art by Philip Castlen

Goodnight, Elephant.

I don't want to pick the scab off a "kerfluffle," but I'd be lying if I said that in my mid-thirties I wasn't weirdly super-obsessed with Amanda Palmer. We share a birthday and she married (and eventually divorced) my Pretend British Boyfriend. I also genuinely think that she's a good musician and an amazing lyricist. It probably didn't help that my entire life collapsed in 2011-2012, so obsessing over her and her music was an escape from the stress I was under. This is a pattern of mine that I have come to recognize, and it is not always as harmless a coping mechanism as I once believed it was.

That said, I'm older and wiser now, and have been actively working to remove my head from my ass. As part of that, I'm letting Evelyn Evelyn and Elephant Elephant go. From a technical standpoint they are very good patterns, but from a "read the room, Zabet" standpoint... well, I am working on my room-reading skills. I'm only sorry it has taken me so long to get here. With my mid-forties eyes, I can recognize the underlying abelism, inspiration pr0n, and crip drag that was part of Palmer and Webley's original project, and how these patterns spport and normalize that.

I do believe that their intent was not to harm, and I do recognize that Palmer gets a lot of shit just for daring to be a woman on the internet, and then double extra shit for daring to marry Neil Gaiman, but I really think they didn't think this through. (And nor did I at that age, having grown up white, middle-class, and liberal, thinking I Knew Better Than Most So I Couldn't Be Doing Something Wrong.) Palmer mused on her blog, "was anybody really harmed? if i’ve actually harmed someone (and the harm isn’t just a drama in their heads), have i owned my responsibility?" smacks of denying Annaham's (and others') own experience, and that, for me, is the clencher. So as my dear Renée texted to me just last month (about an entirely different situation):

"But impact over intent."
(Emphasis added.)

No matter the original intent behind publishing these patterns, I can't leave them up knowing the impact they may still have on new AntiCrafters, and I offer my sincere apologies to any AntiCrafters already negatively impacted by them. You can disagree with my decision to remove them from The AntiCraft's cannon, but these patterns (and others) have been weighing on me for a while, and this is how I'm choosing to address them. I also want to extend my love and gratitude to the designer, Dr. Hel Apocolypse,* for all the other ways they've supported the site over the years.

–Zabet, February 17, 2024

*not a real doctor

P.S. Please remember that the copyright for projects still belongs to the designer. Removing them from The AntiCraft is not the same as releasing them into the public domain.