Scream Team

I will try to make a better, more honorary post when I have the mental capacity, but I just wanted to update everyone.

We lost Astaroth. I’d had him the entire time I’ve ran this blog. Since he was 8 weeks old.

He’d just turned 10 in April, and since 10 is a cursed dog age for me apparently, he had some really complicated health issues arise. We tried so hard to get him the care he needed to be painfree and comfortable again, but he was in surgery when they found masses that complicated things even further, and raised his chances of the issues repeating. We opted to not continue and say goodbye given his age and how much pain he’d gone through already.

To say we are devastated is an understatement. I have felt sick for days, my partner keeps bursting into tears. We miss our forever puppy. Even if he has good company waiting for him on the other side, it just isn’t fair. We hoped for a better outcome.

We've gotten some help, which I desperately appreciate. We've still got about $2500 sitting on my CareCredit card, which will still be a struggle to pay off even over 6 months. My partner and I just don't get paid enough, the cost of living keeps getting insane, etc. My partner had a car wreck and their vehicle was totaled and just had to finance another car right before this happened. Pazuzu also needs a skin growth removed and that had to be pushed to the backburner because Astaroth's issues were more urgent. If we could get a good chunk of that CareCredit bill paid off, we'd be able to get that taken care of (another $700 to start but that's way more manageable for us).

So... if anyone wants to toss us a $5 donation or something, it would be vastly appreciated. I know I'm not as active on this blog these days as I used to be, so I definitely understand if no one is comfortable with it, I'm just tossing it out there because you get zero % of the help that you don't ask for. Linked my paypal below.

Hey y’all, I hate to ask for help like this, but Basil is at the vet after a severe attack from a loose dog during our morning walk.

Right now, the biggest concern is that he almost certainly has a fractured skull. Initial exam upon intake indicates that it appears to be a sinus cavity skull fracture rather than damage to the brain cavity itself, he wasn’t exhibiting neurological symptoms and was able to stand despite being in shock and the wounds on other parts of his body, responsive and mostly alert etc, so it’s possible that we got very, very, VERY lucky, but we will need to take him to a larger veterinary hospital once he’s stabilized here in town, since we’ll need to do a CT to get better imaging and determine if surgery is necessary. The other injuries are all pretty superficial (bruising, lacerations, damage to his ear, etc) in comparison to that.

This level of specialty care is very expensive and will push me past my emergency savings. If you’re in a position where you can chip in a few bucks towards his care, I would really, really appreciate it. My PayPal is [email protected] and Venmo is @gabriel-ogle-wilderun, but if a different method works better just send me a DM.

Basil is one of those once-in-a-lifetime dogs. Within days of him being dropped off as a foster I knew that he was never gonna leave, he just fit in so well with my crew and I fell in love. He is so, so special to me, and I’d do anything for him including ask for help.

So we're all pissed at the new update as we should be and I've been seeing many people proposing blackouts, which is amazing! But all the dates are different and people might get confused at what's happening when, so I just want to organize every blackout (at least that I saw) in one place.

So far I saw six people with dates.

The earliest one, organized by @yourlocalfandomfriendo begins on March 18th and will last 48 hours.

This overlaps with a second proposed blackout by @veejiez for March 19th.

There is also one on the 20th proposed by @daysleftofsecondterm and another one on the same day from 6AM UTC to 6AM UTC on the 21st by @everythingwsnormalhere.

These three days are all very soon so not everyone may see them in time to participate, but if you are able to participate for any or all of these days, I highly encourage you do. Otherwise there are two more blackouts coming up:

The next one after these will be on March 24th as organized by @aroacesafeplaceforall who suggested doing 12 hours.

And the last one, which I personally have a lot of hope for as it's a major day for activity on Tumblr and a blackout then could be especially impactful: April 1st, as proposed by @darkwood-sleddog

There is also a discord set up by @yourlocalfandomfriendo and @aroacesafeplaceforall for anyone interested in joining in!

SO OVERALL, it may sound like a lot, but no one expects everyone to participate to every date here. But PLEASE try to participate in at least one or two of these, even if you feel it may not do much.

Typical strikes, the ones we hear about all the time, win by withholding their labour for consistent periods of time; that's the power people have at work because that's what's exploited.

For blackout strikes, we need to withhold our attention; the resource we own which is exploited through the selling of both advertisements and data.

My comparison of blackout strikes with regular strikes will be for a whole other post, but for the time being, just know that

withholding our attention is our digital bargaining weapon

Tumblr literally lost 63% of its monthly traffic from 2024 to 2025; they are not in a position to play around with those of us still here.

So PLEASE try participating. We cannot let every decent online space get enshittified with no care or consideration for the communities using those spaces.

not to mention that a lot of people take an apology as an invitation to stand there and lecture the handler which makes things worse, because youre prolonging the time the reactive dog is in a triggering situation

Real talk, I'm a broke girlie. I had several thousand dollars stolen from me by my family, and six months later I'm still trying to get out of debt. I desperately need to get my service dogs to the vet since they're due for their yearly shots. Anything helps 🙏