voidsaveforthestars - Tumblr blog

[voidsaveforthestars]

Honestly there's nothing a child can do in public that's as much of a disturbance as an adult yelling at them

[voidsaveforthestars]

every time.

[voidsaveforthestars]

It's actually kind of striking how tightly wedded most major genres of tabletop RPGs are to the decades when they were popularised.

Trad fantasy tabletop RPGs – even those that aren't positioned as revivalist – are so intent on emulating the sword and sorcery literature of the 1970s that the only reason they don't come off as quaintly nostalgic is because nobody reads sword and sorcery anymore.

Cyberpunk tabletop RPGs are, at this point, essentially an exercise in retrofuturism, endlessly polishing a vision of what people in the 1980s thought the year 2015 would look like.

Urban fantasy tabletop RPGs might include smartphones and electric cars in their equipment tables and mention 9/11 in their lore chapters, but culturally and aesthetically, most of them are taking place in a world where the 1990s never ended.

I don't mean this as a criticism – I'm just fascinated with how this tendency is so strong that, for example, a brand new urban fantasy RPG written in the year 2024 is liable to end up being a 1990s period piece at heart even when that was 100% not the author's intention, simply through the inertia of the medium's well-established tropes.

I'm mostly curious what the characteristic tabletop RPG genre of the 2020s is going to end up being thirty or forty years from now, and I hope I live long enough to find out!

[voidsaveforthestars]

resentment

i saw you in my dream last night

you were impassive and blase

i haven’t seen you in almost five months

and in my head you just don’t care

you were walking through a parking lot

and i saw you with your brother

i said hello,

holy shit it’s been so long how are you?

you never texted.

and your brother said more to me than you did

i woke up and realized

that i think i’ve given up

even on being your friend.

i stopped wanting more a long time ago,

so that’s over and done

but i still liked your company, you know

you were more to me than a stupid high school crush

i loved you as a friend before and longer

you were my best friend, for a time

and then i think you outgrew me.

i wasn’t ready to be outgrown.

you used to love the cookies i would bake

(such a funny coincidence

how i always seemed to make them on your birthday)

you used to text me hours after we’d seen each other

can we hang out soon, i miss you, i love you

you used to hug me every day,

i remember that part the most.

every day after school.

there’s a vivid memory of a certain day

your laptop flew out of your hand

as you flung your arms open to me,

walking down the hallway i watched

the laptop slide like a puck down the hall

because you wanted to hug me.

i think that was the first time

that i felt truly and honestly wanted

unconditionally

i had done nothing

yet you flung the innocent thing away from you

across the hard tile floor

because a single quotidian moment with me

meant more to you than any repair bill

any grade setback

any reprimand, anything at all.

i remember how vividly loved i felt in that moment,

and i compare it to how vividly unloved i feel now.

i resent you.

i resent you because you left me behind

when i still had care to give you

you left me behind with the pile of shits i still give about you

and nowhere to put them

and i’m angry at myself

because i let you fucking drift

and i even watched it happening

and i did nothing

because i figured that you’d text me once in a while

at least a stupid dick joke every couple months

but they never came (hah)

and still i did nothing

because i told myself if he still cares

he’ll be the one to reach out

so i never reached out

and i let you fucking drift

and now you’ve drifted too far for me to fix

i don’t think i can fix this

i don’t know how to un-drift a gap this wide

i hung out with your best friend tonight, did you know that?

i almost talked to him about you.

i almost told him that i used to love you

but was too afraid to do anything

i even almost got some fucking closure

but the drive back to his house was just too short

his driveway was closer than your name off my lips

and time won again

and uncertainty won again

maybe if i hadn’t let the silences stretch so long

maybe if i had just gotten to the fucking point

maybe if i stop stalling, and stalling, and stalling,

and just DO something,

things will turn out all right.

but i’ll never fucking do something

because i will never be 100% sure of something

and oh if that isn't just the woeful human condition.

so now i resent you and i resent myself along with you

and it’s the only way we’ve been together in a long time.

[voidsaveforthestars]

cherry sucker

he grins around the stick with red-stained teeth and the air fills with the smell of intoxicating chemical cherry.

his shirt is cherry red and your bottom button is open as you stretch back, back, reaching, reaching, up and over, behind your head.

chill air brushes featherlight over a triangle of skin and you don't know where his eyes are

but you know where you want them to be,

cherry patterns pressed into stomach fat, kissed there by a slouch and a tarnished old belt buckle.

chemical cherry stains the stick and stains his lips and surely stains your face but his eyeline only stains the board.

the ball of it cracks on his teeth as it leaves and the stick of it is marked and bent where his teeth held it down.

artificial flavor burns down the back of your nose and artificial color clings inside your lungs until your head spins.

he grins around the stick with red-stained teeth and the air fills with chemical cherry,

and you breathe it in like gasoline.

[voidsaveforthestars]

Ode to a Page (One-Way Glass Dimension)

I exist in a one-way glass dimension.

