Leah: Writer, Queer, '76 Cancer/Dragon. This is my catch-all blog. You can also find me on my bishonenink, tenshinokorin, & valnon tumblrs for website news, fanfic, and my pro writing, respectively.
“It’s all about demanding what you want out of the story, believing that the story should be tailored to your individual needs, not the expression of the creators. These fans are treating stories like ordering at a restaurant - hold the pickles, please, and can I substitute kale for the lettuce? But that isn’t how art works, and that shouldn’t be how art lovers react to art.”
Everything is here. Everything about why I left social, public fandom, why I remain gone, and why after three years I still haven’t published the sequel to my first novel.
I’m easy to find, if you know where to look. On instagram I’m leahsbaird. Valnon.org is my pro writing site and the valnon tumblr content will eventually be moved over to the website for safe archiving. Book news and announcements and promos will still be posted on the valnon tumblr, though it might just become a mirror of a more stable website-based blog. (Likewise for my fan writing/tumblrs, though to a lesser degree.)
My fan website is, has been, and ever shall be: www.bishink.org. We make up in content what we lack in fancy code, and there’s a fully armed and operational Advent Calendar in the works for December.
Our BJDs? Childofglass.org.
Our Character shrines, recipes, cosplay, old advent calendars? Odessacastle.org. I also have a dusty old insanejournal, alorian.insanejournal.com.
(We are our own oroborus webring)
But, if you’re website-adverse, my Ao3 handle is Tenshinokorin (http://archiveofourown.org/users/tenshinokorin) and contains a sample of my pretty capacious body of works. I’ve been writing fic online since 1998. There’s a lot. I hope there will continue to be more.
(And the great irony is that my mic drop post gets more notes than anything I’ve posted in the last six months. I think we’re all getting pretty fed up with the whole social media platform deal by now.)
I think I’m done with tumblr. Between the ads and the randomass recommended blogs invading even my phone browser (where there is no xkit to save me) and tumblr bullshit ruining a carefully-curated feed, I’ve had about enough. I’ll still use my side blogs (valnon and the bishink/tnk blogs) for announcements or news, but I’m done on a personal front, and I’m giving up the dash.
I’ve never liked operating on any platform where I don’t have the last word in what’s on my feed–or worse, where my (deliberately obscurely-tagged) blog can be plastered on other peoples’ feeds without my permission or knowledge. I started out here for Tron fandom, but it never felt homey or nice or really text friendly, not like lj in the old old old days, fifteen years ago. It was too big, too loud, too young, too judgey, too easy for totalass strangers to descend from nowhere en masse to start sealioning with you. I was constantly balancing the damage–real and potential–from this site, and always coming up short. At this point, tumblr might as well be facebook, and I’m tired of being sold. And frankly, the nearer my 40th birthday looms, the less I’m willing to put up with shit that doesn’t work for me. Life is too goddamn short, I know how to get what I need out of fandom by now, and I already have my own webpage.
As for blogging, IJ is full of tumbleweed, and nobody I know has posted there in approximately five billion weeks, but I own my account, I have plenty of icons, and at least I know and control exactly what’s in my feed. The peace and quiet will do me good.
Dantalion (and Amon holding the candy.) I have bat rings, chocolate eyeballs, and skull bracelets to give out, so come say trick or treat! (at Anime USA)
During the Mystery of the Haunted Photosuite (more later), one of the staff members ran out of the cosplay ops room to give me this ribbon. It’s the only cosplay award I’ve ever gotten. 😊 (at Anime USA)
