quadruplify: John Watson (from BBC's Sherlock) standing in Buckingham Palace ([Sherlock] John - standing)


*taps microphone* Uh....is this thing still on?

Two years since I last updated this thing, and almost three years since a proper update. Geez. My LJ and Dreamwidth accounts have always been for myself first and foremost, but it's hard to motivate yourself to write an update when you know hardly anyone is going to read it. And this post isn't going to be an update....well, not a proper one anyway. This is just to let you all know that I'm still alive, that I hope it stays that way for a long time to come, and that I really appreciate all of you who have stuck around. ;-)

I really do miss when these places were a lot more active than they are now; even though I never met any of my "friends" in person, I felt a lot more connected with others and the world, and in turn happier and more satisfied, even when I was otherwise going through a pretty bad rough patch. And I understand why they stopped being active -- other sites (Tumblr, Twitter, etc.) are shinier and have lots more people, and LJ has always been clueless on how to run a website. :P

(Speaking of LJ: I haven't signed in to Dreamwidth ever since last year's mass exodus from LJ due to the TOS changes, and I've stuck around on LJ because I thought a lot of the issues being brought up, while certainly well-intentioned, were overblown. So if you're one of those who left, I have no clue what's been going on in your lives for the past year or so. I'm really, really sorry about that.)

But as much as I miss all the activity, I suspect that in the end it's all for the best. For one, it's not nearly as easy to find and meet new people on these newer social media sites as it was on LJ and DW, and those places are designed more to be addictive than anything else (plus, it seems like the world is finally waking up to the fact that social media really isn't the best place to have any sort of quality conversation in the first place).

More importantly, though, is that I'm not nearly the same person I was in 2010, or even in 2015. Of course in many essential ways I still am the same person, still struggling with many of the same things I was then. But the way I look at the world, the things that matter most to me, the things I'm fascinated by, the things that piss me off, all the things I want out of life -- those have changed a lot in the meantime. To the point where, if I ever did reconnect with my close LJ/DW friends, if I could get the opportunity to be open and honest with who I am and what I'm about nowadays....I'm fairly sure they wouldn't want to have anything to do with me, or maybe even wonder how the hell they were friends with me in the first place. Not just because too much time had gone by, but because our interests, opinions, and lives have diverged so greatly that there'd be little chance to make a connection even if we pretended it was the first time we'd ever met. I've already had some of these acquaintanceships end acrimoniously precisely for these reasons, so I'd rather have the rest of them simply fade away instead of ending the same way.

And while we would all like our friendships to be lifelong, more often than not the people in our lives are merely the people we need to have in our lives at that particular point in time. And as both we and them changes, and our interests and their interests change, having these same people in our lives becomes maladaptive and counterproductive. So part of life, it seems, is learning when to let them go and have new people enter our lives.

Lately I've been doing a lot of letting go. For a while now I've been done with fandom as a whole; I realized that I'm not actually the kind of person that "fits in" well with the concept of fandom, that I was faking a lot of the enthusiasm I showed for various TV shows and movies just so I could "fit in," that I'm really just a "casual" at heart, and that I was doing it only as an excuse to meet new people. Sure, I'll appreciate good fanart whenever I see it, and if a fanfic looks especially interesting I might read it, but online fandom spaces have become so toxic and depressing that it's better if I just walk away from it all.

But more importantly, my grandmother (on my mother's side of the family) passed away eight days ago; I no longer have any living grandparents. Also last week, I left a part-time job I had since December 2016. At the end of next month(!) I'll be "letting go" of stagnation by starting a master's degree program, and next year I'll be "letting go" of my twenties by turning THIRTY. ._.,

So....a lot of change has happened recently, and a lot more change is to come. Which makes this summer kind of an "in-between" period -- a good time to rest, recharge, and reflect. Which is why I've finally gotten around to updating this thing after so long.

I've had this LJ account for almost ten years now, and I've used the site regularly for a little over twelve. (The only reason I joined was to access [livejournal.com profile] mecha_erotica -- and I lied about my birthdate in order to get in because I was still in high school. XD) I've been on DW for almost eight. I've been on here so long and so consistently (even when I wasn't posting or commenting on anything) that it's felt like a home to me, like it's always been this essential part of my life. But now I think that, once I post a proper update, it's time to "let go" of LJ and DW -- if not entirely, then just as a way to communicate with other people instead of keeping it as a diary of sorts. Being active on these sites -- especially when you feel you don't get much in return -- takes a lot more effort than you'd think, and I'm going to start needing that effort for other things.

