Goldkin @Goldkin@awoo.space

I apologize that I’ve kind of pulled way back from everyone, especially compared to how I used to use birdsite. Know that I genuinely care, even if I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and had to scale back to keep myself together.

I’m hopeful that I’ll eventually have enough emotional spoons again to return to my old routines. But in the meantime, thank you for being here and thank you for continuing to be you. 💜

Queer fantasy romance and co-op videogames have been extremely grounding through the current strife and insanity. It’s been very calming and valuable to spend time in worlds that make sense and care about my involvement, when the rest of the world feels off-axis.

I’ve been going back through Sythyry’s Journal and A Marriage of Insects, which are particularly good. Silly builder games have also been enough structure for me to feel safe and included, which I’ve kind of badly needed.

They are coming after every vulnerable population they think they can get away with. These are actual, real trial balloons for fascism that will erase people and will not stop until we throw these people out of power, ensuring the costs are so high they never try again.

Please support your trans and NB friends today, especially if they need to take a break from all of this. Please vote. And please fight this if you can. Because they’re not going to stop unless we stop them.

It should be a rule that every fantasy life sim contains at least one friend-shaped character with the personality of a giant teddy bear.

My Time at Portia has this fellow, who deserves all the hugs in the world:
https://awoo.space/media/lJGTKmK22RfU3D2SLfc

@mawr Yaaaas.

... also, this made me check to see if this was a current Splatfest theme. It should be. ^..^

@zetasyanthis Thank you so much. ;..;

@orrery Thanks, that’s a very helpful way of looking at it.

@orrery I guess I don’t see that as an indictment against groups, or even specific ones I fell out of.

More: there is a need to sort bad faith from miscommunication, and to weight that as more severe than the need to retain community harmony. It’s a good problem to have, because it means one has a relatively healthy community to begin with.

And I guess that’s a very old open question in humanity that has no easy answer, either. But it wants for trying, albeit imperfectly.

@orrery I guess, for me, I wish it wasn’t a constant struggle against cynicism at how people act in groups. I know that most of community crashes are elaborate games of telephone by primarily good faith actors, but it still surprises me how single actors acting in bad faith can erode and destroy community.

I know the best answer isn’t to pull back and be cynical, but I’ve been struggling for a better answer. Especially considering the long tail of harm that followed.

And to be clear: I’m not going anywhere. I just need that out of my system, which is I guess a normal thing for me now.

I’m otherwise doing okay, but I wish I didn’t still have this in my headspace. And I wish it weren’t my brain’s self-preservation instincts keeping it lodged there.

Most of all, I don’t think this should have been my sacrifice to bear. The fact it was and still is is why I’ve pulled back so hard from communities I care about, and I’m still struggling with the damage that’s done to me.

The cost of community harmony should not be annihilation and exile. I know I tried to be stoic in the face of all that, but I still feel and hurt and bleed like anyone else.

Be better, and be good to one another, okay? Don’t do this to anyone else. Please.

It’s been several years now, and I still don’t know how I should have handled The Falling Out. I also still don’t know what I could have done better, other than to have cut and run sooner and more quietly, instead of trying to save friendships with people I care about.

I wish I hadn’t had to flee my community to prevent it from fracturing. I wish I hadn’t been a target. And I wish people understood how damn hard that is, when it seemed best to keep people happy.

@Soreth TBH, if a vitamin D supplement weren’t working for me, I’d do something crazy with IFTTT to keep a solar lamp running longer that day.

Come to think of it, I should try that anyway.

... which is a good reminder going into the winter months: if you use vitamin D supplements or sunlight lamps at home, this is roughly the difference you need to account for when doing so.

Remember those solar panels we installed here a year ago? Here’s what a year of sunlight looks like from Renton, WA:
https://awoo.space/media/x7yRLQcBDfjG3YM9U0M

@orrery Also, adopting the dissident playbook is probably appropriate. I feel it’s especially imperative to get folks off of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram for organizing protests (etc), since those platforms are not trustworthy in how they disseminate or share their information.

@orrery Given we’re at the point that the admin and its machinery values human lives in dollars and says the quiet parts out loud about oppression, civil disobedience and grievous political costs are necessary to bring them back to the bargaining table for democracy. So, yes.

@typhlosion Headcanon: everyone is actually the Tourist class and is faking it very convincingly with their given starting equipment. (Which would help explain weird rules like the knight’s move jump ability.)

@mawr In that book, Sally and Ken rewrote the JLS from scratch and step you through why they made their decisions. It actually makes sense, giving necessary context to why Java does what it does. Sally also has course notes posted online that pair well with the book.

While I’m unfortunately no longer on good terms, my previous roommate had Sally G as a professor, and may have more info that I do not. But even without that, the book is amazing.

@mawr The JLS is extremely good. 💜

Also, strongly recommended supplemental reading if you can find time for it: https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Structures-Algorithms-Chapman-Applied/dp/158488455X