Don't make me laugh.
5 Aug 2007 02:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouWarning: what I have to say here, you may not agree with. In fact, based on what I see on my flist, the majority of you may find the Other Point of View to be potentially offensive. I don't intend personal offense against anyone, but as a former business owner, I've hit my limit. SA/LJ may make an easy target, but I don't think it's the right one.
Really, IMO, the latest wank o' the fandom day isn't the fault of SA/LJ, which is trying -- and however miserably failing in terms of consistency -- to keep up with the corporate lawyers. Nor, honestly, is it really the fault of the corporate lawyers, who are just trying to cover their clients' asses in light of some really convoluted, ambiguous, and generally fucked-up state/federal laws. (For any non-US readers wondering, the US laws apply because the servers are housed in the US. Period. Until Six Apart moves to Germany and must abide by German -- or Filipino or Japanese or Antartican -- laws, it's US laws, and them's the breaks.)
Look at it this way: if I rent a house to you, and you open a meth lab in the basement -- even if I am fully ignorant of your doings -- when the DEA sweeps it, it will take my house. Lock, stock, and stinkin' barrel, and there won't be a damn thing I can do about it. If I rent you a car, and you perform illegal activities in some way associated with the car, same again: the Feds can confiscate it, auction it off, and use the money to pay for the investigation that got them the car. Fair? Not even close. The way it's done? Yeah. Anything we can do about it? Not in the short term.
If Six Apart rents you server space -- in effect, what it's doing by letting you sign onto LJ -- it comes under scrutiny as your landlord. Does it particularly want to get a cease & desist order from a copyright holder? No. Does it want to be investigated for broadcasting child pornography across state lines? I highly doubt it.
Thing is, as soon as someone brings anything matching that convoluted, ambiguous fucked-up state of affairs known as "you can't do that" laws, Six Apart must investigate and make a decision. If they don't, then they're doubly at fault, having failed to practice due diligence to make sure someone isn't setting up a virtual methlab in SA's basement. If, after such a tip, Six Apart does nothing -- and the tipster then goes on to complain to any authorities who then do find fault -- well, SA will get nailed to the wall along with the offender.
Oh, but freedom of speech, I hear! Right to speak freely!
This is where I repeat: please, do not make me laugh. What part of "privately owned business" were you just not getting? First, private owners have the right to censor what they will, when they will, within their own arena; it's only publicly-funded arenas (like public museums, grant-supported theaters, universities, etc) where the issue of free speech is both complex, bothersome, and very real. For those areas which have government support of any kind -- local, state, or federal -- then suppression of free speech by the organization could potentially be seen as suppression by the major source of funding, that is, the government.
As a private property owner, or business owner, I can and will and may suppress your free speech all I goddamned want, as long as you're on my private property. Six Apart, I'm thinking, is a sort of apartment landlord -- what we do behind closed doors (friends-lock) is our own business, and SA's TOS seems to imply (it's not well-written, granted) that flock counts as "behind closed doors" and is left alone. If we set up a soapbox in the hallway, well... we're off our "private" subset of the property, and standing firmly in SA's area of the property, and thus their rules will override our rules.
Get this clear, once and for all: the right to free speech is a right that the government will not infringe; it is not a right granted automatically by a private business.
As for the obscenity laws, please, stop citing Mapplethorpe. Please. His situation simply does not apply, not in a realistic, pragmatic sense.
You are not Mapplethorpe, I am not Mapplethorpe, and I sincerely doubt anyone we know on LJ qualifies as Mapplethorpe. On an artistic level, the chances of Mapplethorpe's allegedly obscene images being found to contain artistic value? 100%. The chance of the same for any fanartist or writer? Significantly lower, at minimum. First of all, because Mapplethorpe is, well, Mapplethorpe -- hell, no one pays over a half a million USD for a hack -- and they sure don't pay it for fanart, people. Second, because if you have someone, anyone, willing to pay even half of that half-million for your art on a regular basis, then the chances are good that if you're accused of obscenity or pornography, someone's going to step forward to pay for your court bills to contest the charges. They've invested a lot in you; they're patrons.
