Ashley aka Anoel | she/her 🏳️🌈 30something | Currently mostly into Hacks (Avorah). | Find my vids on Youtube or AO3 @anoel (all platforms except anoel_43 on Tiktok)
I know this post is for a very small audience here on Tumblr but some of my oldest friends I met on LiveJournal are still here, so I'm making it anyway just in case.
But there have been some changes at LJ recently that do not bode well at all. Rahaeli made a thread about it on bsky with some more worrying details. For a bit of background on this, LJ is surprisingly big in Russia. Like way more than on the western side, and it's been owned by a Russian company for a long time now (it wasn't always - there was a big controversy when LJ got sold to the Russians back in the day).
The Russian side of LJ dropped a very big change on Dec 29th without warning on their users, essentially making it so they'd have to register their ID or bank info with LJ to post or comment. Any posts from people outside of Russia, or without Cyrillic services turned on, are invisible and can't be interacted with by people inside Russia. It's nearly impossible to turn Cyrillic services on if you're not in Russia either, so there's a big wall now between both sets of users. Rahaeli speculates that this could mean the Russian company that owns LJ could be considering selling off or just shutting down the western side of LJ soon, thus why they're sectioning it off. There's been no mention of this on the western LJ news comms or anything which is also worrying.
Fandom's moved on from LJ now, but that doesn't mean that a large chunk of old fandom didn't take place there before, and if LJ does go down then tons of fic, fanart, meta, communities, kinkmemes, discussions, rp, goes down with it. Everything up in smoke! I think people underestimate sometimes just how much stuff went on there. LJ being dead is much different than LJ being gone... the thought of it really disappearing after all this time breaks my heart. I've spent so much of my life there, even after everyone else left. ;_;
But how to do your backups? Dreamwidth is an easy answer as an LJ clone, with an automated importer that'll snag all your stuff and move it over for you. Another tool I've been using is ljArchive, specifically this fork of it which will also save comments and communities, although it won't get userpics. There's also LJ Archivr, although that one costs money, and I think some others are mentioned in the bsky thread. Whatever you pick, I'd do it sooner than later.
This little notion has been tumbling* around in my head these last few days, and I have a lot of feelings about it, so I'm gonna share those with you!
tl;dr what if Ava and Deborah returned from Singapore to find out that DJ and Nina had become besties after being left behind by their mother and daughter respectively?
This idea came out of me having so many feelings about DJ over the last couple of episodes. How did she feel watching her mom give up the biggest dream she'd ever had, stepping off the peak of a career that had always, always come before DJ, for someone else? For Ava, specifically—Ava, who just appeared a couple of years ago and upended everything, Ava, who DJ had just shown such tremendous grace towards in naming her AJ's godmother? How does this hit her? What is she feeling? And then, just a couple of months after she has her first child, her mom—who, for the first time ever, has nothing else to prioritize over DJ and her grandson—fucks off to Singapore (with Ava!) for eight months and misses basically AJ's entire first year?
And then, on the other hand, there's Nina—Nina, who's alone and floundering, who feels replaced by Deborah (let her and her alone think that Deborah's a mother figure to Ava, the truth is so much worse), who's never going to be a grandma, and who's never met a scam she doesn't want to invest her entire personality into. Nina, losing her mind over the fact that Ava's doesn't have a job anymore and has been kidnapped and will apparently be in Singapore indefinitely?
So like...imagine Nina shows up at DJ's house, freaking out. (DJ doesn't know how she found her address or why Nina, who she's met like twice and whose name she definitely doesn't remember, is acting like DJ's her best and only friend.) DJ's having big feelings herself, but—the crucial but!—DJ's been to therapy and has coping skills. Lots of them.
"Um, okay," she says, trying to peel Nina off of her. "Let's, uh, let's get you a drink."
And Nina's a little nuts, yeah, but Nina also lights up when she sees AJ, cries a little when she holds him, and within twenty minutes has committed all of her lawsuit winnings to his college fund despite DJ's many assurances that that's not necessary and is in fact kind of weird. Nina has like six different tinctures of suspicious natures in her suitcase and when Aidan comes home with a split lip, it turns out one of them actually really helps. (The other turns his tongue a little blue, but she assures him that's normal.) Nina LOVES jewelry, actually, she can't believe she didn't pack any, but she buys everything DJ thinks works for her with the money left over from AJ's short-lived college fund.
