Tanis Nikana

I wanna touch more unique turtles this year than I did last year, and last year I touched seven turtles.

It’s okay if I pet the same turtles again though, new year, new goal.

🐢

(That said, I much prefer an actionable and enjoyable goal like “go touch some turtles” to something nebulous and frustrating and intangible.)

This is an underpinning of the plot of Final Fantasy VIII, where a sorceress with incredible power is entombed and sent to space, and her screaming drowns out all the radio frequencies on the planet.

This is vital information for my everyday life.

I’m gonna throw in for Zachtronics Solitaire Collection.

Most of Zach’s games are about engineering assorted things to meet demands like speed or efficiency, but he would always bundle a fun and thematic solitaire variant in with his games.

This is all the solitaire games collected, with all the engineering cut out. I’ve probably put a couple thousand hours into it, and since it’s just in my pocket, I can pick it up and play while waiting on food and such, playing before I sleep, and just random games of solitaire folded throughout my day.

(My favorite in the collection is Fortune’s Foundation, a Fortress variant that puts away a whole tarot deck, major arcana included.)

A contracted version of “asexual,” those who do not feel sexual attraction.

Being an ostensibly-male-ish high schooler with a bad grasp of English and good looks had gotten me so much attention.

And every goddamn one of them was disappointed that I was ace and sex-repulsed and didn’t have the vocabulary to express it at the time. They thought I was spurning their advances deliberately!

(Of course, looking back, I bet that none of them actually wanted to be with an incredibly lesbian trans woman. (And yet, somehow, I married an ace trans woman of my own, shit’s nice.) I’m trying to work on not feeling bad that I disappointed those women, and that they found better matches of their own.)

I’ve got four of those.

Edit: wait, that’s a useful disorganized kitchen drawer. I’ve got two. I should do something about my four junk drawers, and today’s the day, goddammit!

Not much. Didn’t grow up with it, and trying to celebrate it when I’m older without kids or parents is weird. It’s time off work for me and not much more.

Yes! Agency!

I never started. Soon as I left my parents’ house, it was just more time for games and reading and adventure.

Tons of really really good games right in my pocket, that’s what.

I can’t do it. I have to be actively making decisions and having agency in my entertainment. I end up playing video games, or board games.

(The board games I end up playing are usually the sorts of solitaire board games with a huge campaign and a grand sweeping narrative. My favorite board game of all time is Etherfields, for example.)

It’s the default language for international business, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that flips to Mandarin in twenty years, the way things in general are going.

But I’m not gonna lie, I wish I cool read ich_iel and get the humor so bad.

I still have one working hand, and I can walk.

I seem to be pretty good at English, which is definitely a leg up on billions of people.

I’m actively protected, respected, and cared for by my insular community.

I’m skilled with a microphone and can make whole audiences cackle.

These advantages are enough that I needed to be nerfed in some incredibly heinous ways, and yet I still have such an advantage that I’m usually first- or second-ban in the draft.

Mosc isn’t bad. I even set the keyboard shortcuts to their Windows IME equivalents cause it’s easy to remember.

I just wanna let you know that it’s possible, out there. I have an asexual wife, and we don’t do any sex, but we’re sickeningly heavy on the romance.

Those types of people are out there!

My memory is poor and my facial recognition is zero.

I remember broad timelines, and I try to take pictures of my life so I can look back and jog my memories. Sometimes weird memories randomly bubble up to my consciousness though.

I’ve had two strokes; sex is the least of my worries.

My goal is to be weird and intimidating now, and I’m pretty good at it. Still friendly though.

I manage. There’s no sex in my day to day life, no libido either. It’s not a thing that comes up often.

Eh, I’m also intersex and lack the musculature to do anything with my genitals.

It’s also a physical problem. Doesn’t really need fixing.

It’s temporary, forty or fifty more years and I won’t have to worry none about it.