This is the real difference between Mapplethorpe's obscenity charge and the same leveled against an amateur (non-professional-level) artist. He could fight it, because he had benefactors -- including the museum that arranged to show his artwork. They were willing to go to bat for him, along with him, to defend his art. Who would defend a fanartist? All those folks paying $15 for a comissioned piece? Maybe... Six Apart? Hah, again, I say, hah. Fat frickin' chance.
The obscenity standards are three-fold, in the US, as I'm sure you've all heard myriad times in this wank and the previous. For Six Apart to arrange a group of what sounds like ten to twelve people -- from employees to corporate to legal -- constitutes, truly, as much of a jury of our peers as any jury we'd get in an open courtroom. And, with the emphasis on web-savvy folks in that self-arranged group, it might even be more a group of our 'peers' than any Joe, John, and Brenda plucked off an address list for their turn in the jury box.
What the hell do you want, to hand-pick the peers on your jury, yourself? The Miller Test is, however fairly or unfairly, based on local standards: and by that definition, a selection of web-savvy journal-users is most definitely our community, whether we like it or not. A group from our web-life community looked at art, and whether unanimously or in majority, determined it qualified as obscene for them personally -- and by that standard, the work is obscene. Period.
No, I don't think SA/LJ has been consistent in their approach, but I also know from experience that no one goes into a business, of any kind, with a full set of rules in place that never get questioned or changed. You just don't know what you'll need to address until you need to address it, and giving a fanartist at least enough benefit of the doubt -- however much of a star chamber you might declare it to be -- is still better than the equally-legal alternative of simply shutting down and kicking out.
That said, here's LJ's current position on the particularly-sticky issue of minors (17 and under, in US legal terms) viewing adult material on a journal. (This is from the abuse policy, which contains specifics although the TOS is considered the Final Word.)
It makes me wonder what value it holds to jump ship -- especially if you're just leaping from the Titanic to the Andrea Doria or the Estonia. Any corporate environment, once large enough to ping on the radar of state/federal authorities and/or those busybodies convinced we must all be protected from the horrors & evils that is pr0n!!! are going to be paying just as much attention, and those other journals will be wanting to protect themselves from civil or criminal suits just as much as SA/LJ, or your or I.
So, my conclusions are:
1. Flock MA and MA+ posts. (Guess what I'll be doing in the morning.)
2. At least make passable attempt to confirm readers are 18 or older.
3. Backup your journal regularly.
4. Enough with comparing LJ to the Iron Curtain. There is no comparison. None.
If you absolutely believe that you shouldn't have to flock, and shouldn't have to worry about this at all, the solution isn't to move to another privately-owned (and not by you) business arena where the managers may claim to be fandom-friendly but may find themselves less so once the corporate lawyers explain jail terms... the solution is to get yourself a copy of Wordpress, register your own URL, sign on with a hosting service that specifically allows adult material per its TOS, and blog out in the big, bad, real world of the 'net.
Which is all a long-winded, mildly ranty way to say I'll be flocking my fiction [for R/MA & above, that is] posts, adding those on my flist who wish to continue reading, and carrying on as I have been. Maybe I'll be next to be kicked in the teeth by SA/LJ, maybe I won't.
In fact, I think it's more likely my own fandom will do the kicking, after this post. Maybe I'll get proved wrong. Maybe I won't.
Eh, well: them's the breaks.
Really, IMO, the latest wank o' the fandom day isn't the fault of SA/LJ, which is trying -- and however miserably failing in terms of consistency -- to keep up with the corporate lawyers. Nor, honestly, is it really the fault of the corporate lawyers, who are just trying to cover their clients' asses in light of some really convoluted, ambiguous, and generally fucked-up state/federal laws. (For any non-US readers wondering, the US laws apply because the servers are housed in the US. Period. Until Six Apart moves to Germany and must abide by German -- or Filipino or Japanese or Antartican -- laws, it's US laws, and them's the breaks.)
