postroll #1, april 2025 (part 1)
last modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago
hello! here's a postroll. you've read my previous post on the subject. here's some more posts! they're all from april.
a note: I bookmarked 150+ posts in the month of april and now I have exams (and other non-exam commitments) and I can't write coherently about all of these posts and pass my exams and fulfill my commitments, etc. so I'm going to write as much as I can, and then I think what I'm gonna do is upload a part 2 post sometime in july, before the 28th, naturally. (most likely after the 5th though, sorry)
also, july's actual may postroll will probably be significantly skinnier. I had exams in may, and I've got exams now in june, and it's not unlikely I'll have another round in mid-july. (yeaaaah). so I couldn't bookmark 150+ posts again, and I also can't, uh... write... about 150+ posts again...
I'm changing my format slightly too - to save myself time, I'm not gonna try to order these posts chronologically throughout the month of april. jesus. no.
aaaand I'm considering making a permanent blogroll as a page on my blog. I've shied away from them in the past, because my experience with blogrolls is through tumblr, i.e. publicly sharing everyone you're following which is madness to me... but I've realized actually, I don't need to do this in bear since it's, yknow, all manually linked. 100% curated. embarrassing it took me this long, I know, my kneejerk reaction was just real strong lol
that's about it, though. onwards with the post roll!
here's a post about learning english! I can relate to the struggles. I've got a lot more practice with english but, paradoxically, it's my native language that's been suffering recently... and I agree with the conclusion that thinking too much about grammar isn't the way out of these conundrums. I think you've gotta imbibe the language like it's water and you're a big old sponge and then grammar will naturally improve.
that said, of course more technical knowledge of grammar is still vitally important. it's actually interesting to compare this post to my own situation: I'm obviously pretty immersed in spanish, my problem is that I've never seriously studied its grammar, because it's my native language, so all of my fuck-ups are caused by not paying enough attention in my primary school grammar classes lol.
so I think both may be important, and the biggest thing might just be practice... earth-shaking conclusion that'll surely change the paradigm of the linguistic field I know lol
a short poem about permanence and mortality I liked! it's a bit morbid, to my senses, but I like the framing where the immortal object you're comparing yourself to is the human crowd (or at least this was my interpretation; if it's other people, on a more individual level, while still fresh, it becomes even more morbid. maybe the writer was going for that, though! who's to say)
I think this poem could easily continue. it's just short because it was made short, but I think it has potential to keep going. I'd be interested in seeing a continuation!
I like the observation that listening album-per-album rather than one big shuffled playlist makes you pay more attention to the music! (or rather, that listening to big shuffled playlists makes you pay less attention to the music than the normal way, which is album-per-album)
I've started listening to music per-album in recent years. I still dabble in shuffled playlists, but whenever I wanna listen to new music, I try to make it a full album or EP, rather than singles or even singular songs. I feel fucked up about one-hit-wonders, so listening in a way that makes them impossible makes me feel wayyy better lol. and it's turned out that the longer I do this, the more gross I feel listening to big shuffled playlists...
I feel like we've hit a point in music, with streaming and all, where it's taken for granted and mass industrialized the same way e.g. IKEA furniture is. it might be me, because I go everywhere with earbuds and spend a lot of time listening to music if I'm doing something else (I'm doing it right now1!) but I have this feeling music is just becoming some sort of abstracted background noise, increasingly, that the difference between one song and the next is lessening... like music's become less about playing it, and more about listening to it. I think this is probably something a billion luddites have been saying since the invention of the radio station, though, so I'm taking it as a personal criticism rather than a societal one, since I can actually enact personal change, or at least a lot more easily than societal one lmao
well, I dunno. I want to develop my appreciation for music, so this post is nice to read, since it's all about that!
