Going Forward

[lb_lee]

Hey folks. After a couple months of thought, I've decided that I won't be on Dreamwidth much, at least not until the pandemic looms less large. I'll be posting pretty much nothing: no locked stuff, no polls, and a lot less free writing. (And the writing I DO post for free will probably be multi history and mental health crap, not fiction.) I probably won't be reading or responding much either. Sorry.

Right now, a poll is up on Patreon to see whether folks want to keep the old "vote for what writing gets posted" polls; if the votes say yes, then it'll just be Patreon folks voting on them. If the votes say no, then I'll be shifting to uploading my usual ~3000 words a month on shuffle, like I have been the past few months. Either way, things for people on Patreon will change very little.

If you aren't on Patreon and you want my writing, you can either wait for me to make ebooks for sale, or you can personally request a copy of an old story and I'll email it to you. This is the best compromise I've been able to think of. I have loved putting up writing for everyone to read in the past, but it's not worth it to me anymore, not right now anyway.

Ebooks that I am currently working to put together:
* Multi, Orgasmic (a headmate sex zine)
* Reverend Alpert, Traveling Exorcist, Book 1
* House of Resilient Children

Over the years (and especially once the pandemic made the Internet an overstuffed cage full of frightened rats), I have conducted myself online with increasing conservatism and paranoia. Because my "rules" grew gradually, it was easy to think them normal and reasonable, but by the time I crashed, they had become so multifarious and mutually contradictory that it was impossible to follow all of them, miserable to try.

There are a lot of artists I respect on the Internet. Most of them have been hate-mobbed. Some of them have disappeared. Others remain, but the scars and twitchiness remain. I'm crazy, not stupid. I know when hunting season is on, and I've known for years that I'm an easy target. Even severely curtailing my Internet activities, where I go and what I say, I've been threatened with violence at cons, booted from one of my business sites, put on an alt-right "watch this antifa" list, and lost a publisher--and that last one was just because they thought I MIGHT get them harassed by proxy.

Knowing that I "brought this on myself," by going public with my Cultiples work and my family history, knowing that this is beer nuts compared to most public figures on the Internet, none of that helps. If even this comparatively minor amount of harassment is enough to make it hard for me to function, what's going to happen if I actually make a living wage?

It's not even about what I do directly; if that were the case, then it'd just be a matter of self-improvement. But the magnifying glass effect of the Internet gives me and my words disproportionate importance, and "going viral" is now so built in that you can spur a hate mob by accident, not even knowing who any of the mobbers are or what they're doing. (And I don't even mean setting a mob on someone I dislike! It's easy for trolls to stake out a plural and go after anyone they talk to; that's how Kiwifarms did things, a while back, and I evaded their notice that time only because I had long since realized I could never set foot on the "big" Internet platforms. I know I've ended up there other times.)

This post has taken me hours to write, because I am trying to control my affect and my words in hopes that if I just do it right, control myself enough, nobody will get hurt.

But that's not under my control anymore. Maybe it never was.

I'm burned out on being a public figure. It's not what I want to be, and it's never what I wanted my job to be. Since I've left Dreamwidth, my productivity is way up, because I'm focused on my job: writing, drawing, cartooning. Not the Internet china shop, not being a tin-dime celebrity. I don't want to be an Important Person On The Internet. I want to make stuff.

So I'm going to go and do that. And I'm going to post this and stop trying to control the uncontrollable.

Comments

[stealthsystem]

Hey.
We are always around by email, and we like you for you, not your internet celeb status, because we knew you when you weren't Internet famous (TM) and we support you 100%

[feotakahari]

I’ll miss your posts. Good luck.

[sinistmer]

I'm glad you made this decision for yourself and that you're doing what you want to do! I hope we can meet up soon.

[sorcyress]

Thank you for posting this. I am sorry to see less of your writing here, but will look forward to reading it on Patreon. I hope you have the peace and space you need to make wonderful and fascinating things!

[silvercat17]

I miss seeing you, but I'd rather you take care of yourself than put your mental health at risk!

[pantha]

As others have said, I will miss your posts. However, THIS: "I've left Dreamwidth, my productivity is way up, because I'm focused on my job: writing, drawing, cartooning." This is a thousand times more important than anything I'm feeling. And not because of the productivity per se, but because of what it's probably saying about your underlying health and wellbeing. Productivity, for many of us (myself definitely, and I suspect for you too) is rather a canary in the mine. I'm glad to see the canary thriving again, not for its own sake but for what it is (I dearly hope) indicating about you all.

Best wishes and much hugs for those who want them.

I will continue to keep up with your work as and where I can.

[wispfox]

"This post has taken me hours to write, because I am trying to control my affect and my words in hopes that if I just do it right, control myself enough, nobody will get hurt.

