Not to mention the question of "is it REALLY normal/OK/not hurting your opinion of me if I show up in your mentions now and then asking for emotional support?"

Everyone says yes. Not everybody actually _acts_ like it's OK in the moment. And I also don't know if my friends know the converse, which is that YOU ARE WELCOME TO IMPOSE ON ME IN THIS FASHION.

I wouldn't do it if I thought friends didn't have the general right to lean on each other. That is SUPPOSED to be reciprocated, and tbh, having my life degrade from "constantly being asked for chaplain services" to "nobody comes around anymore, guess I'll rake the chapel grounds again" has been really painful too...

@eredien Sure! Sorry we've been quiet but OH MY GOD MOVE.

@zebratron2084 It is fully normal to have friendships ebb and flow with time, both amicably and not!

@Soreth Even for you?

SORETH YOU'RE SO GODDAMN *NICE* THO. D:

@zebratron2084 Sure, but that doesn't mean I can't lose my temper at someone, or they with me, and Words Get Said. Things can shift and time isn't easy to find with someone anymore, or people suddenly decide to shave their heads and go live with Bhagwan Bill off in the county.

Shit, some people straight up betray my trust and niceness. It happens, I just try to take things as they come and go.

@zebratron2084 *hugs* I'm sorry that experiences have made your own sensor data not trustable. I think you're okay. And I'm glad your move is in progress and going well (I hope!)

@kelseyhusky I think you and mawr are pretty awesome too! Sorry I didn't get to see y'all again on the way out but oh my god bothell. :D

@Oneironott I mean, I'm so burnt out on social RP, I'm going it solo after a lifetime of being too ADD to focus on conventional writing.

So I definitely think you're on to something, and I'm glad the Next Gen is already thinking in terms of "OK, this is obviously winding down, what the hell do we do next?"

I feel so responsible for letting that energy dwindle, and responsible for so much of the drama that started separating us. I did what I could.

I keep trying to tell myself we're still big... it's just the Internet that's gotten small. (And increasingly hostile to Unreal things, which is a FUCKING TRAGIC reversal of the original spirit of the Net.)

@zebratron2084 Yeah, oh believe me I will fight on that hill of the internet. We still got a place, I believe. hard as it is anymore. IDK, maybe a different direction altogether. You ever make music? I want to do it more. like something physical I can use my paws with. We can still create, yeah yeah.
GODS do I feel that ADD as I'm sitting here with numerous unfinished writing projects

@Oneironott @zebratron2084 ... as someone with a shitton of FL studio projects who works with music basically every day and yet has only released a single song in the past three years or so, yeah, I feel y'all

as for the social thing, honestly I feel like letting discomfort fester and never discussing it until it's way too late, things suddenly explode and people get banished from the community is kind of a Thing in the Seattle-based postfurry scene in general, from what I've seen

@Thaminga @Oneironott Honestly, that's really comforting because it means it Ain't Just Me. :) I used to pride myself so much on the delusion we'd be more socially and emotionally intelligent than The Mundanes, but... it just doesn't work that way. We're ALL just broken, overevolved monkeys.

There's just no way out of this, and sometimes that is a *bit* comforting in that Philip K Dick "at least there are stars" sort of way.

@Thaminga @Oneironott

um how much trouble would i get into if i wondered aloud if certain tenets of current queer leftist political culture might not have had some role in our problems too >___>;;

not about to switch teams here, but... i could rant for hours about how dogmatic some people were starting to get, especially with the US vs THEM bs

@zebratron2084 @Thaminga I mean yeah, I could.. just as easily complain about that In General, as I've gotten on the shit end of Queer Leftist Politics enough for just having certain kinks

@Oneironott @Thaminga I've been quiet about that stuff because my tigery presence has a tendency to... um... not de-escalate sensitive sociopolitical threads. *opens maw, touches sabery fangtip* ^_^;

But for the most part, I am on your side here. I've only got an anthropological interest in most of those kinks myself, but I would defend their morality and psych functionality to THE HILT in 99% of cases.

@Oneironott @Thaminga Also, honestly...

Can I just say it?

Lenin sucks. And some of my friends were REALLY starting to sound like the Earnest Young Leninists from some of my favorite old anti-Soviet satires. Or the really SCARY leftists from my 1960s counterculture influences, the sort of people who raised underground papers with guns and bats for being "indoctrinaire."

Some queer people are pretty fucking doctrinaire and pretty willing to see evil in ANYTHING that contains a potential symbolic threat.

And I'm a fucking Discordian.

The fights were probably, in retrospect, quite inevitable. I get REAL fucking nervous when people start putting little post-its labeled "GOOD" and "EVIL" on things. Tigers have GOTTEN the "evil" post-its before, and all we did was eat a few hundred people! D:

@zebratron2084 @Oneironott yeeeeeaaaaah, there's definitely a lot of the social whore-madonna complex that's unfortunately seeped into leftist circles in general, largely as a result of 2016 in particular essentially being "They Live, but in real life"

like, fucking. let people be imperfect, and allow people to try to redeem themselves if they've fucked up

@Thaminga @Oneironott

> the social whore-madonna complex

Quote of the Year, Mx. Vesemxoq. I will be cribbing that for my own nefarious uses. That NAILED all my current issues with queer leftists. It's like... dammit, we already TROD all this philosophical ground in the 1960s, and they were WRONG THEN TOO. :)

You can NOT fucking get away with lazy, simplistic, comforting generalizations *and* simultaneously build something lasting and humane and good. Trauma is inherently NOT A SMART FORCE, and building a body politic around trauma, while sometimes necessary, is not a real good long-term strategy.

