Welcome to New Jeanland.
If you are looking for a neat explanation of what, exactly, New Jeanland is, I should probably begin with the fact that I have never been particularly good at having only one interest at a time.
I write poetry and fiction. I follow politics and world affairs. I play games. I research things simply because somebody said something online that made me wonder, Is that actually true? I have opinions—sometimes serious ones, sometimes petty ones, and sometimes ones that probably should have remained inside thoughts. I like art, books, internet culture, history, strange rabbit holes, and occasionally making things considerably more elaborate than they ever needed to be.
For a long time, the internet has encouraged people to separate those things.
New Jeanland is my little country on the internet where all of those things are allowed to live next door to each other.
Some days, that means an opinion piece about politics or media. Another day, it might mean poetry, fiction, a book announcement, a game, an art project, or an unnecessarily detailed examination of something I stumbled across at two in the morning.
There will be serious things here.
There will also be nonsense.
Both are important cultural institutions in New Jeanland.
So, What Is New Jeanland?
The simplest answer is that New Jeanland is a personal publication and creative space.
The less simple answer is that it is part blog, part magazine, part archive, part author site, and part ongoing experiment in building the kind of internet space I actually want to have.
It is intentionally broad.
The Gazette is where you will find commentary, opinion, politics, world affairs, media criticism, and whatever current issue has captured my attention long enough for me to have something to say about it.
The Creative Quarter is where the other half of my brain lives: poetry, fiction, books, creative projects, and work from other writers and artists I want to share.
Elsewhere, you may encounter gaming, internet culture, community projects, personal observations, and whatever else eventually wanders across the border.
There is no requirement that all of it fit neatly together.
The fact that it does not is sort of the point.
This Is Not a News Organization
New Jeanland is not attempting to become the world’s smallest newsroom.
When I write about current events, I care very much about sources, evidence, context, and getting basic facts right. If I make a factual claim, I want to be able to tell you where it came from. If better information becomes available, I would rather correct myself than defend something simply because I already said it.
But reporting facts accurately and pretending not to have opinions are not the same thing.
I have opinions.
You will notice.
The Gazette is not written from nowhere by an invisible narrator floating above politics and human conflict. It is written by a person with experiences, values, biases, interests, and a point of view.
I do not think acknowledging that makes information less useful.
If anything, I prefer knowing where someone is standing when they speak.
The important question is whether the facts underneath an argument hold up.
You are welcome to disagree with the argument.
In fact, you probably will eventually.
Curiosity Is More Important Than Agreement
One thing I do hope becomes characteristic of New Jeanland is curiosity.
I like complicated subjects.
I like finding the part of an argument that does not fit comfortably into the popular version of the story. I like timelines. I like primary sources. I like asking whether something repeated ten thousand times online is actually supported by anything.
Sometimes the answer confirms what I already believed.
Sometimes it absolutely does not.
That is considerably more interesting.
I am not interested in creating a space where everyone is required to arrive at the same conclusion.
I am interested in a space where people can distinguish between I disagree with you and you are lying.
Where an inconvenient fact does not become “misinformation” simply because it helps the wrong side.
Where a biased source can still contain useful information.
Where changing your mind after learning something new is not treated as losing an argument.
And where it is possible to say, “I don’t know enough about this yet.”
The internet could use considerably more of that sentence.
There Will Also Be Chaos
I do not want to make New Jeanland sound more dignified than it actually is.
This is also a place where creativity is supposed to be fun.
There will be jokes.
There will be weird graphics.
There will be recurring characters, projects, books, games, art, experiments, and ideas that may or may not survive contact with reality.
There may occasionally be an extremely serious discussion of an international conflict immediately adjacent to something objectively ridiculous.
This is normal.
Please do not be alarmed.
One of the reasons I wanted a site like this in the first place was because I miss the version of the internet where personal websites actually felt personal.
Not everything had to become a brand.
Not every interest had to become a niche.
Not every post needed to satisfy an algorithm.
Sometimes somebody simply made a little place online, filled it with things they found interesting, and invited other people inside.
That is much closer to what I want New Jeanland to be.
Welcome In
New Jeanland will probably change.
Sections will grow. Projects will appear. Some ideas will become permanent institutions and others will quietly disappear after I realize they were terrible.
That is fine.
A place should be allowed to evolve.
What I hope remains consistent is the spirit of it: curious, creative, opinionated, slightly chaotic, willing to take ideas seriously without taking itself seriously all of the time.
You do not need to agree with everything published here.
You do not even need to understand why all of these things are on the same website.
Sometimes I don’t either.
You are only required to accept one basic premise:
Human beings are allowed to be interested in more than one thing.
New Jeanland is where I put mine.
Welcome to the country.
New Jeanland 