Suddenly feeling super depressed about golden times that happened 20 years ago and are never coming again. Blah. This, too, shall pass.
Look, I'm looking forward to this century's 20's flappers, and you can't take that away from me!
@balinares When this is all over, I really want as many of us who will still speak to each other to get together, somehow somewhere, and basically have our own Big Chill/Return of the Secaucus 7* moment.
(*two very similar films about a bunch of ex-hippies reuniting in middle age and taking stock of their lives)
@zebratron2084 In the community whose long cold demise I suddenly find myself achingly mourning right now, I don't even know where people went. Re-reading logs, I realize I'd all but forgotten most of those people, whom I adored.
This is a horrible feeling. I'm taking it hard.
(length cut)
@balinares It definitely came as a shock to me. I've peeked at some of my old follower lists from LJ accounts recently and... yeah. Lost track of so many people I swore I'd never lose track of. We got blasted by cultural change we could never have seen coming and we're still picking up the pieces. *hug*
It especially blows my mind that something as seemingly simple as "a queer-friendly freeform text RP scene" would turn out to be so damn hard to preserve. Especially NOW where i meet people every freakin' day on Birdsite that would have fit in perfectly.
re: (length cut)
@zebratron2084 Yeah. I don't know what changed, but sometime through the 2000's, little by little, everyone lost the kind of time- and brain-leisure that ongoing engagement on a MU* requires, and all the places died. This sucks. It's a worse world now.
@balinares And I can't even read logs. Far too painful for far too many reasons, lost friends being one of the most prominence. (That plus the fact that me circa 2005 comes across as so CRINGE -____- )
Don't beat yourself up to harshly for being different when you were younger.
We all were.
That's how we got to here.
@JulieSqveakaroo @zebratron2084 @balinares if you don't mind me saying, part of being in a golden age is the inability to know you're in one, or recognize when it passes.
i miss many of the friends i had back when i was at my social and creative peak, but mostly i wish i had known the friends i have *now* back *then.*
@zx3 @JulieSqveakaroo @balinares Have all y'all seen Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai? That film and all its references to the Passing Of An Age has been setting very heavily with me lately. It's been a lot of comfort.
@zebratron2084 @JulieSqveakaroo @balinares "Ghost Dog" is a fantastic movie for so many reasons. i need to give it a rewatch soon.
@zx3 @JulieSqveakaroo @zebratron2084 Yeah. Back then it felt like every day. It *was* every day. It would have been hard to imagine that one day, 20 years later, I would come to miss it this suddenly, this hard.
@balinares @zx3 @JulieSqveakaroo What really blows me mind is that TapestriesMUCK outlasted my ability to deal with TapestriesMUCK, the people on TapestriesMUCK, or the sort of things I had to do to get the attention of people on TapestriesMUCK.
Heh. Puzzlebox and 12Fold failing is not nearly as large of a surprise. *I* was [very nominally; other people did all the real work, mostly poor longsuffering Rik] in charge.
@balinares @zx3 @JulieSqveakaroo And again, the idea that there's just... nowhere. That the RP scene collapsed so badly that people recommend F-List (which may have changed but I recall as VERY minimal effort RP) is just shocking. I just assumed someone would take over and there would Always Be A Party Somewhere. And if there is one, if people are still doing that kind of high-concept polymorphic queer-friendly love storytelling at each other... I sure as fuck haven't been invited. :)
@zebratron2084 @balinares @zx3
I won't say (because I refuse to believe it) that it's completely gone, but it has distinctly gone more animated... VR chats, avatars, and such, and I can't begrudge the idea that folks went all in on making their insane imaginations more visually distinct instead of textually, because that's just how some folks parse things... I mean, I totally get why I went to drawing more than writing...
... I dunno...
@zebratron2084 @balinares @JulieSqveakaroo my take is that the fertile grounds upon which our Weird Pretendy Fun-Style Games were sown have been largely liquidated or repurposed as money and net-gentrification took over; we assumed that new spaces would pop up and we'd move the floating party to new locales. that sort of didn't happen as those spaces were more locked down and less friendly to our purposes.
@zebratron2084 @balinares @JulieSqveakaroo in addition, i believe that there *are* still huge amounts of Weird Pretendy Fun-Style Games happening out there; but they're happening in places we were not the first to settle, being played in ways that we would not have thought of. private islands in the distance, if you will; finding that magic balance of self-sustainment and enthusiasts with money/time.
@zebratron2084 @balinares @JulieSqveakaroo hell, looking at the last decade, we're coming off a trauma Katamari that just got a little smaller a few months ago. building communities is HARD, and it's way easier to pick and choose your social experience from a list of ready-mades. maybe we shouldn't be surprised that what we're looking for is rare right now. doesn't mean it will always be this way, though.
@balinares
*does math*
Ah, so Deus Ex and Half-Life mods.
@LionsPhil Not really, no.
@balinares Yeah. *hug* Yeah.