11.17.2023
Lyric of the Day: My love, it got its lick back / Destroyed me, I deserved that / Tell the truth, tell the truth / Why can't I ever love like you?
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I've been way too busy with writing lately to keep my diary updated...! I'm participating in NaNoWriMo, which is every November. It challenges writers to write a 50k novel in a month! I'm not doing that, though. I'm just using the month as an opportunity to focus a lot more on my writing, to see how high my word count will go, without a set goal! So far, I've written 2 Gary and Marshall Lee fanfics, one Owl House fanfic, one article for my site, one essay (which technically I had to do for school, but I'm counting anyway because it's still writing!), and one page for a shrine! Writing it all down like that sorta makes me realize how much I've done, even if I've felt like I've been slacking. (This diary entry is also going towards my word count, by the way. I make the rules! It's actually what pushed my word count over 10k.)
In the meantime, there was a scare with the end of tumblr recently! As per usual. There was a statement that was meant to remain between the staff of tumblr that got leaked, that revealed that tumblr's team was gonna be largely cut down. A lot of people figured this was the site getting ready to shut down, with the staff being slowly downgraded until it sunsets.
But, of course, everyone was panicking over nothing, per usual with tumblr's many greatly-exaggerated "deaths". The CEO held an AMA where he cleared up a lot of things. Mainly that, yes, the site is cutting down its staff, but it's planning to dedicate that staff to honing the core features of the site. He seems rather optimistic about the team downsizing. A quote that REALLY gives me hope is, "I think one fair criticism of our 600+ person-years of effort we've put in since the acquisition of Tumblr was that we were spread too thin. We spent a lot of time and effort on things that weren't well received, and neglected some core functionality and stability. In 2024 we'll try to hone in on making the core parts of Tumblr that people love really hum and work well. The good news is, we've learned what didn't work! And won't do those things again." AND he revealed that the reason tumblr was pushing Live so damn hard was because of a literal contractual obligation to try and make it as successful as possible. This contract is set to expire at the end of this year, where the tumblr team will "re-assess whether it should be a part of the tumblr app anymore".
Needless to say, we are SO fucking back. (Per usual, following a period of, "It's so over.") I'm actually feeling optimistic about tumblr for the first time in a while! And maybe it's the corporate propaganda working on me (especially because reading about how much they're struggling DID make me buy a year of ad-free tumblr), but I can have a little capitalistic brainwashing, as a treat.
In other social media-related news, I've been watching a lot of a particular V-Tuber lately! I've only really watched one V-Tuber regularly before, and that was Dollip Daze. But I was watching her well before she had a V-Tuber model, and fell off of watching her a while ago, because she doesn't stream many games that I'm interested in anymore (although I do still tune in when she's playing something I'm familiar with). Some months ago, though, I started watching Andou! He's a genderfluid imp who mainly does art streams. I originally learned about them through Verdant sending me their model and telling me that it was my gender, which... Yeah, he got me there. (Fat genderweird demon who loves sweets and has a predominantly pink color palette? AND she has two models to switch between genders? He just like me, for real, for real...) So, I followed them! I was a passive fan, but I started REALLY getting into watching him after I got a notification for him doing a stream dedicated to the indie web (where I, of course, was very active in the chat the whole time, because I'm very autistic about the subject). The vibe there was a lot different compared to Dollip, because Dollip usually pays more attention to what she's doing, while Andou pretty obviously prioritizes fostering a community, and responds to chat messages a lot more often. She's the first V-Tuber I've watched that I've really connected to (although, of course, I take care to check myself for parasocialisms regularly).
In recent happenings: I'm no longer the president of my college's Neurodiversity Club. Thank God. After the trip I went on for the club, we had a meeting where everyone was saying, "This isn't just a laid-back social club anymore! We have a platform! We need to make big social changes and big steps!" And I was just sitting there like...
GIRL, I SIGNED UP TO BE PRESIDENT OF A LAID-BACK SOCIAL CLUB!
I am also currently writing this around an hour and a half before I'm going to give my panel at Othercon!! The one I mentioned in my March diary entries; the one on alterhumanity and autism that I did a poll for. AHH! I'm so excited but so nervous...! I'm not really good at speaking for long periods of time... But I have water and cough drops and also a script for the majority of the panel. So! Hopefully, that means it'll be okay! I put a lot of love into the panel, so I hope everyone will like it!!
Needless to say, when one of the higher officers approached me to ask me to step down (essentially saying, "Your strengths lie in the activities (read: the laid-back social club stuff), but we should have someone else as president moving forward"), I was like, "Oh, thank God."
There's also some school stuff going on right now (damn biology class), but I'll talk about that in my next entry, I think. Ciao!