Sunshine and Alibis

Hi, I'm Kali. 30, queer, and a big nerd. I love to read and write. I play Dungeons and Dragons, reblog nonsense, and I've been here since the dawn of this hell site. Send me an ask if you want to know...

[danielkanhai]

it would suck being a new immortal. like it’d be 2109 and people would go, “what was it like seeing ancient civilizations rise and fall like that? seeing the pyramids being built? watching the expansion and growth of the new world?” and i’d just be like, “no…no i was born in 1991. so like, wow i’m gonna see some cool stuff, but, i mean i’m not that much older than just a really, really old person, you know? phones were big back then. so big. but only for like ten years, then they got like, as good as they are now. uh. rhinos existed. don’t think i ever saw one in person. cool, good talk.”

[ayellowbirds]

even worse, imagine being an immortal who keeps missing stuff. “What was it like seeing the pyramids being built?” “Fuck if I know, I was in Madagascar.” “Oh, okay. Well, how was the Renaissance?” “I fell down a hole in Scotland and people thought I was an enchanted well for four hundred years, it was over by the time I convinced someone to get me out.”

[erkhyan]

And now, a lesson in biases:

We barely know anything about Madagascar pre-500CE. We don’t even know whether the island had a permanent population before then, despite finding a bunch of much older signs of temporary human presence.

Malagasy mythology makes mention of the vazimba, a “precursor” ethnic group that might or might not be distinct from Madagascar’s current population.

The point is, we do not know.

So you were in Madagascar when the pyramids were being built in Egypt, i.e. during one of the most obscure, most undocumented parts of Madagascar’s human history?

Oh, buddy, you better go and make a bunch of anthropologists and archeologists really happy RIGHT NOW instead of feeling bad about missing everyone else’s pet Major Event.

[ayellowbirds]

It’s been a decade since we left that comment and you have the best reply anyone’s left to it.

[podcastwizard]

manager today asked if i’d face paint for an event my work is hosting and she said “you can face paint, right? we all just assumed you could face paint” which is a fun assessment of my character

[artist-lazrael]

First post on here! I'm Lazrael, an illustrator specializing in character-focused fantasy & sci-fi art.

To kick things off, here are all 4 of my completed Corrupted Elemental Faeries from NeoQuest II!

I designed these custom borders inspired by the Neopets Battledome TCG. A major goal of mine is to illustrate officially for the game/Upper Deck, so I'm building out a portfolio tailored exactly to that style.

My Commission Slots are officially open! If you want your own Neopet, OC, or tabletop character drawn up, you can check the link in my bio for my Artistree (pricing & forms) or Ko-Fi.

Happy Friday (I purposely scheduled this for 6:26 on 6/26)! Which of the four elements resonates most with you?

#neopets #neoquest #neopets art #neopets fanart #neopets battledome tcg #tcg art #fantasy illustration #character design #nostalgia #lazrael art

[nonasuch]

Oof. I just put a batch of vintage clothing in to soak, which is a whole big production requiring putting a plastic tub in my bathtub (because they’re going to be soaking for at least a full day and I still need to shower in there tomorrow) and filling it up with yellowed dresses and Retro Clean.

This time I decided that historical laundresses probably knew what they were doing, and grabbed a metal pole to stir my DIY laundry cauldron and poke the floaty bits back under the surface. Historical laundresses were right, it works great.

As I stood there, I had a moment where I thought, ‘oh wow, so many women in my family tree must have done this exact set of motions throughout history.’ Which should be a humbling and heartwarming feeling of connection, right?

Wrong. I swear I could feel twenty generations of shtetl women going “For this you went to college? You want to work with old shmattes all day, fine, but you could have saved the tuition to buy a house.”

And like. They’re right, but hey.

[ganondorf]

i think this captures the defining pathology of the collective social media psyche right now. we are in the thrall of people who are wantonly cruel but who also demand to be coddled at all times in every way

[tedcruzisthezodiackiller]

[kat]

i had a dream last night that the entire world used a currency (?) called angrypennies which as the name implies are obtained by experiencing anger. the stronger and more intense your anger was, the more angrypennies you'd gain. an all-consuming rage would earn you more than a slight irritation, etc. so people were always searching for ways to fuel their anger and purposefully keeping themselves angry all the time because they wanted to earn angrypennies. unclear if angrypennies could be exchanged for goods and services, or if they were just a collectible.

anyway, as if this wasn't heavy-handed enough, at one point british comedian greg davies appeared and explained that angrypennies couldn't be worth feeling angry all the time. this was a real revelation to dream-me and i was finally able to break free of the angrypenny grind and allow myself to experience emotions other than anger.

[kat]

it goes without saying that i will be using the word angrypenny as if it was part of the common vernacular instead of a term that my dreaming brain conjured up i.e. "he's all about the angrypennies" (derogatory way to refer to a guy who searches for reasons to be angry and possibly lacks introspection)

[bonivers]

i haven’t stopped thinking about this tweet for days

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

Your partner came back from the dead after being missing for decades. Every one of their friends who they went with ended up dying a horrible death.

