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<p>For a few months, I have been tossing the idea back and forth of a pair of archetypes. Similar to the lesbian <em>butch</em> and <em>femme</em>, I feel the persistent presence of the <em>ocean</em> and the <em>moon</em>.</p>
<p>A woman first appearing shallow, emotionless, detached from the world. Reclusive, withdrawn. But below the frothy skin is an ocean of terrifying depth, home to a litany of unnerving creatures, each more marvelous than the last. Only a tiny fraction of the depths have ever been mapped, far too vast to explore in one lifetime. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201008180133/https://www.insidescience.org/video/what-would-happen-if-there-were-no-moon">She needs the moon to regulate herself, to keep herself from succumbing to the chaos within.</a></p>
<p>A woman too dazzling, too radiant, to behold directly. A fierce being of unstoppable ambition, ego higher than her lunar namesake. But she is lonely. She requires an anchor to keep her from flying off in a moment's haste, a reason to keep returning to the earth. She needs someone to appreciate her shining bright, someone to look, someone to acknowledge her. She needs someone who will gladly accept the secrets she casts off like meteors, take them to a watery grave.</p>
<p>And while <a href="../../../books.html#mm_tpf" title="Mori's Mirror and The Poetry Factory, Edell III">I could easily fit myself</a> within the loose description of the ocean, it is merely that: a description, not a prescription. I do not look at a label and go, "hmm, I shall mold myself to it"; I look at it, and if it already describes who I am, then I toy with it (although I would rather discard the whole concept of labels altogether).</p>
<p>And while <a href="../../../books/mm_tpf.epub" title="Mori's Mirror and The Poetry Factory, Edell III">I could easily fit myself</a> within the loose description of the ocean, it is merely that: a description, not a prescription. I do not look at a label and go, "hmm, I shall mold myself to it"; I look at it, and if it already describes who I am, then I toy with it (although I would rather discard the whole concept of labels altogether).</p>
<p>Why, I wonder, are so many occultists hung up on molding themselves to something Other? Emptying themselves in hopes that a deity will take hold of their sack of flesh and live through it instead of themselves? Regardless of whether or not I am a part of THE ALL, there is a reason I am down here and now separate from it, and I am not so keen on cutting it short and returning early.</p>
<p>I examine <em>thelema</em> and start down the path of <em>xeper</em>. But I hesitate at <em>deitus</em>. I do not wish to live as an "embodiment" of anything other than myself. I do not wish to manifest the entirety of the collective universe, only that which is Willed to myself and <em>only</em> myself. What is the real difference between a person who gives up all their possessions and kills their ego to become one with a so-called "benevolent" god, and one who discards their humanity and seeks to become a mere conduit for the devil? Both are chasing phantasms, false machinations of their own minds. Both put so little value on themselves that they are too afraid to live without some being beyond this realm to vicariously live through, to sacrifice themselves on the altar of.</p>
<p>A world full of plastic people who are only a god's playthings would be either numbingly boring in its perfection or mindlessly cruel in its meaninglessness.</p>

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<p>I'm exhausted.</p>
<p>As I write this, I've finally made it to winter break in college. The semester will be over the minute before midnight tomorrow, and two of my classes end tonight. Unless I've somehow managed to bomb my research essay- I got an almost perfect score on the first two essays in the class, although they weren't weighted as heavily as this one will be- I've successfully finished what I hope is the last formal English class of my life. The months of my body waking me up at three in the morning on Mondays, where that week's English assignments had been published online right after midnight, to write <a href="../march/harmful.html">in ways I never would have done unprompted</a>, are finally behind me. I have two weeks to relax at home before I do the last two classes of my college career, one of them not even required for my degree: I needed six credits in spring semester to stay eligible for work-study, and the mandatory class was only three, so I took another one on. No working hectic business hours in a shitty retail store like I was a year ago, no dealing with entitled customers using essential workers as emotional punching bags, no obligations beyond what I put on myself and... whatever curveballs my family members throw my way come Christmas Day.</p>