another note: pirating music through a telegram bot is insane to me because I would just do youtube to mp3 (and have done this). but I'm not dealing with the great firewall lmao so I should probably count my blessings there
a really, really cool home-made Smart Thang2-type object. I don't really have nostalgia for this weather channel, but I really like it whenever people make like, weird fucking one-purpose computers for themselves. I recently watched a video of a young woman who made herself a homebrewed smart mirror and it was really, really cool. I like it when people do these sorts of things! one-of-a-kind crafting for yourself and your own purposes is the best, I think, and most fulfilling type of crafting. & I am not biased at all as a creative list-journaler3 and occasional whatever-tinkerer lol
five poems that I LOVED and I know I often say I like or love things, but I looooved these!!!
my favourites are definitely "Performance" and "Old School Bakery", but they all construct really strong mental images and leave you with intense emotion... wonderful stuff!!
go check these out, I enjoyed them a lot.
a really beautiful post talking about, well... makeup! and mental health, and nonbinary expression!
I'm not very sure how to talk about it further, to be honest... I've got a complicated relationship with makeup. but I really like this post. it relates a personal history with makeup as an artistic expressive hobby; what events in the OP's life helped support this blooming artistic interest, and which ones didn't. I really resonate with how the post talks about being able to better engage with personal decoration and expression through connection with the LGBT community as a queer person. I had a similar experience with fashion... and I also just think it's a common story, though that doesn't make it any less beautiful. sometimes what bothers you about a discipline isn't so much the thing itself, but the gendered connotations of practicing it, and when that happens, finding communities with alternative constructions of gender and/or the ability to create ur own can bring about a magical change in oneself
I want you to know, these postrolls are mostly unedited, I sound this nonsensical in real life too lol. this is why I post once every three months, nothing I say makes sense until the third draft!
well, I dunno. I also enjoyed the makeup look photographed in this article a lot too! I really like more "minimalistic" and "abstract" makeup looks where most of the face is, or looks, near-untouched, except for one attention-grabbing and fantastical element. "sparkly rainbow eyeshadow with no eyeliner or mascara" is awesome every single time I see it, bless
a critique of the videogame Lorelei and the Laser Eyes! which I haven't played, so I can't tell you if it's fair or not, but I liked the points raised as an outsider. I thought it was interesting and that it explained the problems very convincingly, and it wasn't overtly negative about the game, in fact noting that the OP actually enjoyed their time with this game. I especially liked when it said it's "hard to assign a rating like "good" or "bad" to a game that is so thoroughly the product of an artistic vision like this". I can really relate to that sentiment! I feel like originality is kind of a Z-axis in a theoretical "engaging vs boring/technically skilled vs technically unskilled" cross-shaped chart (ala political compass).
I also liked that it criticized a loss of protagonism/narrative focus for Lorelei in favor of the character Renzo. I feel like there's an interesting potential feminist critique about this sort of female protagonist that exists purely as a vehicle through which to experience male characters, because I do feel like I see this often, particularly with more amateur authors. it's not necessarily exclusively a feminist issue, I can name plenty of protagonists that exist as vehicles for other parts of the story where I wouldn't say there's a gendered dynamic going on, but I do think that this specific dynamic reflects a lack of care towards female characters in favor of male ones. and I think it's interesting to analyze how superficially, the male character is usually hateable and flawed, while the female character is virtuous and sympathetic, but ultimately this makes the male character richer and the female one flatter. it's one of those like, little tricks that might get someone to act this way, depicting the female character as less flawed in an attempt to make her a "better person" than the male one, and therefore making her a "worse character". which ultimately matters more, because she's not a person, she's a character. I don't know, it's interesting to me...
reflections on what it's like to create and the creative process, which I found really interesting. they're accompanied by several project updates (congrats on the Kickstarter funds!!) and a cute cat pic. what's not to love?
