Small Joys

[Fetian]

The way the tree in the backyard is underlit by the sun reflecting off the pool, all shimmery and flickery

[Fetian]

My hair is long enough to satisfyingly headbang with it!

[Fetian]

That the Japanese for "good morning" is functionally pronounced "Ohio"

[Dax Webster]

I'd made the long copypaste joke about Final Fantasy 14 now with free trial up to heavensward blah blah blah but that's beside the point. I run a small Free Company (Guild thingy) that is just a group of friends. We're not really hardcore and don't have enough people to do current Hard Mode content without reaching out to connections or finding randoms. We've honestly probably only have 10 actual players and half of them log on with any regularity.

But the thing is, I've played longer than basically any of them, and some of them are still learning their way around things when it comes to some of the harder stuff that we can get into. So when we form up a squad and run something that does require some explaining and planning ahead, I can mostly explain and lay out what we're going to run into and coach them through the fights.

Couple weeks ago one of said friend members decided they wanted to do A Specific Fight, and streamed while they got into a group with randoms since there wasn't anyone on that was free to do it, and I got to watch them go into a fight blind and pick up what to do with someone else driving the party. They still have some refinements to make and tend to panic but like, I was able to pick up improvement overall and could watch as they get better each run.

My video game babies are growing up!

[knightofcups]

Making unexpected progress on a project I didn’t think I had energy to work on!

[erikavonkaiser]

Knew I had a short work week because my weekend is rotating, but for some reason I thought I had a four day work week and it's actually only three days!

[knightofcups]

NEW BIRTHDAY SHIRT!

[knightofcups]

This is a bit more discussion-y than just small joy, but it fits best here. Sorry for pasting directly over from a Discord server, but...

So I don't do a lot of gender like... activism or anything, beyond just being pretty open about the whole "was a girl before" thing.
But something I do do is show people the joy that being gendered correctly gives me, and it's really interesting
I emailed my auntie to thank her for the card, and she said she hoped "nephew" was alright, and I was able to tell her I it made me so happy and I took a picture to show friends online
And she said that kind of surprised her. Like, not in those words, but the general meaning
And that's something I'm observing-- people don't seem to realize the joy that comes with being perceived correctly. And that is something I want to put out there, especially to older cis people who aren't really familiar with "all this"
Because so often it's framed in the negative-- how shitty it is to be seen wrong-- that it's easy to just kind of miss the joy on the other side
It feels really vulnerable to do it, for me, because it's talking directly about a thing that still feels weird and uncomfortable. Like... I just want to exist and have all the gender stuff be ignored
But so far, at least, I've seen such surprised, but positive reactions
It's neat

[erikavonkaiser]

When I woke up this morning, I saw this:

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And on its own it's very cute, but that particular giraffe toy I had put in Baby Dog's toy bin as a surprise, which means that at some point in the middle of the night she got up to patrol, which included checking her toy bin, and discovered she had A New Toy and then took it back to bed with her.

[Sorcyress]

I am falling to pieces, and have been for a while, but yesterday I managed to clean my room which means I can do breakfast-and-morning-internet from my actual desk instead of haphazardly on my bed, and I am pleased for that. Ever onwards!