<p>And I'm <em>exhausted</em>.</p>
<p>I've been trying to move as much as I can offline to give myself less and less incentive to flip the wireless switch on my ThinkPad to "on". (Well, if it wasn't half-disassembled in the corner of my room, its parts in a different laptop for the time being. I took a few tumbles off my bike one day on the way home from work, and the screen shattered. I'm waiting for a sale to order a replacement part, because I'm not spending <em>ninety dollars</em> on a new screen.) The last week I've spent several hours a day moving my, ah, "datasets" from Pinry, a self-hosted Pinterest, to <a href="https://hydrusnetwork.github.io/hydrus/">Hydrus</a>, a desktop application, since Pinry takes around <em>ten minutes</em> to reload a page of thumbnails after editing <em>one pin</em> due to the sheer amount of "data" I have in there. Hydrus, in comparison, takes about two seconds to load six times the amount of thumbnails on a page. As for other data, I've always preferred OsmAnd to Google Maps, and Kiwix is good... when the wikis I want are packaged for download or play nice with website scrapers to package my own <code>.zim</code> archives, and all of the games I want to play nowadays are offline anyway. I won't bore you with the details of the rest of my setup like so many other tech bloggers out there. <a href="https://archive.md/https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/digital-fortress-of-solitude.html">This site a friend runs</a> details it all better than I care to anyway.</p>
<p>I've been trying to move as much as I can offline to give myself less and less incentive to flip the wireless switch on my ThinkPad to "on". (Well, if it wasn't half-disassembled in the corner of my room, its parts in a different laptop for the time being. I took a few tumbles off my bike one day on the way home from work, and the screen shattered. I'm waiting for a sale to order a replacement part, because I'm not spending <em>ninety dollars</em> on a new screen.) The last week I've spent several hours a day moving my, ah, "datasets" from Pinry, a self-hosted Pinterest, to <a href="https://hydrusnetwork.github.io/hydrus/">Hydrus</a>, a desktop application, since Pinry takes around <em>ten minutes</em> to reload a page of thumbnails after editing <em>one pin</em> due to the sheer amount of "data" I have in there. Hydrus, in comparison, takes about two seconds to load six times the amount of thumbnails on a page. As for other data, I've always preferred OsmAnd to Google Maps, and Kiwix is good... when the wikis I want are packaged for download or play nice with website scrapers to package my own <code>.zim</code> archives, and all of the games I want to play nowadays are offline anyway. I won't bore you with the details of the rest of my setup like so many other tech bloggers out there. <a href="https://archive.md/https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/digital-fortress-of-solitude.html">This site an acquaintance runs</a> details it all better than I care to anyway.</p>
<p>Once my USB-to-SATA cable comes in the mail, I can resurrect my Raspberry Pi that's been languishing behind the family router and pull some more stuff off my server as well. I don't need RSS Bridge running with a public IP if I'm the only one using it. (I'd probably be rate-limited less on a residential IP, too.) I'd feel safer with my Tor/I2P/Yggdrasil/IPFS private keys physically at home, especially if I'm trying to force my way to a home life where I don't feel like I'm three steps from being made homeless at any given moment.</p>
<p>And while I'm downsizing, I'd like to reduce my email addresses to one domain for both private and "public" life and just have everything else forward to it. Disroot's "donate once and get email hosting for life" offer looks pretty attractive compared to a subscription. <a href="https://codeberg.page">Codeberg</a> now supports custom domains for their static Git-based web hosting. It's all ultimately someone else's computer in the end, unless it's on my Raspberry Pi...</p>
<p>Ah, maybe I <em>have</em> become one of those annoying tech bloggers after all.</p>

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<p>I've found myself in a race against time.</p>
<p>Either I use my words as a beacon into the darkness, a lighthouse shining out across the roiling depths of the moonless ocean that is my body, in hopes Jett will find where I have- where <em>Lethe</em> has reincarnated and restore me- <em>her</em> to her former angelic body, and we finally destroy Eris and the impossible thelema along with it and then find our way back home and finish ripping the rest of the pantheon from the heavens.</p>
