tsarina

I have a hard time with change. With endings. With the inevitable passage of time. None of this is helped by this garbage fire year, where I've struggled with my depression and a raging storm of PTSD that's come out howling out of the darkness while we fight the destruction of our democracy.

Last year my email was hacked, in one of those "state sponsored" attacks. I suspect it has to do with this journal, with a Russian name, with the weird fuckery of what's happening with LJ's servers going Russia side, with the horrifying things that seem to underpin everything now. Some weird things have happened over the years I've mostly brushed off, but it seems sinister in retrospect. Especially given the political situation, the reports of anti-queer violence becoming worse and worse, the stories we're seeing about gay men being rounded up in Chechnya, the complicit actions of the president. Things are bad.

Permanent Account - Created on 14 December 2000 (#33314)

I remember paying the $100 in the permanent account sale, which was a lot of money for university me. I remember the strangeness of searching journals, finding strangers and their lives. I remember what it felt like to reach across the strange dial up darkness on my computer, to find you.

Seventeen years of my life happened here. There is so much I could not even begin to summarize. This place has been my daily routine for seventeen years, and it aches to think of not having it.

But I can't stay here, for a lot of reasons.

I've got a DW account under the same name. I exist on twitter and tumblr under another name. My digital ghost roams. My email still works, the yahoo and the gmail. I'm writing, and I sort of hope to actually publish something. I've backed up everything in PDFS. I'm going to save the icons I love, give it a little time, and then I'll probably delete this. Even if it hurts, looking at that five digit user number. Farewell Brad and Frank the Goat and my twenty year old self who started this journal while working nights at a shitty dot com job.

A southern drawl, a world unseen
a city wall and a trampoline
well I don't mind
if you don't mind
cause I don't shine
if you don't shine
before you jump
tell me what you find
when you read my mind
- The Killers

I went to my first march yesterday, and not the last one. It was the largest crowd in Texas history, mainly women though I was one of many men there. The diversity of the crowd was awe inspiring. There were moments when it felt hard to breathe for how much my chest ached. It was the slowest I have ever walked a mile, in the enormous 50,000 person crowd flowing down Congress avenue.

It shocks me, how much of this shit happening is straight out of some shitty Soviet style playbook. There's no such thing as "alternative facts." That's propaganda, like those record setting five year plans and great harvests while people starved and died.

This is the most horrifying season of my life.

We must resist. We must fight. We cannot let them do this.

Also, fuck the idea you shouldn't punch Nazis. Dialogue only works when everyone comes to the table willing to respect the basic and essential humanity of each other. Nazis don't. The Nazi premise is entirely based on extermination. There is no arguing or debating. They will use you, drag you into their arguments while they dig a knife into your back. Fuck Nazis.

Sometimes, the fight is violence. We will have to fight.

Today someone told me about his grandfather, Cees. He was a resistance fighter during WWII, and was captured by Nazis. He was mistreated in a camp in Poland. But he survived, and he walked home through war zones when he was freed. He practiced a deep and radical compassion until the end of his days. He also punched fucking Nazis. So I want to remember this, and be like this man.

So I'll make phone calls. I will go to marches. I will donate. I will vote. I will speak the truth. And I will fucking punch Nazis if I have to, because we cannot ever go back to that.

For everyone climbing to the boats of DW, I have the same user name there. I will eventually figure out the crossposting thing. While I am largely sanguine that novy rusky wolves have no use for chasing me, I am concerned that pressures on the company could cause the closure of the servers for reasons financial or otherwise. What a strange thing, to think my LJ could be a victim of Novy Rus.

Anyhow. I've back up the past sixteen years of livejournal, online and offline. It's okay.

I went back to the gym today, after the long December. I gave myself permission to let that slide because there was a lot going on, and I was making a sincere effort not to binge eat. It felt good, even if it was hard. I have not lost as much stamina as I feared. One of the things I'm looking forward to in this strange new year is getting back into a regular gym routine.

I'm so lucky, and I feel so unworthy of the kindness of strangers.

First, someone wrote me a full on Flowers in the Attic style story about Thomas and Lucille from Crimson Peak. Which is exactly the sad story I wanted about how two terrified children grew up to be murderers. Heed the warnings on it, because it is dark and grim. But oh so lovely.

Violent Delights, Violent Ends - Crimson Peak

As if that generous gift was not enough, I received a second story!

