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

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.

... 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

Which I suppose is a good reminder that engineers are still human beings, despite how hard faceless megacorps try to brand themselves otherwise.

Although I think NordVPN is still winner in this regard, when an engineer pushed “hi” to their production push notifier for everyone.

Sadly, it didn’t include “1N (no subject)” to make it perfect.

Seriously though, I’d love to know how birdsite ended up pushing internal state into iOS’ notification API. I know folks external to Twitter won’t get a full accounting, but I bet the internal postmortem is amazing.

(This isn’t an ask for internal info, btw. I’m just really amused watching the reports of that bug.)

Also, please have a plan of action if you’re harassed at your place of polling or if the data you provide is doxed by government employees. We shouldn’t even need to think about these things, but I put nothing past these people.

If you live in a state that does in-person polling and need to, bring a friend. Stay hydrated. Plan to get there early. And know your rights for leaving work to vote: https://aflcio.org/2016/11/5/know-your-rights-state-laws-employee-time-vote

I know things look pretty dark right now, but as a reminder: please vote.

Even if it looks corrupt or like they’re tampering with the voting rolls (or worse), they’re counting on people not showing up much more than any overt tampering efforts. The only way we stop them short of things getting _really_ bad is to show up at the polls.

Please make sure your registration is still valid. Please make sure you have a plan to get to the polls. And vote. It matters.

While perusing discount exploration games on Steam, I ran across a perfect dragon game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/331870/AER_Memories_of_Old/

Its a short game where the protagonist can shift from human to bird and back again instantly. Deceptively simple, yet I’ve never seen it done so fluidly or able to capture the visceral feeling of flight quite so well.

There’s a plot, and it’s decent, but I spent most of my time careening through the air at unsafe speeds. Recommended. 🐲👍

I wonder if there’s a tabletop version of this. Betrayal at House on the Hill and the Quiet Year are close, I suppose, but this blends the two nicely.

While nosing through my Steam collection, I realized I had bought and never played The Yawhg (https://store.steampowered.com/app/269030/The_Yawhg/) several years ago. So I booted it up.

After a slightly mediocre first run (“mediocre” involving animate furniture, eldritch horrors, and at least one grisly murder), I accidentally rolled a vampire and a werewolf that fight crime and save the town together.

Huh.

@Oasus@snouts.online I’m not on Z1 rando’s Discord, but dumb question: does anyone other than me use Voice Attack to do ZHelper annotation? Seeing mouse and hotkey annotation into brackets and elite 8 surprises me a bit.

Also, nice seed.

The other sprites from the four streamers shown being Link, Zelda (who is saving Link), and the protagonist from Crystalis.