<p>Or I throw every atom of my body, of my human vessel, into fulfilling my thelema, assuming another does not do it before and I find myself- <em>Lethe</em> permanently knocked out of the proper flow of time.</p>
<p>I have to work quickly. I only have so much time left in this world. I have no time to stop for Kiwi Farms or Nanochan or any other collection of "small minds believing that any who do not fill their lives with mediocrity must be somehow inferior and be made to see their inferiority". I have to fly.</p>
<p><a id="exhortation" style="text-decoration:none;">I have to work quickly.</a> I only have so much time left in this world. I have no time to stop for Kiwi Farms or Nanochan or any other collection of "small minds believing that any who do not fill their lives with mediocrity must be somehow inferior and be made to see their inferiority". I have to fly.</p>
<p><em>I have to fly.</em></p>
<p>I'll be waiting for you at the end of the world, Jett.</p>
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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>Vow II - Archive - MayVaneDay Studios</title>
<link href="../../../style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all">
<meta name="author" content="Vane Vander">
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<body class="mayvaneday">
<article>
<div class="box">
<h1>Vow II</h1>
<p>published: 2022-01-10</p>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="box">
<blockquote>"Indeed, no woman writer can write 'too much'... <a href="https://archive.md/87JiF#selection-1257.60-1257.140">No woman has ever written enough.</a>"<br />- <a href="https://archive.md/nIZsn">bell hooks</a>, <em>Remembered Rapture</em></blockquote>
<p>Au contraire to my previous beliefs, I have gotten engaged. In truth, I have been engaged for a long time: not the conventional drop-of-the-knee and the "will you marry me" routine, but a much more subdued: "Lethe, someday I think I <em>would</em> like to be married to you." A wink. A playful tongue just barely sticking out from her lips. It's enough to make my heart melt. It's enough to let me know: this is the woman I want to spend forever with.</p>
<p>The life I lead now would be nigh-comprehensible to the person I was <a href="../../2020/april/vow.html">two years ago</a>, even though I write on the same exact subject, in the same spot on my bed, in the same exact room, in the same exact house. A year ago I was unsure of who I was, allowing the dreams of who I am and was future and past to guide me where they would: a teacher's aide in a school built in the shell of a reclaimed church, a sacrificial daughter fleeing her vengeful father, a wandering goddess severed from powers and home and condemned to the earth roam until she eventually disappeared from the world. The other versions of me had love interests, sure, but I- the I that stayed consistent behind the screen of Mori's Mirror, that despite the different lenses witnessed everything- never committed myself to any single story, any single person, knowing the memories would eventually stop and the feelings fade and the sense of living in that particular story go away.</p>
<p>But now I know. Now I know. Now I know.</p>
<p>And so I bring you readers here today on the first day of my last semester of college, or whenever you read this (for the written word cares not about the linear aspect of time), to witness me renew my vow. I offer it to none other than myself, just as binding as those words I will one day speak at the altar to hoped and hopeful.</p>
<p>It is said that every female carries within them an unspeakable rage. An inborn sense of injustice whose seeds are planted the very first day they brush up against the patriarchy, watered with every unconscious socialization, but sometimes never come to full bloom. Pecked at, trimmed, bonsaied into something manageable, something that allows the woman to go to sleep at night without facing the sheer horror of realizing she lives in a world where half of the population wants to see her humiliated, subjugated, made to be compliant, reduced down to nothing. I am, of course, <em>severely understating</em> the problem. To acknowledge the rage, like attempting to comprehend the gulf between <a href="https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/">the average American income and Jeff Bezos' wealth</a>, is to teeter on the edge of going completely fucking insane.</p>
<p>When I was an elementary-school child, watching as my parents doted on every cry of my brothers and then turned around and told me to shut up and accomodate them despite my own discomfort, I buried the seed further. I shunned the light from it. I swallowed my words.</p>