I liked hearing about this blogger's experience revisiting solo journaling games. and I particularly enjoyed the conclusion. I'm totally in agreement with the statement that "the specific and the concrete are the tools the imagination needs to create something truly surprising of its own". I'm a lot more drawn to role-playing games that have very specific, unique things going on, and particularly ones with very specific and clear worldbuilding, lore, and other aesthetic tools. my preferences for roleplaying games actually often veer dangerously close to scripted "murder games" (youtube link): I like having a lotta pre-written stuff. this is because the cognitive load (so to speak) is greatly lessened, and it becomes a lot more inviting to beginners and less calvinball when you have specific, concrete things to fall back on. for me, what I struggle with the most is creating settings and conflicts, so being able to offload those particular things is a huge relief and a big draw for me.
well, yeah. roleplaying games, aren't they awesome? Love those guys, the arpy gees
a long and (fittingly) ardently communist piece about what the videogame Disco Elysium (aka the best published novel so far in the 21st century) says about politics. I recommend this to Disco Elysium enjoyers and communards various, which are two venn diagrams that are circles.
I think the post is interesting, but mostly because Disco Elysium is an absolutely fascinating videogame, and because the post narrates Disco Elysium's greatness very wittily and with a lot of zeal. I think the actual analysis is a bit surface-level. (particularly, it frustrates me that more words aren't dedicated to Disco's arguments for socialism and communism...) but like, any analysis is life-changing to a lot of people lol, so it's above the curve there. also, the skill to actually express the analysis into words is vital and difficult, so I commend it immensely
I uh, I will admit a certain skepticism towards the second postscript. I think starting a work of fiction, even a role-playing game campaign, with "I want to do X story" already sets you up for failure, and specifically wanting to do Disco Elysium, of all stories, is uhhhhhh... well I'll be frank, I think it's a bad idea. none of Disco Elysium's choices are fungible, even and especially the aesthetic ones. you can't do like, Disco Elysium IN SPACE. moreover, you can't do Disco Elysium. you can only ever and always do your own thing. it saddens me a lot to watch people's own thing be smothered because they wanna do Another Story, but Mine This Time... I've been there and done that, and it was strictly negative for my writing ability (various reasons why, maybe not all applicable, but whatever...)
also a lot of choices about the described game, I'm also skeptical about... again, I think a lot of Disco's staying power and its ability to land punches comes from its mundane setting and stakes. there's just absolutely no way to translate what Disco is doing to, uh, essentially what seems to be described here is a Civ game But Socialism This Time:). like, I would describe 15-20 of the 30 hours you spend with Disco Elysium as slice of life. there's nothing wrong with Civ But Socialism:), but that's a really different thing, and I swear to god I'm talking from experience when I tell you that you need inspirations closer to the thing you want to write or you will write something completely different.
I'm likely just projecting my problems onto this person, I haven't read the follow-up post and I actually think the last paragraph manages to pitch it in an interesting way. I think involving philosophical experimentation in roleplaying games is as natural as breathing because calvinball and roleplay are the bread and butter of philosophy. you are always and forever making up a guy. so turning philosophical experimentation into gameplay features is a super fun creative project to hear about, especially because it's a thing a lot of people have done in a lot of different ways, and having more ways to do it is fun as fuck!
but, like. man. if your post analyzing Disco Elysium's political themes is mostly re-explaining things the game already tells you, and then you go on to pitch Disco Elysium Civ without even engaging with the Civ parody within Disco Elysium... y'know, that one civilization-raising board game you can play with Kim, Suzerainty... I don't know, I feel like workshopping this post for longer would've been a good idea. I'm sure the campaign is awesome! it's just the rhetorical skill that's a bit, well...
nostalgic musings about encountering old things and memories. I really liked the final line of this post!
a review for a roleplaying game I've never played, but that this review makes me interested in playing! I find the criticism of "man, I wish you let me spend more time basking in this atmosphere you've created" really funny - it's in the vein of e.g. "it's really good, but there needs to be more of it". there sure should be! I do like gamey game games, so I'll check this one out!
a dream diary! dreams have been a bit of a topic du jour in my class notes recently... we're on the Freud unit of my intro to psych class, and obv dreams are all about the subconscious bubbling up to the surface. a lot of what we've been seeing get put in subconscious brain-storage has been really stressful to me, so it's nice to be reminded that the subconscious is also where things like, "places you used to visit" and "strange and nonsensical adventures with your wife" are. I also just like knowing little details about people's lives lol
I've never seen Mad Men, but I really like this analysis and reflection on the show. I'm particularly interested in the representation of the changing times... I think it's described really evocatively in this post. it makes me wanna watch the show! I don't, uh, really watch TV so I probably won't, but even if interesting and well-crafted art isn't for me, I think I can still celebrate its existence... I dunno, this was neat.
