LiveJournal & The Early Internet Diary to Autofiction Pipeline
with Elle Nash, Juliet Escoria, Sebastian Castillo & Kristen Felicetti
What’s up Shabby Dolls,
Today is a special day! It’s the day we finally release the first episode of the new five-part, round-table Shabby Doll Radio podcast series we’ve been planning in secret for months! Each episode will feature a new cast of contemporary writers and focus on themes related to the forthcoming books, Log Off by Kristen Felicetti and The Island by Oscar d’Artois.
Episode one is out now!
Join some of America’s greatest writers as they discuss where it all began: LiveJournal.
This episode stars:
, author of You Are The Snake (Soft Skull, 2024)Elle Nash, author of Deliver Me (Unnamed Press, 2023)
, author of Log Off (Shabby Doll House, 2024)& Sebastian Castillo, author of SALMON (Shabby Doll House, 2023)
It was hosted by me, Lucy K Shaw, (not gonna link to my own book right now! But I recommend all the ones I just mentioned above, and also Elle’s book Gag Reflex, which, similarly to Log Off, is written using the LiveJournal format.)
Episode one is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Or even right here!
(If you prefer to listen to podcasts embedded into Substack for some reason)
Here’s an excerpt:
Kristen: Did any of you, in addition to customizing your LiveJournal or your Myspace pages, did you also have like a personal website? I remember I had a personal website that was about me and my art or writing or just making weird graphics. There wasn't really much of a point to it. It was just like my expression. And then, there were sort of tiers of that, like you can make your own free website on Angelfire or GeoCities, but then if you were kind of wealthy, then you either were able to buy a custom domain or your parents were able to buy your custom domain. But if you were just good in design or had a cool site or had friends, then you would hope that maybe one of those people that were lucky to have the domain would like host you on their subdomain…
Elle: Oh my god, I completely forgot about that, when someone had their own domain, you were like: They are really fucking cool, you know, because, for me, I was like, how do they get that? Because I was like, oh yeah, that costs money. I don't have access to that as a 13 year old or whatever. You know? That's so true. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I had a GeoCities page and I wish I could find it, but it was so… I remember it being this weird expression of all my sad heartbreak and MS Paint scratching out of my eyes and little red hearts and poetry and stuff like that. Oh, I wish I could find that again.
Lucy: What was the dynamic like between your real life and your online life? I would say that at that time, for me at least, the internet, felt like a completely separate place, where there probably wasn't a lot of interaction with people who I actually knew.
Sebastian: For me, actually, I used AIM a lot. And, and I think that's almost how I became closer friends with my friends at school because we all had AIM. But for LiveJournal, it was more like becoming friends with people whom I would never, you know, meet, uh, reasonably, but, you know, now that I think about it, ever since I was like, 13 or 14, the computer is the place where I went to get to know people better. So at least that was my experience.
Juliet: Yeah. One of my good friends, I got her to use indiefucks (a LiveJournal community) with me. And then another of my friends, we didn't meet on LiveJournal, but we became friends because of LiveJournal, where we met in real life and then added each other. And she's like one of my closest friends still. So there was a certain amount of overlap there. But I think the friends that I knew in real life were into the internet more than the average person at that point in time. I've just always kind of been drawn to internet people, I guess.
We’re going to release five episodes on themes related to the new books, Log Off and The Island, over the next few weeks, and we’ll be discussing important topics such as:
LiveJournal & The Early Internet Diary to Autofiction Pipeline
My Fucking Birthday: Older, Wiser & Closer to Death
Fiona Apple & The Power of the Teenage Girl
Avoiding the Void: Through Yoga, Exercise & Meditation
Small Press Superstars: The SDH! True Hollywood Story
Oh and if you somehow need more Shabby Doll House podcast content, check out this episode of Another Fucking Writing Podcast featuring Kristen Felicetti.
Thank you for listening. Hope you enjoy!
<3 Lucy