antialiasis

[antialiasis]

The fun thing is that it's like this because back when this webpage was first made, browsers were a lot more permissive about wonky HTML than they are today! At least in the owner's own browser, it all looked fine and normal back in 2004. But modern browsers will faithfully obey the literal instructions to just keep

MAKING

IT

BIGGER

I'm fucking dying at this page someone shared on Bluesky.

Behold, the Embroidery Trouble Shooting Guide that forgot to close its <h3> tags.

[antialiasis]

I was going to use my Easter break, once I'd wrapped up some other stuff, to write all of my thoughts on Groundhog Day the musical, but then on Saturday, the 22nd anniversary of TheScythe's GameFAQs thread on the Mew trick, TheScythe commented on my Mew trick essay (I am still geeking out about this), and then when I'd responded left a second comment, aaaand that was the twenty-first comment on that page, which happened to reveal that the way I was doing page comments was buggy and awkward actually. Fixing that then spiraled into me making a bunch of updates to the guestbook/comment feature - some things I'd vaguely been wanting to do but not gotten around to yet, and some things I just kind of suddenly wanted to do.

These days I always feel a little bad making updates that aren't content per se, but it was nice to just dive into some programming-side work and get some stuff done there.

[antialiasis]

my secret to art happiness is it's not about how many notes what you draw is likely to get. t's about how many times you're going to go back to it, to your own art, and think "this FUCKS actually and caters to me entirely, specifically, fully. i love this artist (me) (me who i drew this) (myself)"

[antialiasis]

There is a photographer in our town that works for a local news feed just for our town (which I'm 90% sure is volunteer run) and I see him sometimes at things. He usually covers the town halls, school board meetings, he was taking photos at Juneteenth last year. Basically he's everywhere and I'm also everywhere, so we cross paths often.

But he also does a thing called 'My Final Photo,' which is just random day to day stuff happening in town that he thinks is cool enough to snap a photo of. Like... ongoing construction of the new buildings, when the crocuses come out, a bird landing on a lamppost. Stuff like that. He's a really talented photographer.

The Final Photo for yesterday was kind of awesome but I don't think he knows how much the caption contributed:

Because that is both

a. sick as hell

b. perfect encapsulation of the childhood experience.

[antialiasis]

Oh, also, I forgot to mention here that I was on a couple of different podcasts the other day! I was interviewed on As the Pokéball Turns, a podcast that interviews Pokémon fans from all walks of life to tell their personal histories with the franchise... and then also appeared as a guest on Synthesized Sunsets, a speculative fiction podcast, mostly discussing Pokémon fanfiction and fandom! I'm always a bit awkward on podcasts, but I had a good time and got to ramble about Pokémon and my website and fanfics a bit.

[antialiasis]

kinda crazy how every year since i was a kid ive been going to the tcod website every april fools as a tradition. i still vividly remember getting fooled by that one year the joke was that the website was getting fully translated to icelandic and talking to my friend about it and being sad lmao

Aww, I love that. I've heard from multiple people that they diligently check the site every year on April 1st even if it's the only time they look at it, and it delights me that over time my increasingly elaborate silly gags have become genuinely beloved.

[antialiasis]

The writeup for this year's April Fools' Day joke is now up in the joke archive. The content remains accessible, though, because I don't like to break links, and honestly it's nice to have some of my effortposting archived somewhere more permanent, even if it is not and will not be an official part of the website.

I did a total word count on everything I added to the site for this - it came out to 131,500 words, which is more than the length of an average novel (Googling gives me 70,000-120,000 as standard novel length). It kind of put in perspective just how much rambling I manage to put out when the bug hits me. Thank you all who follow me for being interested in my various blather!

[antialiasis]

Today, The Cave of Dragonflies substantially expands its subject matter to become a Pokémon/The Good, the Bad and the Ugly/Breaking Bad/Groundhog Day/Jesus Christ Superstar/Chess website! It has been a long time coming, but really, it was inevitable.

[antialiasis]

Such a good kitty <3 Thank youuuu

Belated upload, but I drew this last month for @antialiasis's birthday!

[antialiasis]

The funniest hyperfixations have gotta be the ones where you watch something and go "this thing is cute. I like it. not sure if Id call it a favorite of mine but its definitely enjoyable at least" and then cut to a month later and its completely overtaken your life

[antialiasis]

Wishing health for your and yours, may you hit the 'small human' stage before you know it!

Aw, thank you!

That goes for the rest of you who have found thoughtful ways to express well-wishes, too; I really appreciate that. I'm touched, and feeling more understood and cared for than I expected, which is always a nice feeling.

[antialiasis]

wishing you luck and hoping the months will fly by. if things get dire you can always start dressing in full plate armor. granted you can also do that if things dont get dire

Honestly when is it ever not a good time to dress in full plate armor

[antialiasis]

Good time to bring back this important cultural classic

[antialiasis]

On having a kid

So I'm pregnant.

(Some lengthy personal rambling below about my various complicated feelings on this.)

