May 30, 2022
In Star Trek: TNG, S5E11, “Hero Worship,” a kid asks Data what he thinks of a model the kid built. When Data expresses his aesthetic assessment the kid says, “You hate it!” Data tells him, “You are making an unwarranted extrapolation.” I’m telling my anxiety that from now on. 🖖📺
May 29, 2022
Your girl’s over here finding old Star Trek: The Next Generation fanfiction listed on Fanlore but not linked anywhere and digging it up in the Google Usenet archives, then adding the links to Fanlore. Peak Kimberly.
May 28, 2022
“…embodied writing is not in opposition to political writing. In fact, it is the kind of political writing that I am most interested in reading.” Melissa Febos, Body Work 💬
May 27, 2022
How do none of the early results in a Google Images search for Star Trek Bingo have something like “mysterious pathogen takes down whole crew” on them? It happened twice in season 1 of TNG & we got it in episode 2 of SNW. (It’s one of my favorite Trek tropes.) 🖖🏻📺
Reply to Meg Pillow's This Is Not the Essay I Meant to Write
I have a craft essay about writing into uncertainty, contradiction, and grief in the new issue of @PhoebeJournal today. This one means a lot to me - it's part of a larger project I'm working on on uncertainty. I'd love it if you'd read it. https://t.co/gPML7tLRBg
— Meg Pillow (@megpillow)
I saved this and waited 10 days to read it, which meant I read it exactly when I needed it. The phrase “the aesthetic of uncertainty” is something I sorely need. At the beginning of the year, I decided my phrase for at least the quarter would be “Embrace radical uncertainty.”
At the time, I chose this because as a caregiver and person living with chronic illness, it was something I needed to do to not constantly fight life. On 1/18 (my sister’s 36th birthday), my mom went to the ER & they found all her blood counts were low.
They diagnosed her with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and began putting a treatment plan in place. With the treatment plan in place, followed by the chemo putting her into remission, it seemed the path forward was clear.
The day after she was discharged from the initial chemo, she had a cardiac event. Then she suffered from a bout of colitis. Another cardiac event. Then muscle weakness such that she would fall and be unable to get up.
It felt like each week brought a new complication or side effect. This Wednesday, I took my 5 yo son to visit her, and learned that between preexisting spinal problems and chemo side effects, she is now paraplegic.
I live in a constant vacillation between hope and anxiety, optimistic each time a problem is actually identified and an intervention developed, riddled with anxiety each time a new problem appears.
All of this is to say: I really needed this piece. I thank you for writing it. I’m glad I waited to read it. I’m saving it to read again next time I need it. And maybe soon I’ll write something.
May 26, 2022
I don’t have the oomph to discuss this at length but my dad wrote a good journal entry for CaringBridge about the most recent impact of chemo on my mom. My heart is leaden today. At least there’s adaptive technology for sewing without using your feet.
The Michigan Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence has a really useful letter template for writing to congresspeople.
“As we honor the lives that have been given, let us also be grateful to be still on the journey.” “The enemy doesn’t care about my feelings, Captain, so I don’t waste my time having any.”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Memento Mori” 🖖🏻💬
Mood update: the leaden feeling in my heart has been joined by a similar feeling in my stomach.
May 25, 2022
The world is very dismal and I am heartbroken, but my husband is on a meeting talking to people about how he was in A Midsummer Night’s Dream twice. I really love him very much.
Self-soothing by typesetting my 9 year old New Girl fanfic and it actually looks like a book.
I can’t neglect the world & focus on my child, because my child is in & of the world. I’m overwhelmed by the sheer number of existential threats he faces even as I know he is playing life on easy mode. I struggle with where to begin to take action.
May 24, 2022
I have extreme MCU fatigue so I’m only going to watch the stuff clearly and closely inspired by comics I’ve actually read and enjoyed. 🍿📺🗯️
Me “well actually"ing last week’s Fansplaining in the car on the way to pick my kid up: “But Elizabeth the ‘In sleep he sang to me’ part is really low, even lower than you sang it. It gets obnoxiously high later.'” 🎙️🎵🎭👻👩🏻🏫
May 23, 2022
May 22, 2022
I love a good slice-of-life story but the constant interruptions to Worf’s work once his son Alexander boards the Enterprise in the episode “New Ground” are far too real.🖖🏻📺
May 21, 2022
Apparently crows can do metacognition.
May 20, 2022
Some of my tweets from #FanLIS2022 Day 1
I was able to recover my Noter Live log, yay! I’ll go back and collect the tweets from after my reboot later.
has been joined by a cat. This is the most important thing to know about the FanLIS Symposium.
Every technology/platform seems to impose a taxonomy because you have to for organization.
sharing about visual/material design of fan-bound texts. I'm ([@KimberlyHirsh](https://micro.blog/KimberlyHirsh)) obsessed with the desire to make them look like books from a particular era (pulp, 80s or 90s mass market) and even distress them so they look used.
Fanbinders learn so many different skills related to design and craft.
So far my favorite outcome of #FanLIS2022 is another attendee asking me if I’m sure I’m not Caitlin Doughty.
 Are you sure you're not Caitlin Doughty?](https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/17595/2022/9ce206d339.png)
Responses to the chat during my #FanLIS2022 presentation
The chat runs by much too quickly to scroll with it while presenting but I love the vibrance of #FanLIS2022 chat so I wanted to go through and respond to people’s comments from my presentation, in addition to answering direct questions. So here we go!
procrastination and indecision then instantaneous dissertation topic is such an adhd mood
I’m not diagnosed, but you’re not wrong.
embodied fannishness
YES. More studies on how fans express their fandom with their bodies, please.
I’m kind of curious to see how many Cosplayers base their information process on others'.
This is a great question. I only got at individual practices and how others' shared resources are an influence, not shared process, but I did have 2 participants collaborating on an epic Yuri On Ice wedding cosplay who used similar curation methods. I wonder if groups that frequently collaborate have more commonalities in their information practices.
I feel there is some modesty that comes with cosplayers and that would refrain them to define as creators
I think that’s right. They don’t necessarily identify as creators, though I did have 2 participants refer to themselves as “makers.” But whether they’d use the term or not, the position they put themselves in with both trial-and-error and documentation of their construction processes is information creators.
Want to read: The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom by Jessa Lingel 📚
Symposium’s over, it’s 90F outside. Time for a wardrobe change! [Image description: A white woman with dark hair wears a black tank top with the Sheikah eye from The Legend of Zelda and black shorts with a popsicle 0rint.]
May 19, 2022
There are a lot of great things about attending a conference from home. Still, it’s a bit sad not to be able to go hide in a hotel room and let all the new ideas roll around while disconnected from your usual responsibilities.
Week 3 of #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds and there are already 189 works on AO3. Looking forward to discovering new favorite creators. 🖖🏻
🔖 Read Durham GOP’s “Better Board, Better Schools” candidate slate is soundly defeated.
What a relief.