<p>When I was a junior-high teen, watching as my parents fought tooth-and-nail for my brothers to get school accomodations and then turned a blind eye to the school dropping my own IEP despite me still needing help, I buried the seed further. I shunned the light from it. I swallowed my words.</p>
<p>When I was a high-school teen, watching as my parents jumped at every chance to ground me for writing poetry about topics they didn't approve of and then turned a blind eye to my brothers' increasingly inappropriate browsing history, I buried the seed further. I shunned the light from it. I swallowed my words.</p>
<p>But every chance possible, just like the little red bucket that now sits on my windowsill, I tip the seed towards the light in rebellion, weak as it is in this winter of my passing. The strawberry kit I planted on a whim shortly after being fired from my job last autumn has sprouted through the dirt again, little leaves barely two millimeters across but still unmistakenly green and <em>alive</em>. The bush on the other side of my bedroom window, a tree repeatedly cut down <em>again and again and again</em> every time it grows wild, refuses to submit to subjugation and revolts by regrowing <em>again and again and again</em>.</p>
<p>Over and over and over again, I find myself facing the urge to bury the seed further, shun the light, swallow my words in the vain hope that it will prevent others from <em>disapproving</em> of me, disliking me, that it will prevent them from hurting me, that it will prevent the agonizing pain of rejection. I look the other way when men make jokes about porn and rape and close my eyes when another clearly demarcated space for women is destroyed in the name of "inclusion" and bite back tears when yet another woman is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220110023305/https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/77421/WHO_RHR_12.38_eng.pdf;sequence=1">murdered for the crime of being a woman</a>, knowing that it very well could have been me. I, a butterfly, sit entangled at the edge of the spider's web, watching it pace up and down and nibble away at me, and I do little to impede or stop its slow annihilation of myself.</p>
<p>But all this time I've had a knife. I've had a way out. The spiders hate knifes, think it a personal attack against them that I dare to brandish one. But I don't want to kill them. I just want out of the web. I just want to be free.</p>
<p><strong>I just want to be free!</strong></p>
<p><i>I've had enough!</i> I've had enough of the constant propaganda everywhere I go that I am lesser, inferior, meant for servitude on the basis of my birth! I've had enough of placing my trust in a man I thought in the moment was safe to be around and then it backfiring later! I've had enough of being assumed to be incompetent, ignorant, incapable of functioning because of the organs inside my hips! I've had enough of the objectification, of the male gaze, of the omnipresent pressure to shave and pluck and contour and tuck and smooth over the features that differentiate every woman from each other, blended and ground up into the same flat-minded mannequin, model for a sex doll, a hole for a douchebag to dick down and then discard in disgust!</p>
<p>"Your politics are boring," the egoist sneers. Of <em>course</em> you would think it boring to be held accountable for your role in oppression, to be asked thinking you serious about your revolutionary anarchist zeal to imagine a world where half the population doesn't have a high heel pressing down on their throats every moment of every day. Of <em>course</em> you would think it boring to live in a world without a class of people that it's socially acceptable to punch down on to relieve your stress.</p>
<p>"Your politics are unprofitable," the capitalist sneers. Of <em>course</em> you would think it unprofitable to witness the birth of a world with no need for cosmetic surgery or makeup or uncomfortable clothes or fashion magazines or diet programs for the women prioritizing their comfort and existing in their natural healthy state or hormones and masectomies for the females inevitably so alienated from their (physical) humanity they cannot take the pain anymore and wish to masquerade as men in a society that sees men as "default" and women as "other".</p>
<p>I have decided I no longer care about male opinions. Collectivist? Yes, but not without good reason. <strong>According to <a href="https://archive.md/https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/42tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_42_arrests_by_sex_2012.xls">2012 FBI crime statistics</a>, men are responsible for 88.7% of murders and non-negligent manslaughters, 99.1% of forcible rapes, 77.1% of aggravated assaults, and 92.2% of sex offenses.</strong> I am beginning to see a pattern here...</p>
