I realize whining about whining is a special irony, but...

[mistressofmuses]

I'm already dreading tomorrow. I've gotten an absolute deluge of emails to my work email. (I don't check it on my days off, but the alerts come across my phone, so I read the preview of the message.) Already had one "hey, someone called out with Covid - please reschedule all their shit" email, plus another one with "hey, you've got a high sales goal this weekend, and I left you a note about how ridiculous the weekend is going to be, and I know you'll have no time for anything, but just in case, here's a big time-consuming project!" (As well as more forwards from that stupid callback system that came through as I'm writing this post.)

I'm just kind of in general feeling burned out, but in a way I can't even quite explain. Idk, I guess I feel like I just don't have a lot of escape right now? A lot of the burnout is work, and I'm definitely not alone in the general Pandemic Fatigue feelings. But I don't feel like I have anywhere terribly positive to retreat to.
Several communities I'm in on Facebook have been consumed with a ton of drama. (And like... sometimes extremely vitriolic hatred for the thing the community is structured around. I'm not a "never criticize a thing you like" person by any stretch, but... like, why are you bombarding fan comms with stuff about how upset you are that none of the characters are 100% good or perfect people, and you don't understand how so many people like them? Find a different show, or a different comm to complain in.)
I realize that this is also one of the big dangers of social media in general, because controversy/negativity generates clicks. But it feels like every time in the last week I've scrolled through FB or tumblr for more than about five minutes I've been hit with SOME kind of big drama of some kind, whether it's serious or not. (Like my rant about the Perseverance landing... it feels like anything that any number of people are happy about invites at least some subset of people to barge in and tell them how awful they are for it. Not just a refusal to enjoy it, but to actively attack people for being happy about something.) It's not like that's a new phenomenon, it just feels like it's hit a lot of places extra hard in the last week or so, or maybe I'm just oversensitive to it.
The obvious answer is to probably just take a break from that kind of stuff... but then that means that I have NO social interaction whatsoever, so I feel a little... trapped. I can read/watch/listen/play my own stuff, but I'm a fannish creature: I want to share my enjoyment.

DW tends to be the lowest drama space (or at least people keep it in appropriate places), so maybe I should just stick to here, haha.

I did finish River of Teeth last night, and really enjoyed it! It was far more on the "brain candy" side of the scale than the "serious literature" side, but I really want to be clear that that is not a complaint! It was a fast read, and I had fun the whole time. It was like reading my own "every trope I want to see in one id-fic" as written by someone else. "Here's a fun alternate history, featuring an ensemble cast that mostly have various shades of grey morality, but also it is just going to be like SUPER queer, and secretly it's about Revenge." Also feral hippos.
Honestly, I do think it might have been better extended into a novel, so that some of the tension and character dynamics could have been a little more drawn out, but if that's the worst I can say about it...

I'm gonna take the dog out, and maybe nudge Alex, since I don't think he wanted to take a nap quite this long.

Comments

[olivermoss]

"I'm definitely not alone in the general Pandemic Fatigue feelings. But I don't feel like I have anywhere terribly positive to retreat to.
Several communities I'm in on Facebook have been consumed with a ton of drama"

I've seen a lot of this the past few months. For me, it was like the inaugeration not instantly solving everything caused people to explode. The one Discord server I was on where it's local people I know IRL has become beyond wanky. It was really, really messing with me how all my communities were exploding.

Leverage fandom starting to exist again has helped, but also after how insane all my comms have been for a while I need to keep checking myself so I'm not also falling into being oversensitive.

[mistressofmuses]

YES THIS. God, the people who have just FLIPPED THEIR SHIT because things weren't fixed overnight have been exhausting. Having that in all of my real life-adjacent spaces, plus the wankery of having people come into fan comms to bitch about the source material, plus general non-specific fandom drama (the wank around ao3 and That One Fic and the trolling responses), plus non-fandom hobby dramas... it's just a lot.

[olivermoss]

People really jumped on That One Fic and made it a bigger deal than it should have been. It's not 'holding Ao3 hostage' or causing any policy changes. People are just desperate for there to some epic low stakes drama going on.

[mistressofmuses]

Right?? I think a lot of people have blown that WILDLY out of proportion, and also tried to turn it into things that it isn't, re: ao3 policy change.

[scarlipswolfwife]

I get that. I'm not in a lot of fannish things on FB, though I have a variety of Loki groups - either actual god Loki or MCU Loki, and so far, those tend to be pretty drama-free. Thankfully. Most of the drama I deal with is just people in general posting political stuff, though over the last couple of months, I've unfollowed the conservative ones or outright unfriended.

