ploupoc

It's 2026, and the winter-spring exchange cycle is getting underway!

Candy Hearts / candyheartsex is now in signups! This is a low minimum relationships exchange (gen or ship) that reveals on Valentines Day.

purimgifts is also in signups! This is a low-minimum exchange for fanfic and/or podfic with a side helping of art, focused on characters who are at least one of: women, Jewish, or persecuted (preferably by evil viziers).

traumaticexperiences is a new exchange currently in nominations. Does what it says on the tin (an exchange about characters dealing with trauma).

amperslashexchange still has two lingering pinch hits, if anyone is interested! One is for Guardian (book, show, or RPF); the other has some various video game and book fandoms. At the current time, PHs are due on Jan 2 for a hopeful Jan 3 opening, but another extension is possible.

In other news, it sounds like LJ might be in its final death throes - see this bluesky thread from rahaeli/synecdochic about it. She recommends that you save anything off there that you want to keep.

I've kept my LJ account all this time despite being aware of the risks because a) I want to keep my blog links active as long as possible since I had so much fic posted on there back in the day, and b) I don't want to lose the ability to manage the various communities I used to run or co-run (sgagenficathon and stargategenrec among them) just in case of a troll takeover or similar. It's still useful for me to be able to log in occasionally to view locked posts, and I've really appreciated LJ's continued existence as a fic archive as I've gotten into some older fandoms over the last few years. (Torchwood was especially that way - a *bunch* of fic was only on LJ and had never been ported over to other archives.)

So I was feeling a little wistful about no longer having that option in future fandoms, but then I got to thinking about the sheer longevity of it. It was 20 years ago when I got into LJ, circa 2005 or so. 20 years before 2005 was 1985. In 2005, almost nothing about the internet as I had known it in the mid to late 90s was still the same. So the fact that I could go dumpster diving for 15-year-old fanfic in Torchwood fandom was really extraordinary compared to the experience I would have had in 2005 looking for fic from 1990. The most important rule of the early internet for me was that nothing lasts forever, and while it's been nice to have the longevity of certain aspects of its current incarnation, all things internet will still pass eventually.

Still, if there's anything over there you want to save, of your stuff or someone else's, now would be the time.

Edit: As per a question in the comments, does anyone know a way to save an archive of pictures from LJ without having to do it manually? A tool, technique, etc ... this is not for me, but I'd like to help if possible!