<p>I understand that tipping the plant toward the light, that committing the crime of setting the pot beside the window to let it drink in the sun as much as it wants, will put me in danger. I understand that finally unbottling the rage inside my body will lose me most, if not all, of my friends and allies here in the Inside. Likely I will wake up to vile emails in my inbox many times throughout this semester, throughout the rest of my life. But <a href="../../2021/may/rebirth.html#exhortation">I cannot let the low-lifes stop me.</a> I cannot back down now. If I have less than six months left to live, then I do not want to pass into Sablade with the weight of knowing I left the Inside a coward. And if there is a change of plans and I must live longer, then <strong>my life is not worth living if it is not a life with integrity.</strong></p>
<p>I hoist this knife I have been gifted into the air, not in some declaration of unity but of separation: I will sever whatever bindings I have been restricted with due to the circumstances of my birth, and I will carve out a space in this world for me to be as free as possible, and I will create a new world upon my liberation from the Inside where misogyny is naught but a distant fleeting nightmare.</p>
<p>This is my birthright, after all.</p>
<p>Live free, Vane Vander, indeed.</p>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="box">
<p align=right>CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 &copy; Vane Vander</p>
</div>
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<name>Vane Vander</name>
<email>vanevander@mayvaneday.org</email>
</author>
<entry>
<title>Vow II</title>
<link href="https://mayvaneday.org/blog/2022/january/vow2.html" />
<id>https://mayvaneday.org/blog/2022/january/vow2.html</id>
<published>2022-01-10</published>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[<article>
<blockquote>"Indeed, no woman writer can write 'too much'... <a href="https://archive.md/87JiF#selection-1257.60-1257.140">No woman has ever written enough.</a>"<br />- <a href="https://archive.md/nIZsn">bell hooks</a>, <em>Remembered Rapture</em></blockquote>
<p>Au contraire to my previous beliefs, I have gotten engaged. In truth, I have been engaged for a long time: not the conventional drop-of-the-knee and the "will you marry me" routine, but a much more subdued: "Lethe, someday I think I <em>would</em> like to be married to you." A wink. A playful tongue just barely sticking out from her lips. It's enough to make my heart melt. It's enough to let me know: this is the woman I want to spend forever with.</p>
<p>The life I lead now would be nigh-comprehensible to the person I was <a href="https://mayvaneday.org/blog/2020/april/vow.html">two years ago</a>, even though I write on the same exact subject, in the same spot on my bed, in the same exact room, in the same exact house. A year ago I was unsure of who I was, allowing the dreams of who I am and was future and past to guide me where they would: a teacher's aide in a school built in the shell of a reclaimed church, a sacrificial daughter fleeing her vengeful father, a wandering goddess severed from powers and home and condemned to the earth roam until she eventually disappeared from the world. The other versions of me had love interests, sure, but I- the I that stayed consistent behind the screen of Mori's Mirror, that despite the different lenses witnessed everything- never committed myself to any single story, any single person, knowing the memories would eventually stop and the feelings fade and the sense of living in that particular story go away.</p>
<p>But now I know. Now I know. Now I know.</p>
<p>And so I bring you readers here today on the first day of my last semester of college, or whenever you read this (for the written word cares not about the linear aspect of time), to witness me renew my vow. I offer it to none other than myself, just as binding as those words I will one day speak at the altar to hoped and hopeful.</p>
<p>It is said that every female carries within them an unspeakable rage. An inborn sense of injustice whose seeds are planted the very first day they brush up against the patriarchy, watered with every unconscious socialization, but sometimes never come to full bloom. Pecked at, trimmed, bonsaied into something manageable, something that allows the woman to go to sleep at night without facing the sheer horror of realizing she lives in a world where half of the population wants to see her humiliated, subjugated, made to be compliant, reduced down to nothing. I am, of course, <em>severely understating</em> the problem. To acknowledge the rage, like attempting to comprehend the gulf between <a href="https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/">the average American income and Jeff Bezos' wealth</a>, is to teeter on the edge of going completely fucking insane.</p>
