Zia

Girl that's exactly why they close down after a year. You NEED money to keep these places open. There's no magic Gay Money Pot with endless cash to keep these places open. It requires YOU to put your money where your values are!!

And it made it about 2 years before shutting down completely. Because all those young people who begged for a place exactly like this would just show up, not buy a single thing, and leave. You cannot build a community without putting your money into it. This isn't about capitalism, this is just reality. You can't open a restaurant where no one buys your food. You can't have a gay bar that only serves 5% of the population and actively excludes everyone else. This is what I mean when I say people confuse "community" and "friend group." You're not obligated to spend money when hanging out with your friend group. But if you want a lasting community centered space, you need to open up that wallet.

Now you've lived with me for five years. Five is like the number of toe beans on one of your feet. When I clip your nails five is when we're halfway done. But we're hopefully not even halfway done with how long we get to be together. I'm gonna have to figure out new ways to help you count.

late summer / early fall thoughts

im fucking crying

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

#I just started dropping '2.5 Billion page views a month'#into conversations as early as possible bc they would Not believe me otherwise#it was right up there with having to say 'csam attacks' to get them to take my compartmentalization of information concerns seriously#turns out those are the magic words#otw#op

(ID in alt)

Lydia Pettit (American, 1991) - What Lies Beneath (2023)