#I don't feel any need to divest myself from the fandom

[ivyblossom]

Hi Ivy! Had a silly question, and don't feel obligated to answer ... !!! But I was curious if anyone has ever a printed up a copy of The Quiet Man or made like a bound copy i could talk to? I was hoping to get one as this story means more to me than any other in the fandom and I truly do not want to lose it to the world of digital deletion.

Much love, 💋 liri

Hi there! Not a silly question at all! I don't 100% remember in fairness, but I don't believe that anyone's bound The Quiet Man. If someone knows that I'm wrong about that, please correct me!

Sorry I don't have a lead for you. I'm thrilled to hear that my story is important to you, that's a lovely thing to hear, thank you!

For what it's worth, I have no intention of deleting my fics. There's no reason I'd ever need to, they are in no danger. As long as AO3 exists, all my fics will exist on it.

I decided a while back to divest myself from my connection to the Harry Potter franchise. I didn't like seeing JK Rowling's name on my profile, it gave me the icks. So I orphaned them. I believe the URL for them remains the same. If ever I felt a need to distance myself from Sherlock, I'd probably just do the same. I'm not feeling inclined to orphan my Sherlock fics, though.

If you or anyone else wanted to bind The Quiet Man, you're more than welcome to do so as far as I'm concerned.

[statementlou]

i feel like i can talk to you about this because you have rational opinions. so louis bought a starbucks coffee at the airport and the fandom on twitter are eating him alive, calling him evil and wishing he goes to hell. i’m disappointed since starbucks is on the list of brands to boycott but i feel like this reaction is too much? someone even said jay would be disappointed in him, but people said that was taking it too far. i don’t know, i love louis and i’ll keep supporting him and his music but the fact he can be a careless millionaire is disappointing

1. thank you sweetie I would boop if I could 2. oh my god it's a fucking cup of coffee and if people think that's the worst thing Louis, a multi millionaire, has ever done financially they need a reality check! His money will be handled by bankers who are putting it into all kinds of evil fucking shit that he won't even know about, it's actually very hard to know or control that and there is no way trying is even on his radar. That's a passive thing and not on purpose; but the fact that people don't bother to know about that or care really speaks to how performative this kind of online approach to activism is, that they only care about image rather than effect (the effect of his investments would be easily thousands of times more than any number of coffees or even of the promotion Starbucks might get from him holding it.) But furthermore buckle in cause you hit a nerve: Starbucks isn't even an actual organized boycott target as concerns Palestine because THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT financially! The official BDS movement calls for boycott of very specific and pointed targets of which Starbucks IS NOT ONE it's literally just an online trend which is not the same as an actual boycott to materially impact a target! Losing them money is always great, they are a crappy union busting small business killing corporation, but it has zero direct effect to help Palestinians unlike supporting the meaningful boycotts called for by BDS. I don't think Louis has decided to buy starbucks because he has this analysis, but to me it's a pretty important point. Him crossing an actual picket line (playing Israel, playing Eurovision [lmaoooo that thought tho], waving an Israeli flag god forbid) would be a very different situation and something that would trouble me so the distinction matters to me. But I get that to people on twitter, that's what they feel like he has done. To which I would say...