Now, somehow, their entire mental health is based on the continued life and happiness of this fairground goldfish that they picked up.

Neither of you know the first thing about how to care for even a healthy fish. This fish has been poorly cared for, has multiple diseases and the person who handed it over explicitly didn't expect it to live nearly as long as it already has.

You're frantically googling how to set up a fish tank, where to buy fish food, can you even take a fish to the vet? Your partner wants you to know that they're happy they made it home and survived their horrific ordeal, but also that if anything happens to the fish then they're going to kill everyone on this planet and then themself.

You're honestly wondering if you're even helping the fish, or just prolonging its suffering, but your partner will only accept medical help for their many injuries or engage in basic self-care once they're confident that the fish is being looked after.

So you get a tank. You set up a filter and all that stuff. You learn way more than you ever wanted to know about water temperature and ph and nitrate levels. The fish is safe. You start to develop some affection for the little guy. Your partner begins to recover. The fish begins to recover.

Which is when you learn that in its 'healthy' state, the fish regularly refuses to sleep when tired, keeps begging for food that is obviously unhealthy for it (and struggling to eat the food that you do provide because “it tastes gross”), and continually tries to persuade your partner to take it out of its nice safe tank so it can go explore the wonderful world of Outside, where the slightest mishap will kill it instantly.

Your name is Adrian, and you kind of wants to strangle this fucking fish, statement.

[chainmail-butch]

Hi, its me. The warmest creature in the world. I love you. Im the warmest creature in the world and I love you so much and I need to be in your lap right now. Yes, I know about the heat wave. That's okay though because I was already the warmest creature in the world so I don't mind. I love you and you need to let me sleep in your lap right now. I'm soooo warm and I love you sooo much. If you say no you'll be saying no to a thing that love you. Let me sleep in your lap. When I fall asleep I get warmer. I love you

[july-19th-club]

simply cannot ever resist what i call the little mermaid or the tin man or the pinnochio plot, the one about a character who is either inhuman or human but outside in some way, constantly searching for whatever it is that they consider to be the quintessential proof of humanity, preoccupied by it so deeply that they fail to realize the proof is in the act and fact of the search itself

[mischiefseven]

(via @notaficwriter)

[sarahreesbrennan]

MAYBE WE’LL FIND IT IF WE BOTH LOOK

[frankiedotbiz]

depressed steampunk guy: like nothing makes me happy anymore i feel like my fantastical flying contraption just ran out of coal

[frankiedotbiz]

do you think steam just magically comes out of nowhere im so sick of these people who dont understand steampunk it makes me want to get into my submersible bathysphere and never reemerge

[thedarkqueensreblogs]

Steam. Is. Water. Coal. Makes. Smoke.

[frankiedotbiz]

what is the coal doing to the water

[dkpsyhog]

Makes sense to me

[impossiblepackage]

The coal car is so the train driver man can have delicious barbecues whenever he likes (:

[haintxblue]

sometimes when i see posts like this i go and check on the person who was Very Wrong because about 80% of the time their blog now looks like this:

scarlet letter tumblr edition

[umbrellanumber5-deactivated2021]

.

.

This.

This is why people who stay in my life are neurodiverse like me!

[nottoolateforthegame]

Huh

[thisisnotjuli]

this!! I swear I lost like all my friendships bc of this, like I had a group of friends in hs that one day I realized “huh I haven’t talked to this people in a while” and popped in to say hi and they were all awkward?? because they hadn’t seen me in a while?? and that’s when I realized that friendship works different for them?? I was like yeah I haven’t talked to you in like four months but it’s not like I’ve forgotten about y'all why would anything change, and they were all like we haven’t talked to you in four months why are you here again acting like nothing happened? and it was really confusing for me

[mimir-bashir]

YEAH! THAT!

Also I have a thing where I just put the people on pause. If I don’t see them or contact them, my brain kinda put them in stasis. I don’t think about them nor misses them, and I stay on what I last knew about them (how they look, what they study/work). So when we meet again I’m like “wait, you’ve aged?” and I have the same familiarity with them thanI had before.

[gender-snatched]

Anyway all my mutuals I haven’t messaged in forever - this is why

[official-lucifers-child]

oh my gods this makes so much sense??? there are people who i haven’t talked to at all for literally over a year and we’ll pick up like nothing happened, but for their people it’s just like…… falling apart but onesided???? i think we’re still on the same level but actually we’re strangers??

[link-the-feral-anon]

Ohhhhhh

[shark8-my-leg]

OHHHHHHHHH….

[quarra]

Ok but listen, on the other side of this, as a person who moved hundreds of miles away from everyone i knew and then became a hermit for several years, it was SUCH A FUCKING RELIEF to get in contact with an old friend and have him be like, “my friendship levels do not degrade, so in my mind we are still awesome close buddies” and i almost fkn cried. I thought he would be mad or would have moved on because i had slacked on my reaching out to him and staying in touch and doing all the friendship things. But NOPE. 800 miles of distance, depression, and life changing circumstances didnt steal our friendship and i am SO GRATEFUL.

