I feel like I should say

[bironic]

U.S. politics has (have?) washed over my head again, as it does periodically, rising from the baseline fear and disappointment that mounted during election season and spiked in November.

I don't talk about it much here. This blog, and bironicwastaken, are my dedicated fannish spaces online. It looks like we all understand that media consumption, fannishness and other creative pursuits are permissible hobbies, community building in an environment of divisiveness, necessary breaks and even artistic acts of resistance as we struggle with current events. Still, I sometimes (1) worry that fannish-oriented posts strike the wrong tone in wider context, such as yesterday's, and (2) feel a defensive urge to point out that I'm doing things "in real life" to fight what's happening, even if they may not be enough and even though no one has said anything.

When I get down on myself about not doing enough, I focus on things like these, in addition to thinking through how I can have a greater impact:
- Since November, every feature article I’ve written at work has made an explicit or strong implicit political statement
- This auction vid not only raised money for a good cause but is also about celebrating many characters of color in current genre sources, and that's not for nothing these days
- Every month, I donate to activist, investigative journalism and/or minority-support organizations
- I talk to people, including family and friends who voted in ways I am trying to understand
- etc.

That is all. It's a[nother] tough day. ETA: Not least: Someone shattered a pane of glass in the Holocaust memorial downtown for the second time this summer, and last night I dreamed about photo-documenting four young white women neo-Nazis in front of the science museum.

Comments

[yhlee]

*support support*

I hear you on trying to find the right balance. It's something I struggle with myself.

[bironic]

I'm sorry to hear it. Good luck to us all. Creating art (or "art") has always been my outlet and my way of processing difficult things, but like laurashapiro says downthread, the public expression of it feels complicated these days as politics infiltrate online spaces in my life that until recently were almost entirely fannish.