Pregnancy as a concept is kind of nightmarish for me, and has been for most of my life - some grotesque, alien thing growing inside my body, changing it against my control; the horrid complications it can involve; absolutely everything about childbirth. For a long time I absolutely clung to the knowledge we have safe and legal abortions because without it I would've just been terrified of any faint possibility of pregnancy. Honestly, I'm still terrified for anyone who is theoretically able to get pregnant and couldn't get an abortion if they wanted one.

But. At the same time, I also wanted to have children. I've always found babies pretty offputting, but I love kids, once they've started to come together into a person. I love little human beings coming into their own discovering the world, the things they say and think, the stories they tell. I have stronger memories of being a child than most, and I love that kid. I love the kids I know. I love making kids happy, hearing what they have to say and what they're interested in, playing along with their ideas, giving them the cutest stuffed animals I can find. All in all, I did always want, in theory, one day, to share my life with a little human being of my own. But, for the longest time, it was just a firm not now, don't even want to start thinking about it now or any time soon, just sometime off in the hypothetical far future.

We had had some minimal talks about it, of course - that we did both want to do it at some point, that it was a firm But Not Now for me, some potential milestones in terms of financial stability when we could start thinking about it more. Ultimately we did not really want to get into adoption unless we had to; Iceland is not exactly teeming with orphaned or unwanted children, and adopting from abroad was a whole other type of expensive, years-long ordeal with uncertain results. As unpleasant as I found the thought of pregnancy, I had basically intellectually accepted that I could endure it, there sometime in that far-off future but-not-now-or-anytime-soon-I-don't-want-to-think-about-this.

Of course, this did come with the awareness that if it was going to happen it was on a bit of a biological timer, and I couldn't quite just put off thinking about it forever. So it was always a slowly growing, uncomfortable shadow looming there in the back of my mind, prodding at that mental barrier. At some point, in my late twenties, I realized I had organically come to a point where, if I were to somehow accidentally get pregnant, I would brace myself and keep it. But the thought of actually, deliberately going off birth control was still pure dread.

Thirty-five was sort of the loose deadline in my mind. That was an official age cutoff for various kinds of potentially increased risk, and I really, really did not want to get into that territory either. Thirty came and went. The thought was still dreadful. Slowly, creakingly, with a grim resolve, I worked to desensitize myself to the idea a bit. My mom told me, at some point, that a friend of hers had always been waiting for the moment some magic mothering instinct would emerge to make her want to do it; then she'd turned thirty-five and realized it never would, so she just braced herself and did it anyway. I felt that story in my soul. I was never going to want to get pregnant, ever. But I was going to do it anyway, somehow, on willpower, as a trial to be endured - like volunteering to get infected with a nasty illness - so that eventually I could have that little human being made of us.

By thirty-four we'd come to a mutual conclusion that the way it'd play out was at some point I'd just finish a box of the pill and then not get more, and then we'd see what happens. Even then, I bought more boxes: we were busy. In September last year, at thirty-four and a half years old, I finally did tell Shadey I'd finish this box and stop. I had a couple more menstrual cycles, slightly irregular which I gathered is normal after you stop taking the pill. On, I think, December 14th, I started my period only three weeks after the last, and it only lasted a couple of days, but I figured that might be part of that slight irregularity. Around or after Christmas I noticed I was weirdly hungry these days despite all the heavy food at all the Christmas parties; on New Year's Eve I started to feel a bit off and lethargic; at the beginning of the new year, I was ill and alternated between being nauseous and hungry in some kind of weird, unusually urgent way that had me eating a little more than normal despite the limited appetite. I think I had some flu symptoms or such, but when those went away, the nausea didn't. At some point here I started having suspicions. I looked up the symptoms and found that what I'd initially taken to be an unusually light period in December was actually a perfect match for an implantation bleeding. I did a pregnancy test that turned out positive.

That was a lot of weird emotions immediately. I had thought I was prepared, after all that buildup, but then wasn't really prepared for it to be already happening. The pregnancy test was on a Friday evening, and that weekend was awful - that Sunday was the only time that the nausea actually got to the point of vomiting, and I remember lying in bed and just not wanting to be doing this anymore. On Monday I was feeling a little better and could finally call the free midwife helpline that was only available on weekdays, and the midwife I talked to was very helpful and gave some good advice and scheduled some appointments.

The nausea went away eventually - I think it sort of fizzled out by week ten or eleven. That makes me very lucky; I was expecting to have to endure it for months. I had some lethargy lingering a bit longer, but for the past month or so I've been feeling basically fine, apart from that funny urgent hunger. (I generally don't eat that much and experience hunger in a fairly abstract and low-key way that sort of exists at the edge of my attention but just doesn't seem super important; pregnant hunger is not exactly hungrier, just somehow more important, more insistently prodding that no I should stop what I'm doing and get food, now. I imagine this is many people's default - I've certainly gathered it's Shadey's default.) All in all, physically, it's been much, much less bad than I was ready for it to be, at least so far.