There are so many fewer ways to help Palestine than we would wish, and it's SO hard to deal with feeling so powerless right now in the face of such horror, so I love that people feel so strongly about doing whatever they possibly can. But worrying about consumer spending, even on BDS targets, is perhaps the least effective of the things a person can do. Note that BDS boycotts do not mostly focus on asking people not to buy things; they list the products that are especially complicit, but the main work of the movement is to get large investors (corporations, public institutions, whole governments) to divest from the companies targeted because that actually hurts them enough that it becomes less profitable to continue to collude with Israel than to drop them as clients. Consumer spending is not enough to do this. It's easy and doesn't require doing actual work but it's basically virtue signaling, not organizing. Just NOT doing something (yes including voting) is not enough! I personally choose not to give my money to certain corporations because it feels bad to me and I can't stomach doing it, even if they never notice me doing it. But if I was running out of fuel and the only nearby station was a Chevron, I would spend a few bucks there and not beat myself up about it because it will have zero impact on their overall profit reports but a LOT of impact on my life. And if I was in the airport for the second time in mere days after circumnavigating the globe and playing a massive show and doing press and fan service before even having time to adjust time zones and about to get on another flight to another country I might buy a fucking coffee from whatever coffee shop was in there too! But Louis isn't me and I'm gonna be real honest I would be real surprised if he KNEW there was a boycott or gave a shit- he is not a political activist! It's reasonable to be disappointed if someone behaves not how you want them to, but just in general responding to being disappointed in people by lashing out at them is... not it. Not useful, not rational, and not actually an okay way to act to other people. Louis is an awesome sweet caring person who I believe tries hard not to have a negative impact on anyone directly and who cares very much about others; if that's not enough for someone to be a fan of him, okay then they should not be a fan of him! But warning: they're not going to be able to be a fan of anyone else either. No one is pure and perfect... maybe that energy would be better spent trying to make a meaningful difference in the world, and a great first step in that IMO is to recognize and challenge your inner cop. The better world I want to live in doesn't include policing other people, not on twitter and not anywhere.

[lost-technology]

Found another person blocking my blog, but this time I know why. I tried to dry-reblog some thoughtful commentary from them as an experiment, not knowing if they knew or cared about this blog connected to my wider Internet name, but apparently they do. You see, (name un-disclosed) was a person I knew in the old guard fandom about 20 years ago and had a lot of fighting with. It was basically a situation where a toxic former friend drew me into fighting with this entire group of friends and my stupid shenanigans landed me on Fandom Wank, where this person was among one of the main posters. (Hypocritical cyberbulling place if you ask me, but whatever). It confirms that they remember me and aren't willing to forgive. It's okay. It's not like I wanted friendship with them, I just thought they had an insightful post and was just curious. I mean, I actually had found out their tumblr handle from seeing them around Ao3 again (resurrected fan), but hadn't looked it up and didn't block it. The fact that they preemptively blocked me - went through that trouble tells me all I need to know about held grudges and now they are blocked from my main just for the sake of me not seeing their posts and forgetting / accidentally trying to reblog them. (Nothing personal, just respecting their apparent want of no contact and the works of managing main blogs and side blogs on this site). I feel kind of sad because we won't know how each other have changed. I have quite a bit. I have grown away from Church and have divested myself of past bigotries, for instance. I'll never be able to mea culpa enough for that shit , but I don't think anyone really wants me to - just press on and press forward and don't make a big deal of it. I have gotten a lot of help psychiatrically. I'll always be as bipolar as fuck, that's just my brain, but at least it's managed now, but I understand why people would want to shy away from that, especially if they were former Internet contacts who got the brunt of my moodswings and mayhem before knowledge of the condition and treatment. (I can still be pretty bad now, actually, but I was worse 20 years ago). I don't know. I guess I'm a bit sad because I saw "Oh, person from my past, I wonder what and how they're doing now - hopefully they've had a good life. Hopefully they've had as many positives as I have or more." And of course, there was that hope that they'd forget me entirely because The Bullshit happened 20 years ago and people on the Internet rarely have long memories. There is exactly one person from my Trigun Fandom Past that I would be likely to block on sight if I saw them again, but maybe... not even then. I'd look them over and if I felt like I still couldn't trust contact with them again in any way, perhaps I'd give them an explanation of the mistrust, and it being entirely on my end (not a judgement on the person they've become). I think that will happen now, should That Person ever find me. I guess I can think of it as kind of being like my relationship with my older brother. Growing up there was stuff I don't want to even talk about going on between him and I in terms of him being unstable and abusive. Granted, he and I share a disorder, but it was never an excuse - and yet, last Spring, I got to go back across the country and visit my family. In visiting him in particular, I dragged a cousin along as a "buffer," even though everyone was telling me that he'd mellowed out over the years. Indeed, I saw him and I'm glad I did, because... he has. He has, over the last 20 some odd years become more introspective, reflective and he apologised to me for his past treatment of me. I took it as sincere. He just had a manner to him of This Guy Has Mellowed Out and Made Change. It was nice to see. Running into Ghosts of Fandom Past kind of made me think of that. If we ever did talk to each other, putting aside the past, how much change in each other would we see? I want to know how life's been treating you.