KJ

Well, sort of. In a very minor way. A few weeks ago, I saw a call on Twitter asking people to share their last photo from the Before Times and their first photo after the start of the pandemic. I submitted mine, and my "after" photo was included in the resulting video! It's literally blink-and-you-miss-it, because it just appears for a few seconds in a montage of "working from home" images a little bit after the five minute mark, but still, pretty cool, and my name is in the credits at the end.

It would have been neat to be interviewed for the piece, but I understand why I wasn't. Still, I did think my photos told a little bit of a story. My last pre-lockdown photo was a snap I took to note the wifi password at the coffee shop where I stopped for a drink and a bit of a write on my way to FogCon; my first post-pandemic photo was to document my brand new work-from-home setup. Two writing spaces, one temporary, one far more permanent than I ever expected it to be. It was an interesting exercise, one that I recommend if you're up for it.

The Tumblr iOS app was removed from Apple's App Store for insufficient filtering of child pornography, and Tumblr deleted a bunch of accounts in response.

I suppose it was only a matter of time until Tumblr had its own Strikethrough moment. There are a few rumblings about mass exodus, although I'm not sure where everyone would go. I wonder if the days of one platform for all of fandom are truly behind us now. Given that I'm barely ever on Tumblr myself these days, I don't even really know what the mood is over there. Anyone know?

Regardless, if you've given up on Tumblr and have chosen DW as your new home, welcome. I'm happy to have you here.

Busy day, and it's not quite over, but I'm taking advantage of a lull in the proceedings to make some quick notes about everything I've done so far. I went to four panels today and took notes on all of them, and I hope to dive into them more later.

First up was Female Friendship in Fiction. A lively conversation about the good, the bad, and the missing of female friendships depicted in fiction. Lots of recommendations, including a solid five minutes at the end dedicated solely to recs from the audience. Many of them can be found in the Twitter tag. Lots of my favorite examples -- Supergirl, Jessica Jones, the Spiritwalker trilogy, etc. -- were brought up, and of course my TBR continues to expand.

After lunch (back to the cheese shop!) was probably the best panel of the con for me so far: a discussion of "weaponized kindness" -- when calls for civility are used to shut down important discussions. The Andrew Smith/#KeepYAKind incident was used as an example and jumping off point for talking about why "niceness" as a code word for "sit down and shut up" is a problem (as opposed to actual niceness, which they defined as really listening to other people and caring about their feelings and point of view) and how to fight back against it. I'll definitely want to come back to this later, and maybe see if I can find other people's write-ups. For now, I highly recommend the Twitter tag for this one, too.

Next up was a panel on metaphorical minorities (such as the X-Men "mutant metaphor"), which also moved a lot into thoughts on coded (as opposed to explicit) representation followed by a roundtable on the works of Octavia Butler. I learned quite a bit from these discussions, stuff I will have to process and also probably revisit. Very glad I went to both.

After dinner, I went to the Tiptree Auction, a fundraiser for the award. I was promised a great show, and I absolutely got it. brainwane was the auctioneer, following in the footsteps of legendary auctioneer Ellen Klages, and I thought she was great -- an evening of humor, and Hamilton filk, and smashing of the kyriarchy (literally, in the form of a "Pilates for Weight Loss" DVD), and costume changes, and serious remembrances of significant people. Well worth my time, even though I didn't bid on anything (though I did donate a little when the hat was passed around).

Now I'm headed back downstairs to check out the Floomp, the con's dance party. I'm not sure I'm feeling high-energy enough to dance, but I'm told that it's still a fun scene with excellent costumes to admire. And who knows, maybe I'll be inspired to cut a rug or two.

So remember the old days, when we used to write about other people's posts in our own spaces rather than just reblogging everything, maybe with commentary, maybe with a few thoughts hidden in the tags? I miss those days, so here I am, being the change I want to see.

This post about Tumblr and people's issues* with it was making the rounds a little while ago, and it struck a nerve with me. I don't disagree with the original poster's complaint, exactly -- there often is something dysfunctional about the way people interact on Tumblr, and that detracts from my enjoyment of both the site and of fandom as a whole. But it seems to me that the OP has cause and effect exactly backwards. Tumblr isn't a personal journaling site that people are treating like a public forum. Tumblr is a public forum that people are treating like a personal journaling site. Tumblr is a broadcast medium, specifically designed to promote the sharing of content as quickly as possible to as many people as possible. It is not meant for private conversation or personal journaling, so folks shouldn't be surprised when trying to use it that way is a disappointing experience.