I don't know what to say about Tumblr since we're in different fandoms, and my fandoms seem to be pretty drama-free, but that's probably also because I only follow certain people who seem to go out of their way to remain drama-free. *hugshugs*

[mistressofmuses]

I'm only in a handful of fannish FB spaces (one for Good Omens memes and one for The Magnus Archives are the only ones that are terribly active). I'm very glad your spaces are pretty drama-free! These were, but then there was just like a RASH of drama in the TMA one. (A lot of it seems to be spillover from wank that was already around on twitter and tumblr.)
The political stuff is another source of frustration. I've pretty much curated my experience to unfriend/unfollow/mute the conservative jackwads, but a handful of the leftist friends and spaces I'm connected to feel nearly as toxic these days.

I try not to engage overmuch with fandoms on tumblr. I like and reblog a lot, but try to avoid commenting on much anymore. It feels like a lot of it has been broader fandom stuff, like the stuff about That One Fic on ao3 that has thousands of tags and is fucking up the site for a lot of people. And the aforementioned TMA drama. (This horror podcast that has had themes of possession and corruption and replacement from the start isn't about squeaky-clean perfect 100% lawful good characters, and even the protagonist has done bad things? HOW DARE!) Fandom purity culture remains the goddamn worst.

[scarlipswolfwife]

My FB is a lot like my Tumblr: interests and fandoms all over the place, as I'm sure you've seen on both. I follow a crazy number of tea, flower, Loki (Marvel and myth), and a couple of different political groups (Americans Against the Republican Party and Democratic Socialists are my two big ones). For every ranty political thing I repost, I respost dozens of happy tea, flower, dog/cat, Loki and other MCU-related posts as well as personal things that aren't so Hulk-mood, so I hope it evens out.

I engage with the people I follow and who follow me. Well. The people who follow me that I follow back. There are quite a few people who follow me that I don't follow in return. There is a lot of drama in all fandoms. I just seem to side-step the drama quite a bit. It's pretty easy when you blacklist enough of the trigger terms and topics. Yeah, the purity culture crap is getting REAL old, but I'm lucky that most of the people I follow are vocally against the purity culture and villain police.

Yeah, I keep seeing things about That One Fic that's giving AO3 headaches. That's so sucky of that person who did that. AO3 is the best place for fanfic I've ever been a part of. I love it. And people trying to fuck it up because they don't like incest fic is just bullshit. I figure I'm going to get shit for a fic I'm planning to write - it's a crossover rarepair: Tony Stark/Chris Knight (from Real Genius), and I'm planning on potentially setting it when Chris is 19 and Tony might be 17. I might make it a little older? I might make it where Chris is 18 and Tony is 16. It's not going to be full-sex but at least making out. But yeah, I suspect people will raise a little hell about that because of the ages. But shit. That's what AO3 is set up for.

[mistressofmuses]

Yup! I like the mix of things you post!
My issue isn't with ranty political things, or people pushing for better, so much as the sneering ultra-leftist "see, this is why anyone who votes is STUPID, and if you DID vote, then you literally deserve to die because you didn't somehow overturn the whole entire political system neither did we, but at least we can be smug about not voting, sheeple."

And yes, I'm mostly pretty happy with my small bubble of curated tumblrs and fb friends. I interact... very little, beyond liking/reacting/reblogging, but I'm trying to at least comment here and there. I try my best to sidestep the drama, but some of my friends have gotten pulled into it for having "problematic" ships or shows or whatever. (And unfortunately, my favorite 'ship is kind of split between similarly chill ship-and-let-ship types and vicious hatred for a once-fandom-fave-now-deemed-problematic ship.)

It is extremely shitty how that one person has acted. I really do love ao3, and while I know that the issues will be dealt with, it's frustrating that people are giving this shitty person's behavior the "credit" for potential archive tools and policies that have been in the works for a long while. And the anti-ao3 attacks because they allow "bad" content will forever make me angry.
Enjoy writing that fic! I hope you don't get too much shit for it. The amount of ridiculous contorting that antis will do to deem a ship or a fic problematic is truly something to behold.

[scarlipswolfwife]

Oh...oh yeah. I hate that. I've got a couple of friends who post anti-Biden stuff as well as anti-Trump, and I mean. Biden wasn't my first choice, even though I like him as a compassionate human being. But there's this one guy who doesn't just post the anti-Biden memes. His posts come with comments like, "I told you so. I told you so the whole time." (a general 'you', not to me specifically), and they always put me on the defensive and I constantly want to comment, "Okay you're right. I should've just not voted at all and let Trump win because obviously he would've been better than Biden." Because last November our choices were Biden and Trump. Bernie was not a fucking option. I wasn't going to divide the vote and let Trump win by sour grapes voting for Bernie. It just pisses me off. I haven't commented on his posts because...why bother? He'll never see it.

Oh...yeah. "Problematic" ships. I really hate the word problematic. I hate it. I'm sure it should be a good and useful word, but it's become the catchphrase for all the little anti's out there and it has been for a while that it just makes me cringe.

