#What is WordPress Maintainance

[wpbunch2023]

A Complete Guide to WordPress Website Maintenance!

You didn't know what is wordpress maintainance? Look no further, WP Bunch provides all details like, WordPress Maintenance Tasks, Tips. A WordPress Maintenance Tasks is divided into 3 parts that is Daily Updates, Backing Website, etc. To build build Wordpress site visit our Top Website Development Company in India!

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Could you tell me a little more about any strategies/tactics you use or have used to start and maintain your writing income from Patreon/Ko-Fi? Or if you happen to have any recommended reading for aspiring writers who might want to follow that route? Thank you!

sign up for Patreon and/or ko-fi (this is free). Set up your page.

start writing your web serial. Update regularly -- this is the #1 most important factor. Have a SCHEDULE, and STICK TO THE SCHEDULE. If you vanish for months at a time, you will fail. Andrew Hussie can get away with that shit. You're not Andrew Hussie.

You can put your web serial on a website designed for it, like Royal Road. Or you can have your own website, which is what I did. Places like Wordpress will let you build a website for free. After I started making enough money to pay for a website, I switched to that, but you absolutely can start with a free one. I used a free one for years.

Market it, I guess? I don't really know how to do this part. I just mentioned it and linked from Tumblr and that seemed to work. Offer bonuses to Patreon/ko-fi supporters; their name in the credits and access to chapters in advance are popular bonuses.

Over time, you should gain momentum. At least, I did. I don't know what the average success rate for this it. I can tell you that it took four years for my writing to start paying my mortgage; I don't know if that's fast or slow.

That's basically it. Get started, be consistent, make it easy for people to find and support you. There's no reason not to get started as soon as you have the time to write consistently, because getting started is free and time is a big factor in building momentum.

[telltaletypist]

the fact that authors have to have and maintain a substantial social media presence to even get their foot in the door and are expected to basically do all the marketing and promotion for their books themselves is so fucked. like what's even the point of seeking a publisher at all then what do they even do anymore?

might as well post my shit on wordpress and hope i become a fluke online hit since that's apparently only way to succeed in any creative field now

[copperbadge]

Howdy! I am considering submitting manuscripts I've written to a publisher or possibly self publishing. The publisher states on their website that authors must maintain an active social media presence. I'm not normally a social media type, Tumblr is my only one. What would you reccommend for such? Is it worth it to pay someone to make a website for me? Thanks and many virtual kisses for Dot and Deebs!

Honestly, I haven't submitted to a publisher since before a lot of modern social media existed. :D

It is my understanding, but this is secondhand information, that publishers want you to have either a twitter or a tiktok, preferably both, where you're frequently active and have a high follower count, because they want you to be able to publicize your book on it. One of many reasons I don't even consider trad publishing anymore is that I don't want to spend a significant chunk of my time filming videos for the sole purpose of hawking my books.

Now, as I said, that's an inference I've drawn; you may want to speak to someone who has been trad published recently to get the inside scoop (readers if you work in publishing or have been published recently, feel free to add commentary; remember to comment or reblogs, as I don't repost asks sent in response to other asks). I do have an author website but I built my own; I don't know what the going rate is for paying someone to build one these days but most website platforms are pretty intuitive to use -- I built mine on Wordpress and I'm building a new one on Wix currently, and at this point both are very drag-and-drop oriented. I do think a website is a good thing for an author to have, but I wouldn't pay someone to build one for you until you've taken a swing at DIY and decided it's not where you want to spend your time and energy.

In terms of self-publishing, the good news is that none of the rules apply; this is also the bad news. :D Because the thing about selfpub is that you either pay or DIY for...everything. It can be very inexpensive; when I publish a book the only direct monetary cost is what I pay for an ISBN and a proof copy of the book, which I will make back in the first 10 sales or so. However, I am "paying" in man hours in terms of typesetting, cover design, uploading the PDFs to lulu.com, proofing the initial copy, correcting the proof and reuploading (which usually involves further typesetting), and of course all the publicity -- website design and redesign, copywriting, tumblr posting. And while my profit per copy sold is well above what most authors with traditional publishers will make, that's because the publisher is doing a lot of the work for you. And, because I don't have an active twitter or tiktok or a publisher, my books are not very widely publicized. Undoubtedly I sell fewer copies than I would if I had a robust twitter following, but catch me touching that rancid wasteland without inch-thick gloves on.