Invisible hands shelve the books, lovingly.

You cannot see the love, but it is there.

There is care pressed into the cold metal cart,

As it disappears full and reappears, magically empty.

I am a library spectre.

I exist only to children, 

Searching for their favorite worlds,

And little old women lost in the paperbacks.

To the childrens’ parents I am an imaginary friend,

And to the librarians, the little old ladies

Answer their own questions

Before the librarian can speak.

I enjoy my invisibility.

My care is not conditional.

I do not need eyes on the back of my neck.

My care will line the shelves regardless.

I wear quiet shoes. Take quiet steps.

I am not seen as the cart wheels itself out to the shelves.

The books are put away.

The shelves are straightened and neat.

The little girl finds her favorite book sitting next to her mother’s bag.

I love the library from my little glass dimension.

I stain the shelves with care like fingerprints against the window.

I look after the quiet haven of the library

From my one-way glass dimension.

[voidsaveforthestars]

like we used to in the neon blues

we sat together last night, on a swing tucked back into the reaches of the top row of a dark stadium. neon midnights and magentas pressed almost as closely as my shoulder to yours, and you let me hold you again. like we used to. and i buried my face in your hair, like i always wished i could, and everything was right.

we scrolled through my phone, listened blithely to the roar of the stadium. two spectators, as we always were. i miss our swing, that big white porch swing, slatted wood and cushions and the soporific lull of simple harmonic motion. deep blue neon lights mottle across it, across us, and i feel your hair against my face and you are warm and everything is warm. the thunder of the crowd is hypnotic, like rain, and there is so much rain, and there is rolling thunder, and i am alone in my pale blue sheets.

[voidsaveforthestars]

man in his study with a saxophone

i call this piece

man in his study with a saxophone

subtitle, an image of sound.

i cannot paint, so i must write.

i am consigned to mediocrity.

yet even my patron saint could compose,

and i cannot.

i am consigned to description

of that which i cannot create.

my secret pain, that eats me away,

is that i will never do justice the workings of my mind.

the man shall never sit in his study.

not a note shall sound from his reed.

light from the window shall never catch a single part of him,

not hair nor eye nor key.

i am the only one who knows about this man.

i am the only one who will ever know him.

and that i cannot change this, where others can,

is the undoing of my soul.

[voidsaveforthestars]

on sexuality

You are sixteen and you've never felt like this before.

His smile makes you warm like nothing else has.

His eyes and voice are the sweet, smooth taste of chocolate,

Slipping over your tongue and down your throat,

Hot in your stomach like the sips of Merlot you steal from the bottle

While your father isn't looking.

You are seventeen and you've never felt like this before.

Your heart races, pounding, and you dig your fingers into the seat,

Bite down hard on your stupid tongue, your flush-hot cheek,

So you won't do something you'll regret.

The boy who drives you home pulls his hair back from his face

And he sings as wind rushes through the open car windows,

And you scream a little inside as something begs to snap.

The chocolate boy grins and his teeth are sharp,

Sharp as an ivory dagger locked in a glass case,

With a plaque that reads:

Forgive him, Father, he knows not what he thinks.

His brother's hair is black as coals and his voice is wine-dark red,

As deep, bloody red as the stains on the bone-white blade.

His best friend's eyes lock with yours for seconds too long, lingering,

On eyes, hands, mouths, empty buttonholes, savoring, lingering,

Lingering on something you cannot name,

And you wonder.

You are not yet eighteen, and the weight of it all overwhelms you.

What do you want? What do you feel? How can you know?

You stumble blindly without hope of an answer,

Knowing only that you want,

That you want so badly,

And you can't even tell what exactly you want,

And you don't know how to get it, how to sate the hunger,

But you want,

You want so badly that you cannot sleep, you cannot think

Of anything but wanting.

You are seventeen and you are hungry, empty, wanting,

Wanting things you cannot name and food you've never tasted,

And you want.

[voidsaveforthestars]

black box.

there are bars on the doors at school.

cast-iron braces just above the floor.

a black box bolted to the wall holds iron pins,

that fit like a glove in the holes drilled in the floor.

they're working on rigging a system

to alert the office if the black box starts recording.

a phone picks up the p.a.

this is a lockdown drill for an external threat.

continue teaching.

this is only a drill.

this is a lockdown drill for an internal threat.

turn off the lights and move to the corner. 

this is only a drill.

this is a lockdown for an external threat.

lock your doors. continue teaching.

this is only a drill?

this is a lockdown for an internal threat.

you forgot to say drill.

this is a lockdown for an internal threat.

drill?

internal threat.

this is only a drill.

internal. internal. internal.

right?

this is a lockdown for an internal threat.

turn off the lights and move to the corner.

text your parents that you love them.

the black box is screaming.

how do i tell my mother goodbye?

how do i tell my father i love him?

where is my brother?

i need my siblings to know that i love them.

there's not enough time.

i need more time.

time, time, time,

please, i'm only seventeen, i need-

breathe.

breathe.

breathe.

this is a lockdown drill for an internal threat.

drill. drill. drill.

the black box is silent.

you are okay.

it's all in your head.

you are okay.

it's just your imagination.

it's as statistically likely as lightning.

you're fine, it's just in case.

worst case scenario.

worst case scenario.

worst case scenario.

the black box is silently screaming.

