1. What is your name?
My name's Chris. My username comes from the song "Avalyn" by Slowdive.
2. Tell us something about you, your background, and what you've been up to lately?
I'm
rather surprised to have reached age 35. I'm a serial migrant, having
moved to new residences/cities/states thirteen times since leaving home.
I see myself as something of an unintentional/unaware drama queen and
wonder if others see me as one as well. I've got a number of problems
related to self-image, self-esteem and gender identity that are
long-festering and will probably never be resolved. For a long time I
was on a wide variety of antidepressant and antianxiety drugs, but not
anymore, and oddly, I feel much better about everything in general
without them. I'm a survivor. PTSD
still haunts me at times.
Over a year ago, I moved to Michigan
(which is where I grew up). I play
pub trivia frequently and I've been working for a megacorporation for
the past seven months after two-plus years of unemployment. Things are
mostly OK now.
On E2, I don't write much anymore, but I'm still
active behind the scenes as an admin. My main focus there has lately
been the handling of spammers. When I see accounts that rouse my
suspicions, I check their IP addresses against lists of known spammer IP
addresses. When I get a match against two such lists, I lock the
account and ban the offending IP address to prevent the spammer using it
from creating new accounts. There is a never-ending wave of spam
accounts being created. They never stop. I lock as many of them as I
can. I've probably banned over a thousand IP addresses of known
spammers.
I'm also, as ever, active in editorial pursuits. I
rather like correcting typos and fixing broken or incorrect HTML in
writeups written ages ago by noders who last logged in during the
Clinton administration, a demographic which composes a pretty large
chunk of what I edit here, though they are by no means the only
demographic. Even after doing this for almost eight years now, I'm still
constantly surprised at how many people never learned proper HTML, or
rather, that so many people learned improper HTML from seemingly the
same source. I wrote about this some time
ago, but what I wrote then is still true now.
I've been a noder
for ten years, an editor for almost eight and an admin for almost six. I
have no plans to leave in a huff despite an impressive number of the
good friends I've made here doing so and taking their work with them.
3. How did you discover Everything, and how did you become a noder?
I
discovered Everything2, which I've only ever known as "Everything2" and
not "Everything", which I think is an artifact of the generation of
noders previous to mine, in January 2002, following the unfolding saga
of Bernard Shifman through slashdot or some other such tech news site.
I clicked through to that writeup, clicked around some more for a few
weeks, then created an account. I've logged in more or less every day
since then. My first writeup was some navel-gazing pap about being
dumped which dannye nuked. It's still in my node heaven, of course,
but I can't bring myself to read it.
4. What are your favorite writeups -- both your own and from other noders?
My
own? Well, damn. I don't really like any of my writeups, which is a
shame because I've been told I love hearing myself talk. In fact, the
most successful writeups are the ones I like the least. I can't bear to
read strip club anymore, despite it being by far my most well-received
writeup and the one I've had the most feedback on. It reflects a
different time in my life where I wasn't particularly happy. Reading it
reminds me of the madness of that time and my inability to cope with it.
I
rarely receive messages about my writeups anymore, but that's OK. They
have, like almost all the other writeups, faded into the background of
random softlinks that make this site what it is, and they receive little
notice now. Old writeups linger, read occasionally by guest users or
the odd Random Nodes nodelet clicker-noder. But that's what old things
are supposed to do.
As for my favorite works written by others:
most of them are gone. The works of hapax, bewilderbeast,
paraclete, XWiz and creases, and their work, are gone, for
starters. (hapax left a single writeup and paraclete left a few, but I
wish they'd left everything.) The works of junkpile/jessicapierce,
Jet-Poop, yclept, allseeingeye, Princess Therion, longwinter,
jessicaj and many others remain. We'll be much worse off indeed if
they decide to pack up and split.
Sorry I didn't really name any
particular writeups. There are too many to list and I don't want to be
unfair by listing some but not others.
5. What are your favorite and least favorite memories from E2's history?
My favorites have probably been the gatherings, with Hot Damn 3! Nodestock at the top of the heap. Good times.
The worst was, of course, every instance of someone deleting all their work and leaving.
In
the middle was the awful, but still somewhat
entertaining-in-a-perverse-way battle with He Who
Must Not Be Named in 2008-10. Guy was nuttier than a tiny clown car
filled with republican presidential candidates.
6. What keeps you coming back?
A
combination of the force of habit, undying devotion, come-and-go
interest, occasional fun, and the desire to memorialize the friends I've
made in my time here.
7. What do you hope for E2's future?
I
have high hopes for the site now that it's under the direction of a
non-absentee dictator-for-life (no offense intended, nate). I don't
expect much in the way of fundamental change, but I'm eager to see what
nifty newness can be breathed into this lovable mess.
8. What does E2 mean to you?
It
means... a lot. I'm not sure I can elaborate. It means a lot to me.
It's been a constant companion of mine for a long time now and hopefully
into the far future.
9. Who are your favorite noders? Which ones do you miss the most?
I went into this in question 4. Here, I will say that with only a few exceptions, I miss all of those who have left.
10. Who would play you in the Everything2 movie?
According to Wiccanpiper, Hilary Swank. I can't disagree, but my preference is for Natalie Dormer. Or Eva Green, or some other astonishingly beautiful European woman. Basically, Isabelle Adjani in her 30s.
11. Please fill in the blank: "E2 is to the Internet as ___ is to the world."
A dog-eared spiral-bound notebook.
12. Any questions that I didn't ask that I should've?
Nothing comes to mind. I'm spent from answering the other questions. :)
Everything2 Decaversary Interviews
If you have questions or comments, please contact avalyn or Jet-Poop.