Out of Service
Nov. 30th, 2021 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeThis blog has been locked and steep access cuts made. I will be manually going through unlocking things, mostly multi stuff and essays. For now, fiction will stay locked. Reverend Alpert's "The Unbinding", which won the poll this month, is posted publicly on Patreon. For now, there will be no writing polls, and few public posts, if any. For now, I'm paywalling most everything on Patreon and will be mass-uploading my writing there. For those of you not on Patreon, you can either buy the books/ebooks as they come out, or you can request local copies or access to my writing filter here. Patreon patrons will experience very little change. I will still make my usual posts there, still make comics, zines, and books. It's public stuff I'm cutting down on.
This is nothing any individual has done. The decision has been a year in coming. I started my business in 2013, before Gamergate, before Trump, before the pandemic. Mass online harassment existed in 2013, but it was not as organized and normal as it is now, and people worldwide certainly weren't trapped indoors, frustrated and stressed and desperate for anything they could control and change. The Internet is a hostile working environment, and every public post I make paints a target on my back. My demographics are targets too. And because the pandemic has crippled the con circuit, I am trapped; I can't take the breaks from the Internet that I used to.
Cons treated me as a small-time local artist with an unusual gimmick. But on the Internet, I am a tin-dime celebrity, and I hate it. Even the "good parts." When a multi approaches me with stars in their eyes, cold dread congeals in my stomach. Pedestals always break.
I was able to manage my anxiety until the pandemic. But then it got worse and worse, compounded by memory work accelerating yet again. I have limited control over the pandemic or memory work, which means my work has to be what changes. I need to get breathing room and the only way I can think to do that is make myself less publicly accessible, at least for a while. I'm also working to deal with my anxiety with therapy and meds. We'll see how much is environment and how much is me.
Thank you for reading.
This is nothing any individual has done. The decision has been a year in coming. I started my business in 2013, before Gamergate, before Trump, before the pandemic. Mass online harassment existed in 2013, but it was not as organized and normal as it is now, and people worldwide certainly weren't trapped indoors, frustrated and stressed and desperate for anything they could control and change. The Internet is a hostile working environment, and every public post I make paints a target on my back. My demographics are targets too. And because the pandemic has crippled the con circuit, I am trapped; I can't take the breaks from the Internet that I used to.
Cons treated me as a small-time local artist with an unusual gimmick. But on the Internet, I am a tin-dime celebrity, and I hate it. Even the "good parts." When a multi approaches me with stars in their eyes, cold dread congeals in my stomach. Pedestals always break.
I was able to manage my anxiety until the pandemic. But then it got worse and worse, compounded by memory work accelerating yet again. I have limited control over the pandemic or memory work, which means my work has to be what changes. I need to get breathing room and the only way I can think to do that is make myself less publicly accessible, at least for a while. I'm also working to deal with my anxiety with therapy and meds. We'll see how much is environment and how much is me.
Thank you for reading.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-01 12:26 am (UTC)