#new direction

Hello! I am back from my month-long Tumblr hiatus and feeling more refreshed than ever before! Having so much time away from the site entirely really helped me clear my mind and gain a better perspective on a lot of things, so without further ado, I'll just get into it.

I'm officially declining all requests that are currently in my inbox, EXCEPT FOR the Big Windup one. I still really want to do that one.

I will not be taking free requests or coffee shots again for a little bit yet. I still have a lot going on in my personal life that I'm focusing on, and I don't need the added pressure of a slew of requests at the moment.

I'll be redoing my Coffee Shop Menu in the next few days, shifting fandoms around and whatnot. Stay tuned for those changes.

I'm planning to open commissions again soon, though for what fandoms I'm not 100% sure yet. MHA will definitely be an option, though. There will be limited slots for these because, again, I've got other things I'm trying to focus on right now.

And finally, the most important update of all - I'm going to be focusing a lot more on writing self-indulgent content. That's how I started out sharing my stories, but then I shifted my focus to only working on requests once I started gaining popularity. I feel like I've done a lot of writing for other people. Right now, in my current state of life, I want to go back to writing just for me for a while. (AKA, there will be a lot of Big Windup, SenGen, maybe ShinDeku, etc. Brace yourselves!)

There are some resonant themes that we collectively watched develop out of One Direction. The cynicism of the 21st century pop machine, its commodification of youth--the way a consciously prefab boyband turned everyone involved into a product. The strain of private vs. public. The closeting, the PR shit. You know. 

I want to keep exploring these ideas. Some of the things I used to talk about on this blog, I don’t think I have it in me to talk about now. Some things are simply not my business. However, I still have questions. Why was Zayn’s departure so sudden and acrimonious? What sort of contractual grip did Modest exert over 1D? Who was behind Rainbow Bondage Bear? 

There’s also plenty still happening. I want to keep up with the 1D crew generally, their careers. Everyone from Paul Higgins to Caroline Watson. Jay’s death hit me hard. So did Fizzy’s. I want to talk about all that, too.

And the legacy they left us. A Charitable Direction is still doing their thing, which is stupendous. I’d like to use 1D’s fandom as a model for collective action--sort of in line with the support of K-pop stans during BLM protests. What is the engine that makes a fandom into a force of nature? What are its moving parts? Can we replicate it? 

I want to get systematic about 1D media, both official and otherwise, so that it might actually be archived in a more permanent way at some point. Data is not forever. It disappears. I don’t want to take it for granted.