Oh and what a story. It's the dub-con face slapping glory of Nathan and Caleb from Ex-Machina, and it's everything I wanted in that messed up situation. The dialogue is so good I can just hear their voices.

like satellites - Ex Machina

To my Yuletide authors, if you pass by here - thank you. Thank you for your generous gifts. Is it weird to say I cried? I feel like you reached right into my head and saw exactly what I wanted to read. How wonderful it is.

Last night I made a buche de noel cake for the first time ever. I had a good teacher, and I feel confident about trying to do it again on my own. I also feel more confident about getting Swiss buttercream and meringue right. Funny how simple things can feel overwhelming, but having someone show me how to do it in a very low key way helps.

I'm trying to enjoy the holiday season, even as I wake up every morning with dread. Mike said something that struck me. For eight years, we lived with a sense of hope and it seemed to go away almost overnight. I look at my friends and coworkers sometimes and wonder why they aren't as disturbed as I am about what's happening. It feels like we're screaming in a nightmare, the way you try and your voice is so strangled, so small.

Yesterday I looked at those photos from Ankara. He looked so young, that policeman. It made me hurt. A few days ago I saw a friend from high school with his son, which felt surreal. We whispered about our feelings about Star Wars, nuclear war and death. Which is to say after two viewings, I like Rogue One a lot. It's so much about death, and the terrible choices, and the people who aren't the heroes of the stories that get told to other generations. No one will talk about Bodhi Rook the way they will talk about Luke Skywalker to their children - but god I can't stop thinking about that man. (Who was young, as young as that policeman looked in Ankara) About how he makes the comment about trying to get right with himself, how his defection took him to a place he didn't have to be and how he kept making choices to do things even though you could tell he was shit scared and unprepared.

I never thought I would live long enough to see the lead character in a major video game be queer, but I also didn't think I'd live to find myself writing an email to a friend talking about what we might have to do when the neo nazis come to town.

Part of me loves December, the holidays and the lights. I've made myself a happy set of secular traditions and a life of my own. My tree, Christmas in our house, our private traditions. It feels hard to celebrate this year, when everything is so strange and terrible. I don't know what the right answer is. Am I failing by buying us gifts when I could have just given all that money to some cause? I have subscribed to two magazines to support journalists doing great work, thrown money at some charities, and none of it feels like enough. I suppose I won't feel like it is enough unless I'm actually punching one of those fuckers in the face. Not that such a thing is really going to do much for the greater good but fuck it feels so fucking bad every day when I wake up.

I don't know what to say. I've had a hard time coping with it. I managed to deal with updating my documents. But the anxiety hasn't gone away. I seesaw between something like okay and bleakness. I'm so angry, it seethes under my skin. Every time someone downplays the actual nazis, or makes a shitty comment about the generalized horror over 2016, or work fucks us over in some fresh way, I can feel it burning right through me. I haven't been such an angry fucking mess since I was twenty one. This is not a thing I'm enjoying, but I don't think it will just go away. I'll have to find some way to cope. Or maybe I'll just punch a nazi in the face.

I made this sixteen years ago. I've never changed the name, in all this time. Weird to think I picked a Russian word long before the Russians bought LJ or it had any relevance there. I was just bored and angry and lonely at my job in the middle of the night, in the middle of university.

All my names are so different now. I think sometimes I should change the name on this to better reflect who I am but it exists as something out of time.

Funny how I'm still worried about the world ending.

I just don't even know.

I'm having a hard time not breaking down tonight. I distracted myself for much of the day. I cooked an elaborate, excellent meal. Now I'm just drinking wine and living with the terror of this night. I'm genuinely fearful about what this means for the progress of this country, for the safety of my friends and neighbors.

Half the country thinks a xenophobic, sexist bigot with no experience is a better choice than a woman who has spent her life in public service. Gods above and below.

I am listening to Bruce Springsteen play the final Clinton rally of 2016's endless election season. It makes me ache.

I've gone into elections anxious and keyed up, believing they would have significant impacts. I've voted in every presidential election since I could in 1998. Voting for Obama was the first time I backed a winning horse. The feeling of being on the verge of momentous, life changing things is not unfamiliar. But never have I gone into Election Day with actual fear about what the consequences might be. Never have I had a sobbing breakdown in fear about the risk to all of us, to this country. Never has an election given me panic attacks.

