i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

I have been too busy a) watching all the drama, and b) being roped into providing tech support for my mom, to catch up on my reading page, so I don't know how well talked about this is, but given that it's made fucking international news...

Ravelry, as of yesterday morning, has instituted a policy banning support of Trump or the current administration. Because it is unequivocally support of white supremacy. And because Casey and Jess and the other rav TPTB are made of fucking awesome. I mean, it's basically an extension of the "no hate speech" rule, but it makes a very clear line in the sand and stands there like Captain America ready to punch nazis.

There has been (predictable) backlash. Everything from "its meeeeeean to call all Trump supporters racists" (which the policy didn't; someone could not care about the racist aspects of the administration, but that is tacit support) and "I will delete my account" (from people who haven't used the site much, and also in many cases need to ask how) and "so much for free speech and inclusivity" (because rav is the government, totes, and because it's so important to be nice to racist assholes) and "keep politics out of my knitting" (as many people have pointed out, knitting has been political for a long time; as I pointed out in a twitter thread, being a queer disabled woman means I don't have the option of apolitical spaces) to Russian bots and spammers.

And I do feel sorry for those political conservatives who are decent people and do not support trump, because I imagine they feel the same frustration that I feel, as a sometimes Christian, to the frothing homophobic forced-birth assholes that claim to be Christian. But one key aspect of this policy is it *explicitly* is not about conservatives or republicans -- hell, it doesn't even prevent trump fans from being members, just from actively trump-ing, although I suspect the vocal trump supporters are going to leave -- and it explicitly says that it is not ok to try to entrap people into violating the policy, or to antagonize people.

Honestly, it treats Trump fans a hell of a lot better than most trump fans treat anyone who is not cishet white Christian. Not that they see it that way.

Anyway. Back to the main point, which is this: I am fucking proud of Ravelry for doing this, and although I can't provide the staff (all five of them) and main-board volunteers with sufficient booze for the whackatroll they've been doing in the last ~36 hours, I can love them fiercely.

I have decided that this summer is going to be a Summer Of Writing.

(Well. Also of crafts, so kind of a Doing Stuff Summer, but that's beside the point.)

To that end, I have signed up for the Clarion Write-A-Thon. I have committed not so much to word count (my experience with things like NaNo is that pushing a large volume of crappy writing stressed me out and doesn't actually generate anything usable) as to what I call Fingers On Keyboard time: time spent actually writing, as opposed to researching / reading DW and LJ / poking around on rav / playing GW or SWTOR or D3 or WoW / other forms of distraction. Secondarily I would like to come out of the Write-A-Thon with (at least one) draft of a story to send out for publication.

This is partly just a personal goal, but partly also a public goal. If you would like to help me do this, there are several ways:

* Sponsor me. Contributions -- which can be done by goal unit (pledging $X per, in my case, hours spent writing) or as a lump sum -- will help a cause I believe in and will also encourage my own progress. Plus, while I doubt I can raise enough to be one of the top fundraisers, I do get rewards on top of the Knowledge Of Being Helpful.

* Cheer me on. I may be making a separate blog, but I will also be posting updates here, and I would love support in either place.

* Join me. There isn't quite the same community of crazy enthusiasm as there is around NaNo -- or if there is, I haven't found it! -- but we can still keep each other company.

\o/