I really like this Laura Palmer sketch. something about her face is really pleasant to me.
really interesting critique of ethics!! I think it's fascinating to interpret individually-pursued ethics as self-centered, and the way it's expressed is very poignant. philosophy! gets your ass in the most unexpected ways
yet more proof that drag queens are the future, honestly. a short post about confidence in one's body image! idk, I liked it. :'3
scary. and yet I think these stories and vignettes are really important. what it's like to navigate horrible political times, moments in places where great and terrible things are done.
above I mentioned, while talking about a different post, a highly political story with a runtime largely consisting of what I'd describe as slice-of-life. I think this is the sort of thing it was portraying, though in a different political ambiance.
I have mixed feelings about writing things for the future. it's important to have records, obviously, so people in the future will know what it was. but I don't think it's valuable solely for its future purpose. I think writing like this post isn't just valuable as evidence in a future court case, a future nuremberg trial. I think it's valuable now, because saying and describing and explaining it now, to other people also living it, is vital in some way I struggle to articulate. I dunno, I think a lot about how I live my daily life in the twenty-first century. it's not a great time, is it?
Un análisis del videojuego Mouthwashing. empieza con reflexiones personales sobre los spoilers, y luego llega al verdadero corazón del artículo:
"Pony Express es esa línea que al final de una película de terror hace que si aún no hay tragado saliva por todo lo que acabas de vivir te atragantes y tosas, Pony Express es el “basado en hechos reales”."
me gustó muchísimo este post porque demostró un montón de emoción e investidura sobre los eventos del juego, y siempre me parece mágico cuando alguien tiene estas emociones enormes sobre una obra de ficción. y el argumento del post sobre Pony Express también me pareció muy fuerte y muy acertado. el título del artículo vuelve, luego de una vuelta a la cuadra retórica, y te pega una piña en la cara. Me gustó mucho el análisis idk <3 buen post buen post
I like this post's take on meditation. I've never practiced it and this makes me want to, this makes meditation really approachable. it's a pretty simple take - "it's fine to fudge the details" - but I think it works really well to (so to speak) pare away the external parts of meditation to really get to the core of meditation, why it's valuable and what parts of it are valuable. really good stuff
I thought it wasn’t possible to like my favorite Disney movie more, then the star did this
a fun fact that adds a lot to what a beloved children's movie means to a particular group of people. seeing yourself reflected (ha!) is a magical, powerful thing
a post about making bluesky bots! one posts Merriam Webster's word of the day, another follows certain stocks. simple and pleasant to read! good stuff
45. i have a 15 year old canon powershot sd400, no photographic skills, and some thoughts [📷]
photos!! I really like the third one. and in response to the question posited at the end of the post, I've also shopped around for a gallery-type website onto which to host my stuff (though it's drawings rather than photos), and I actually found a template for a gallery-style portfolio static site here, made by artist Kaylee Rowena. as for hosts, I like what nekoweb offers more than neocities (mostly the RSS feed admittedly...) I figure it's been two months so I'm late with my reply, but, o well, it's out there if anybody else needs such a thing!
incredibly fun title for a first post, and really, really cool-looking blog, in my humble opinion. I'm not that big a fan of big great long first posts, but it's a natural thing to happen, I think... you've got all these words stuck and figuring out how to get them unstuck tends to produce the biggest knots. also, the blog really does look very cool. I wish OP the best with the fear/constipation/angst!
a really pretty photograph! ^^
dev blogging!! always a fun time. I have no context for these characters, so it was fun to puzzle them out, a bit, based on their potential configurations. looking at the characters' pages, I think I'd probably choose to either romance Val or Kiriyak!
analyzing a strange old D&D set from the late 70s as a playable individual thing. old school-types aren't my most favourite rpgs to play myself, but I have a lot of appreciation for discussion of their rules, because I'm an awful little scavenger who loves to learn about tabletop game design from examples and then steal as much as I can to incorporate into my terrible unplaytested notebook experiments. and also, it's just a really fun post about a weird d&d thing I didn't know about! really, really very fun, I enjoyed.