I wish I had a firearm that could shoot the entire contents of Erich Fromm's Art of Loving and Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man into someone's forebrain and MAKE THEM LISTEN. >:D

@zebratron2084 @Oneironott I mean yes, many if not *most* of us are traumatized in some way or another (it kinda comes with being queer in this society, along with the ever increasing amount of abuse leveled at the past three generations or so as kids and young adults), and we absolutely need a way to negotiate with that.

Key word being negotiate. Not center every part of our interactions around it to the point of (re)traumatizing others in the quest to avoid our own problems. I mean shit, I had to deal with this from someone in a completely unrelated Discord server who got banned for tearing into me because I vented about someone outside the server who happened to be this person's friend joined the voice chat using their roommate's microphone and proceeded to make everyone uncomfortable, and to this day they still don't understand at all that the reason they got banned is due to abusive behavior towards others, not because "they wanted to vent while others were venting" and "it's so unfair [I] told [them] to shut up when [they] were trying to get a word in".

@Thaminga @Oneironott Preach. It. Sister. ✊​

@Oneironott I think that's exactly what we should be doing. Just go off and use what we learned.

The most important thing the Church of the Subgenius taught me is that it is absolutely VITAL to schism with your church as soon as you feel comfortable doing so. Any church that was worth attending in the first place will wish you luck as you go.

@zebratron2084 Oh gosh does @catoxis have a relevant story there but YEAH. I wholeheartedly agree.

@kobi_lacroix I'm blushing, so... yeah. *hug* Thank you so much. I like you too, especially your pol takes lately. :)

@Balinares *hugs* No that's pretty good right there. <3

@Verdigris I mean, we could write VOLUMES of good sociology about how we fucked up. :)

And while I am DEFINITELY partly responsible for that... yeah, I feel like there was a certain anarchistic chill-vibe that I tried to bring to the whole thing that people just kinda... forgot about. *sigh* (Is it OK if I blame Trump for this, too? :) I saw some really good people turn really cold and cruel out of... somewhat understandable paranoia, militancy, and impatience.)

We did NOT have good conflict resolution at all, and my only consolation is that basically all the 1960s counterculture groups I worshipped in my adolescence more or less fucked it up the same way. I could dish for hours about it. :D I just can't believe I was arrogant enough once upon a time to think we were doing much better...

And I had forgotten about Dunbar's number. That's... yeah. That's very insightful. And highly applicable. *sad nod* Honestly... this just did not do well as an RL community. We were one of those bands who were always far far better in the studio than we were live, if you know what i mean. :D

@Leucrotta Yeah, tbh that was a fucking NIGHTMARE. I still love a lot of people on the spectrum, but... the way things went with Kristy kinda lead me to believe "ADD manic-depressive neurotype" and "high functioning but fully autistic" are NOT a good basis for a stable friendship.

And I blame myself, no matter what Kristy chooses to believe about my opinions of what happened, for quite a large part of that mismatch. I should really have seen the signs coming and.. well, I did fucking TRY to apologize to her and got fired upon. *shrug* Never again. :| And I'm gonna be REAL skittish about ever befriending someone with similar social habits again.

(And yet, once again I am a total fucking hypocrite since I am shy AF and have probably ghosted people for months that I STILL HAVE NOT REALIZED actually ever wanted to see me in the first place.

Um... that's QUITE A LOT of you reading this toot, actually. If I didn't say goodbye when I left Seattle... it's probably because I assumed we weren't close enough and I'd just be bugging you. :| <3 )

@zebratron2084 I feel for you about this, but suspect there is never a clear way to know that someone feels off about you if they don’t say anything; that you’ve basically stuck feeling slightly paranoid until you’ve logged enough time and interactions to build confidence back. With that in mind; you’re honestly cool with me.

@Leucrotta That means a lot to me given some of our mutual acquaintances. And FTR, I am 100% cool with that. I don't necessarily think they're bad people-- we just all triggered abject failure states in each other at the same time. 💔​

@zebratron2084 my experience has been, I’m usually not pissed off at people enough to ditch a friendship unless they do the sort of repeated stuff that... uh... you get sharing a job, a vehicle, or housing. Despite furries having a reputation for drama, I’d wonder whether the only folks actually skeeved off at each other were the people in the house itself?

@zebratron2084 honestly *you’ve* never been uncool to me, *Kristi’s* never been uncool to me, I can’t even *imagine* being on the outs with Jess, so all I can think is that whatever happened (and I’m pretty sure I’m happy not knowing) it was definitely something that required really being in close proximity stepping in each other’s issues a *lot*, y’know?

@Leucrotta Yeah. Yeah basically. Go with that, I'm 100% fine with it. I learned a REAL long time ago that everybody is different things to different people. <3