But that's not under my control anymore. Maybe it never was."

I don't think it ever was, and it certainly wasn't ever supposed to be on you to try.

I hate that the online world became so dangerous to health and sanity, and get the difficulty of trying to keep yourself safe in the dangerous place it became.

"post this and stop trying to control the uncontrollable"

Wise. While I have enjoyed my glimpses into your life, I very much would prefer that you take care of yourself. It sounds like this is letting you do that, so I'm glad for you and hope it continues to be good for you.

[beepbird]

I hear you on this, and I'm happy you're putting yourself first. I'll miss seeing you here, but it's far more important for you to protect yourselves and your mental health. Take care and keep following what's most helpful for you, okay?

[writerkit]

I will be sad to see you go, because I have appreciated your writing, but the internet is hell these days (certainly as a writer I'm concerned about when this eventually happens to me) and I definitely can't begrudge you wanting to get away from it. I hope you find your life improving this way.

(And since you seem to have had a lot of unfortunate things happen to you, I will offer a positive thing that happened from your work: because I have been following you, when someone came to a Discord I was on asking questions about teaching a plural kid in his class, I had enough context to tell him he was coming at it from the wrong track and direct him to your introductory work, which means that a kid thousands of miles from here is having a better classroom experience than they otherwise might have had.)

[itsamellama]

Supporting you ♥ Good luck with everything! Take care of yourself.

[erinptah]

For me, Dreamwidth is the quietest and most-chill social-media platform I'm on, so it's disheartening to learn it's gone so differently for you. And of course I'll miss your posts :(

But yeah, if someone is making it their mission to Get You, there's no way you can "say the right thing" to discourage them. Do what you gotta do to take care of yourself -- I hope things keep picking up as a result.

[igel]

I get it. My social anxiety's through the roof right now because of the state of the world/internet. I'll miss your posts, but you've got to take care of yourself. Good luck.

[talewisefellowship]

I respect that decision, you come first before everything else. Glad to hear your work is going well

--Janusz

[runeroot]

I'm so sorry that things are this way. *offers hugs* Good luck taking care of yourself! It is hard but important.

[lithophiles]

Take care of you first. I will always support that. I mean, a lot of why we've been hermitting over the past few months (although we should make ourselves available for gchat more) is because we were overwhelmed and stressed out by journaling for even the small audience we have. And we can easily start to believe we're in parasocial relationships, whether we really are or not, and that people are all watching us to see if we mess up and writing up our perceived sins in some ledger we never get to hear about.

Tbh, we were definitely feeling the stress from you in the last couple months you were posting on DW, and I want to make it 100% clear that we are not blaming you for this at all, but we were getting stressed out by picking up on it. We only realized it in retrospect. No harm, no foul, I think actually the best way to say it is that I can totally see in retrospect how much stress you were under because we were picking up on it, and that is a thing that's happened to us with a lot of friends besides you, so you're definitely not "uniquely hurtful" or whatever you might be worrying about being.

I do still value your input on things, and I hope you wouldn't mind me pinging you occasionally, but that's something that can be done without you needing to post to DW regularly, be the Big Multi Ambassador, or whatever else you felt pressured to do.

-Istevia

[lb_lee]

Yeah, part of why I ducked out of the group chat was, I think I was also picking up on Y'ALL'S stress, and on some gut level I sensed that I was getting trapped in an infinite loop of "I'm stressed because you're stressed because I'm stressed." I've come to realize that I can only handle my own memory work, nobody else's (and I figure it's probably similar for most of my friends doing it).

And yeah, y'all can ping me via email, that's probably the most reliable. I might be slow in responding, but I'm still around.

[nihilaeon]

We look forward to having the opportunity to buy more of your books and other works in the future! Thank you for all your hard work in creating them. They changed things for us in a majorly positive way in a terrible time. Our empathy that things have been so rough. If our comments contributed to any degree in the bad atmosphere, our sincere apologies, without any bad feelings on our end. We were a bit too consumed to model what it might be like. But we're glad that cutting down on internet presence has helped ease things. Good luck, and good sailing.

[lb_lee]

Fear not, it's not anything anyone on this site has said or done. It's more just a cumulative build-up of the greater social climate, combined with my own difficulties being a focus of attention (even positive attention) and realizing I could no longer do my job the way I had been doing it.

Y'all have been nothing but lovely, and I'm glad our work's been helpful for you. Hearing that really does help.

[songspinner]

I've not been on much for the last 3 years for similar reasons. Too much. It's so important to take care of ourselves first and foremost. Even teaching has been so very, very hard lately. Is it still okay to teach the story you once gave me permission to use in my classroom? (the one about the teenager transported to a planet with insect-people) I was thinking about using it again next year.

[lb_lee]

Absolutely. Go right ahead!