Three Years For Sweet Revenge, Or How I Love Being A Tranny Dyke, and You Can Too!
what a sick title! it might be a reocurring theme on this postroll series to highlight blog posts about positive transgender experiences and transgender happiness and joy in general. if it is, then the fault lies in that I'm trans too, and seeing trans people be happy makes me happy because we're like... shield siblings. to put it in a really dorky way. comrades, possibly. choose your fighter?
well, anyway, I think being trans and sapphic is fucking awesome and certainly worthy of annual celebration. and I really like the reflection on wanting to grow and change as a person. it's great stuff and really relatable... I also want to be a way better person in three years! cooler, better adjusted, friendlier, more thoughtful, more hardworking, more confident... these sorts of things. & of course I want to be more transgender and more bisexual in the future too lol. I wish OP many more long beautiful happy years of being trans and sapphic and strange in magical ways and above all having fun!!
an overview of the literary genre of, well, 1960s sleaze, going over its strong aspects and its weaker points. I like reading anything to do with weird fucking books. I'm also occasionally partial to weird trashy fiction4, and even if none of it were to my taste, it plants the seeds for regular weird fiction (so to speak), which is something I'm definitely a fan of. therefore, this post is extremely fun and informative to me. I think it highlights some fascinating technical and social aspects of weird trashy pulp stuff. obviously talking about queerness in pulp fiction is awesome, because we love gay people, but I'm also drawn very strongly to the passages about authorial voices developing in these books that would later become recognizable in other genres. I'm learning to write better creatively, with a particular focus on fiction, and so this sort of talk is endlessly fascinating to me. I'm always hoping to gleam interesting new angles and wisdom and knowledge from it, wherever it comes from. whether I've learned a lesson from this article, I couldn't tell you, but it's still good to know; any log can one day fuel a fire, or whatever. fun, historical, informative, niche - what else could you want?
siempre me parece una cosa buena y constructiva establecer claramente y en voz alta las reglas, las obligaciones y los derechos que uno se auto-impone cuando uno tiene un proyecto que se publica serializado, a medida que se escribe y en partes, como por ejemplo, un blog.
estas reglas también me parecen muy buena idea. yo no las sigo, pero es por debilidad de carácter; debería seguirlas. (pero aún no siento la necesidad desde el fondo de mi alma, así que no voy a hacerlo - capaz un día). si vos corrés un blog, deberías fijarte en estas reglas. puede ser que no estés de acuerdo con todas, por ejemplo, puede ser que tengas un blog cuya temática sea muy particular, entonces varias de estas reglas no te sirven... pero también puede ser que te vengan bien
son reglas bastante obvias, claro, pero decir cosas en voz alta y establecerlas así es muy valuable, incluso si las cosas que decís son simples o son obvias. en todo caso, está bueno haberlas dicho para que no las puedan ignorar otros luego, o vos mismo...
nada, apoyo esto mucho jaja
a series of journal prompts to question the status quo from a leftist perspective. I really like the last prompt: "What would a post-colonial world look like?" it's something I think about a lot, though never very solidly or even coherently, and it stays in my head. there's something utopic about a far-flung future we could describe as entirely post-colonial, and I think there's a lot of value in building utopias in our head, though it's difficult for me to express why...
on the one hand, of course it's motivating. on the other hand, I think there's a lot of value in writing about "better" societies because often, our assumptions have little things baked into them that spoil the final result, and we don't quite realize them until we've written them down. so it's constructive. and I don't think it's good just for cynical we-will-never-have-a-perfect-world reasons, I think it's also useful for actually trying to build a better future, because it lets you experiment with and examine your hopes for the future. they may need adjusting, or they may resonate... I haven't finished Sophie from Mars's most recent video essay yet (link here, youtube link of course) but the parts I saw touched on this5.
