I gloried in lurking in real time through a worldwide fandom and found my feet again. No one knew how sick I still was, and that everything I was laboriously reconstructing from scratch went agonizingly slowly because I still had to wear sunglasses in the house and couldn't sit or stand in one position for more than five minutes at a time.
This was a video I downloaded and played every single day to get me motivated to WORK, because I had a vision, and come hell or high water, I was going to follow this dream.
I live streamed the last show as it was broadcast to UK fans, and sat in on one of the coolest live tweets I've ever seen. I've never seen a fandom before or since who shared so openly and lovingly, even through tiffs and fights. I lurked through watching a whole planet come alive over this show, and weep together at the end. Watching people in so many countries reach beyond their borders, beyond their politics and religions and family problems to comfort and support each other in real time was like watching a dream come true. I realized THAT is what fandom is all about.
After that I reclaimed my original internet name and came out of my lurker hole and continued to keep scraping my web empire back together, word by tiny word, link by broken link. Almost nobody saw me doing this at first.
Over time, weaving in and out of fandoms, meeting new people, making new things, I got stronger, more capable, and along with the determination I found joie de vivre, something I'd never experienced before, because most of what I'd built before I tore it back down and disappeared had been constructed dot by dot through terrible pain and sadness on broken tech. No one ever knew how hard I worked and how much I threw away. But I wanted it all back.
As I watched myself scraping my heart back together, I started feeling a thrill I never expected. I was still far from where I wanted to be, but it was getting easier to to believe I could get there, no matter how steep and jagged the mountain. I started to dance while I worked.
And as I worked I noticed other fandom leaders going through the same thrills, dancing the same dance, reaching out to and supporting their people. Their people.
My people don't really have a global network yet. The dream is there, and some have tried. I've talked to several around the world who've worked very hard to extend and connect beyond their borders, crossing language barriers and political lines. But some of my deepest lurkers are watching from countries that would burn everything I've done for standing up against a fictional tyranny because it so sadly expresses exactly what they're still living with now, on this earth. It's just a TV show, and we're just a fandom, but for some of us, it's very dangerous to reach out and show our support.
Many Americans don't think of these things very often while they're watching television. So few people actually get what I'm doing or see what's going on behind the scenes that even if something happened, it would go unnoticed. When I first came back public I had no intention of doing this, no idea it would become important, I just knew what I wanted to say from the heart.
Zev vs Xev is still a big deal. That post, along with my entire Lexxperience blog now, is regularly loaded from a country that upholds strict Sharia law. I continue to stare at my monitor every time I run into that, wondering who is actually reading it, whether it's being copied and passed around underground, whether it might be inspiring hope, and I dearly hope it's not inspiring punishment if anyone is caught reading it.
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| This is a 28 day chart of top ten visiting countries. Over half these views came in the last 7 days. The country in question has never shown up on my other blogs. |
I took a long break on purpose over the holidays just to see if the traffic on Lexxperience would slow down from a particular country. It hasn't. So before I continue with more character posts in which I intend to be brazenly stupid enough to point out politically incorrect atrocities going on, I just want to go on record saying I know exactly what I'm writing while I'm writing it out, and I've always believed that what I'm writing about Lexx is important.
And now I'll call other reviewers cowards for jingling Lexx down to a 'smut in space' show. It takes a lot of guts to say the things I'm saying and watch some of it go viral in places that still execute people for that.
This might become a really challenging year, and I hope all my friends understand that I need to stay focused and not blow this off as busy work for fandom glory. Anyone who thinks what I'm doing on the internet and social media is about getting attention for myself needs to please step back if you're taking me personally, give me room to think and write and be brave enough (brazenly stupid enough) to say some things that will probably rock a few boats.
If there really is such a thing as destiny, then everything I am doing is part of that.
I'll never forget the first time I watched this fan video. Every hair on my arms went up, and it inspired me like nothing else in any other fandom ever has. It's not mine, the site I got it from is long gone, and I've never seen it again anywhere else, although I'm sure other fans have copies. And if it is out there and I've missed it, apologies. This comment is the closest thing I can find publicly on it ever existing.
I've got work to do.