<p>When I was an elementary-school child, watching as my parents doted on every cry of my brothers and then turned around and told me to shut up and accomodate them despite my own discomfort, I buried the seed further. I shunned the light from it. I swallowed my words.</p>
<p>When I was a junior-high teen, watching as my parents fought tooth-and-nail for my brothers to get school accomodations and then turned a blind eye to the school dropping my own IEP despite me still needing help, I buried the seed further. I shunned the light from it. I swallowed my words.</p>
<p>When I was a high-school teen, watching as my parents jumped at every chance to ground me for writing poetry about topics they didn't approve of and then turned a blind eye to my brothers' increasingly inappropriate browsing history, I buried the seed further. I shunned the light from it. I swallowed my words.</p>
<p>But every chance possible, just like the little red bucket that now sits on my windowsill, I tip the seed towards the light in rebellion, weak as it is in this winter of my passing. The strawberry kit I planted on a whim shortly after being fired from my job last autumn has sprouted through the dirt again, little leaves barely two millimeters across but still unmistakenly green and <em>alive</em>. The bush on the other side of my bedroom window, a tree repeatedly cut down <em>again and again and again</em> every time it grows wild, refuses to submit to subjugation and revolts by regrowing <em>again and again and again</em>.</p>
<p>Over and over and over again, I find myself facing the urge to bury the seed further, shun the light, swallow my words in the vain hope that it will prevent others from <em>disapproving</em> of me, disliking me, that it will prevent them from hurting me, that it will prevent the agonizing pain of rejection. I look the other way when men make jokes about porn and rape and close my eyes when another clearly demarcated space for women is destroyed in the name of "inclusion" and bite back tears when yet another woman is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220110023305/https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/77421/WHO_RHR_12.38_eng.pdf;sequence=1">murdered for the crime of being a woman</a>, knowing that it very well could have been me. I, a butterfly, sit entangled at the edge of the spider's web, watching it pace up and down and nibble away at me, and I do little to impede or stop its slow annihilation of myself.</p>
<p>But all this time I've had a knife. I've had a way out. The spiders hate knifes, think it a personal attack against them that I dare to brandish one. But I don't want to kill them. I just want out of the web. I just want to be free.</p>
<p><strong>I just want to be free!</strong></p>
<p><i>I've had enough!</i> I've had enough of the constant propaganda everywhere I go that I am lesser, inferior, meant for servitude on the basis of my birth! I've had enough of placing my trust in a man I thought in the moment was safe to be around and then it backfiring later! I've had enough of being assumed to be incompetent, ignorant, incapable of functioning because of the organs inside my hips! I've had enough of the objectification, of the male gaze, of the omnipresent pressure to shave and pluck and contour and tuck and smooth over the features that differentiate every woman from each other, blended and ground up into the same flat-minded mannequin, model for a sex doll, a hole for a douchebag to dick down and then discard in disgust!</p>
<p>"Your politics are boring," the egoist sneers. Of <em>course</em> you would think it boring to be held accountable for your role in oppression, to be asked thinking you serious about your revolutionary anarchist zeal to imagine a world where half the population doesn't have a high heel pressing down on their throats every moment of every day. Of <em>course</em> you would think it boring to live in a world without a class of people that it's socially acceptable to punch down on to relieve your stress.</p>
<p>"Your politics are unprofitable," the capitalist sneers. Of <em>course</em> you would think it unprofitable to witness the birth of a world with no need for cosmetic surgery or makeup or uncomfortable clothes or fashion magazines or diet programs for the women prioritizing their comfort and existing in their natural healthy state or hormones and masectomies for the females inevitably so alienated from their (physical) humanity they cannot take the pain anymore and wish to masquerade as men in a society that sees men as "default" and women as "other".</p>