So -- I think it's probably pretty important to understand that I have deliberately rejected trad publishing for good but not lucrative reasons, and I'm considered at best an iconoclast and more commonly a crank for having done so. If you can go the tradpub route, I would, but I also wouldn't put any money you're not prepared to write off as a loss into that pursuit. Definitely I would see if there's anyone in the industry you can reach out to who can answer these questions with a more thorough understanding of what publishers look for in an author and how to go about achieving that than I possess.

In any case, good luck! It's a journey regardless and I hope you enjoy your time on the path wherever you end up. And I'll give the cryptids a special cuddle for ya.

[wip]

Realizing that Tumblr users can easily follow my posts, I'm considering how to engage users without accounts. I seek auto email subscription tools to encourage visitor interaction without mandatory sign-ups. Platforms like Medium and Substack offer such services, yet lack theme customization. On the flip side, Webflow, Wix, and Wordpress allow theme customization but lack email subscription options. There's a notable gap, and I believe Tumblr, with its focus on creativity, could bridge this.

Answer: Hi, @shahrishi!

As it happens, we, too, don’t dig anything that prevents non-logged-in people from seeing content on a network either—but it’s also true that requiring an account more often has helped Tumblr grow a fair bit in the last couple of years, so there’s a balance we’re trying to maintain. However, easing up that login wall is unlikely as things stand today. But we do have a suggestion. A loophole, if you will.

We would remind you that every blog on Tumblr has an RSS feed that’s free to use and doesn’t have any login wall—just add /rss to any blog URL, i.e., https://cyle.tumblr.com/rss.

We understand this is probably not exactly what you’re looking for, but maybe in the same direction. We hope it helps either way—and thank you for your question.

[xenosagaepisodeone]

I want to know how locking information behind discord servers became so common practice when the entire process of creating, moderating and maintaining a discord server is easily far more taxing then just setting up a wordpress or tumblr. I imagine that the social element acts as a 24/7 help desk for any questions or issues you might have, but you cant tell me that this cant be facilitated on a public forum of some kind that will not also require me to oblige some arbitrarily determined posting etiquette to get what i want. You might as well be asking me to join a cult by forcing me to join your discord server just to get a link to a game download or some kind of guide.

[anarchywoofwoof]

Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, is required to remove a controversial login checkbox from WordPress.org and let WP Engine back into its ecosystem after a judge granted WP Engine a preliminary injunction in its ongoing lawsuit.  In addition to removing the checkbox—which requires users to denounce WP Engine before proceeding—the preliminary injunction orders that Automattic is enjoined from “blocking, disabling, or interfering with WP Engine’s and/or its employees’, users’, customers’, or partners’ access to wordpress.org” or “interfering with WP Engine’s control over, or access to, plugins or extensions (and their respective directory listings) hosted on wordpress.org that were developed, published, or maintained by WP Engine,” the order states. In the immediate aftermath of the decision, Automattic founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg asked for his account to be deleted from the Post Status Slack, which is a popular community for businesses and people who work on WordPress’s open-source tools. 

