Call for ideas & help : a collective blog-zine-thing about disability & brain weasel repellent &tc

[untonuggan]

I have been brainstorming with partner and some other dw folks about a potentially very cool and exciting project. Also it is one that I cannot do alone (even if I had the spoons I did in high school, which was a LOT of spoons). So I'm going to talk about the idea and then see if anyone else is interested, and what they might want to do possibly.

~Idea~

A blog-zine-website type thing a la The Toast or Autostraddle, but aimed at disability-type issues or interests. Potential posts or sections or topics could include (but are by no means limited to):

• a section of things to look at when you have brain weasels
• "how to do X when your body/brain does Y" (kind of like bitesizedcleaning tips, but not limited to cleaning)
• cross-promoting people who have their own writing sites (fiction or non) or tarot readings
• "why austerity is terribad" and other political topics related to disability
• disability and history
• science!
• recipes for when your body thinks food is the enemy
• fandom reviews and recommendations that deal with disability
• terminology and ableist language
• Artwork/comics
• Poetry!
• Podcasts of written works and other accessible features (like being accessible to screen readers)
• Other things I may not have thought of yet!

Also, some kind of online store to support the site and possibly a collective fund that could be used for (a) monthly charity donations; (b) "oh crap my car died" type hat passes; (c) upkeep; (d) possibly a paid position at some point if someone is doing a lot of upkeep or web-dev or editing or whatever. TBD in the course of "how is this run?"

Kinds of things to maybe have in the store (Zazzle? Cafepress?):

• Coping cards for people with chronic illnesses (as opposed to "get well" cards)
• T-shirts or buttons or whatever (maybe ones that warn readers not to touch you today because your body hurts, or perhaps say things like "not your inspirational crip")
• A print zine of things on the site
• Funny shit to look at when you feel like crap
• Other possibilities!

Plus probably some sort of advertising but hopefully not terribad advertising.

~Kinds of tasks I can think of atm (but we can totally bitesize it and share srsly folks)~

• Organizing system/emotional labor of "how does this work, how do we make decisions, how do we handle conflict, etc"
• Legal side of "how do we do banking, setting up non-profit or whatever kind of corporation status, etc"
• Web development (accessibility important)
• Web maintenance (moderation, posting, etc)
• Content creation!
• Content decision making (when to post certain things, how often to post, etc)
• Are there things we decide *not* to post? How do we handle conflict about that?
• Networking (social media promotion, finding new creators, outreach to other sites, etc)
• The store - content creation for that, legal side, banking! homg

OK now that *I* am kind of overwhelmed...I still think this is allllll kinds of awesome and can start slow and steady and build, bc I know that is how I operate these days.
~In the comments or via PM~

• Your preferred username (dw, tumblr, whatevs) and pronouns
• What you might be interested in helping with, if anything. Any mad skillz?
• Some sort of ranking of how realistic helping is right now or in the future? ("I am finishing my degree right now, but later..." or "This sounds amazing and also I have a couple of spoons I could use for this while I lay on my recovery sofa" or "I would totally read this but I can't commit to anything new right now" or "I have ideas but I can't help implement them right now")
• name ideas?

Note: not helpful right now, anything along the lines of, "This is cool but totally unrealistic." My brain weasels can rain on the parade on their own without contributions so it would help if you did not feed them.

If there is a lot of interest I would be up for starting a dreamwidth comm about this, but would need a name.

Signal boosting appreciated

Comments

[ironed_orchid]

Gretchen, she/her or they/their.

I'm not sure how I could contribute, maybe could do some recipes, put together linkspams of stuff posted elsewhere (I would want to share this with others), and cute pictures, also proofreading and comment moderation (depending on my free time and spoons).

BUT I wanted to comment to say I love this idea.

One thing I have noticed about successful new sites like this is that often key contributors wrote for other established sites/zines before launching something, e.g. Mallory Ortberg and Nicole Cliffe were both writing for The Hairpin before launching The Toast. So maybe it would be worth approach people with their own blogs (and strong following) to submit articles. Alternatively, if there are writers who are interested in this being their main venue/soapbox/etc., they could submit articles to bigger, more established places (or even post somewhere like Medium) before this project gets launched.

Also, I wonder if "Bitesized" might work as a name, with some tagline explaining how it relates to disability.

[alexseanchai]

Ooo I like your name idea better than mine.

[ironed_orchid]

Since I'm already involved in bitesizedreading which is a spin off from bitesizedcleaning, it was an easy leap to make. I also like the idea of using a name that jumpuphigh came up with, as a way of commemorating her.

[alexseanchai]

Yes.

[untonuggan]

<3 jumpuphigh

[ironed_orchid]

She can be our patron saint of getting stuff done.

[erika]

i support this message

[worlds_of_smoke]

I'm kind of eh on the idea of "Bite-sized". I don't think we should be using something that requires a subtitle to explain. Plus Bite-sized sounds like something that's mainly a food blog, which isn't our thing. I'd like to have it absolutely clear that we're a disability blog.

Sadly, my only ideas are along the lines of "exploding barriers" or "Able, not disabled".