<p>I have decided I no longer care about male opinions. Collectivist? Yes, but not without good reason. <strong>According to <a href="https://archive.md/https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/42tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_42_arrests_by_sex_2012.xls">2012 FBI crime statistics</a>, men are responsible for 88.7% of murders and non-negligent manslaughters, 99.1% of forcible rapes, 77.1% of aggravated assaults, and 92.2% of sex offenses.</strong> I am beginning to see a pattern here...</p>
<p>I understand that tipping the plant toward the light, that committing the crime of setting the pot beside the window to let it drink in the sun as much as it wants, will put me in danger. I understand that finally unbottling the rage inside my body will lose me most, if not all, of my friends and allies here in the Inside. Likely I will wake up to vile emails in my inbox many times throughout this semester, throughout the rest of my life. But <a href="https://mayvaneday.org/blog/2021/may/rebirth.html#exhortation">I cannot let the low-lifes stop me.</a> I cannot back down now. If I have less than six months left to live, then I do not want to pass into Sablade with the weight of knowing I left the Inside a coward. And if there is a change of plans and I must live longer, then <strong>my life is not worth living if it is not a life with integrity.</strong></p>
<p>I hoist this knife I have been gifted into the air, not in some declaration of unity but of separation: I will sever whatever bindings I have been restricted with due to the circumstances of my birth, and I will carve out a space in this world for me to be as free as possible, and I will create a new world upon my liberation from the Inside where misogyny is naught but a distant fleeting nightmare.</p>
<p>This is my birthright, after all.</p>
<p>Live free, Vane Vander, indeed.</p>
</article>]]>
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</entry>
<entry>
<title>I don't trust technomancy</title>
@ -148,30 +178,4 @@ or jump off the edge and trust you'll become airborne?
</summary>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Copyright Accelerationism</title>
<link href="https://mayvaneday.art/blog/2021/december/copywrong.html" />
<id>https://mayvaneday.art/blog/2021/december/copywrong.html</id>
<published>2021-12-04</published>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[<article>
<p>Since <a href="https://mayvaneday.art/blog/2021/november/nft.html">my post on non-fungible tokens last month</a>, I've come to the radical and totally shocking conclusion that I personally don't care if corporations start using NFTs as a Digital Restrictions Management scheme to further lock down their products. Actually, I take that back: I <em>hope</em> they do, and quickly, because the more restricted their products are, whether software or music or games, the less appealing said products will be for the end consumer and thus the less money said companies will make.</p>
<p>I follow a great deal of Tumblr accounts without having an account myself due to this funny little thing called RSS. Over the past month, one of them, which I followed for the occult memes, has been throwing a shitfit over <a href="https://archive.md/6rYq7#selection-517.0-517.8">the public backlash from their planned NFT collection</a>. It turns out that almost nobody actually wants to pony up large chunks of money for the privilege of... accessing a full-quality GIF in a digital locker.</p>
<p>And why should they? It's not as if the art, from what the preview GIFs show me, is of high artistic merit. Why would someone go through the hassle of setting up a crypto wallet, paying the money, and figuring out what convoluted authentication scheme the digital locker uses to access the art just to... claim ownership over a chunk of ones and zeros? Thanks to the analog hole, either the value would tank when the buyer tried to show off the GIF they'd bought as it would be the full-quality one and now available to everyone to see and steal, or whatever site they uploaded it to would compress it, in which case there would be no point to having bought it as they could have just used the preview one to get the same end quality.</p>