“It's hard to imagine wanting to continue to working on WordPress after this,” he wrote in that Slack, according to a screenshot viewed by 404 Media. “I'm sick and disgusted to be legally compelled to provide free labor to an organization as parasitic and exploitive as WP Engine. I hope you all get what you and WP Engine wanted.” His username on that Slack has been changed to “gone 💀” Mullenweg began to publicly denounce WP Engine in September, calling the web hosting platform a “cancer” to the larger Wordpress open-source project and accusing it of improperly using the WordPress brand. He’s “at war” with WP Engine, in his own words.  In October, Mullenweg added a required checkbox at login for WordPres.org, forcing users to agree that they are not affiliated with WP Engine. The checkbox asked users to confirm, “I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise.” The checkbox was still present and required on the WordPress.org login page as of Wednesday morning. Automattic and Mullenweg have 72 hours from the order to take it down, according to the judge’s order.  WP Engine sent a cease and desist demanding that he “stop making and retract false, harmful and disparaging statements against WP Engine,” the platform posted on X.  Automattic sent back its own cease and desist, saying, “Your unauthorized use of our Client’s intellectual property has enabled WP Engine to compete with our Client unfairly, and has led to unjust enrichment and undue profits.” WP Engine filed a lawsuit against Automattic and Mullenweg, accusing them of extortion and abuse of power. In October, Mullenweg announced that he’d given Automattic employees a buyout package, and 159 employees, or roughly 8.4 percent of staff, took the offer. “I feel much lighter,” he wrote. But shortly after, he reportedly complained that the company was now “very short staffed.”   All of this has created an environment of chaos and fear within Automattic and in the wider WordPress open-source community.  Within 72 hours of the order, Automattic and Mullenweg are also required to remove the “purported” list of WP Engine customers contained in the ‘domains.csv’ file linked to Automattic’s website wordpressenginetracker.com, which Automattic launched in November and tracks sites that have left WP Engine. It’s also required to restore WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org, including reactivating and restoring all WP Engine employee login credentials to wordpress.org resources and “disable any technological blocking of WPEngine’s and Related Entities’ access to wordpress.org that occurred on or around September 25, 2024, including IP address blocking or other blocking mechanisms.” The judge also ordered Mullenweg to restore WP Engine’s access to its Advanced Custom Fields (“ACF”) plugin directory, which its team said was “unilaterally and forcibly taken away from its creator without consent” and called it a “new precedent” in betrayal of community access. “We are grateful that the court has granted our motion for a preliminary injunction,” a spokesperson for WP Engine told 404 Media. “The order will bring back much-needed stability to the WordPress ecosystem. WP Engine is focused on serving our partners and customers and working with the community to find ways to ensure a vigorous, and thriving WordPress community.” A spokesperson for Automattic told 404 Media: “Today’s ruling is a preliminary order designed to maintain the status quo. It was made without the benefit of discovery, our motion to dismiss, or the counterclaims we will be filing against WP Engine shortly. We look forward to prevailing at trial as we continue to protect the open source ecosystem during full-fact discovery and a full review of the merits.” 

[elvain]

marvel's boys: from sidekicks to heroes

i've been seeing a lot of talk about my friend ray's post about the mentor/sidekick relationship in marvel as compared to DC (this post is specifically in regards to the movie portrayal of said relationships). find the post here. the discussion around this post has inspired some thoughts in me, so i thought i'd share them below.

steve and bucky's relationship as mentor/sidekick originates in the golden age as part of the "child sidekick/hero" craze phenomenon at the time. kids wanted to know they could contribute to the war effort in these years, that they could also make a difference when their fathers and brothers went to war. so the child sidekick was invented and at marvel, that was bucky barnes + toro raymond.

but even in the silver age, we maintained a younger sidekick mentality: rick jones, janet van dyne (until she turned out be old enough to marry hank pym), and i would even include flash thompson's brief stint as a fake spider-man in this category. but, yes, all these "sidekick" scenarios eventually winded down. but i don't think it's because marvel decided sidekicks weren't a worthy trend anymore. far from it.

i think DC's interpretation of the mentor/sidekick relationship becomes more paternal/familial whereas marvel's becomes centered around guilt and trauma (rick jones, primarily). i wouldn't say marvel hated sidekicks after the golden age; they just become heroes on their own (peter parker, the original x-men, nova, etc.) rather than relying on a mentor-esque figure. i think DC has clung to the paternal side of this trend more and maintained it - it's worked for them, so great. but marvel i think dived the other way which was also great.

i know about the "spider-man killed teen sidekicks by being both a young person and the main hero" take as well and i have some thoughts on that, too, if you'll bear with me.

