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I joined this site to impress a goon and we're still together. He liked to show me Fashion SWAT articles and FYAD threads and I liked sitting real close together looking at his laptop. SA on a whole has helped me become funnier, more informed, and more political. That said, most of this is a retrospective on one community within the site. In 2012, I was in a really dark place with some hosed up family poo poo. One day, someone posted a flash fiction contest down in Creative Convention with the stupidest writing prompt I had ever seen: A man agonizes over his potatoes. It was so dumb that I felt personally challenged to try to write a good story with that as its basis. I don't think I succeeded, but I won the first Thunderdome, which was the first time I had ever won anything based on my own merits, even if it was just a goofy contest. And then it kept going, and more people joined. Meanwhile, I was in the middle of a catastrophic depression and still dealing with some heinous family garbage. Someone reached out to me, said some stuff. It was the right stuff at the right time. I started to feel like something other than a prisoner in my own life. The Thunderdome community grew into a sort of friendship machine. We were spilling guts (our own and each other's) in this farcical flash fiction combat arena, basically playacting like pro-wrestlers, and I think the ego-scouring nature of the contest created a community of people who value honest critique over placation. The friends I made there are people who I trust to shoot straight with me, and I try to offer them the same thing in kind. Early on, all my characters were passive. Their stories just happened to them, and I was rightly critiqued for that. As I learned how to write people with agency, I learned that I had agency over my life. I didn't have to tolerate cruel people. I could get therapy. I could do bold things, gently caress up, and learn from it. I don't want to sound bootstrappy here, but the practice of writing people with agency helped me understand how I had taken my own for granted. Goons have been so kind to me. In 2014, I spent a weekend in San Francisco with a goon I'd never met in person. She gave me a spare key to her house and said "here's where we keep our weed and booze, go explore and have fun." Neither of us murdered the other afaik. In 2015, I went to Boston with the aforementioned person and we spent a weekend at yet another goon's house, this time with several others I'd met through Thunderdome. It was my first trip to the east coast. Saw the inside of a mad scientist's lab (there were rat guillotines). I met a lot of local writer friends, too. The Pacific Northwest is perhaps a bit overly goon-saturated. What's up Seattle LAN frenemies! In 2018, I was a bridesmaid for a Thunderdome friend! I met Pick there, at the goon containment table. She was nice! In 2018, one of my oldest IRL friends (also a goon) wrote his best, last piece of fiction and then took his own life. Because of SA, we had 50 pieces of fiction to give to his family after his passing. He had destroyed most of his other art and writing. I have one of his old journals, wherein there are notes in his handwriting about judging Thunderdome, and it makes me think about how many little connections were made because one long-since-banned poster prompted us to write about potatoes. At the end of 2019, a prodigiously kind group of New Zealand goons helped me visit their country. That was pretty much the last time I felt unreservedly happy. I came back home and the world fell apart. But you know, as long as the tubes are still online, and we can still shitpost side by side in the face of hell, i think i'll be okay. love you goons, goatman bless. Sitting Here has a new favorite as of 23:51 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 29, 2020 23:49
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cherry13chumscum posted:I like you guys a lot but I am out of here. Mods are gassing the Lowtax threads. That is not just lovely, it destroys the free speech that the Internet was supposed to provide. I'm now on https://www.something-waffle.com and the hell with this place. No offense to all you goons. Or well most of you anyway Hmmm I will not be going to this new domain, I think. Also this is kind of a dumb thing to do in this particular thread, just as someone who came here to read nice things.
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Jul 27, 2020 09:11
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HAmbONE posted:Avalloc saved my life. I don’t know if he posts on forums proper but I met him through Goonfleet Logistics. I was not doing well in the 2000’s, severely alcoholic and burning through multiple runs of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. During one of alcohol fueled breakdowns online, Avalloc reached out to me and gave me his personal phone number. I called him and he proceeded to talk me out of my spiral. Glad you're still here, goon
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Apr 22, 2021 22:09
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HelloIAmYourHeart posted:I might have mentioned it in this thread before, but when the pandemic hit and no one could get masks, I started making masks because I'm a quilter and had a fabric stash. I ended up selling hundreds of masks to goons and once the protests started after George Floyd's murder, I started donating my proceeds to various bail funds, the NAACP, etc. It kept me occupied and made me feel like I was actually doing something during a very scary, uncertain time. This is very cool 
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Aug 28, 2021 20:11
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