back from the (un)dead

ZABA is my favorite album by Glass Animals (and perhaps of all time) and now my journal has the album art colors! :3 I might tweak a few of them over the next few days, but overall I like the way everything looks now.

Signed the lease on the apartment I'll be moving into on July 1st. Very, very nervous! I'll be living with four roommates who so far seem nice enough, but I've only met them a handful of times. They're all queer too and at least one of them is also neurodivergent, which makes me hope there won't be many misunderstandings on that front at least. The landlord has been described to me as a little unpredictable at times, but generally friendly, which lines up with my impression of the guy thus far. Am I *excited*? I don't think that's quite the right term. My family moved here when I was a pre-teen and now I'm closer to thirty than to twenty. Our house is beautiful, our garden is beautiful, the whole area is beautiful and has shaped me in so many ways. I'll miss it all a lot. And so much of what's to come is still uncertain, which isn't something my brain likes very much.

I'll have to learn to just deal with that, I suppose. It took the whole past year and a little longer for me to finally find a room, so I should be relieved, too, and moving is for so many reasons so obviously the necessary next step for me. But it's done with at least somewhat of a heavy heart. Ideally, in a few months, I'll be looking back on this moment and think, wowie, I was worried for nothing! But as of right now, there's no guarantee my situation will improve in the ways I'm hoping it will, only that I'll be leaving behind many things, people and places that mean a lot to me.

Hmm.

Getting into Backrooms again has helped me break out of a terrible art block and now I've been doodling Ivan almost daily for a few weeks. I've even been posting some of it to the KF Discord and my heart has been warmed by how well it's been received there, too. Feels great to know how to use a pen again! The "new blorbo acquired" phase I'm currently in that lets you connect any song or quote you hear to The Character™ is just a never-ending source of inspiration. With any luck, this current momentum might even carry over to the times I want to draw stuff for other fandoms too. My Ace Attorney project is constantly on my mind as well, of course, but the creative parts my brain haven't been nearly as cooperative with that as of late. Sigh.

I'm also thinking of creating a Backrooms community here on Dreamwidth. I'm not sure how many other fans are even on here, honestly. Maybe there are some of the original concept, the wikidot version and of liminal spaces in general. The Kane Pixels fandom specifically mostly seems to hang out on Reddit, Discord and YouTube, though. But who knows? With the movie's recent success, there might be enough newcomers to the series on other sites like here that it's worth a try to set a space like that up. I'd be very happy! I like the atmosphere and the whole ... everything about Dreamwidth so much more than other social media sites, and I wish modern fandom was more active on here. I know I've been part of the problem in the past, heh. It's just hard to stay active here sometimes when it feels like almost nobody else into the same things as me is active on here either. Just look at the aceattorney community. The last post is from 2018, and the one before that from 2016. Of course, there are some individual users posting about it a little more frequently than that. But it's sad to see, I think, with how active the fandom was in the livejournal communities - and how very much still alive it is even now, just in very different, algorithm-driven corners of the internet.

The Elder Scrolls series, too. The r/teslore subreddit comes closest to the fandom space I'd most want for it in terms of activity and depth, but it's ... well, on Reddit. Even regularly encountering the same users, it still feels largely anonymous. That's one of the things I miss most about old forums, and what I like about Dreamwidth - you got, and get to know the actual people participating in the conversation with you a lot closer than elsewhere. It's just so much more personal, and, well - fun, because of that.

Makes me wonder - what are some DW-active fandoms? Are there any fandoms where big (or smaller, but consistent) parts of it come here daily to discuss it with others? Probably. At least I hope so, even though my fandoms don't seem to be among them.

I think I'll go ahead with creating that community some time this month (unless someone beats me to it, which would be a pleasant surprise). Worst case scenario ... nothing, really. Just one more inactive community among hundreds of others, I guess?

Uh.
Hey!
I am, in fact, still alive. Hoping to be a little more active on here in the future. Hi to any of my old readers still following me, and hi to anyone discovering my journal for the first time!