[thatlittleegyptologist]

#came back to tumblr after four years #lottie and I immediately went like that spiderman meme yknow tags via @rudjedet

I have literally no friendship degradation whatsoever. I will not have spoken to someone for 5 years or more, and they’re still as much a friend to me as if I had only seen them yesterday. I’m just very bad at communicating if someone is not in my direct orbit. So when Sonja reappeared on this site I basically screeched into her notes like a banshee because I was delighted and we picked straight back up where we’d left off.

[elodieunderglass]

Happy to go on the record that I don’t expect regular contact and will welcome hearing from people after a long time

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

Holy shit, I didn’t actually realize this was a Thing.

[newvegascowboy]

"Tumblr is my bedroom" this "tumblr is a pinboard" that

Tumblr is an apartment complex with thin walls and every so often you just have to listen to your neighbors say the most deranged shit imaginable

[bingomann]

[parkchanwoohoo]

I've posted about this before but back home at my old job I used to get pho so fucking often that the owners of the place stopped asking me what I wanted and stopped handing me menus when I walked in. After I moved to NY and I could only go back to Chicago like once a year, I sat down and they gave me a menu and I was like "Oh no I already know what I want, can I get--" and they were like OHHH #36 WITH EXTRA NOODLES YOU'RE BACK and I almost cried

[fox-bright]

Swarovski can continue to fuck off.

In 2021, Swarovski (the company that makes the very sparkly crystals you see in certain jewelry, on figure-skaters' twinkliest outfits, on red carpet dresses), decided they didn't want the grubby fingers of small-time jewelers, clothing designers and costumers and crafters on their shiny beads and rhinestones anymore. They decided to limit their sales to "luxury" and couture creators, not girls who sell stuff on Etsy. The tenor of their press release on the subject was snide and insulting. Resellers (like your favorite bead shop) would no longer be allowed to carry their product; the average Jane on the street would not be able to purchase them. You could only get them if you had an authorized business agreement that bound you to very strict brand behavior. And those of us who still had good stock of the crystals would no longer be "permitted" to use the brand's name in our listings for sale.

Every bead shop and craft supply place and many, many small clothing makers--wedding shops, prom and dancing dress suppliers, the sort of salt of the Earth mom and pop time machines of shops that are the backbone of the field--scrambled to find something that could replace them. The last of the stock dwindled quickly, all of us grabbing what we could get while there was any chance of it, and then it was gone and we no longer had any access.

I was Big Pissed about it at the time. It was just so goddamn stuck-up, when wholesalers and indie jewelers had made them so much money, when some people I knew--when *I!*--had been brand-loyal for decades. But with no recourse, everyone pivoted fairly quickly, most of us to Preciosa Crystals. Those are Czech, quite sparkly, and considerably less expensive than Swarovski. The faceting method they use is different, but not worse; any differences are hardly noticeable when you're seeing them as a hundred pinpoints of light.

Well, out of nowhere, Swarovski just dropped this: https://www.harmanbeads.com/swarovski-brand-policy-update

"Effective June 1, 2026, Swarovski updated the distribution and brand usage policies introduced in 2021. Businesses may now purchase Swarovski Crystals without signing a Brand Control Agreement, and Authorized Distribution Partners may once again sell Swarovski Crystals to resellers, including bead stores and online retailers. Businesses may also use the Swarovski brand name when following Swarovski’s Proper Use Guidelines. Designers, manufacturers, artists, brands, retailers, and resellers are now eligible to purchase Swarovski Crystals through authorized distribution channels."

They want us back. A lot of the companies who could have kept a brand relationship with them also have swapped to Preciosa, over the last half-decade, in solidarity with indie creators and out of a sour awareness that it could be them, next. And it doesn't hurt that Preciosa was able to expand their line quite a bit now that everyone who wanted sparkle had no choice but to go to them.

And I'm not seeing nearly anyone who intends to return. The feeling is, "Y'all told us to fuck off! Off we fucked! And now, that's what you can do, too!" I'm seeing a lot of "How many of us did you stab in the back?" comments from the people whose money they're hoping to attract.

And personally I'm sitting over here all rubby hands, mean snickering, because they really thought they were going to be able to outclimb the people who actually provided all their profits, and now here they are, hat in hand.

[orphanedsource]

the place I work at remodeled these split gendered restrooms into “inclusive restrooms” and never told us what they meant while construction was ongoing. I need you to know every atom of potential criticism or whining that could’ve happened disappeared when people found out this meant we got 10 fully separate private bathrooms with sinks inside. I’ve not heard a single person crack a joke about the inclusive signage. this is the world TERFs are trying to steal from you

[revcleo]

This is called a "superloo" and terfs are actively trying to steal this from you, in the UK they changed bathroom regulations to mean new buildings have to prioritise gendered toilets rather than build superloos.

This also upset a lot of architects and designers who like the superloos. They're also typically more like small rooms rather than having doors you can look under.

[skelotan]

Dedicated to my cat, who is very vocal about my bed time.

PATREON