Look at it this way: if I rent a house to you, and you open a meth lab in the basement -- even if I am fully ignorant of your doings -- when the DEA sweeps it, it will take my house. Lock, stock, and stinkin' barrel, and there won't be a damn thing I can do about it. If I rent you a car, and you perform illegal activities in some way associated with the car, same again: the Feds can confiscate it, auction it off, and use the money to pay for the investigation that got them the car. Fair? Not even close. The way it's done? Yeah. Anything we can do about it? Not in the short term.
If Six Apart rents you server space -- in effect, what it's doing by letting you sign onto LJ -- it comes under scrutiny as your landlord. Does it particularly want to get a cease & desist order from a copyright holder? No. Does it want to be investigated for broadcasting child pornography across state lines? I highly doubt it.
Thing is, as soon as someone brings anything matching that convoluted, ambiguous fucked-up state of affairs known as "you can't do that" laws, Six Apart must investigate and make a decision. If they don't, then they're doubly at fault, having failed to practice due diligence to make sure someone isn't setting up a virtual methlab in SA's basement. If, after such a tip, Six Apart does nothing -- and the tipster then goes on to complain to any authorities who then do find fault -- well, SA will get nailed to the wall along with the offender.
Oh, but freedom of speech, I hear! Right to speak freely!
This is where I repeat: please, do not make me laugh. What part of "privately owned business" were you just not getting? First, private owners have the right to censor what they will, when they will, within their own arena; it's only publicly-funded arenas (like public museums, grant-supported theaters, universities, etc) where the issue of free speech is both complex, bothersome, and very real. For those areas which have government support of any kind -- local, state, or federal -- then suppression of free speech by the organization could potentially be seen as suppression by the major source of funding, that is, the government.
As a private property owner, or business owner, I can and will and may suppress your free speech all I goddamned want, as long as you're on my private property. Six Apart, I'm thinking, is a sort of apartment landlord -- what we do behind closed doors (friends-lock) is our own business, and SA's TOS seems to imply (it's not well-written, granted) that flock counts as "behind closed doors" and is left alone. If we set up a soapbox in the hallway, well... we're off our "private" subset of the property, and standing firmly in SA's area of the property, and thus their rules will override our rules.
Get this clear, once and for all: the right to free speech is a right that the government will not infringe; it is not a right granted automatically by a private business.
As for the obscenity laws, please, stop citing Mapplethorpe. Please. His situation simply does not apply, not in a realistic, pragmatic sense.
You are not Mapplethorpe, I am not Mapplethorpe, and I sincerely doubt anyone we know on LJ qualifies as Mapplethorpe. On an artistic level, the chances of Mapplethorpe's allegedly obscene images being found to contain artistic value? 100%. The chance of the same for any fanartist or writer? Significantly lower, at minimum. First of all, because Mapplethorpe is, well, Mapplethorpe -- hell, no one pays over a half a million USD for a hack -- and they sure don't pay it for fanart, people. Second, because if you have someone, anyone, willing to pay even half of that half-million for your art on a regular basis, then the chances are good that if you're accused of obscenity or pornography, someone's going to step forward to pay for your court bills to contest the charges. They've invested a lot in you; they're patrons.
This is the real difference between Mapplethorpe's obscenity charge and the same leveled against an amateur (non-professional-level) artist. He could fight it, because he had benefactors -- including the museum that arranged to show his artwork. They were willing to go to bat for him, along with him, to defend his art. Who would defend a fanartist? All those folks paying $15 for a comissioned piece? Maybe... Six Apart? Hah, again, I say, hah. Fat frickin' chance.