i think it isn't that we started hating sidekicks. i think we realized that, after the golden age, the kids weren't just kids anymore. there is a genre of kid who was too young to fight in ww2 but who still dealt with that trauma and that kid was reading these comics, sending in letters, collecting stamps, etc. comic mags in the golden age used to be FULL of things like "if you see any war planes over your city, report it to the nearest military office!" or "you can collect scrap metal and donate it to the war effort, just like timmy here!" and after the events of pearl harbor, every timely comic had a big stamp on them, demanding that we "remember pearl harbour".

now its 1962 and that kid is 15 and he kinda doesn't NEED his dad as much cause he's either dead or he's been away for years fighting in the war. this kid needs to be his own hero. [gestures to peter parker, richard rider, steve rogers even if you count the origin story] like it isn't that spider-man killed the sidekicks - it's that he lost his father figure (ben parker) and now had to be his own hero and i think that would've resonated a LOT with kids of that era who had gone through a similar loss.

i think it shows in rick jones too - the reason rick just never REALLY "sidekicked" is because he was a reflection of the young boys/girls at the time who suddenly had no parents or elder figures bc of the wars. now they had to deal with it on their own and thats why he didn't stick it out with steve and why he became bruce's friend instead of the hulk's sidekick, cause he just didn't need that mentor and that protection anymore after what he (as a representation of kids from the after-war years) had gone through.

it isn't that the sidekicks died. it's that they were forced to grow up.

if you're interested in thoughts like this, i have some posts on my rarely used wordpress blog. The Golden Age: overview: how i started reading the Golden Age comics. The Golden Age: I: characters i thought i knew, but did not. The Golden Age II: think of the women and children!

[ettawritesnstudies]

[Image ID: WordPress logo on a black background. Below in white text, it says "4 year anniversary announcement. Happy anniversary with WordPress.com! You registered on WordPress 4 years ago. Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging. End Image ID.]

I made my Tumblr blog about a year before I made my WordPress blog so this is also technically my 5 year Tumblr anniversary.

I actually had this in my calendar and had planned to do some kind of DTIYS or ask game to commemorate it... But I've been so overwhelmed with work and burnt out lately that today I'm celebrating making it this far.

I survived a pandemic. Finished two manuscripts. Started a newsletter, Kofi, and a YouTube channel. Graduated university and moved across three states to start a new life. Got engaged. Now I'm preparing work for both an anthology and to publish my debut novel and I'm still posting on my website every week regardless of what life throws at me.

So yeah, maybe I didn't organize a writing advice post or any community events this year. I've been struggling to stay on top of my current obligations (and I'm only going to get busier for the next year), and I'm also trying to avoid overworking myself into burnout. But fiveish years of maintaining an author's platform is still something to celebrate.

[notfinancialadvice]

WordPress Shifts in industry news I am not a part of but enjoy gossiping about

I used to do a a lot of work using WordPress as a system. It's easy, cheap to build and maintain with, etc.

I do not anymore. This has nothing to do with WordPress. It was exclusively a "a few years ago I received the opportunity to bow out of the industry as a graphic designer in order to pursue a cocktail of art, fantasy, economy, and business"

I used to be a customer of Advanced Custom Fields. I am no longer, for the same reason as above, I am no longer a web developer. Their service was good to me and I enjoyed it tremendously while I had it.

I have therefore no stake in this game and thus no public opinion.

And yet I enjoy the drama of it all so here we are.

WordPress is forking.

Or maybe it isn't a fork.

The core, mesmerizing, (and I do not say this lightly) potentially civilization changing beauty of open source software is the ability to meet different, often diametrically opposing, priorities.

"Civilization-changing is kinda heavy language?"

via

No :)

A significant portion of the internet as we know it today is powered by WordPress. It has and will continue to shape the entire scope and scale of internet development for longer than anyone reading this will be alive -- for good and for ill.

WordPress was primarily a blogging system that could build websites as well. With the introduction of externally-based Advanced Custom Fields, it became a powerhouse web builder as well.

