to have since the beginning. Also, zhe're friends with at least one of the Gods of Yhine and has generally gained the Gods' favor. So zhe're just. Yeah.)

[halloweendeity]

.

[claudeleine]

anyway back to feeling sad about my dead uncle.. feel like me & my family were able to be distracted all weekend bc i was visiting, but now that i'm home i'm like what the fuck.. my uncle is dead and i haven't processed it at all

[crispyjenkins]

welcome to cj/crispy's bi-yearly ptsd rant about fireworks, you are all safe and valid here and i am mentally giving out juice boxes and animal crackers

[minglana]

my aunt was invited by our neighbors to the wife's village in llión (a tiny village w like 30 ppl i believe) and shes literally like. kicking up a storm over there omg