there's one bit in Disco Elysium, when your character... well, if you've never played Disco Elysium this sounds like madness, but it's basically a passage narrating your player character's experience internalizing their world's equivalent to Marxist socio-economic theory. I really, really like it and think about it a lot. it goes something like this (highlighted emphasis mine)
0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself *sad*. He is starting to suspect
[learning about this has]*fucked him over* personally[...]It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world.
this quote is kinda like a fable to me. Aesop-style. I think that when you're highly focused on the construction of a better world, it is incredibly easy to fall into merely recounting all the wrongs of the current world, and it feels impossible not just to imagine a better one, but to create any sort of plan for it6. I think it's valuable to build the precise model of our dickshit world, but I also think you've really gotta think about the future. it's basic planning, isn't it? you want to enact a change, okay, why and how? what's your ideal end result? what compromises would you make more easily, which ones less so? and how do you think those compromises could be turned against your end-goals, how do you think they could go sour? you can't plan for anything, but planning's invaluable, or however went the one Eisenhower quote that dungeon masters on forums wield like a mallet in conversation. reflecting on what "the thing you want" will look like, and what it actually is, is vitally important to enacting change, I think, on basically any level
and yes I'm aware "what do we do next" is the original sin of leftist infighting. my opinion on it is that killing each other with hammers about what to do next is a less bullshit reason to kill each other with hammers than a lot of current reasons to kill each other with hammers. being less bullshit doesn't make it better, but it sure does make it less bullshit. what you make of this statement is up to you, like all of my words
well, anyway. I think it's important to think about things. genie-proofing is a real skill. if you're good enough at it, they even let you practice law, which is crazy
and all this speech is prompted by just one of these questions, too! that's sorta the nature of prompts. I'm not even answering it. I don't know, I think that if you're creative enough there's almost no such thing as a bad prompt7, and these are interesting, if pretty personalized to the OP. I think writing prompts can become really juicy through a specific brand of honesty - that "big draft energy" that revising and editing your work is supposed to minimize - because ultimately the power of a prompt is in its ability to compel you. a good writing prompt needs to be something you dug out of your subconscious, like, well, analogies are overrated. it's gotta have texture to it so that you can climb it, you know?
I mean, I think writing should be misshapen. good writing is misshapen in a beautiful and harmonious way, but you need not just self-indulgence but texture, some kind of acne of the spirit, to avoid becoming, like. Chuck Wendig or something. that's a fate worse than death, I would daresay
remember at the start of this post when I said I can't find it within me to write about 150+ posts? you see now why. if I've got reason to talk I literally never stop. (for the record: if I don't talk this much about this post it's not that I like it less, it's just that I have less to say about it. sometimes something needs no further comment!)
y'know that strange feeling when you hear someone else talk about their age on the internet and it's not yours? I'm putting this post on my postroll, like, 80% because the OP mentions being 70. I wish more 70 year olds had blogs. if you've got a blog right now, try to blog when you're 70, too. I wanna hear what 70-year-olds have to say on blogs. that's... chic as fuck is the only adjective I can come up with and it's incoherent but it's true. anyway, the 20% remaining is because I really like the photograph in this post. it's a really nice flower!
Live-blogging an old-school megadungeon written by Gary Gygax. mostly this chapter is about the village outside the dungeon, which features obscured alignments, a surprising quantity of evil NPCs, and a fucking DEMON CROCODILE. At least, that's what I infer from the name "DEMONCROC". it's not spelled in all-caps in the post or the adventure, I am really just excited about a demon crocodile because the concept sounds like the subject of a King Gizzard parody song.
well, it's modern reactions to Gary Gygax being Gary Gygax. if you know what that means, you probably will enjoy this. unless you hate Gary Gygax. which is fine, though I think joyless - I can only read his work as absurd black comedy. ontologically evil eight-year-old. jesus. thanks, Gary, you're always bringin' in the laughs...