The short version: You could easily say "put this image / text / whatever here in the template."

It was a game changer to many smaller scale developers (hi) with a tiny staff. It allowed us (me + team) to grow much more powerful very quickly and very affordably.

Digging into the news further, there is / was chatter about pulling in the core functionality of ACF into WP's main system.

It brings an interesting point to the open source space.

And goes to my original points above.

If you make something open, how much control do you have over it? If you profit from it, how long can this last before it gets pulled into the core?

That is a risk as a developer -- you could potentially lose your business because it gets folded into the larger entity, but on the other hand, until that point, your reward was immediate accessibility to a market / system a million times larger than you, that you had previously no hand in building.

It is a tragedy of the commons.

I had long forgotten this phrase.

I'm familiar with the concept -- a public finite resource is at risk of overuse from all because it is available to all -- it largely joins with the core issue of economics itself -- how do you find balance with finite resources and infinite desires.

It is the nature of art on the internet.

Artists want to make art and it to be seen, they put it online. Audiences do not by nature owe them anything, the art is available to view for free, but without audience support, the art will stop or degrade in posting frequency.

More directly, to the WordPress sphere, what is the responsibility to the core system (thus other users)? What is the responsibility of the users to the core system?

Objectively speaking, building and maintaining a system like WordPress requires a lot of resources.

The open source nature allows for competing priorities to be served provided enough resources, because you can always say "I don't want to follow your path of ABC, I want to do BCD" and then do that.

The open source nature also allows you to say "I made a widget, it costs $100/year"

But the core can say "Hm. That would make our system stronger. Yoink. Now it's ours and is free."

Then you have a market race to push to build the better whatever.

I...

...do not have answers.

To any of this.

I am left realizing.

It feels like macroeconomics and personal economics grinding against each other in a way that is traditionally seen across countries (if not the world) and decades (if not centuries) -- but in this instance, it's a much smaller scale (kinda? WP powers a lot of the internet and influences a significant portion of what it doesn't power).

And weeks and months.

Instead of decades and centuries.

This is a fun piece of bone to chew on.

I freely admit it is fun exclusively because I am not involved. If I were, it would be fucking nerve wracking.

[netscapenavigator-official]

Automattic making some questionable decisions and getting the piss sued out of it isn't in the least surprising. Back when Matthew was busy doxxing and sexually harassing a trans woman he chased off of his site, former higher-up employees came forward and alleged that he is a chronic drug abuser who is too high on his own Elon Musk-esk ego to accept a helping hand from those in his life.

So I'm not surprised he's crashing his company into the ground. It's an exact mirror of what he did with his life. And now that his life is too ruined to ruin any further, he's reaching for anything and everything in his vicinity. That include Automattic, WordPress, and Tumblr. The only difference is that Matthew doesn't have Elon's money to maintain this unsustainable lifestyle.

He's going to crash and burn, and he's going to take Automattic with him.

[m0r1bund]

hello! I was catching up on reading NAKAQUOI! and the essay from the most recent entry was such an inspiring method of storytelling. enough so to make me reach out and ask about your website in general (if you're comfortable answering!). what is it like running a lore/gallery site for your work? how and why did you get started? and lastly, what about it keeps you going?

thank you, cheers! -Winn

😭 Thank you so much for the kind words, this means a lot to me. I really enjoyed writing that little essay.

This is going to be a weird and vulnerable sidebar, but I promise I’m going somewhere with it. Honestly, it blows my mind that anyone reads them. I think it’s because I’m still operating on the assumption that this form of storytelling is for n=1 (yours truly) and other people are merely tolerating it, LOL. I used to be way more sensitive about sharing my characters / stories / worlds, because the forms of storytelling that came naturally to me were often received as incomprehensible, dense, and unintuitive by other people. At a certain point I decided that I just had to accept this and become my own hype man. People could enjoy the pretty pictures out of context, and they could be a vehicle for me to journal about the pretend people who live in my head. Good compromise 👍

for someone who talks big about making weird art and finding the 6 people in the audience who truly get it, I don’t think I realized that this could include my deranged essays about things that aren’t real. And yet. AND YET!!!! I think this desire to present my work in a way that’s ��more” than just pretty pictures with text attached to them has been simmering for a long time, even though I dismissed it and was kind of embarrassed about it. Which is wild. Because I grew up on bestiaries and warrior cats lore compendiums and video game wikis and morrowind. There was clearly a precedent. And Yet.

