Every so often, I would post a thread on twitter called "Movie Therapy"—Example (warning: 21 tweets long). I haven't posted them in a year because I didn't want people yelling at me that I was spending my donation drive money on streaming services.

However, I never spent money to watch them; I got them all through KimCartoon. You may have heard that KimCartoon was closed down for good yesterday, which means I no longer have access to any of them.

Was it piracy?
I've been living with my parents for a while (I had to move "back in" years ago). My parents' internet provider is a local cable TV company and our package includes Disney Channel, XD, WB TV, and Cartoon Network. However, whenever there was a show or movie I knew about and wanted to watch, I could never figure out what time it was on. If I caught an ad, it never gave the time (and I would sometimes spend hours hunting them down!) The times on the websites were unreliable (it turns out it's not exactly the same signal for all carriers); and the "TV guide" channel scrolled too slowly, only showed a limited time window, and was often wrong, too. Many networks have the ability to watch shows on their website "just" by picking out your cable provider... mine's never on it.

So I turned to KimCartoon. Because I couldn't get the service... through the way I was paying for it. Now, you may object that means my views didn't get counted and because of "people like me" those shows got cancelled "early", but I counter: the big guys weren't playing by the rules!

KimCartoon became a necessary part of my routine, often playing in split-screen while I drew my art, helping me continue while depressed or combating heat stroke. Now, I have some problem in my brain that prevents me from binge-watching (even in the pre-streaming era, when networks would air "marathons" of a show, I would never be able to watch no matter how hard I tried!) so if a show has 10 episodes, it could take me 3 months to watch it, so every show I was accessing through KimCartoon when they took it down ...I was only halfway through. Even if I could magically get the money for all the respective streaming services, it would be really hard to find again what episode I stopped at, and the magic money would need to keep coming for God knows how long just so I could finish watching them!

And that's not to mention that the physical TV burned out during the pandemic (so we've been kinda paying for a service we can't use solely out of fear that the price will rise).

It really does feel like, at every turn, the universe says "I'm here to take something from you."
and I say "I have nothing else left for your to take."
And the universe says "how about that thing? Yoink!"
"...that...wasn't even mine..."
"Well it's gone now!"

Perhaps what upsets me more is this isn't even what I wanted to journal about today. I wanted to do a "where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10? 20?" with my art, but instead, some rich guy in a rich office decided I had to have depression today.