meowloudly15

[meowloudly15]

A stray train of thought led me to archive.org's "Donate Physical Materials" page. The Internet Archive has so many books and records already that they prefer you check to make sure you don't send them any duplicates. I don't have any notable rare books, but I do have one that I wondered might not be in the collection.

Of course, they have it. The Girl Scout Handbook copyright 1947, for intermediate ages. The copy scanned into their site is the third impression, where mine is from the fourth; I doubt that makes a difference in any of the words other than the front matter. Well, except that this handbook is signed with a name unfamiliar to me: one Janet Miille. She wrote her name on the title page in shaky child's penmanship in blue marker that bled through to the next page.

My maternal grandmother wrote her name on her own copy, though I won't tell you it for the sake of my privacy. She was a girl scout, all those years ago. So was my mom: her application form is tucked in the front of my gram's old, loved, tattered copy. The front cover's falling off. The dust jacket has a large section missing. I can barely bring myself to touch it for fear of damaging it further. It's one of my most prized possessions.

My gram's still alive. The last of my grandparents left on Earth. My paternal grandfather died before my parents were even married. From all I've learned of him, he was a heckuva character. My maternal grandfather died a few years after I was born: late enough for me to have a couple fond memories of him, but early enough that I never really got to know him. From all I've learned of him, he was even more of a character. My paternal grandmother died a few years ago, shortly before the pandemic hit. She was an acerbic woman, but caring in her own way, and I remember her fondly (though I'm sure she'd disown me if she knew I were queer).

I'm very fond of my extended family. My great-uncle, only a year or so passed, with his "How are ya?"s and his gift for storytelling; my great-aunt, the world's fastest knitter (dubious) and the reason I can never think ill of anyone with a Rhode Island accent; my great-great-aunt, dead for a goodly while now (I did meet her a couple times), but whom I'm told would steal cutlery from restaurants; my cousins's other grandma, who's not my blood relative but whom I consider the next best thing, and a veteran woman in STEM; my great-grandfather, whom my mother never knew but still has a memory of that is shockingly accurate for someone who was in the womb when he died; so on and so forth. My cousins and aunts and uncles, too, but this is less about them and more about my elderly family.

I was helping my gram clean her attic a few years ago (because that's what we both consider fun quality time), and we stumbled across an art piece that she'd made shortly before getting married. She's since hung it on the wall in her living room, among various other knick-knacks. The woman's house is almost a museum. It's full of photos of relatives, some of whom even she never knew and whom I certainly didn't. And also photos of my cousins and my brother and myself. There's a Baby Wall upstairs. There's two Baby Walls, actually. Not even counting how my gram bronzed her children's baby shoes. My gram likes babies. There are worse things to like.

My gram is devoutly Catholic, something she has done her darnedest to pass on to her clan. It certainly stuck with us; I go to Mass every week, my uncle calls himself a "cradle-to-grave Catholic", my mom has taught religious education on and off since she was a teenager. The art piece that was once in her attic now proudly displays to the living room a titular "City of Churches". This being Tumblr, I'm sure like 95% of you are doing the grimacing emoji IRL at that concept. You're certainly not wrong to. But, even from a secular standpoint, the idea of a utopia constructed of buildings that you love (libraries, perhaps) is something beautiful to think of.

(It's an amateur art piece, for the record. So whatever grandiose image you might have in your head, decrease the quality by about 85%. Not to disparage my gram's artistic abilities, but it's not exactly something you'd find in the Louvre. Not that that makes it any less beautiful.)

My gram will die one day. I don't expect to have more than ten years left with her. (Which is perhaps an overestimate, but given that her own grandmother lived to see every one of her great-grandchildren, and given her own excellent health, I'm willing to bet on that number.) I will have things of her, though, memories and items alike. Many more than I could reasonably mention in a blog post. Or even at all. She loves giving gifts. I'll have those things as long as I live: the Girl Scout handbook (provided it doesn't disintegrate in a stiff wind); the art piece (if I'm permitted to take it after her death); the explanations about the Rosary; the time she ordered nothing for dessert and was served a plate with "Nothing" written on it in fudge sauce cursive; the time she wore a fur coat to a robotics competition for some ungodly reason; her own innumerable memories of long-dead relatives whom she herself loved and whom I've learned to love in turn.

I could keep boring you with anecdotes, but I've already been typing for a solid half an hour.

Janet Miille may well still be alive. I haven't looked her up. She may be, but she may be dead. And yet what a blessing it is that I might know her name, despite having lived so many years and miles away from her! Not just her family and friends, but I, a total stranger multiple generations removed, and quite possibly whomever reads this as well!

I pray that, if she is still alive, she lives a good, rich life; and if she is dead, may God grant her eternal rest.

... was I going somewhere with this?

Oh, right. Uh. The moral of the story is, SUPPORT ARCHIVAL CAUSES. Preserve history. Give yourself and your loved ones and the knowledge you have gathered a chance at a sliver of immortality.

Remember us. Remember them. Be remembered.

The rot may take all in the end, the last enemy to be destroyed may be death, but we must fight the good fight in the meantime.

[meowloudly15]

gerhard richter’s stained glass window for cologne cathedral (2007)

[meowloudly15]

The Un-Fae watching Fae TV will never be seen again.

[meowloudly15]

"Yuri is the purest form of love" is so ridiculous cuz, like, even if you set aside the misandry and misogyny, way to tell people you've never actually interacted with a queer woman in your life, buddy.

[meowloudly15]

quick doodle

[meowloudly15]

[meowloudly15]

"spending too much time on the phone with my friends instead of outside + alone" I think you really touched on a fundamental problem with modern culture here

i do actually get sad whenever i lose a mutual follower like this is a good reason for me to start spending more time outside i think. spending too much time on the phone with my friends instead of outside + alone.