Anyway, this desire started rubbing shoulders with the technical limitations of blogs and gallery websites, and also a general disillusionment with social media during the enshittification of the internet. Like, yeah it sucked that my whole body of work could vanish overnight. But mostly I had worldbuilding neuroses that made me want to scratch at the walls, and I knew just enough html + css to be dangerous. In 2018, I had also finished some longer works that made me more confident in my ability to deliver a cohesive Moribund, and these works weren’t intuitive to share on social media… So… I guess that gave me the impetus to stop flirting with the idea of getting my own website and start actually working on it.

M0R1BUND.com used to be a pure html + css + js website hosted on Neocities. It was ideal and I miss it in a lot of ways, because yeah, that IS the most unadulterated control you can have over your webspace. Had a blast with it, experimented a lot, learned a lot, hosted galleries and twines and webfiction and digital collages and ARPG stuff and interactive maps and a webcomic. And it was mine as much as it was the work of kind people sharing sample code on stackexchange, LOL.

Eventually, I felt the growing pains of managing this by hand. Updating ate hours out of my day. There are definitely more intuitive ways to build and maintain a pure html + css + js website, but I was working with what I knew. I started learning wordpress for basedt.net with the hopes of automating certain operations, like posting art to a gallery or pages to a webcomic. It felt intuitive enough that I later rebuilt M0R1BUND.com in wordpress.

It took a long time and a lot of work, like almost a year? And I still haven’t mirrored everything. Wordpress has made things easier to maintain, but I learned the hard way that it doesn't avoid the pitfalls of simpler website-builders… which is to say… whatever it does to make life easier will also make life incredibly difficult if you decide you want to do something manually. And it’s never the stuff you expect.

These days there’s also the baggage of Automattic’s nonsense. Wordpress is open source, so I don’t think it will go anywhere, but it’s still the corporate clownery that I wanted to escape by making my own website. Blech.

Really though, I love running M0R1BUND and it’s the closest thing I have to an ideal “home” for my work. Going to a dedicated website is unintuitive and out of the way for a lot of people, but (indicates generally) what have we just learned about me. This one’s for n=1 and the, like, 6 people who pop in and say hello. You are my people...

Looking forward, things cook at the rate of 2937728839 irons in the fire, and they are all getting done, but they are all getting done sooooo slowly… I’m having fun. Besides having a general compulsion to make art and tell stories and be Understood, I think that’s what carries me thru this. I want to have fun. and I want to trick people into caring about my characters and also the Sonoran Desert. And as Bjork says, I have to get the wiggles out or else the dark times will come.

It’s getting late and I don’t have a denouement for this. Thank you for your kind words! Thank you for asking! hope this answers? hope this helps (???) take the best and leave the rest.

[thesummerfox]

Hi, it's time for a random ask! When did you join Tumblr and what made you join im first place?

Hi anon! 😊I first joined Tumblr in March 2012, but didn't really start posting/reblogging until September 2012. I think it was just that it was advertised as a blogging site and I'd had my struggles with Livejournal/Wordpress etc so was looking for a new medium. Stuck around once I found community here.

I used to have a different blog here, then made this one in September 2016. (Apparently that month is always overhaul month for me, haha!) And I have a few other blogs for special interests here but they're not always the most well-maintained. 😂 I need a place to put my gifs and my writing and always love to see what other people create or have going on in their lives, so that's probably why I stuck around this long.