I feel like I've been beating this drum a lot, especially since the end of Tumblr comments (and was there ever a more clear sign that Tumblr doesn't want to be a conversation platform than their decision to take away commenting?), and you might fairly ask why I care. It's purely selfish in the end -- I think fandom would be a better place if we would accept Tumblr's limitations and use it for the type of content and interaction that does work well there -- sharing multimedia, links, memes, and other short-form content. As far as I'm concerned, Tumblr works best when you treat it like Twitter writ large. No one expects Twitter to host personal conversations. No one expects an unlocked Tweet to be private. No one expects to avoid spoilers or negative commentary about characters they like. No one expects Twitter to serve as a long-form archive. And yet these are all complains that I hear about Tumblr on a regular basis. The secret to happiness is setting proper expectations, and the way to do that as a Tumblr user is to embrace the site for what it is, rather than fighting the interface to make it into something that it isn't, and was never meant to be.

I get the desire to have your entire community living on a single site. But the days of One Platform to Rule Them All are long behind us, if that particular beast ever even existed. Is it more trouble to go to Twitter for news and links, Tumblr for images and memes, Dreamwidth for meta and discussion, AO3 for fic? Maybe so, but I find that playing to the strengths of each site is making me happier overall. If that means I drift away from some elements of my fandom community, so be it -- I miss some people who I don't see nearly as much as I used to, but I hope to enjoy the time I do spend interacting with them all the more.

*Linking to a reblog because the OP deleted the post. The respondent here words things more strongly than I would have, but as you might guess I largely agree. The fact that the OP can delete but the reblogs live on forever is a whole other can of worms with Tumblr's design, but getting into that would be a different post.

Just a cold, but a bad enough one that I missed three days of work and didn't have energy for much beyond lounging around the house. So what did I do? Consumed a bunch of media!

1. Read comics: Nimona, the latest Captain Marvel collection (Chewie!), and the first three volumes of Matt Fraction's Hawkeye. I've had the Hawkeye books for awhile, and I actually bought and read the first one when it first came out. But then I put off getting the second, and then when I did get it I wanted to re-read the first one before reading it, and then I didn't get around to doing that either. So I read them all in one fell swoop yesterday. And they were great, although predictably I liked the Kate Bishop volume the best. Is the next one out yet? I know it's ending soon, or maybe already has, but there must be at least one more (that was quite a cliffhanger). Nimona was delightful. I don't know whether its initial publication as a web comic messes up its Hugo eligibility, but if not, it's definitely in my first round of nomination picks for next year.

2. Caught up on the last few months of PBS Idea Channel, which I hadn't watched since March or so. Or almost caught up, anyway -- I decided to take a break after the video that discussed Lewis's Law. One of the things I've always appreciated about the host, Mike Rugnetta, is how unapologetically feminist he is, and how he refuses to debate the validity of feminism as a philosophy. So when he spent his entire comment response to that episode pandering to "egalitarians" whose poor feelings were hurt when he compared them to MRAs, I was pretty disappointed. (I don't think egalitarianism, in and of itself, is necessarily a bad philosophy, but those egalitarians who set themselves up in direct opposition to feminism are 1. missing the point of feminism, especially intersectional feminism, and 2. not taking privilege into account.) I get wanting to keep your community open to a wide range of viewpoints, and I concede he may have worded his comparison clumsily, but there's nothing wrong with setting the terms of the debate. I hope this doesn't mean that he either avoids feminist topics in the future, or starts treating them all with kid gloves in order not to offend. Honestly, I'm not sure which would be worse.

3. Picked up my Dragon Age: Inquisition replay. I left my Trevalyen warrior stranded in Halamshiral for months, so I started by finishing up there, and then I played through the remaining Grey Warden quests (as well as a bunch of sidequests in the Western Approach, a few in the Hinterlands, and Varric's companion quest). ( Some spoilers. )

4. Watched a good chunk of Season 2 of Star Trek: Voyager. I never watched all of Voyager, and not long ago I was struck with the idea of revisiting it. I had remembered watching it for a few years, then getting bored when it became The Seven of Nine show, and most of the first season episodes were familiar, but the second season has been almost entirely new to me. I vaguely remember the business with Seska, and a couple of other things, but either I actually didn't watch it regularly or have blocked the whole thing out. It's been enjoyable to rediscover how much I loved Captain Janeway and B'lanna and Harry and the Doctor, and there's no one I dislike (although I prefer Neelix in small doses). It'll be interesting to see when it starts getting familiar again -- I know I was watching when Seven joined the cast, but I don't remember exactly what season that was, and not much about what was happening before that.

5. With T, watched Jupiter Ascending (which was bananas, but a fun kind of bananas, but I didn't fall in love with it as deeply as many of you did -- probably my expectations were dialed way too high), the Roger Ebert documentary Life Itself (which was lovely, and if you have any interest in Ebert -- and can handle watching a man in slow decline, since it was filmed over the last few weeks of his life -- I recommend it), and the first episode of Sense8 (promising, although I don't think I'll be able to binge on it).

