#nebuvoid

Hello. I hope you are having a wonderful day or night wherever you are. Thank you so much for sending this into my inbox. 😊

I agree wholeheartedly with everything you have said here. One of the most frustrating aspects of the recent debacle was watching the momentum fracture because we didn't have a centralized signal to follow. When communication gets throttled or reblog chains are intentionally chopped and divided up, as they were, the only way to maintain a cohesive front is through a unified tagging system that everyone knows to check.

The headless chicken feeling was very real. I saw people using #UI, #tumblr update, #staff, and half a dozen others, which makes it nearly impossible to organize or find the most current information in real-time. We need a universal connecting point that acts like a hub for the community, especially when the dashboard becomes unreliable and dare I say unreadable? I primarily used #tumblr update myself, but I think establishing a single, dedicated tag for these specific movements is the best way to ensure we stay prepared for whatever comes next.

Using a specific tag for usage in the future would allow us to bypass the chaos of broken threads and find each other instantly. Whether it is a specialized tag or a move toward a backup gathering spot, we need to be organized before the next disastrous update happens. Our strength is in our numbers, but that strength only works if we can actually hear each other over the noise.

Yeah I get that, I use Google sometimes (like the reverse image search), but I also have uBlockOrigin completely block all AI search from the entire browser so I don’t get AI results in the first place :>

You can look up uBlockOrigin ‘all AI blocklist’ and you should be able to find a GitHub page with instructions how to do that.

that’s valid but also i love overthinking things so i really gotta consider this carefully. i mean i agree that x conceptually is much more horrifying but i personally think y is more fitting overall given a lot of things. i think it makes more sense to say lysandre was trying to commit mass murder slash suicide but now he faces the agony of being unable to die. like i like to imagine that the first game is about the beauty of life and the second game is about the beauty of death, in a way

UUUUGGGHHHH i think about that so so much oh my god i've wanted it to happen since i first played kh2

i've probably mentioned it a million times by now but there is soooooo much potential for all the characters to interact with each other 😭

one i've been thinking about a lot is strelitzia and lightning just because of how similar she can be to marluxia. rose-themed older sibling with pink hair?? it's killing me dude!!!!!!!!!!!! and strelitzia would probably remind lightning of serah oouughh

How I started reading again, a guide by someone who read voraciously as a teen, stopped reading in college, but was able to pick it up again at age 27

1)Read the things you used to read when you liked to read. This one comes from TikTok, and is probably the best piece of advice here. You don’t have to read books for adults, whatever that even means. If you devoured a John Green YA novel back in the day, either reread the one you liked, or read one of his newer books you haven’t read yet. I fuckin DESTROYED the Hunger Games back in high school, so the Hunger Games is what I read to get me back into it.

2)Read the things you like to read as an adult. A corollary to the above, but like, I realized I like romance books. Teen me would have HATED that I like romance books. Suck it up, past me, we’re in the melodrama zone. This also works the other way. Maybe you loved h*rry p*tter as a kid but the terf-who-must-not-be-named has ruined it for you now, so skip those. Tip: Graphic novels, comics, and fan finction all count as reading!

3)Momentum is important. This manifests in a few ways.

3a)If you’re not feeling a book, HIT DA BRICKS. You don’t have to finish every book (or even most books!) you read. Even if you think you Should like it. Even if you’re like “well maybe this will get better,” but the thought of picking it up to look at it again feels like a chore. It’s not worth it. Remember how I reread Hunger Games? When I got to Mockingjay, it felt like a slog, so I put it down. Not worth it. Even though I had read it before and knew I liked it, I wasn’t feeling it! So I hit da bricks!

3b)Have a book already lined up to read and in your possession after the one that you are on. That doesn’t mean you have to keep the same order - so like, if you find a new book you’re excited about, but you already had one on deck, don’t be afraid to put the exciting one on deck instead. For me, this means grabbing a bunch of books by an author I know I like, or a series. (*But don’t buy a series or author until you know you like them! Because if you buy/borrow a ton of books, and you read the first one and realize you don’t like it, you’ll have a pile of Guilt Books staring at you and that isn’t good for anyone). Having a book on deck also helps keep momentum if you have to Hit da Bricks.

4)Sensory Considerations - hello fellow neurodivergent friends, this one is for you, especially. (Though it truly does apply to everyone!)

4a)Read where you’re comfy! I recommend this reading light because it charges easily, has a bendy neck, and clips on wherever you need it, so wherever your comfy spot is can now be your reading spot.

4b)Read what feels good, like, to your senses. For example, I know I prefer paperbacks because hardbacks are hard to hold (tactile). I also know I prefer owning a new book to borrowing from the library because library book smell bothers my nose.

4c)Hear what you want while you read. If you like silence, maybe this means investing in some active-noise-cancelling headphones if that’s something you can afford (this is a reasonably-priced pair that I own that works beautifully, maybe check for sales). If you like music, put that on. There are a lot of places to find chill wordless reading mixes online. But, if you have the particular brand of brain that I have, you’ll want something more upbeat that still does not have words. I suggest video game soundtracks! Darren Korb of Supergiant (Hades, Bastion) is a go-to for me, or Krelez on YouTube has great chiptune mixes.

Congrats! You’ve made it to the Book Rec Zone.

I’m not going to overwhelm you with a big list here. Rather, this is a choose-your-rpg-class kind of situation.

Romance

First Book: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Twenty-something son of US President and the youngest prince of the UK hate each other… until they don’t.

On Deck - Any other Casey McQuiston book.

Sci-Fi

First Book: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers. Space opera with a lot of focus on the social differences among alien cultures, and how that plays out on a multi-species crew.

On Deck: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (Next book in series. Have not actually read this yet bc I’m still waiting on my dang delivery from bookshop.org to come in)

Magical Stuff

First Book: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. Also have not read this one yet, but it was a rec from a friend as an easy, devourable read, and I trust her. Gay love story between adults that take care of magical children, I think.

On Deck: Next book in series

Non-Fiction

First Book: Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World by Carl Hiaasen (yeah, the guy who wrote Hoot, which you probably read in middle school). This is super short (90 pages!) and was written in 1997, but is a really interesting dive into how weird and manipulatively shitty Disney can be. Good if you like Defunctland.