Psychologically, socially, it's still a bit of a trial. I told some friends, at the start, that in my ideal fantasy world, the way this would play out would be that nobody notices a thing, then one day a child appears, and then nobody questions it or asks where it came from; it just is. People congratulating me on it feels desperately strange and awkward. I will still smile and nod; obviously it's just standard social niceties from people who want to express that they care about me and are happy to hear about presumed happy developments in my life, and I will recite the standard social niceties too when I hear it from someone else, in order to express the same. But as far as I'm concerned, this is not an achievement; it's not finally reaching some goal; it's a grim personal choice to undertake an unpleasant but necessary means to an end, and I'm not better, happier, more fulfilled than if I had chosen differently, as it irritatingly feels like the congratulations imply.

Recently people have started excitedly asking if I'm showing yet, and the question kind of makes me want to crawl into a hole and not be seen in public until it's over. I don't want witnesses to this slow body horror transformation that I will, once again, endure as a grotesque means to an end. The thought of being visibly pregnant in public is kind of mortifying. It feels weird and bad telling people, like some kind of bid for attention and congratulations when I don't actually want either; but it would feel even weirder to have people just look at my body one day and see it. Writing this is, I suppose, a way to rip off that band-aid.

I guess essentially the main thing is that, to me, being pregnant feels inescapably embarrassing, humiliating, like somehow giving in to every relative who ever uncomfortably prodded me about it, to every asinine social pressure and gender role that ever decreed that this is what women are for, what marriages are for, what people are supposed to want out of life, the expected Next Step in a relationship. As if it represents some resigned decision to go be a normie, to go with the flow and accept that this is what people are supposed to do with their lives and I had to fall in line eventually, too; represents somehow betraying the cause and aligning with them, after a lifetime of talking about how I don't like babies and pregnancy is horrific actually.

So I have this weird, defensive, stubborn urge within me to attach disclaimers whenever anyone learns I'm pregnant: no, I'm not doing this for any of you, I'm doing this on my own terms; I still don't like babies, I still think pregnancy is pretty horrific. All those pressures and prods ever did was make it feel more distasteful and make me want it less. Every time anyone implied that I was supposed to be having children by now to be a Proper Adult, it sparked a flash of resentment, a biting shard of the Pingu well, now I am not doing it meme. I could have chosen differently, and I will fight you if you think that would have been a lesser choice. My many child-free friends who have no intention of ever having kids are the most valid people in the world. I expect I will envy them sometimes.

But ultimately, I do want to have a kid. I want to love them, and listen to them, and show them the world, and experience the world again through their eyes. I think I will be a good parent and can give a kid the kind of life and love and emotional support they deserve. And I think, on my own terms, that ultimately I would regret it if I never did. That's a personal choice, and it is not a choice anyone else ought to make unless they're dead certain that they do want it and can do it.

So what does this mean for my life? Obviously, children make a lot of demands on your time. But ultimately, talking to friends on Discord, working on my website or fanfiction or writing analytical Tumblr posts is just what I do to relax, where other people might do something like watching TV, and that's what I expect I'll still be doing when the kid's asleep or Shadey or the grandparents are watching them. It will certainly eat up a bunch of my time, but I will not be disappearing. And I still plan to make time for things like visiting internet friends now and then, which is very high-priority Butterfree enrichment. (Shadey is a teacher, which means he conveniently has lots of free time during the summer.)

Above all, I will not have some kind of personality transplant and stop being a giant nerd passionate about Pokémon and stories and websites. I'll just be a nerd with a kid. I don't know how much you'd be likely to hear about the kid from here; maybe I'll post something funny they say, I guess (if it translates at all), or musings on parenthood.

But probably I'll mostly just keep doing the same kind of stuff I usually do. If you regularly forget I even have a kid, I'll consider that a success.

[antialiasis]

I have now expanded my Tumblr posts on the Mew trick into a 9000-word deep dive essay about its context, history and mechanics!

The Mew trick is truly the most beautiful video game glitch I have ever seen, and I'm very pleased to finally have my passion for it recorded in full with a permanent home on TCoD. Featuring: personal reminiscence, musings, historical digging, speculation, and of course a bunch of game mechanics geekery.

[antialiasis]

Awww, look at them! Thank youuuu <3 Mew totally would attempt to put birthday hats on him. (Unfortunately no one knows Chalenor’s birthday since he definitely did not keep track, sadbees. Maybe Mew invented a birthday for him.)

"That's... that's too many hats. I don't need that many hats."

"Don't be silly! More hats means a better birthday, and you're going to have the BEST birthday this year."

"I don't deserve to celebrate in the first place. All my birthday means is we're one year closer to the day when I'll kill you all."

"That's hundreds of years away, Chalenor. Everyone deserves a happy birthday! Now come on, let's celebrate another year of you!"

Happy belated birthday to @antialiasis! I don't think you have quite that many candles on your cake just yet, but time sure flies, doesn't it? Hope you have a lovely year!

[antialiasis]

This poor Gambler just keeps trying to challenge kids to an honest Pokémon battle only for them to fly away right out from under his eyes! Kids these days just have no manners.