Back to work today -- I don't usually work my part-time gig on Mondays, but I fell far enough behind this week that I want to at least start catching up. Fortunately I think I'm up for it, although I am a bit sad to end my mini media feast.

A much-delayed news post -- turns out I am still following that account, they just never post anything anymore -- asks for feedback on the changes and presents an 11-point list of problems they already know about.

We know that things changing abruptly can be frustrating, and that we don't have the greatest track record when it comes to making changes based on your feedback. (Emphasis mine.) Gee, ya think?

1. My Tumblr dash is over half blocked posts. Must be new DA:I content! From the things that have slipped through (gaaah people why must things slip through), it sounds like a new trailer, which I would actually be interested in watching (just not dissecting in intense detail), so I'll have to check it out when I'm on a better Internet connection.

2. Speaking of Dragon Age, I'm still in need of a beta read for my Dragon Age Big Bang story. Any takers? At this point, given that it's due in less than a week, I'd be happy just for a quick read-through to look for egregious problems. Let me know.

3. I saw Winter Soldier again last week. It definitely holds up. I need to see it again. I posted my thoughts to Tumblr. Note, the entry also contains a significant spoiler for the two post CA:TWS Agents of SHIELD episodes. (Although it's the kind of spoiler that might actually lure some people into watching.)

4. We have another guest conductor this quarter. In some ways, he's as brilliant and as difficult as the guy we had in the Fall, but he has a way of communicating that makes him much easier to work with. The repertoire (church music by Holst and Vaughan Williams) is quite challenging -- so challenging that he actually pulled one work and substituted a much simpler one. It's a little disappointing to put three weeks of work into a piece and then not perform it, but it was absolutely the right choice, because now we can concentrate on making the rest of the concert amazing rather than struggling just to put it all together.

5. DOINK! I have my assignments and know which one I want to do. Now I just have to decide how I want to approach it. And see if I can manage to avoid all the shiny Steve Rogers distractions that the movie has put into my head.

This is a day late; sorry!!

alias_sqbr asked me to compare and contrast Dreamwidth and Tumblr. "I'm specifically interested in the different ways people react to the same post, since you crosspost, but whatever you feel like talking about is fine." This is a great question, but also a hard one, because my thoughts on Dreamwidth and Tumblr (and LiveJournal, which I can't decouple from the others completely) are complicated, and sometimes contradictory. That said, I've wanted to write this post, or one much like it, for a long time, so here goes!

( I suppose it's no surprise that this got long. )

From the January Prompts meme (On DW / On LJ). Want to ask a question? Many slots remain open, especially in the latter half of the month.

Browsing Tumblr last night, I came across my first image takedown notice.

Now, this might not be a sign of doom. Tumblr has always had a route by which you could report unauthorized use of copyrighted work. But in two years on the site, I have never before seen an image removed icon -- for a second I thought it was a remote host error or something, before I remembered that such a thing would make no sense on Tumblr -- so of course my thoughts go to the Yahoo acquisition. Which, as it happens, closed today. Coincidence, or is this the canary in the coal mine? Only time will tell.

It's been awhile since anything I posted on Tumblr got this many notes, and it's been interesting to watch the evolution of the reblogs. Some of the commentary has been disbelieving, others have been alarmed, but the one that catches my eye the most is the "but hey, at least now there's a way for us to report people who repost our art instead of reblogging it" reaction. Does anyone really think that Yahoo's top priority is going to be taking down unsourced fanart? No, the most likely target is images and video copyrighted to major media IP holders, and if that starts happening en mass, you can forget Tumblr as a viable fandom platform.

Not jumping ship yet; this isn't meant to sound the alarm. But you can bet that I will be keeping a very close eye out for more of these.

I would like to have something coherent to say about Google shutting down Google Talk and forcing the functionality into Google Hangouts, but right now all I've got is "Google argh bargle WHY??? [insert profanity here]"

News article about the change, more positive than I'm feeling, but at least it acknowledges my main concern: will Google stop supporting the ability to log in via a client? Because if I can't access Google's chatting function through a client (I use Adium for the most part), it becomes useless to me.

Anyone still on AIM? Any thoughts on Skype as a text-only chat service?

I still need to decide what I'm using instead of Reader, too. Goddammit Google, why are you dismantling my online life? To paraphrase a quote regarding Google's decision to take sharing out of Reader (which happened only a few months before they announced that Reader would be sunset), you aren't going to get me to use Google+ by taking away bits and pieces of the services I use. That's not how this is going down.