Discovered in the Wassail Bowl - 6th December - Twelfth Night - the Final Day...

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

It is the 6th of January, and the end of our Winter-Solstice-Christmas-Celbrate-the-Light calendar for 2025 - sigh, as ever. It's always sad when I make the closing post like this - and especially because this year I have to say something very important, so please keep reading.

This might be the last Discovered in a Winter-Solstice-Christmas-Celebrate-the-Light calendar...

At first I thought it might be the last because I've been doing this for twenty years now and it's taking up more and more time the fewer of us there are, when I really need to do other Christmas-life things more efficiently (and I must admit I was a bit disappointed no one seemed to notice it was our twentieth Discovered in a Winter-Solstice-Christmas-Celbrate-the-Light calendar except me, even though I did announce it - and put it on the banner!) But then a few people messaged to say how much they look forward to the calendar each year, and being me I was relenting and thinking 21 sounded good too...

...and then the Dire Warnings of the End of Lj began popping up, which most of you have probably seen. There've been Dire Warnings before, but I think the world is possibly at a place where this time they're more likely to have some foundation. There is a rumour that Lj is splitting the (probably now very small) English-speaking side from it's much larger Cyrillic-speaking side prior to implementing other changes. There is a post here in the Russian Lj News comm about what seem to be pretty serious restrictions to users of the Cyrillic language site (Google translate seems to work pretty well on it). I must admit I can't see Lj continuing as a viable blog for them if those changes are actually effected - and some commenters seem to indicate that they have been. Could it all be a mis-translated ruse of some kind? Yup, not impossible - but it's hard to tell either way, and ironically enough Lj had a wee glitch as I came on to post this, which usually means something has been changed on the server. But who knows - it could have been a minor fix-an-issue thing.

That said - I have been/am updating the back-ups for ci5hq, my own Lj, and various other comms that I mod or co-mod to DreamWidth, and I will be running a final discoveredinalj back-up to Dreamwidth tomorrow. So all the Pros comms that we use and love will be available over there if Lj does go down, or vanish for us (some Dreamwidth links: CI5hq, Discoveredinalj, The Safehouse, CI5hq_dnoticed, ProsFicIndex, ProsFinder, Pros Records Room (Palelyloitering), and here's me too - bet you'd forgotten most of those existed! *g*) The Russian post linked above seems to suggest that content from before the changes will remain available even if everything else is different, and I'm crossing fingers because our comms (and my own Lj) are image-heavy, all hosted on Lj.

Basically: I don't know if we'll be here on Lj next year, and if we're on DreamWidth I'm not convinced it will be possible to run the calendar in the same format. Where ever we are, though, I hope we can all gather in a single agreed Pros-y place again, at least for next Christmas.

All of which is very heart-heavy, so - I'm going to open the rest of your day, in whatever time zone you are in, to posting any more little cheers-es that people might have from the Wassail Bowl, and as always remind people to archive their stories/images/creations elsewhere, although the calendar will remain as an archive for as long as it can be. (Did you know that if you click on a date on the calendar itself, it will bring up the posts for that day? This is true of all the archived calendars that you can find via the User Info page too! Go read the old stuff! Fill your boots! *g*) And...

...Wassail!

Comments

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

Thanks for all you do and have done for our beloved fandom.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Hee - that feels a bit like being given an eight day clock! *g* But back at you too - a fandom is a community at the end of the day, that's what makes it... well, everything really!

[theyokotaibani.livejournal.com]

Hello, byslantedlight... A moment ago, I saw your post, and honestly, I feel as if the ground beneath my feet has opened up and there is only emptiness... I'm a relatively new fan of The Professionals compared to all of you, and I only recently decided to join the fandom, but I've known about your sites here on LJ for years (because when I searched for fanfiction and information, I always ended up finding it on this site). Your usernames are very familiar to me, even though I've never posted anything or interacted with anyone. I am familiar with all the sites you have created and I browsed through them reading absolutely everything I could...

Obviously, for you this has much more significance and that is why it moves me even more. You are a small and very close-knit community, the friendship you have maintained for so long makes you a ‘mobile ghetto’, just like our boys. Together you will get through this ‘change of scenery’, don't worry!

And wherever you go, following you like the faithful wildcat that I am, I will go too!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Hello! How fun to think that someone has been quietly reading all the sites, and enjoying them! Although that's exactly how I was when I found Pros fandom, you know - quietly enjoying for a while, until I decided that I'd like to write something as a way of saying thank you for everything I'd enjoyed so far... and that led to all sorts! Also, other Pros author's names became so familiar to me from reading their stories in zines and letterzines, even though I didn't interact with them or even see them around "live"...