Nina's a mom overflowing with love and desperate for connection. DJ's a daughter who's never had that, and actually, it turns out, really, really likes it. A surprising amount.
Nina moves to Vegas. She does not move in with DJ, despite her initial assumptions that she'd be a live-in grandma. This, she comes to understand, is a boundary that DJ's set. DJ's very good at boundaries. DJ's therapist recommends another therapist who's also very good at boundaries, and helps Nina learn about them. Nina's therapist helps her with a lot.
And sure, she doesn't live with DJ and Aidan and AJ, but she's there every few days for family dinner. She watches AJ all the time, and is absolutely positive that Josefina is only there to keep her company when she's otherwise alone with the baby. (Josefina never tells her otherwise.) Nina learns the art of a good con from DJ, and joins her at church every Sunday to peddle the goods. She calls up some of her friends from her previous MLMs, makes a Youtube video about how to extract .zip files to browse through the full lookbook (cheapest pieces starting at $350 for unique, high-quality, hand-tumbled gems carefully set in rare metals), and sets up a little packing station to mail them across the country, all while raking in alllllll of that sweet, sweet suburban housewife lawsuit settlement cash. DJ even lets her help with the rock tumbling sometimes.
Nina cheers the loudest at Aidan's fights. DJ celebrates with her each time she catches herself spiraling into anxiety and uses her coping skills. Nina cries a lot the first time DJ calls her "Grandma Nina" to AJ, and honestly, DJ gets a little misty too.
"It's just so easy with you," Nina tells her one evening in the back yard, a couple of drinks in. "It was never like this with Ava."
"Nothing was ever easy with my mom," DJ replies. Nina's not exactly a walk in the park (she thinks but doesn't say), but she's so much easier than Deborah ever was. And she's there. She wants to be there. She's trying to get better, and doing the work.
Deborah never did that. Not for her.
Nina's there when the TMZ article drops and DJ's phone starts blowing up. DJ goes strangely calm, calling Aidan and asking him to come home, please, apparently her mom is dead. She picks up her son and sits on the couch, not really there. She holds him, trying to pick out five things she can see, four things she can hear. In the background, Nina starts calling Ava frantically. No answer.
Nina's making tea—she doesn't drink tea, and neither does DJ, but it's what you do, isn't it?—when DJ's phone rings. Nina immediately grabs it.
"Ava! I've been calling you for an hour, I can't believe—are you okay, are you coming home? Josefina's getting the house ready, my apartment is only a one bedroom but things are going really well with d'Jewelry, I was looking at the place that you used to live, actually, you know, the mall? But—no, I'm sorry, Ava, what happened? No one knows anything and DJ—oh honey it's so sad, she's barely moved and she hasn't said a word, though AJ's starting to talk, I think he actually said Aunt Deborah the other day, or, well, I think he was trying to, it didn't quite—but it's almost like he knew, do you think..."
Silence for several stunned seconds, which isn't actually silence because Nina doesn't stop talking, and then:
Come into a fandom late. Leave early. Write 100 fics. Write 1. Write none. Read every single fic written in your fandom. Read only your OTP. Write only your OTP. Write every pairing under the sun. Make gifs just for your friends. Make gifs to share with everyone. Make art. Make nothing.
Cheerlead from afar and keep to yourself. Join a groupchat. Yell about headcanons with your friends. Leave kudos. Leave comments. Make fic recs. Bookmark everything. Read or watch and then forget it.
Treat canon like gospel. Treat canon like a dumpster fire. Only read/write/art coffeeshop AUs. Decide your corner will be all hurt no comfort. Decide your corner will be all fluff no angst.
Fandom isn't one size fits all, and there is no one right way to do it. So find what works for you, and don't worry about all of the outside noise. It doesn't matter how everyone else does fandom.
art will save you, being unreasonably passionate about something niche will save you, letting past sources of joy show you the way back to yourself will save you, earnestness over composure will save you, the natural world will save you, caring for something bigger than yourself will save you, daring to be seen will save you, kindness not as a whim but a principle will save you, appreciation as a practice will save you, daring to try something new will save you, grounding will save you, love will save you, one good nights sleep will save you
andulkaphoto
snowghoul
janainaart
yousharknotpass