Even if Clinton wins, the virulent hate won't disappear. This year has opened the floodgates on the bigotry we've so often pretended doesn't exist except as an outlier. This year should make us acknowledge that the hate is mainstream, that the misogyny of the nation is so real and deep that a completely inexperienced narcissistic madman was considered a viable candidate next to an accomplished public servant.

Mostly I hope that the best of America turns out to repudiate this year of horrors.

Someone on twitter said tonight was a mix of Christmas eve and the night before potentially life ending surgery. I'm feeling it.

It's Halloween. Many things are better. Some are the same. Work is still dumb. I cover a lot of shifts because other people are fuckwits.

There were very few kids trick or treating this year. Very few. I wonder if it is the clown stories, or the election year fears, or something else. Mike did frighten a few children, and our house is now a neighborhood fixture for candy and screams.

I don't know what I'm going to do with the eleven million temporary tattoos I got to hand out with the candy. But I'm hanging out watching Crimson Peak, and Blade, and drinking wine.

I voted last week in early voting. It took an hour. Worth it though. Everyone's so fucking scared.

Got two days off, and I'm just gonna try to keep myself sane. Thinking a lot about what I might cook for the holidays.

That's the quickest I've ever seen a Yuletide assignment.

Unfortunately my assignment has so little information, I'm mildly concerned. As in one line in optional details, and no letter. I'm sure it will be okay. I can write something for this. I just wish I had a better idea of what they would like? Since it's a gift? The canon is dark, so this is either going to go well or really, really bad.

Hello writer!

After a couple year hiatus, I've returned to my favorite fannish event of the year. Yuletide is always such a wonderful thing for me. I have fairly broad tastes, which I hope will make you sigh and say "thank (deity/expletive)" at this point. So hopefully this letter will be helpful.

General information!
All ratings from the mildest G to the hardest "check your ID at the door" Explicit are welcome. This applies to sex, and violence. I'm comfortable with dark themes, and a happy ending is not a requirement. I love ships, I love genfic, I love PWP. I will read just about anything, if we're honest. While I have requested some things that are ships, please don't feel bound to write ships if it just isn't working out for you. I'm very happy to receive something that's just world building, or focused only on a single character.

The do-not-want list:
- Pregnancy, kidfic
- the "sold as a slave, falls in love with owner" trope

Things I do enjoy:
- Any and every AU you can come up. If you can build it, I'm interested. Especially if you have niche knowledge to really flesh it out, I'm down. War zone reporters? Esoteric academics? Line cooks? Marine biologists? Landscapers? Construction workers? Whatever it is, I'm down. I love AUs.
- Polyamory. I would like to avoid painful love triangles and have more poly in the world.
- Hurt/comfort fic is one of those things I enjoy, okay. A lot.
- I enjoy the slice of life, missing scene and curtain fic pieces a lot.
- Messy relationships, ones that are fucked up somehow.
- Functional relationships, people who work well together.
- Ghost stories
- The partners in crime tropes, us against the world
- Holiday fic, and all sorts of autumn/winter fic (October-December is my favorite time)
- Found families, families of choice
- Food as an expression of love, cooking, any excuse for food descriptions

Sexy times:
It's hard to find a blow job I didn't like somehow. I enjoy everything on the spectrum of enthusiastic consent to the dubcon/noncon side, vanilla to kinky. Special love for well written BDSM scenes. See my YulePorn comment for more information.

( Specific fandom information! Firewatch, Morgan (2016), Stranger Things, Crimson Peak, Ex Machina, Only Lovers Left AliveCollapse )

Going back to work today was weirdly exhausting. The effort to present a certain persona towards the public is terrible and draining. Thankfully I have tomorrow to not speak to anyone.

The beach was nice. The ocean was mostly calm, aside from a bit of storm and rough waves the first full day there. There were sea turtle nests on the beach, and big silvery fish. I ate too much ice cream, but didn't eat terribly badly. Lots of seafood, mostly grilled. Fruit. French toast one morning.

One of the things that reassured me was the complete absence of the unpleasant shortness of breath and chest pain. I've had two different doctors check me over and not find anything. It's definitely anxiety doing this.

I read a lot. An excellent, sad novel about boys sent to war. A gripping account of the end of the Comanche people and the colonization of North America. Some magazines. Didn't write a damn thing.

My quiet Sunday has been full of charging electronics and making sure they all have cables. I bought a couple new albums and rearranged my mp3 player. There's new Nick Cave and new Bastille just in time for the flight.

