In the past two weeks, I have:
Recent Downloads:
Recent Watches:
New playlists:
The second half of the month has been pretty significantly busy for me. I'm getting used to working "part time" (read: full time but with no benefits) hours again. I'm clocking out at 38-ish hours a week, when I haven't had this many hours since I got laid off from my full time job in 2020-2021 (due to lockdowns). Getting laid off in 2020 is a huge sore spot for me, hahah but it isn't for here.
The biggest thing that I think I'm adjusting to is: "When do I go get groceries?" and "When can I see my friends?" and "When can I have appointments without ruining my sleep schedule?" This past week, I had to appear in court for a matter related to my old job, at 8:45a, for example, after working for eight hours and not sleeping super well earlier in the week, and also in the middle of the snowstorm. So that meant risking my health (even masked as I was) on a 3 hour roundtrip on public transit. The transit here is notoriously unreliable even on a good day, and of course, it's cold, flu, and covid season and everyone is coughing and sneezing raw into the air. I'm certain I only saw one other person masked on the bus.
I don't necessarily want to get into details on what happened in court, but I will say that inclement weather was a factor for the matter I was appearing for, and I will likely also have to be involved if it goes to trial. Hooray.
Beyond that, since the day I've been working again (after my layoff), I have been beyond militant about masking in the workplace even if mandates haven't been in place since early 2022. I care about my health too much to risk it, and I know that other people in a similar financial situation as me have no choice but to work sick. It's just something I've had to accept: people are doing the best that they can, given their circumstances. What bothers me is when people who are working sick do so without also wearing a mask to protect their coworkers. Fortunately, my sick coworker did in the past two weeks, and I appreciate them for it even if it's the bare minimum. I have not shown any symptoms, at the very least, and have been isolating from loved ones in the event that any crop up.
This is just a friendly reminder from your local internet disabled vampire that it's never too late to begin masking again, even if it's only in higher volume/higher risk situations. You could save a life, and the life you could save could be mine, or a child's, or a loved one's, or a random stranger on the same bus as you, or the cashier at your local market who is just trying to make ends meet and doesn't get sick pay. If you're not actively sick, the life you could save could be your own. I have a lot to say about covid mitigation and how it relates to disability, but I'm saving it for a future blog post.
In a complete 180 from the topic above, after writing my last fic I'm back in a creative slump. I think that it's because I stopped reading for this half of the month. Now that my mental load is a little bit lighter, as in, no court dates or ill coworkers to worry about for the time being, I'll be picking up Hunchback in my off time. Finally. I do have an inkling of the next fic that I want to write, but it's still firmly in the ideas phase. I think I only have one real scene written out and cohesively making sense at this point.
That brings me to the Great AO3 Outage of 2026: What a bummer that the archive was down through Halloween, but what a great opportunity for us readers and writers to take a break and reflect on what that community means to us as creatives. I only masquerade as a cynic, really. Secretly, I hope that the outage gets everyone to think about the way we've engaged with art in the past five years. From a writer's perspective: please never be afraid to comment on someone's fic if you want to sing their praises, even if you think it's "cringe" or whatever other insecurities crop up. The creator of the work, whether visual or narrative, put it out on the internet for you, often for free, often on top of work and other life commitments, because they want you to engage with it. It's not a crime or a social faux-pas to do it! I can talk literally all day about how creative ventures have been transformed in the past decade to mere "content" and how creatives have to plan frequency and visibility to stay relevant in an algorithm over simply sharing their work and letting people enjoy it. That's why I like the archive so much, you seek out what you want to read or look at, and then you get to discover absolute gems of creativity. So please, in the wake of this outage, remember that it's not just content, it's a relationship of reciprocity.
