Beast's Teeth

I'm terrible with radio silence. Been having a hell of a time just existing, much less anything else. Just going to try and vomit up some kind of summary.

( Medical bullshittery under the cut. )

Over the last 5 or so years, I've become very interested in writing teenagers. Which, for me, is actually pretty weird.

I was the one who was always preferred to write characters that were functionally 15-20+ years older than myself. (I say "functionally" as it covers the nonhumans and immortals, basing it around their maturity and/or equivalent age rather than literal years.) But once I hit my mid-twenties, I may not have done a total 180, but a lot of my focus certainly did shift younger. And I've been thinking about it.

( CW: chronic illness, mentions of child abuse, memory loss )

Day 3: In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.

Okay so this is way easier, and I'm sorry I'm getting to it late! This got long and… okay, let’s hope this cut works this time.

( Books, movies, video games, anime & manga, oh my! )

(This started as a post for the Fandom Snowflake challenge, but then it spiraled into such a rambling downer, that I felt like I should really make a separate post. So, yeah.)

I have a weird and deeply conflicted relationship with fandom. Part of me has always deeply identified with the community, but I've also always been on the outskirts. A strange kind of silent exile, a constant lurker, too afraid to do... anything, really.

( Read more... )

 Well, the Tumblr Purge is officially tomorrow.

I just finished saving a handful of text posts from one of my personal sideblogs and archived them here. Also tried to snag some of my favorite pieces of art from my small fan sideblog. But honestly, I haven't done as much as I could. It's finals during my most hellish semester so far and my puppy comes home in just four days, so I've just been... overwhelmed

And now, Tumblr has blocked the Wayback Machine. For reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, they've actively blocked archival attempts.

Although I don't know how it's going to turn out, how much the internet may or may not change in the coming months and years... I can't help but mourn. I can't imagine things aren't going to change, and significantly. Maybe not overnight. Maybe even for the better. But so much is going to shift, so much is going to be lost.

It's hard to wrap my head around, really.

Just. Shit.

The internet is changing, and sometimes I can't believe I'm watching it in real time.

I'm a chronic lurker. I always have been, due to a near-debilitating mix of social anxiety and some other cocktail of neuroatypical obsessiveness that probably isn't healthy.

But I've been there through a lot of strange bouts of internet history. I remember the days of cease & desist order from Anne McCaffery and Anne Rice. I saw the echoes of FanFiction.net's purges. I was on the fringes as I watched LiveJournal's community fracture. I've seen the strange ups and downs of NeoPets, how it went from college-student hub to sad corporate shell. I watched y!gallery be handed off to an admin that booked with funds, and then watch it get wiped off the internet in one go.

But I think this is the first time I've been present for an Event -- really present -- and thought: wow. This one's big.

Ostensibly, the Great Tumblr Purge would leave me largely unaffected, just like all the others. I'm not a content creator. I could barely be called a content curator, what with followers totally less than 50 combined across all four of my blogs. I'm not even in fandom in any real way outside of an incredibly casual observer. I'm not a sex worker, and I'm only a little embarrassed to say that I probably get 90% of my porn from FurAffinity.

If Tumblr becomes a ghost town, I'd have probably my biggest time-sink and source of news gone, yes, but even then that's not a big impact for me personally. My life would, by and large, be mostly unaffected.

But it's not about my daily life. It's not about how it affects my livelihood, or even my social circle.

Censorship creates ripples, and those ripples end up turning into tidal waves at the fringes of society. The marginalized are always most affected, and I admit that I do have a personal investment in that.

I don't think there has ever been such a sudden mass migration off such a popular platform before, because I don't think there has been such a sudden and sweeping policy change before either. I don't know what it means in the long-term, but I do feel confident in saying this: things are changing.

I can only hope it'll be for the better, but I don't know. Not now, not in this political climate. Not with the staggering power of corporations.

But I can hope. I can hope that these are the catalysts for positive change, even if the road will be hard. I can hope that I, in my limited capacity, might be able to help.

Because right now, hope is about all I have.

... well, aside from a puppy on the way. But he's more or less hope made flesh, so. You know. Thematically appropriate.