#quantum thoughts

[wearequantum]

First of all, yes, I'm very upset about Simply Plural shutting down. Thank god that systems have until June to figure something else out, but holy moly.

Second, the way this situation is being handled just smacks of "long-standing problem reached its boiling point and a hasty decision was made" to me. As someone with BPD who struggled for a long time with both conflict resolution and impulse control, I have so much experience in letting a problem get worse and worse until it blows up in a catastrophic way, and that's how this feels. Amaryllis was clearly struggling to keep things going, overwhelmed by how big it all was getting, yet refused to let anyone help them or take steps back to recover. Then, all at once, they shut everything down and block all criticism, disregarding how many people they're affecting.

This is complete speculation, though. I do agree with all the posts saying this should've been handled differently. Amaryllis does have a dev team, does have financial support, does have the option to make SP's code open-source. And yet they're shutting everything down due to personal issues. I know they're struggling, but it's not just about them anymore; it's about the system community that you brought along with you too.

Please pass on development or even just maintenance to someone else, or make the code open source, or SOMETHING. You are robbing vulnerable people of a vital accessibility tool.

[wearequantum]

Welp, today's apparently a good day to never have messed with Octocon 🙃

On a more serious note, I haven't seen many people point out that Amaryllis should never have pointed to one specific tool that SP users could flock to, even if Atlas agreed to it. Amaryllis, someone who claimed to be overwhelmed as a one-person developer, saddled another one-person developer with all of the systems they abandoned. Big shocker that Octocon is now shutting down /s

Anyway, Ourcana looks promising.

[wearequantum]

I catch myself avoiding logging switches, even when I can clearly feel them happening. This started before I even came out of dormancy. It's as if logging the switch will admit it's real, and whoever it is will get scared into hiding again. We desperately crave switches, to be able to stretch in the body and feel slightly less cramped in headspace, but the brain is terrified of them.

Continued fear of discovery, I see. Guess that habit dies hard.

- Aegis 🪼

[wearequantum]

Praying that Amaryllis manages to create a self-hosting option for SP. I find myself scrolling through our hundreds of profiles, seeing all the picrews and notes left from others, and end up on the verge of tears. We're losing five years of memories, messages, and hard work. No alternative can replace that. No amount of transferring these memories can replace the origin.

We were an ever-expanding universe. We tried offline options so many times, but it was never practical with the 1300 shards that make up our mural. Simply Plural became our home. And now, perhaps due to our ignorance, that home is being stripped from us.

[wearequantum]

Great, our anxiety about SP has us avoiding logging switches again. Great. Fantastic. Exactly what I wanted.

I'm going to purposefully talk about something positive to spite the universe. Our system partner has slowly started feeling more comfortable switching around us, and it's incredible to see. The progress she's made in the past three years is inspiring ♡

[wearequantum]

Spent at least 6 (probably closer to 8 or 9) hours transferring information from our Simply Plural to a plain spreadsheet. We managed to get the basic information of about 303 profiles onto there, which is impressive, but we still have over a thousand to go... Not to mention, there's no easy way to export all of the icons we've spent hundreds of hours trying to upload, so every fragment felt like they had that tiny bit of dignity. Still holding onto the naive hope that something will happen to allow SP to keep running indefinitely, but it's good to have this information stored offline regardless.

And btw, to all these accounts that are STILL calling systems entitled and spoiled for being upset that an app is shutting down are completely missing the point. We're not upset just because a tool we like is being taken away, we're upset because 1) there's nothing else on the market that's like SP, 2) there were a number of other choices the dev could've made that would've done less damage, and 3) SP HAS BECOME AN ACCESSIBILITY TOOL FOR 500,000+ SYSTEMS. Stop fucking telling us that we're whining over nothing. Even if there's nothing else that could've been done, we're allowed to be upset. Systems get enough loss in our lives, just let us grieve, please.

[wearequantum]

1. hyperfixate on system

2. start to categorize system and take notes

3. become dissociated and blurry for __ hours

4. repeat steps 1 thru 3 until desired results

[wearequantum]

Staring down our Simply Plural page until one of these fuckers front