Oh I doubt I'll get too much shit for it. I mean, my stuff isn't that widely read. I'm getting a lot for Hemispheres because it's a long WIP and it's Tony/Loki, which is a pretty popular ship, but my Bruce/Jane fic has gotten so few hits as has my Emma/Tony one.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, I have several VERY leftist 'friends' (/acquaintances), and... like, I agree with them on a lot of things, including what I'd consider ideal in terms of politics and economics etc. But we disagree vehemently about what it means to move toward those things. To so many of them, incremental progress is literally worse than no progress at all, and anything other than their own version of perfection should be torn down with equal viciousness. Same where I'm just starting to use the 30 day mute button instead of even trying to comment.

I hate that "problematic" has become such a trashed word. Because it IS a useful word... or at least it used to be, until it became an all-purpose bludgeoning tool losing all aspects of critical thought behind it.

I'm glad your current project is going well! I know it's hard to get much readership for anything that falls in rarepair territory.

[scarlipswolfwife]

Exactly that! The people I know who are bitching the loudest about Biden keep posting things like "Biden gimme my money" -- uh. He's trying. He's also got the whole world to deal with as well. But yeah, incremental changes to them aren't good enough, and yes, I would love monumental changes, but humans don't deal well with that. A lot of humans freak the fuck out over monumental changes. I mean, shit, I want to see them march the neo-Nazi insurrectionists (and well, ALL neo-Nazis, tbh) and shoot them, but that sure as fuck isn't gonna happen. I use the 'hide' option, and when there's the chance to 'hide all by' when it's not specifically my friends' themselves that'll be hidden, I do that. If it keeps up, I'll use the 'unfollow' option and just check on their profiles occasionally, and then if I have to, I unfriend. My sister uses the mute for thirty days thing with certain people because she hates to cut ties.

Yeah, that's my problem with 'problematic'. It's become a catch-all phrase for antis, and it just is annoying. Like. If you don't like incest fics, how about...you don't bother reading them? If you, like me, don't like rape fics, do what I do. I don't read them! And there are so many reasons out there why non-pedophiles write fics with underage characters, but like...they're not fucking children? I honestly drawn the line at 16+ because I don't tend to think of 16 year olds as children. I didn't when I was 16, and I don't now. If it's a 16 year old with someone in their 20s+, yeah, OKAY, I'm gonna side-eye that so fucking hard and poke away the old person with a stick, but I'm also going to smack the shit out of the 16 year old because they shouldn't be hitting on an older person when they are aware that it could get the older person tossed in prison, and the older person might be telling them NO NO NO but still get in trouble if the 16 year old wants to pout about it and lie. And it does happen. I knew girls in high school who would pull that shit when they were butthurt because and older person would tell them no. One even proudly told me, "I'll say that they raped me." UGHHHHHH NOOOOOO LITTLE BITCH. But I mean. If my 16/17 year old Tony Stark with 19 year old Chris Knight isn't what someone's comfortable reading, DON'T READ IT. I'm not forcing people at gunpoint. Ugh.

Oh and random to this post, but I called it. Jean Grey kicked in my uterus this morning. Joy. Which also means that she'll kick in my uterus around this same time next month probably, which means she's showing up for my birthday. -_- Bitch.

[mistressofmuses]

I *really* wish that some of the loudest critics, especially the ones who like to set themselves up as some kind of political experts, would try to understand how... things work? That the president really does not actually have the power to just make the house or senate do everything he wants immediately?
I would LOVE for everything to change drastically and suddenly get everything I want from a political and social system. And I am still angry and want to continue to fight for that, and no, there shouldn't be ANY people still suffering. BUT. A world where *fewer* people have to fear for their lives and safety is worth something. I want it to be zero, but I'll take harm reduction over the alternative.

YUP. There's a lot of stuff that I don't want to read, and having it tagged means that I handily don't have to! There are so many reasons that people write, and the attitude that writing something is an uncritical endorsement of the topic needs to fucking die. (And yeah, a 2-3 year age gap is not fucking pedophilia, fuck off with that minimizing bullshit.)

Ugh, yuck. What a bitch. -_-

[scarlipswolfwife]

Yes, yes that's it. I mean, I don't claim to know exactly how all aspects of the gov't work, but I do know that a president can't make all decisions on his own, esp not that fast. That would be a dictatorship, which is what we were founded to not be.

YES. I read tags. I TRY to always read tags, and when I forget to and just throw myself into a fic, as soon as I run into something that's a no-no for me, I scroll back up and generally see that yes, they DID tag it with that stuff, and I was too hasty to start reading a fic before I checked out the tags. So I'm trying to put myself into the habit of reading the damned tags, and then I can determine if the writer is good enough to make me like it despite the things in the tags that will normally make me not like a fic. And yeah, I'm tired of tiptoeing around the purity culture.

Yeah...what an absolute bitch. I'm so ready to be done with periods.