[griddlebandits]

Sleeping Bear Training Week 13 of 14

Woah, what?! We are almost there folks. And while I got a little off track with my long runs, I have been diligent this week about getting some miles on these legs. A 4 mile run here, a quick 2 mile run there, and ending the week with a 6 mile “long run”. That’s the taper. We don’t want to wear ourselves out before race day. These last two weeks are for maintaining fitness but giving ourselves…

[biolizardboils]

Hey again.

I was saving this for when I'd wrapped some other stuff up, but it's taking too long. I'm just gonna say it while the words are fresh in my head.

The two-month break I've been on? I think I'm gonna stay on it. As in, stay logged off except on special occasions.

There's still things I want to finish here. I will answer what's left at @ask-the-all-consuming-void and bring it to a proper ending; The Secret Thing it was gonna segue into will go up, even if only as sketches and drafts; And there's another project I'm still helping with behind the scenes. But aside from those… I want to maintain my internet presence a lot less.

I've learned a lot about myself since I left: most importantly the hyper-empathy, compassion fatigue thing, and that being terminally online probably does more harm than help. There's trying to be a good, vigilant person, and then there's overwhelming oneself about things they can't control, with info that isn't always accurate. I've been doing the latter in different ways for years; late April/early May was a big wake-up call. Lesson learned: I've got to find balance, and I won't find it here.

The second-most important thing I learned is that… the reason I "joined" the internet in the first place? It's pretty much been fulfilled. Has been for a few years now, actually.

I made this tumblr in 2015, but I got my real start on deviantART and WordPress in 2011. Don't expect links; what people post in their preteens can stay between them and God lol. But I'll tell you what got me to make accounts: my confusion as a new Sonic fan. The way people talked about them, the way they talked to each other… it hurt to see.

I got it in my preteen head to set a better example. To not let my love for something become disdain for others of its kind. To explain instead of assume. And to assure anyone who'd listen that it's not shameful to like Sonic, that those who do deserve better, and that they could still have it better someday.

And now, 13 years later… we do. The hurtful stuff I saw back then is nearly gone now. When it does pop up, it's easier to counteract than ever. People realize how silly and petty and wrong it was, and can call it out accordingly. People can live a little truer to themselves, now that that shit isn't everywhere anymore.

I think that, specifically, is all I really wanted. Everything else—the reinvigoration of the characters and their world, the downpour in avenues once closed off by "cringe" and "not enough interest"—have been wonderful byproducts. I've been gassing up Sonic Movie 3 as the final step, but it's really more of a victory lap.

After realizing that, I just… don't feel the need to post so much here anymore. My self-worth and sense of morality shouldn't rely on what I do or don't type. I don't need to document every thought or choice I make and why.

The cause I've performed for since middle school no longer needs my time and energy, if it ever even did. I can just enjoy things in relative silence, and spend myself in other ways. Ways I've taken too long to get around.

Sonic Unleashed is what set me down this path. I watched it go from rejected at launch, to just divisive, to respected and beloved. I still wonder if, had it gotten a fairer chance, the current Sonic renaissance could've happened sooner.

But dwelling on that won't change anything. I'd rather dwell on how, this year, I got to scream Endless Possibility with hundreds of other people, loudly and proudly. No fear of who's watching, no need to self-sabotage. It meant the world to me.

There was a con in my area on June 23rd. I wasn't planning on doing anything that day until I heard about it. There was someone in attendance who helped me put a symbolic bow on this part of my life.

I think he did a wonderful job :)

I have one last thing to say before I go. That'll be its own post, so I can put it in the public Sonic tags.

Again, the stuff I've left hanging here will get finished eventually. But for now, this is goodbye.

Moots, followers: thank you so much. I will quite literally remember you all in therapy.

--BiolizardBoils

[helenwhiteart-blog]

Hypermobility is a spectrum disorder: its not all about subluxations!

There’s a very classic view of what hypermobility syndromes are or look like…in the case of hEDS, many joint subluxations and the like; basically, symptoms that affect joints, not taking into account a whole other range of symptoms that can often present themselves as well as, or instead of, major joint issues. Also a persistent viewpoint, maintained by GPs, that it is a rare condition (by the…