...why do tabletop RPGs lend themselves so naturally to black comedy? this should be investigated.
anyway, demon croc. go lookit.
"mosquito zapper at the buddhist temple" is a parable. OP walked into a fable. reasonable crash-out.
"I still feel this yearning for a social channel that actually works for me. Something where I can really connect and where interaction actually happens. [...] In the end, I always feel like I’m standing there alone. It doesn't matter whether I’m signed up on Mastodon or not — hardly anyone (if anyone at all) would even notice if I were there or not. It feels like this emptiness. Like being in a city full of people and still feeling lonely — because no one knows you, you don’t know anyone, and no real connection happens between you and all the passersby. [...] Maybe I should just give up the search — it seems like there really isn’t anything out there that's different from the rest."
cannot stress enough how relatable this passage is to me. I've mostly stopped posting on social media over the past year and a half, but now it feels like I've got all this stuff to talk about and nowhere to put it. it's part of why I'm trucking onwards with this blog, I think - I'm finding ways to reformat things I'd say into blog posts, and that's a fun challenge. but there's still this sense of loneliness. talking into the void and getting no response is really discouraging. I think it's worse in social media than with things like blogs, but it's definitely still present with blogs. it's part of why I do this blogroll, actually - I want to give attention to other people's posts in a more artisanal way. I also sometimes try to send emails, but it's stressful...
well, I've been trying to fill the void by socializing in real life. strangely, now that I'm in an environment that's supportive of my gender identity and gotten some practice performing speech8, I've found I'm much more drawn to talking in person rather than online. part of it is my obsession over digital footprints, but it goes beyond that - it's not just that there's no record of in-person conversations by default, but that people are a lot more gracious in-person than online. there's more patience present in the interaction, more grace, and it's easier to communicate complex things or to get something across without fully articulating it. it is, and I swear this is true, a lot easier to talk out loud than through text, and I'm saying this as someone who loves writing and spends more time texting and writing than speaking on almost any day.
it's also a positive experience for other reasons, but those are more difficult to articulate for me, and also, other people have spoken at length about them. you don't need me to sing the praises of human conversation. you just know it's good because you've experienced it
I also have a groupchat with friends of multiple years that I dump all my stupid thoughts into. I would recommend establishing one if you're feeling this sort of way. find people that you like talking to, and who like talking to you, and then ask them if they're interested in a groupchat centered around random life updates, complaints, infodumping, etc with no particular pressure to respond to any given message. if you don't have friends like these, putting out feelers online can also work out; that's how I made my friends. (but this requires an online presence... ah, paradoxes)
that said, I think if you really want to connect with strangers through social media, that's fine. it might require some strategy. if going at it with no plan yields unsatisfactory results, my instinct would be to reassess and make a plan. trying new things, new strategies, and at some point, something will click. try to not lose your soul doing this, though - anecdotally, it's pretty easy. and the internet isn't just social media and blogs, either. you could start posting on a forum related to your interests, or seek out pre-existing communities, or even cold-emailing anyone you find interesting...
extremely unfortunately, the only way out of loneliness is through. I think the principles are to never socialize where you feel uncomfortable, and to learn to give up on people who don't talk to you. at least, those are the ones I've figured out so far - the hard way - and so it's what I'm sharing.
and I think it's also worth examining what's causing the sensation of loneliness. is it a need to be validated, or is it a need to be heard? or even a need to speak? working out what's going on is useful for planning. ...a statement so obvious I'm blaming it on the late hour lol. well, onto the next one before I embarrass myself further...
an interesting experiment in turning a series of linear adventure modules into a more sandbox-y game. reuse, reduce, recycle bog-standard 5e content into something more your style - that's a slogan worth bandying about, I feel like!
I'm particularly tickled by the adventure described as just, "The party delivers packages. Representatives from a Walmart stand-in try to stop them." Fantasy Walmart ™ is classic 5eposting. next you'll tell me something about stones of farspeech you can play snake on...
y'know, I'm reasonably sure I read a one-shot on manga+ that had the exact premise of "your teeth cheering you on".
