The Pen Pot

It's been a while since I complained about my mother on here. Back then, it was to do with polymyalgia and her being stubborn about taking any meds. In January, 2024, the polymyalgia basically became a non issue because she had a widowmaker heart attack (and didn't, you know, die).

She got a stent, a raft of medications, and then the subtle signs of short term memory loss became increasingly apparent. Now mum always asked me to tell her if she started losing her marbles. The problem? She doesn't believe me.

Her current mental status can adequately be summed up as "Short term memory is in the shitter"

First, it was just that her conversation got a bit repetitive. She has always talked the hind leg off a donkey (fucking exhausting, actually), and then she started to get jammed on certain subjects and anecdotes that I've heard before. A lot. She'd repeat things three times in a one hour conversation.

Her current favourite topics are:

1. Her best friend's grandchildren and how they're "strapping young boys!!" (probably true) and were born nine months apart (they weren't. They were born eighteen months apart at least)
2. Her cat and how he is an "adequate" cat and older than everyone else in the family's cats (untrue. He's the youngest.)

She just puts them on repeat and off she goes. All right. Fine. Don't correct her. She gets stroppy and then immediately forgets you corrected her.

Second, her gift giving got weird. Now, it's always BEEN weird. My mother has this notion that a gift has to offer her, the giver, a certain sort of status. What you want doesn't matter. What matters is that its "a good enough present". This has been her thing all the time I was growing up and honestly it drove me nuts. Did I get some truly extravagant gifts out of it? Yes. Did I get what I wanted... rarely.

Suddenly, her gift giving is random and arbitrary. Like it has no bearing on the person she gives it to. It's just... stuff. She also gets details wrong. Got my husband a (quite nice) keyring with a personalised year of birth on it, got the year wrong by two decades. That sort of thing.

Then came the "can't remember a damn fucking thing" situation. This came on in dribs and drabs. She went on a cruise and forgot all her heart medication, for example. It happens, sometimes, but it was a pretty glaring error. She forgets directions to places; I don't think she knows what day it is.

Her time-keeping, which was always bad, has become atrocious. We joke now that their house is a time-zone behind everyone else, because she is at least an hour late to everything (and I'm an aggressively, anxiously punctual person, so you can guess how well that goes down.) There's also this bizarre thing where she says she couldn't leave on time because she was waiting for the washing machine to finish, and it's like... maybe plan your washing better? Or don't start the machine thirty minutes before you're meant to leave for somewhere? It's truly bizarre.

Her latest thing is it's her 79th birthday on Friday. She and my oldest sister arranged to do a birthday lunch with all of us at the local pub. She talked to mum about it on the phone on Sunday. All agreed. Great.

The next day mum sends out an email saying it's her birthday (we know) and she'd like to celebrate (we know that, too) and how about Thursday?

When Kate reminds her, by phone, and I remind her, by email, about the plans we have already made, she claims she's not spoken to Kate since last Thursday.

And it's like, did she forget a whole half hour conversation on the phone this time?

And all this would be challenging, but tolerable if she would just acknowledge it's happening. Like I get it. It's scary. But we've had three interventions now as a family. Dad's been telling her she's forgetting things, and then she conveniently forgets/"forgets" that we ever told her that.

And if we point out she's forgetting about appointments or whatever, she's just like "I'm not forgetting. I was never listening in the first place." (Which is bullshit and a rude ass excuse)

She's coming over for coffee today to drop off a gift for my kid (her grandson) and I just... don't want to deal with her. At all.

Still, needs must, I suppose. Wish me luck.

There's talk (again) at Tumblr that the site is being sun-downed due to a severe layoff of staff, and honestly, it's heartbreaking. The Internet I grew up with is no longer a thing.

There are ghosts of it, here and there, but what we're left with it Meta (ew), Musk (double ew) Tik Tok (No thanks. I'm not one for videos) and Bluesky, which is very quiet.

Discord's a thing. I even use it, but it's not quite the same.

Then there's this place, which feels like a phantom in itself: a memorial to what once was.

I suppose I just woke up this morning feeling uncertain of things. The political situation in America means I'm not sure if AO3 will survive (How long before anything gay is porn and porn is "illegal", for example?)

It's hard to look on the bright side when everything is so damn dark.

I can honestly say, a dental abscess over a bank holiday weekend does not spark joy. I have antibiotics now, and a root canal booked for the 15th of September, but this is just a bit more faff I could have truly done without 🤣

Since I've become a fandom-old ™ I get to see a lot about how the fashions surrounding fanfiction has changed. Some of it, I love. For example, I adore that it's now frowned upon to give unsolicited criticism on fics. People still do it, but as an author you can rightfully shut them down, because people have figured out that fanfiction is a gift, not a submission to a writing workshop, and critique should only be offered if its invited in the first place.

However, with the way everything's changing, I'm witnessing a rapid switch and change in writers' attitudes to comment. Some people are simultaneoulsy bemoaning the lack of engagement (true) and complaining about the quality of the comments they're receiving. I've seen writers saying that emojii's or just a "great job" are apparently meaningless to them, and frankly, my mind's a little bit blown.

As it is, while I can sympathise, the posts pressuring people to comment with fic have been getting seriously over the top lately, shooting straight past begging to almost threatening and making some kind of moral judgement on readers who don't comment. For me, that's not what fandom should be about.

If people comment on my fic, I am always grateful, because it's a way to start building a community and meeting people who share my interests, but I'm not about to start demanding that. Are there consequences to no comments? Yeah. Lack of engagement = limited desire to create content.

I think in this very instant gratification consumer culture, that's important for people to understand, but in the same way that fic writers aren't just there to dispense something for people to read, readers aren't just a means to gratify a wrwiter. They're real people, with real issues, stresses and all that.

I just honestly don't think guilt tripping people into commenting on fic is healthy, and nor is judging the so-called quality of the comments you receive. When most creators are gasping for any interactions, policing feedback is ridiculously counter-productive.

I'm delighted, personally, with an emoji or a "great job" because that's 3 seconds out of someone's really busy life that they put forward to me to say thanks.