Oh, and I've been seeing posts online about uploading fics to backup drives like Google, or elsewhere. Fics that people do not own, themself, and without permission from the author. Please don't do that, especially without permission. Google has denied that they use Google Suite to train their LLMs, using very specific language about quote: "content you share with Gemini" - but Gemini is built in to Google Suite at this point. People who are creative generally do not want their work in danger of being scraped by LLMs. Honestly, in the wake of the way genAI is being shoved down everyone's throats, do you think Google, a huge conglomerate, is going to be 100% truthful with you, a potential LLM training tool? Please don't. If you want to share a fic you've downloaded with someone else during the outage, opt for ePub/PDF and email. It's just way safer for everyone involved to not have their work stolen or compromised.
In the wake of the outage as well, I just want to share that all of my writing is also available on Tumblr right here.
On the note of community, it seems to have waned in general in recent years, and I can count on one hand the number of friends I've made in online spaces recently. It's especially so, for me at least, in the aftermath of the Discord mass exodus. I've personally moved to Fluxer in light of Discord's age verification policies and just generally how they've treated their user base and personal data collection (and data BREACHES) overall. Thus far, they as a company have been very open about how they interact with a user's data, and have even put out a press release about their stance on genAI. I like Fluxer a lot, but the user base is still very small, and it still leaves me wanting in terms of meeting people online and speaking with them on a day-to-day basis. There are a few large servers out there that are discoverable (Community/the Discovery page works generally the same as on Discord) but I have joined several and haven't really found the je ne sais quoi that I'm looking for in an online space.
Confession time, and I'm kind of nervous about this, but I want to soft-launch two servers I've built on Fluxer, admittedly for two very different purposes. One is for theistic Satanists like me (or people who are curious about that and want to learn), and the other is for people who are non-binary. There are a few servers that exist on the platform for people who are transgender, but I so far haven't seen any that are specifically geared to non-binary people or those transitioning to neutral. I personally, one more time for emphasis, PERSONALLY, found the servers that do exist to be very binary-focused and a little exorsexist at times, so I said, I'll make my own with blackjack and hookers. And... well, there is no other theistic Satanism server on Fluxer that I have seen thus far.
If you, the reader, have a Fluxer account and are interested in joining either or both of them, here:
Lastly but not leastly, I've been re-watching some of my favourite seasons of Survivor and loving it. My family was always really into it, instead of weekly church, we had Survivor Night every Thursday. And admittedly, I can look back as an "awakened" autistic adult and realize, hey, this is where I learned a lot about socialization, and studying other people for The Way To Act, especially under pressure. People-watching is a really important pastime for me, and studying how people interact under a microscope is one of my hobbies. I've been watching Survivor since The Australian Outback, though my mom never let me watch the episode where Michael Skupin fell in the fire. She also didn't let me watch Borneo because of Richard Hatch's constant nudity.
One thing that I noticed in re-watching Cook Islands and Micronesia is Parvati Shallow's playing style. She has said multiple times in the confessionals for both seasons that she flirts (with the men) to lower their defenses and then manipulate them. Knowing now that she has come out as queer, and being able to relate to a sentiment shared amongst queer women that "being with men is 'easier'," I can definitely understand more now how that may have come into play in her strategy. I'm not saying that Parvati has ever shared that sentiment publicly, but I am saying that it's not an uncommon queer experience by any means. And obviously, there is a lot of nuance to go along with that sentiment overall.
Another thing I've enjoyed to varying degrees is looking up former contestants to see what they're up to these days. For example, Michael Skupin is a CSAM offender. Yikes. Leslie Nease (Survivor: China), who infamously walked out on a Buddhist welcoming ceremony due to her strong evangelical beliefs, is, surprisingly, no longer an evangelical. She is still a Christian, but denounced evangelism in 2016 (I'm sure you can guess why that particular time is significant), because of how it was being weaponized. She now runs a podcast with Todd Herzog (Survivor: China winner) called Beyond The Torch.
I also find it really interesting how returning players play the game, whether or not they change, and how their fortunes fall - whether other players see them as a threat or not, especially. The sentiment is usually "how can you let this person play you, when you know how it is that they play?"
A non-exhaustive list of my favourite players is as follows: