I've switched to semi friends only. Although I'll still have a number of public entries, and any entries related to ICoS updates will remain public, I make no guarantees for anything else.

I also changed the security settings on all my old entries so anyone stumbling on my journal now-- I assure you, I've been around for quite some time even if you can't tell right now. I promise I'm not an ljbot. Probably.

If you aren't listed as my friend you aren't missing anything important. But feel free to add me if you want. I may add you back. I may not. No offense intended if I don't... I'm a bit unpredictable that way.

Thank you for showing interest in my journal and either way, I wish you the brightest of blessings!

(Background image used for sfo banner from lyckaa)

I made a Patreon page--I'm posting Incarnations, the first book in my fantasy series called Wildwood Rising. Incarnations is an LGBTQIA+ fantasy/mystery/police procedural, and Wildwood Rising as a whole will be an LGBTQIA+ fantasy series. For my patreon page, there aren't reward tiers; any amount you donate will give you anything I release. Also, almost everything will eventually be free so if you can't pledge I totally understand, but for anyone who is able to I would greatly appreciate any support :)

Here's the link to my patreon page, which explains it way better and in more detail: https://www.patreon.com/ais

Also, here are the first two chapters of Incarnations so far:

Chapter one: https://www.patreon.com/posts/incarnations-one-14398122
Chapter two: https://www.patreon.com/posts/incarnations-two-14400304

Thank you to everyone who has supported me in the past or who will look to support me in the future, in whatever way you feel comfortable. I appreciate you and hope you have a lovely day <3

Hey! :D My author site is up! http://aisylum.com/

There's a lot to find there-- information on books I'm working on, of course, but there's a lot more. I also have art, videos, photography (CC license so you can use them), my favorite charities/a place to recoup... Go check it out!

http://aisylum.com/ :D

I’m donating my 32nd birthday to raise $320 to help build clean water facilities through Charity: Water. Please help if you can, even just by clicking the link to read more information: https://my.charitywater.org/for-lucas. 100% of your donated money goes straight into building clean water facilities, so you know that every penny counts.

As you know if you've read my previous blog entries, 2 years ago I donated my 30th birthday and together we raised $210, which with other campaigns helped build a piped water system- tap stand in the Daduwa community in Nepal, which provided clean water to 144 people.

There’s more information at this year's campaign link (https://my.charitywater.org/for-lucas). I donated $32 to the campaign already to get it started. No matter how small an amount you may be able to donate, if you can donate (or share my campaign with others), will you please help? (If you can’t help me with my campaign, please consider donating your own birthday so that more people can get clean water in the end)

I started this campaign early in honor of World Water Day today.

Some of you might remember that in 2013, I donated my 30th birthday for mycharity:water to help fund a project that would bring clean water to a village somewhere on the planet that really needed it.

I posted on my blog about it (and at other social media like here at lj) and with all of your help, we went past my goal! $210 was raised for my $200 goal.

mycharity:water has been keeping me up to date as time passed and I've been telling all of you what they say. I just got an email saying the project is complete!

Read about it at the Daduwa Community in Nepal project page! You'll find a bunch of pictures of people using the different gravity-fed taps that were built to bring clean water to the community, as well as a google map pinpointing the location.

Thanks to all of your help, 144 people now have access to clean water.

Thank you so much to anyone who donated to my fundraising campaign! I will likely do more in the future. And if you want to contribute to mycharity: water, they are an awesome campaign. 100% of donated funds go straight to these projects, and they do a fantastic job of keeping you up to date as the project progresses.

If you don't have money to donate but still want to help, consider donating your birthday.

Thank you.

Thank you to everyone who has ever read one of my stories or looked at any of the drawings I've done. Thank you no matter how you felt about it-- whether you tried to read the story and just couldn't finish it, whether you hated it or loved it, whether you'll always remember it or forgot it the second you looked away, or whether you haven't checked it out yet but still plan to someday. Thank you to everyone who has never been interested in anything I created but has still interacted with me.

Thank you to everyone who has been there with me, or us, throughout the years, and to everyone who has been around more recently. Thank you to everyone who's ever reached out to me, and to everyone who is too shy or introverted to speak up but silently lends support anyway. Thank you to anyone who isn't there now but reads this message in the future.

I still don't quite understand how I was lucky enough to be in a situation where I could meet so many amazing people around the world. I don't know when you'll see this, what your mood will be, or what you'll be doing--but if you're reading this, know that I appreciate you. I know you're there, and you matter to me.

And more than anything else, I hope you are able to let yourself be you--that you don't feel pressured into being someone you aren't, and that you take a moment to appreciate yourself. See the brightness inside, all the pieces of you that are unlike anyone else, and all the parts that fit together with everyone else into a greater whole.

I had something special, a small token of gratitude, that I wanted to include with this message but I was unable to make it with the current equipment I have. If I'm able to make it in the future, I will share it with all of you and reference back to this post.

No matter the season, no matter the setting, I'm wishing you the best and hoping for your happiness.

Love from the internet,
Ais

So, I used to go to youtube only for funny cat videos and weird conspiracy theories, because that was basically all I knew was there. Every now and then I ran across another type of video but back then, vlogs were incredibly boring to me because it was usually someone rambling about something without any proper presentation that intrigued me.

In the last... oh, I don't know, year? year and a half? I somehow stumbled across different channels. At first, I didn't really get how the subscription process worked, and then even when I slowly started subscribing I still didn't actually check my feed.

But the thing is, I don't have cable tv, and I started getting really frustrated by how I would get emotionally invested in a long-term storyline only for it to end often abruptly and/or shittily, and then that was it. You were done. The characters had never existed in reality so there was never an answer to, "But what happens next?"

I think one reason for my transition into watching youtube more is because, with real living people who actually exist, there IS always a Next.

I think, if you had tried to explain youtube communities to me years ago, I might have thought they sounded awesome if I'd known what it really was--but if you'd told me it all started with vlogs, I might have zoned out. I had a poor understanding of what it is to vlog and why exactly some of these youtubers are actually really fucking amazing.

What's even more interesting is, if you start following different people on youtube, you'll start to notice that many of them name their viewers as a community. I actually don't like that in a lot of cases, tbh, because it feels sort of egotistical-- but on the other hand I can see why they do it because it probably makes it easier to refer to the millions of people watching their videos.

And, in some cases, the idea of it being a community is actually very true to form. Some of these places, you actually do start to feel like you're part of a family. There's a very different feeling to the community of people commenting in different videos or places. Spoiler alert: for some of the most awesome people, who will treat you like a human being and actually explain things without turning into jerks, I have to recommend Nerdfighteria. What's that? Well, my friend. Read on and you shall see.

I'm probably subscribed to, I don't know, maybe 20 channels or more-- but I want to take a moment to highlight my favorites. If you haven't ever really looked around youtube as a source of entertainment but also feeling connected with vloggers and their followers, give these guys a chance.

This list is in no particular order.

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The vlogbrothers, aka, Hank Green and John Green
(And when I say John Green--yes, I mean John Green, the author of Paper Towns, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, etc.)

These guys are honestly just straight up awesome. I won't even try to explain all the amazingness of them because it would be way too long, but their community is known as Nerdfighteria so go look into that if you want some info on it. You can also research Project For Awesome. And if you want to search my favorite things they do on youtube, look up Crash Course.

Here's an FAQ video they did about what it means to be awesome and what it means when you see people say "DFTBA":



I'm not posting more from them in part because I'm also still figuring out all the things that are attached to the Green brothers, but generally speaking, I really like them both for different reasons. Here's just an example of some things:

Hank:


John:


COMMUNITY NAME: Nerdfighters, called Nerdfighteria too--also DFTBA is used a lot, and while that isn't the community name, if you see that anywhere that's what it relates to. It stands for Don't Forget To Be Awesome. (A reason I freaking love them is they're all about being awesome and not sucking)

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Dan & Phil, aka Dan Howell and Phil Lester or danisnotonfire and theamazingphil

These two are just both so adorkable I just love them so much. They're friends (or, according to the phangirls, secretly lovers) who both make their own videos but also collaborate a lot. They live in the same flat and they co-host a lot of things--including a show on BBC Radio 1 that's now monthly but used to be more often I think. I love them individually in their videos-- basically Phil is a dog and Dan is a cat. Phil is this super cute, sometimes a bit naive guy, who often tells stories about weird things that happen around him or things he misunderstood-- and Dan is often sarcastic, introspective and introverted, telling stories about how socially awkward he is and all the problems that result. They also have a gaming channel where they play games together.

Honestly I don't even know what videos to link for these guys because pretty much all of them are funny or cute in some way-- but some that made me laugh the most are below. (Side note, one of them features Louise and she's awesome too so I also recommend checking her channel)









I'm going to stop there but for real, you can just search dan and phil, theamazingphil, danisnotonfire, or if you want some funny things that at first will be really WTF, phil is not on fire-- just pretty much anything with these guys is good to watch. PS: the water race is also really funny but you'll probably want to watch the other Krave challenge videos before it or it might be super confusing.

COMMUNITY NAME: I actually don't think they have one? Except the people who slash them call them phan as a couple name, and the slashers are called phangirls, so you will see a LOT of phangirl comments in pretty much any video related to Dan, Phil, and especially ones with them together.

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Bunny aka grav3yardgirl

I really love Bunny. She is sweet, dorky, funny, and feels very genuine. She does a lot of interesting videos-- I particularly like her Does This Thing Really Work? series, where she buys things often from As Seen on TV and tests it out to see if it actually works or not. But she also does other things--Pintertest, where she tries things she sees on pinterest; First impression Fridays where she tries something out for the first time; Follow me around, where she films herself going into stores buying things.

It's hard to explain why Bunny is so fun to follow-- and honestly you might get a bit thrown in the first few videos you watch of hers because she can sometimes be all over the place and she's very expressive in her facial features and often loud. One thing I like is she doesn't wear makeup in a lot of her videos, so she just feels more like she's sitting around talking to you rather than someone going to all this effort to present themselves only a very specific way publicly. She's all about being yourself, loving yourself.

I don't really have a favorite video of hers I can think of immediately but here are some examples:



This is an interview she did for TV, in case you want to get an idea of who she is:


COMMUNITY: Swamp family

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Rhett and Link
These two have been friends since childhood and call themselves "internetainers". You've probably seen things they've had a hand in, and didn't even realize it. Like, did you ever see that Shift It commercial that was all over the place a year ago? Rhett and Link made it. They create purposefully terrible local commercials that are so bad they become funny and catchy. Here's the commercial if you haven't seen it, and if you liked it you should watch the behind the scenes on it:



They also make great music:





They also have a mostly-daily show called Good Mythical Morning, which is where they kind of talk about whatever topic they're on now. In all honesty, I loved the early seasons more than the recent ones because sometimes I feel a little like they're trying too hard lately to get more hits-- but let me show you one of my favorite ones they've ever done, because it's so fucking funny:



Also, at the end of every Good Mythical Morning episode they spin a wheel of suggestions by fans for things to act out. One of the fans took the audio of the funniest ones and has been animating it in a little cartoon series called Wheel of Mythicality. These are two that make me laugh every time, but there are many others that are super funny:





ALSO, they made a documentary about trying to track down their elementary school teacher who was the reason they first met as kids. I really loved the documentary, to be honest. It's called Looking For Ms. Locklear, and you can rent it or buy it on Amazon or elsewhere.

COMMUNITY: Mythical Beasts

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All of the people I mentioned have merchandise you can buy in various forms. John and Hank do a lot of charity fundraising too.

This is another werewolf-centric, Remus-centric fic I started in 2006, but it's unrelated to the other one. In this one, the idea of the potion is what drove the idea for the plot.

This is also unnamed--I only have it labeled as "future dark" in my files.

( Dark Remus-centric AU werewolf fic startCollapse )

I found a number of fics I'd started back in 2006 but never finished. They were probably all going to be long and that's problematic when I'm not sure if I'm going to finish them or not. But I like the concept of both of them so I might still.

I didn't want to lose them if anything ever happened to my computer so I'm posting them here.

( Unnamed Remus-centric, werewolf-centric ficCollapse )