[meowloudly15]

@myusernameisstolen

ngl this is the funniest procedural thing ive made in a while i saw https://genders.wtf/gauntlet/ and realized that the only way it could be better is if it went forever

kinda curious to see what ppl get

[meowloudly15]

I decided to take a risk last night and show my mom a religious meme and all she did in response was sigh deeply and say “I can’t send that to my church group chat”

The meme in question

[meowloudly15]

day 148

she acts as an example to us all i think

[meowloudly15]

unrestrained summer fun

bapping you with my soft wittle paws until naught but ash and dust remains

[meowloudly15]

Rotating this in my mind like a rotisserie chicken. And I think, maybe, the best and most accessible format for this sort of game would be an interactive fiction game, like, a classic text adventure a la Zork. Where, say, visuals are purely optional, and all interactions are conveyed in the form of text-based inputs (which may have its own limitations based on user creativity, but that is an unfortunate drawback of the medium).

In terms of a plot, I'm thinking it would be some sort of low-stakes (no risk of physical or mental harm) dungeon-delving type adventure. (Which, if the game were to be, like, set in a classic fantasy environment, could invoke various abilities that certain species lack relative to others, like, for instance, an elf being unable to see in a dark room that, say, a dwarf could see in. But that would probably be contrary to the point of portraying real-world disabilities.)

Unsure about what the end goal would be, other than completing the dungeon for its own sake (cuz maybe it wouldn't be important to have an extrinsic motivator). But yeah, those are just my two cents on game format.

I know it would probably be a logistical nightmare to also make this accessible to the actual people represented, but I think it would be cool to have a game where the whole point is that every character has different limitations, that make it impossible or at least incredibly difficult to get past the whole game without switching them every once in a while, and the way you switch is by going to another character and asking their help with something.

Like you start out the game with one character and go "oh huh, the colour sceme of this game is really cool, really interesting use of such a limited palette", play through the puzzles for a while, and then encounter something where you're supposed to arrange some slightly differently coloured puzzle pieces to the right order by shade or something, and it's goddamn impossible. No matter how many methods you try, it's just not clicking, no matter how logical your solutions seem, no matter how clearly they can't be arranged in any other way that'd make more sense.

And maybe you go online to ask people "hey I'm stuck in the colour puzzle, what the hell am I supposed to do to get past this?" and someone tells you to go find one of the other playable characters and ask for their help. Which sounds patronising and stupid but you're stuck so you might as well give it a try. You go to one of the other characters, choosing the dialogue option to go "hey I need a hand with something, I can't do this on my own", and when they go "sure, let's go", your controls now switch to the other character.

And the colour scheme switches immediately. The aesthetic limited palette has changed to a far wider range, there's details in the environment that you hadn't noticed, like the muted faint flowers on the ground are actually bright red, the greyish shirt that your first character was wearing is actually striped with orange and green. The first POV character is colourblind, this whole time you haven't been able to perceive the difference between green and red. Solving the colour arranging puzzle with the other character is a breeze.

And this is the repeating theme of the game - every character has their own limitations, and while none of the puzzles are easy, you learn to think "maybe I should ask someone to help me with this" whenever you've been stuck for an unreasonable amount of time. You need to grab a buddy along for the quests, or you'll need to go back to get one eventually, and the way the game is structured somehow ensures that you can't just tactically dodge the limitation puzzles beforehand. Deaf character's POV doesn't have the audio clues that different pieces of the same puzzle make a different clicking sound, the puzzle with garbled numbers on it stops being garbled when you're not playing the character with dyscalculia.

You slowly get to know the whole cast, and occasionally help them out with things, too. You know which character could probably help with something you're stuck with, but while they'd be glad to come help, they're unfortunately stuck doing some task that could take you 20 minutes but is going to take them all afternoon, and you can offer help. Sometimes the helping-a-buddy-out minigames don't come with any direct transactional reward, you can just help a friend with something just because you can.

And the game's whole goal isn't to just illustrate how different people have different strengths, and sometimes things that are easy for you are hard for someone else, and vice versa, but to condition the player to think "maybe I should just ask someone to help, instead of wasting time struggling on my own."

[meowloudly15]

how do you approach dating as a catholic lesbian?

i have a strict rule of only entertaining relationships with people that bring me closer to God. i take that very seriously. and i have both dated Christians and non-Christians alike, that’s not an issue. it’s just that i’m pretty much only interested in dating fellow religious people.

to be 100% real, i have much more “trouble” dating as a femme4butch lesbian than a Catholic lesbian. cishets would be SO shocked to know how many queer women/lesbians are people of faith.

[meowloudly15]

SKDGHDJFFDKJSFDKFDS SHUT UP

[meowloudly15]

free will is a scam invented by Big Morality to sell you more ethics textbooks

[meowloudly15]

look it's all very simple. Luz has 2 moms and 3 siblings who are not each other's siblings. Hunter has a mom and a dad who don't know each other and an evil uncle who is also kind of his dad and his younger brother. King has a mom & a dad who is also his mom and the country he lives in. Hunter is technically Eda and Lilith's biological ancestor. Eberwolf is there. what is not clicking.

[meowloudly15]

The FitnessGram Pacer Test Spiel, in the Form of a Sonnet

The FitnessGram-producèd pacer test Tests your aerobic capability With many stages you will have to best If your performance you would like to see.

Each stage is harder than the one before. You'll run between two lines when you are primed. The count of runs you pass will be your score In ever insufficient growing time.

If in that time you fail to reach the mark You gain a strike. When you acquire two You're done. In thirty seconds you'll embark. Line up, prepare, and see how well you do.

The test begins when you are signaled 'Go'. Good luck and try your best; give a good show.