I'd really like to think that nothing will happen with Lj, and that it will continue as it is so that we don't really have to change, but I'm not sure... But hopefully if we are mobile ghetto then we can just trundle over to somewhere else, and carry on through the new scenery with old friends - and our fab faithful wildcat too! *g* I'm very glad you decided to come and play with us. It's been nice chatting with you just recently - or reading what you have to say where I haven't had a chance to reply yet, too (sorry, I can be very slow at replying these days - I never used to be! I think it might have to do with working in an office full-time now, which leaves far less time for gorgeous fandom!)

Here's to our mobile ghetto - wassail!

[tinturtle]

Thank you for all your hard work for the fandom. Maybe we can have a new, shorter midwinter event next year, if there is a venue and people in it.

I never did do a hand coloring of my coloring page, so I can't post that today, sadly.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Rats that you didn't do the hand colouring, I was looking forward to seeing that! That was a very fun game, too. *g*

I did think this year's calendar would be shorter, like last year's was, but it didn't turn out that way. I'd like to think we might be able to stay on, but I hope we'll try to do something similar where ever we may be!

ETA - and I'm soooo close to having finished my story, but I just couldn't quite get there tonight after all... sigh...

[f-m-parkinson.livejournal.com]

Thank you for organising the calendar. I enjoy taking part even though I have a mad panic about contributing.
I hope that we'll be able to continue as a community, either on LJ or an alternative. I would hate to lose touch with people I've got to know here.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

It would be horrid to lose touch (and I already feel like I am a bit, it's been so hard to come back and play on lj now that I'm working in an office full-time!) but I'm sure we can find somewhere else to be if we have to. I'd like to think we won't have to - but I guess we'll see...

[cloudless-9193.livejournal.com]

Thank you for all you've done! :-)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

And the same to you! it wouldn't be fandom if we weren't a community to start with, and that takes all of us. *g*

[tango65.livejournal.com]

I would like to echo all the other sentiments. I can't thank you enough for all you have done to keep this going. I love the fandom, but never get time to write, except for this annual Christmas event. I too will follow whereever you go. Just let me know.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

So glad we get to see you at Christmas at least - though I hope you get to enjoy at least thoughts of fandom at other times! It's so hard, these days, with life and all... it seemed so much easier when I first found fandom!

I'd like to think we won't have to go anywhere, but hopefully we can go together if we do!

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

If this is truly the end of the winter calendar, I can't thank you enough for all the hard work you've done, keeping it running for so many years. I've loved taking part and will miss it greatly. Everyone's creativity has been amazing! I'll keep my fingers crossed we can somehow keep it going, in some fashion, in the future. ❤️

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

It has been such an amazing thing - and I would never have thought, all those years ago, that I would be posting about twenty years of Discoveredinalj! Josey and I were so worried that no one would even join in our very first one!!

Hopefully we can keep going in some way, somewhere - and we've got a year to figure it out, so cross fingers! *g*

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

If the images are still there that will be a big big help to me, at least. I was dreading losing all those linkages.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I know! It's bad enough that so many Lj comms were ravaged of their pics when Photobucket went paid-only, but losing the Lj scrapbooks would be tragic...

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!
Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

I have to admit to not following my fandoms much this year. Unfortunately, things in RL have taken precedent. But I'm hoping this next year will be better and that the Lads will still be around to enjoy.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

It can be so hard with real life going on all around - I've not been here nearly as much as I would have liked to be. Maybe I can try harder this year! And yeah - it would be nice if everything got better rather than worse, and even if not that we'll still have the lads to cheer us up somewhere!

[cim3745.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for keeping the fandom and the calendar alive.
I can't imagine loosing this community here, so I hope to find all of you somewhere else.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I'm sure we can all find each other somewhere else if we really have to - and maybe we won't have to, although... well, even if we do then we'll find each other! Our Pros community is too good to lose any more!

[macklingirl.livejournal.com]

Sorry for not responding to the announcement about the twenty years. But this is the banner I saw all the time. I couldn't read the whole text. :-( But I thank you for doing all the work all the time and will follow you whereever you go to.

(https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/macklingirl/63614131/959721/959721_original.png)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh no, the banner was cut off! I thought it was set as a percentage so that didn't happen on different screen sizes - argh! I did talk about it in posts too... It's funny, I thought the 20th anniversary would be a huge thing!

I'm still crossing fingers that there won't be any difficult changes after all, but even if there are I'm sure we can get together elsewhere. It's being the community that matters at the end of the day. *g*

[tinturtle]

I’m sad I didn’t think to put a “20 years” banner or something in my coloring page. :’(