<p>This person losing a large chunk of their followers from what they perceived to be as "selling out" is, to me, a microcosm of what is to come if corporations start trying to use NFTs as a DRM mechanism. Any PC gamer knows what a hassle existing DRM methods like Denuvo are, especially when trying to get games working on any operating system that isn't Microshaft Wangblows. There comes a point where the software's attempts to ensure it isn't an "unauthorized" copy are so intrusive- remember the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal">Sony rootkit</a>?- that it becomes more of a hassle to tolerate it than to learn how to use a less-restrictive alternative. Even the most dedicated <a href="https://mayvaneday.art/blog/2020/february/consumeproduct.html">"bugman"</a> has a limit. (That is, when one is aware an alternative exists...) I originally learned how to use Linux because my Windows install had found a way to break itself, and fixing it every day would have been more effort than just learning how to run Ubuntu, even though I was terrified of breaking my computer at the time due to my then-incompetence. <strong>The more opaque and DRM-ridden a product is, the closer to "path of least resistance" a pirated version of said product with the DRM removed or an alternative that never had the DRM becomes.</strong></p>
<p>Rejecting intrusive DRM need not mean a loss of revenue for artists. Before my parents finally allowed me access to my bank account in 2019 (which had existed before then, but they hadn't allowed me to withdraw any money...?) and I got my first real job later that year, my consumptive habits were limited to whatever I could squeeze past my parents' censors or what I could acquire on my own for free. Any music that I could not torrent, any video games that I could not find an emulator (or, later, a hacked console) for, any books I could not find on eBook Bike (which later went to shit when they required registration to download) or Z-Library, I had to go without. This restriction led me to places like Bandcamp, which had a plethora of music free to download from every genre I could possibly think of. There was (and still is) no DRM to be had, just an optional prompt to donate whatever money one thought the album was worth.</p>
<p>And, as it turned out, many of those albums which were free to me ended up becoming some of my favorites:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://reactwithprotest.bandcamp.com/album/cassus-this-is-dead-art"><em>this is dead art, this is dead time, but we may still live yet</em> by Cassus</a></li>
<li><a href="https://idontwanttoknowwhythecagedbirdsings.bandcamp.com/album/things-are-getting-better-but-i-am-still-dead-inside"><em>Things Are Getting Better But I am Still Dead Inside</em> by I Don't Want To Know Why The Caged Bird Sings</a></li>
<li><a href="https://lalunaband.bandcamp.com/album/always-already"><em>Always Already</em> by la luna</a></li>
<li><a href="https://reactwithprotest.bandcamp.com/album/piri-reis-they-sleep-we-live-split-2">the Piri Reis / They Sleep We Live split</a> (which may <a href="../september/fire.html">sound familiar</a>...)</li>
<li><a href="https://seikomart.bandcamp.com/album/invitation-to-the-voyage"><em>Invitation To The Voyage</em> by Setsuko Suwa</a></li>
<li><a href="https://treehousesperth.bandcamp.com/album/id-rather-forget"><em>i'd rather forget</em> by Treehouses</a></li>
</ul>
<p>As soon as I had access to my money, I made sure to give some to these artists in appreciation for the many hundreds upon hundreds of hours I'd spent listening to them over the years. And although many of them have fallen into hiatus, I am still finding new music, new books, new games for free to this day. And as for the games and books I had pirated? The ones I ended up liking, I bought physical copies of, money they would have never received if I hadn't had the opportunity to experience them for free first.</p>
<p><strong>There is a world of art that exists outside DRM, outside the purview of corporations. There is a Second Realm waiting to destroy the First by making it obsolete and irrelevant. And it exists <em>now</em>.</strong> And if corporations, and the occasional indie artist, want to shoot themselves in both feet with NFTs thinking them an impenetrable form of DRM, I say: let them. Let them lock down their works so tightly that they become utterly inaccessible. Let them miss out on the money they would have earned from now-disgruntled customers. Let the corporations destroy themselves in building a dam to maximize every dollar flowing to them only to find their river is drying up. Let that money flow instead to those who respect computing freedom, to those not hamstrung by corporate interests. I would rather live in a creative culture with millions upon millions of indie artists who make a few things out of love than a single corporate powerhouse with a monopoly, a monoculture.</p>
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@ -46,7 +46,6 @@
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