[voidsaveforthestars]

contradictions

his hair brushed my arm today, 

and i felt at home as a house long sold.

whole in a way 

that ripped me from myself,

so utterly myself again that i was nothing but him.

it's an old feeling,

as old as change in all its ways.

ancient as a lightning strike and fleeting as earth, was that touch.

i was sixteen when i first fell in love,

naïveté wise beyond years.

i fell in love with a being 

that changed in a way 

that was always the same

and built patterns of novelty,

a chrysalis becoming itself.

his hair brushed my arm today,

and something like a slingshot sent me home.

[voidsaveforthestars]

pieces

this moving on is hopeful, moving

up

moving up away, i 

see

pieces of you, they 

speak

to me from everyone, every

face

i fall for again, the

new

the old and rediscovered, all

shine

all glow and golden, and

i

love them all, each

lash

each crack, each

splintered reed

speaks that little warmth, my

home

that never was, but

loved

nonetheless i am home, with

you

without you, i

carry

pieces of you with me, forever

unchangeable

i think of you, fondly

always

[voidsaveforthestars]

i hate holiday nostalgia.

i hate holiday nostalgia,

but death comes for us all in its turn.

-

so deck the fucking halls

with all the feelings i forgot,

i’ll light the memories ablaze

to keep the mulled wine hot.

when candles glow from hazy pasts,

i’ll douse their flickers and bin the whole damn lot.

-

this shit stayed behind for a reason,

don’t you get it?

maybe it felt good back then,

but have you considered

that maybe i wanted to forget it?

-

so i’ll open this book

and i’ll overlook

the damn emotions in my gut.

i don’t want the warmth,

i don’t want the longing.

i don’t need anything but

gingerbread and carefree songing.

i’ve got a fireplace and christmas dinner,

i’m a warm and full and happy sinner.

-

so what more can you want from me?

are you never fucking satisfied

with all the things you’ll never have?

i don’t need this company.

i don’t need him, or him, or them.

how do i this ugly bleeding stem?

-

so line the fucking mantle

with all the thoughts i had dismantled,

i’ll light the memories afire

and watch the syrup-sweet expire.

when candles glow from days of old,

i’ll quench their flames before the ham gets cold.

[voidsaveforthestars]

i have an odd relationship with gender.

sometimes i feel 

like i missed something crucial.

all the stories start the same -

like a fairy tale,

and its promised little "once upon a time".

i could never be myself-

i was trapped-

my whole façade, my life an act-

-

that was the stair i missed.

my brain replays that jolt a lot–

my stomach's drop as my foot plummets through

the stair i thought was surely there.

-

life's a checklist, right?

tick off the boxes, one

by

one, until 

you're done.

and i missed a box.

so mustn't that mean

it doesn't really count?

-

i never felt the pain they all describe,

the pain that all the stories start with.

i was never able to be me,

not in the times before.

the real me was trapped, locked away,

the dragon in a dress was my warden

and my mother had thrown out the key-

i was always me.

i'm sorry you weren't -

but somehow i was.

i had always been me.

the skirt didn't change who i was.

barrettes didn't lock me away.

-

i am and always have been me.

does getting a haircut change the self?

does a pair of shoes define the ego?

no, you said,

that's laughable.

clothes don't make a person.

-

so why should they make me?

i'm the same i've always been.

so what, if i tried on new pronouns?

i liked how they went with my shirt.

my name matched my hair dye.

looking in the mirror

made me smile,

because all my clothes finally fit.

-

so maybe i never missed anything.

i'm still me, just like i always was.

i just smile at the person 

in the shop windows, now.

i like his style.

he's got cool clothes.

[voidsaveforthestars]

sometimes

sometimes

when i'm tired

you're the only one 

my fragile mind can stand

but with standing comes

a neverending nag

because what do you do

when your home is a person

paint and drywall can't reject you

but what do you do

with a home

that doesn't want you

[voidsaveforthestars]

i love you in the past tense

i love you 

in the past tense, my dear.

not i loved you -

i still do love you, love -

but i love the you

that lives in the past tense.

he lives in the unsaved old letters

and dances through ballrooms lit dim 

with the blue-tinted faintness of age.

[voidsaveforthestars]

winter love

people all romanticize about a summer love - 

the honeyed kiss of sunshine,

lovers in the dark like fireflies,

but he was gone when autumn came -

i had a winter love.

winter has always settled a chill into my bones

that doesn't lift till spring.

he melted the frost

and kept me warm all winter.

but then summer came

and the chill left on its own.

the season brought its own sunshine,

and i lost his in the glare.

i'm sure he'll be back next winter,

a candleflame against the chill,

but for now i am warm

on my own.