...no actually, it was a caries. and it was a metaphor for... something about your parents sacrificing their health for your well-being, I think? well, it's still really, really funny whenever there's a sanrio mascot that's this weird.
I want to note that the Black Teeth character isn't as nonsensical as she appears, either - I figure she's a reference to ohaguro (wikipedia link), thus why she's a refined upper-class lady. that wikipedia link, by the way, is a really fun read. here's a passage:
"In the story, the protagonist's eccentric behavior is considered less reprehensible than her repulsive natural appearance [...] a captain of the guard who shows attraction to her is repelled by her lack of makeup and, above all, by her teeth which "shone horribly when she smiled.""
it also apparently acted as a sealant that prevented tooth decay. I didn't know this and I'm glad to know it now, because that's super interesting lol.
...and I'm also, uh, really intrigued by the magical girl ojisans. but, welp, guess if there's nothing out about 'em...
an obituary for a dear friend. it paints a moving portrait of a wonderful friend, of a life lived and gone. I resonate with the final sentiment - choosing to celebrate the memories Axel left behind. "A man is not dead until he's forgotten," as they say; through the impact someone leaves, they can live on. none of these words are new; all of them, I think, are human.
and that's all I've got for today. I'll edit this post when I've posted part 2 and link it!
I go through a bit of churn collecting these. sometimes I bookmark a post, reread it, then decide against re-sharing it for one reason or another (usually, it's too personal or I don't think I'd have fun commenting on the post's subject). other times, I bookmark a post - then it's deleted. I've got maybe 15-20 more posts left for part 2, so feel free to look forward to those once I'm through with exams!
I've also got some shorter, lighter posts in the pipeline. I mentioned last time having some big old essays tucked away half-written, but I've been experimenting recently with smaller-scale posts. novel-length essays are fine and all, but I can never finish them; I'm trying to learn how to do things like "tell a joke", or "share some music I like". something small and silly should go up on monday. I've got an exam that day - please wish me luck... it's sociology.
and, as always,
thank you for reading!!
if you want a link to what I'm listening to, heed my warning: MASSIVE FUCKHUGE DELTARUNE CHAPTER 4 SPOILERS. HOLY MOLY. DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK IF YOU ARE AVOIDING SPOILERS FOR, I REPEAT, CHAPTER 4 OF DELTARUNE. anyway, it's an orchestral cover of several tracks from the chapter's climax, here's the youtube link, it's so fucking awesome I love it↩
Smart Thang here referring to some damn object with a computer in it for funzies. this is different from a Smart Thing because it's fun and awesome and you say it with like, a weird unsuccessful attempt at an american southwestern drawl. you gotta say it like a cowboy. Smauauaauauhhht Thaeaeaeaeng.↩
I would absolutely fucking never describe what I do as bullet journaling even though it is literally bullet journaling and the description would be entirely correct. this is because I'm a horrible hipster and also because I spit in contempt in the face of Ryder Carroll. listen, I fuckin' hate self-help books and outrageously mormon names and somehow this guy's got both going on? go fry asparagus, man.... and also I haven't actually, uh, read the book so IDK if I'm following the rules. I'm doin it by vibes. lmao↩
specifically I have pretty recently developed an appetite for the isekai villainess subgenre that I myself am terrified of. someday I'll make a post talking about this obsession...↩
I also just really like a lot of video essays Sophie from Mars makes lol. I recently watched the Kaiju episode of the Monster Men series and I really enjoyed it, as well as the Vampires episode. I was incredibly moved by the Pokemon Liquid Crystal video too. and of course the Theranos video is a certified classic in my household. well, in my youtube watch history lol↩
stagehands, please roll out the ol' reliable Mark Fisher quote about imagining the end of capitalism...↩
boy, do submissions to the writing-prompt-s tumblr blog like to try, though↩
through GMing role-playing games but it still counts as projecting my voice and talking without stuttering and being engaging and weaving people's responses into the thing I'm talking about, right?↩