I'm hoping a few days away will be good. Maybe I can quit obsessing about my own mortality and my blood pressure. I probably won't be successful at this new healthier diet, but I'm going to do my best and not torture myself over it. I'm staying in this fancy hotel because I want to eat ice cream and drink wine. (I am taking some graze snacks so I'm certain to eat at least one healthy thing.)

But days on the beach, with no obligations. Paperbacks, swimming, pretty clouds, watching the sun come up over the water. With any luck, I can get some writing done and come down from this year. The next few months will be a lot of work.

I did my nomination first thing today. Got in the wives and Lady Beatrice for Crimson Peak, as well as my Firewatch Jam and ladies from Morgan. Really hoping someone else saw this movie. The reviews are terrible, which is a shame. I don't think it's terrible. It's short, so it cries out for fic and more depth.

Officially on vacation for a week now.

I think I might have to shake up my yuletide nominations just because I went to the movies tonight. I saw Morgan, and it was a crying shame that only two people were in that theater. Because it was an elegant, intense little film about humanity and consciousness and self. With bonus of having a cast that put forth many women as main characters, which is nice to see in science fiction. It's got an excellent cast, and beautiful economy of shots and frames. From Ridley Scott's kid apparently!

I have started playing Pokemon. I'm giving myself permission to just enjoy the dumb thing. But really, the genius thing is that it forces me to walk around. In the past three days I've walked for at least an hour every day, sometimes more. It's slow walking, but it's walking.

God it's so damn hot. I don't know why people enjoy summer. Fifteen minutes into a walk when the sun isn't even over the horizon and I'm already sweating. I came home the past two days and could actually wring my shirt out over the bath tub. I might just have to start wearing a back pack with more than one water bottle or something. I deeply want someone with some entrepreneurial spirit to set up a stand by the park where there are multiple stops and a gym. Someone please just sell lemonade or cookies or something. I will pay. It would be a great fundraising tactic for kids sports or charity or something.

Genuinely considering taking myself out to lunch now. Just trying to do some little things to combat the horrific summer/politics/current events depression.

Things are a bit better than last week. I have a temp crown on, and in a week or two they'll put the real thing on. It was expensive but it is crazy metal and should be good for me. My dentist is pretty kind and the best with the injections. Plus they let you flavor your nitrous - mine was mint.

Things are strange and tense on the friend front. I'm trying to just let it go. I can't control everything, no matter how hard I try.

Weird to think my birthday is in just a few days. I don't feel this old. I'm having the traditional anxiety. So many panic attacks about death.

Just trying to make it through my days. Writing, wishing some things were different, that so many people didn't suck, that the world was a little more just. I'm hoping work levels out, is less stressful for a few months until the big move.

Something I hate: Mosquitoes. Is there anything like the horror of looking down and realizing a creepy insect is stealing your blood and leaving you with itchy, terrible bumps? Not to mention the diseases. I wonder a lot if it would destroy the planet to eradicate mosquitoes.

Something I love: Marshmallows. I love the texture of marshmallow, the unrepentant sugariness, the squish of it. Marshmallows are one of my favorite things to mix into ice cream, and I've got three packs of marshmallow Peeps leftover from Easter still.

Somewhere I've been: Mont Saint Michel, which is an island depending on the tide and has a little road that winds up and up and up.

Somewhere I'd like to go: Montreal. I've never been to Canada, but it is awfully close by.

Someone I know: I feel like Mike is the obvious answer. Though I also want to say my coworker Marian, because I like that name.

A film I like: Marie Antoinette. One of my favorite period pieces, of utterly lush and gorgeous visuals with a superb soundtrack.

I caught the flu coming home from my emergency trip, probably on that hellish swing through Orlando. At first I thought it was just jet lag and being up for so long. But by the next day the fever started, and every joint in my body ached. That's the worst part of the flu, that weird diffuse pain that strikes everything. I haven't been this sick since I had bronchitis about five or six years ago, I think. I've missed work for the first time. My throat has just given up, and I've not had a voice in about two days. Amazing what you can't do when you don't have a voice - no calling the doctor's office, no drive throughs, no asking for help when you're trapped in a mess of road closures.

Mostly I resent all the wasted time that I could be doing something more productive with that sitting here hacking and staring into space because being sick is so exhausting.