The fact that this occupies so many cycle hours for me is still depressing

[yvannairie]

Welp it's been another week where I've just been talking about how much fanpol and the purity brigade part of fandom has just. Taken the joy out of it, and how much their continued existence and my awareness that even while a lot of them are quiet and have taken their wank to private venues, there's a lot of people in my primary social space that two-three years ago spent weeks harassing people, sending death threats and accusing them of horrible acts of violence and abuse and don't regret it except for maybe for the part where they're confused as to why some people act like they're the villains here.

I ended up watching Innuendo Studio's video about the Beginner's Guide again b/c when I'm sad I watch YT videos I've watched a 100 times again for comfort, and the part about how you can use the author to read the book but not the other way around, and how "imposing your conception of the narrator onto the flesh and blood human being who made the test not only takes the focus off the text itself and kneecaps your ability to fully engage with it but can ... be painful and psychologically damaging for that human being"... that hits different, now. My relationship to "the artist is absent" has gone from "I'm the author who is terrified that people will misconstrue me based on my work" to... whatever malaise I still feel about this.

Like, I'm finally in a place mentally where I'm like hell yes, bring it on, I wanna do exchanges, I wanna apply for zines, I wanna grow my server, I want to be immersed in a conversation that isn't about us but is firmly for us... and then I think about the people who spent years receiving the kind of abuse that makes me feel obligated to offer my allyship to them, and suddenly I lose that enthusiasm.

Uuuuuuuugh. 2016 never ends.