I've been putting off a proper update for so long because there's so much worth talking about, and the more time passes the more the stuff worth talking about accumulates. ^_^; Tomorrow I plan on working on it, and I should have it ready by the end of this week. In the meantime, I'd love to reconnect with you all. I'm not active at too many other places, but I definitely encourage you to add me on Facebook if you haven't already -- just please be sure to tell me your LJ/DW username first. You can also email me at james.l.hexter -AT- gmail -DOT- com -- yes, unlike most people these days it seems, I still like using email to communicate. XD

Sorry for the long radio silence, but thanks again for all you who have stuck around -- I truly appreciate it. :-)
quadruplify: Julian Minci (from Legend of the Galactic Heroes) sticking his tongue out in disgust ([LoGH] Julian - yuck)
1. So I'm sure many of you know about that video about Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony produced by the NGO Invisible Children that went viral a couple of days ago (if you don't know what I'm talking about, look up "Kony 2012" on YouTube). The video has become quite a big deal, generating a lot of buzz and publicity in a remarkably short amount of time; I've seen many people on LJ, Twitter, and Facebook talk about it, so I felt it was necessary to do a post about it, much like the 2009 protests in Iran and last year's "Arab Spring." I would make a big linkdump about it, complete with pertinent quotes, but I've been feeling too lazy and tired to do one up this time, and besides, many people have already beaten me to it:

--[livejournal.com profile] eska_rina has put together a great assortment of links and relevant quotes
--[livejournal.com profile] ontd_political has its big compendium of links here; of particular interest is The Guardian's liveblog of the fallout
--The conveniently titled "Reader's digest to Kony 2012"

I know it may seem like a ton of links to deal with, each attached to rather long reads, but I highly, highly recommend you skim them at the very least. The issues, criticisms, and commentary Invisible Children's campaign has raised can't be neatly summed up in a quick soundbite, and it's very important to read up on the issues before you decide to donate money or engage in activism -- not just on this particular issue, but on everything else as well.

I personally find myself agreeing with the backlash against IC's campaign, and while I think #Kony2012 has good intentions, it has not been thought out very well. The campaign appears to ignore much of the context of the conflict in Uganda, such as how Kony and the LRA became prominent, the circumstances in which (and reasons why) it happened, and the legacy of European colonialism and imperialism that ultimately led such a situation to come about in the first place. The campaign also paints a picture of Uganda that is overly simplistic and reductive; it plays into the common media narrative of Africa being a place of nothing but war, starvation, and poverty, and that only Americans/the West/white people can "save" Africans from this predicament. Not only is this narrative rooted in the same kinds of ideas that led European powers to colonize Africa in the first place, but it's also extremely inaccurate, given that a variety of peoples and cultures exist on the continent, that there are already many organizations on the ground in areas affected by the LRA run by Africans themselves doing the work IC claims to be doing, and that many Africans -- some of whom have been directly affected by Kony's violence -- take issue with the campaign and suggest better ways of going about it. The fact that the campaign's promoters don't appear to be listening to the voices of Africans themselves, especially those of the people they're purporting to stand for, shows how paternalistic it really is, and how it's nothing more than "Kony is evil, he used child soldiers, he must be brought to justice." Obviously Kony is evil and needs to be brought to justice, but if you think about the "nuts and bolts" of how to do it, and the consequences it might bring, then you realize just how good intentions aren't enough.

Obviously these criticisms shouldn't be an excuse to dismiss #Kony2012 as an exercise in feel-good activism targeting American college students; human rights violations are an affront to all of humanity, and we shouldn't stand by and let them happen. But creating change isn't nearly as glamorous as the video makes it out to be, and context (and the nuances, complexities, and frustrations that come with it) matters. If something seems too black-and-white, it probably is. It pays to do your research and come up with your own conclusions, and this is no exception.

*********************************************************************************************

Onto other things:

2. This is the best modern-day retelling of a fairy tale you'll see this week, hands down:



3. I don't post fic recs that often on here, but I found a great LoGH fic worth checking out: Inheritance. Cross-dressing!young!Reuenthal fic that's not crack and is actually pretty well-written? YESPLZ. :D

4. A continuation of the seven-questions meme from the last post, this time from [livejournal.com profile] iron_valkyrie :

Read more... )


Egypt #3

Feb. 2nd, 2011 08:11 pm
quadruplify: Stuart Staples (lead singer of Tindersticks) surrounded by pigeons ([Music] Tindersticks - pigeons)
The situation in Egypt seems to have taken a turn for the worse; after yesterday's peaceful "million man march" on Tahrir Square in Cairo, pro-government counter-protesters have come out of the woodwork begun clashing with the anti-Mubarak protesters who have been on the streets for the past week. Because the attacks appear to be coordinated and tend to be coming from plainclothes police and security officers, and it's very likely that Mubarak's government has planned the recent violence; as a result, three people are confirmed dead and at least 1500 others have been injured. Meanwhile, Mubarak has promised electoral reform and to step down when his term ends in September, despite continued calls for his immediate resignation. The only good that seems to have come out of today is that anti-Mubarak protesters have re-taken Tahrir Square (though this might not last for long), and the Internet in Egypt has been turned back on.

[livejournal.com profile] ontd_political has their latest live-blog here, though the one before that has an exhaustive list of liveblogs, Twitter accounts, articles, and other resources; because I won't try to replicate that here, go to those links first for the latest information. I've also been retweeting some good bits of info on my own Twitter (to all my Twitter followers: sorry about all the spam XD).

Here's a list of some of the best articles and analysis I've come across over the past couple of days. There's a lot this time, so recommended readings are in bold:

Other liveblogs I've been following:
Al Jazeera: Tuesday 2/1 || Wednesday 2/2 || Thursday 2/3
The Lede @ New York Times
Mother Jones
Mondoweiss

Cut for length... )

As always, feel free to link to this page to "boost the signal," and also if I missed anything you'd like to see in this list, let me know in the comments (especially if they're from non-mainstream or non-Western sources). Hope these posts haven't been too annoying for y'all. ;-)

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