The obscenity standards are three-fold, in the US, as I'm sure you've all heard myriad times in this wank and the previous. For Six Apart to arrange a group of what sounds like ten to twelve people -- from employees to corporate to legal -- constitutes, truly, as much of a jury of our peers as any jury we'd get in an open courtroom. And, with the emphasis on web-savvy folks in that self-arranged group, it might even be more a group of our 'peers' than any Joe, John, and Brenda plucked off an address list for their turn in the jury box.
What the hell do you want, to hand-pick the peers on your jury, yourself? The Miller Test is, however fairly or unfairly, based on local standards: and by that definition, a selection of web-savvy journal-users is most definitely our community, whether we like it or not. A group from our web-life community looked at art, and whether unanimously or in majority, determined it qualified as obscene for them personally -- and by that standard, the work is obscene. Period.
No, I don't think SA/LJ has been consistent in their approach, but I also know from experience that no one goes into a business, of any kind, with a full set of rules in place that never get questioned or changed. You just don't know what you'll need to address until you need to address it, and giving a fanartist at least enough benefit of the doubt -- however much of a star chamber you might declare it to be -- is still better than the equally-legal alternative of simply shutting down and kicking out.
That said, here's LJ's current position on the particularly-sticky issue of minors (17 and under, in US legal terms) viewing adult material on a journal. (This is from the abuse policy, which contains specifics although the TOS is considered the Final Word.)
Minors Befriending Adult-Themed JournalsI read that as: if you've got your stuff flocked, and you practice some kind of due diligence to make sure everyone's old enough to be reading... have at it.
Last updated: November 29th, 2004
The presence of minors on the friends list of a personal journal whose content primarily consists of material meeting the legal definition of "pornography".
Action
Journal owner will be required to make the following changes:
* All pornographic content be posted with security set to friends only
* All friends who do not list a complete birthdate in their userinfo, or whose birthdate indicates they are under 18, must be removed from friends list
* Journal owner is responsible for ensuring that all individuals on the friends list are over 18
After deadline has passed, Abuse Team member will verify that the above steps have been taken and that there are no longer minors present on the journal's friends list. If they have not, the journal may be suspended.
No further followup will be scheduled once compliance is verified. However, if subsequent complaints are received about the same journal, journal will be suspended pending compliance. Upon a third violation, the journal will be terminated.
It makes me wonder what value it holds to jump ship -- especially if you're just leaping from the Titanic to the Andrea Doria or the Estonia. Any corporate environment, once large enough to ping on the radar of state/federal authorities and/or those busybodies convinced we must all be protected from the horrors & evils that is pr0n!!! are going to be paying just as much attention, and those other journals will be wanting to protect themselves from civil or criminal suits just as much as SA/LJ, or your or I.
So, my conclusions are:
1. Flock MA and MA+ posts. (Guess what I'll be doing in the morning.)
2. At least make passable attempt to confirm readers are 18 or older.
3. Backup your journal regularly.
4. Enough with comparing LJ to the Iron Curtain. There is no comparison. None.
If you absolutely believe that you shouldn't have to flock, and shouldn't have to worry about this at all, the solution isn't to move to another privately-owned (and not by you) business arena where the managers may claim to be fandom-friendly but may find themselves less so once the corporate lawyers explain jail terms... the solution is to get yourself a copy of Wordpress, register your own URL, sign on with a hosting service that specifically allows adult material per its TOS, and blog out in the big, bad, real world of the 'net.
Which is all a long-winded, mildly ranty way to say I'll be flocking my fiction [for R/MA & above, that is] posts, adding those on my flist who wish to continue reading, and carrying on as I have been. Maybe I'll be next to be kicked in the teeth by SA/LJ, maybe I won't.
In fact, I think it's more likely my own fandom will do the kicking, after this post. Maybe I'll get proved wrong. Maybe I won't.
Eh, well: them's the breaks.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 08:43 am (UTC)Although I must say... Iron Curtain? What the hell. That's a new one.
Anyway, I'd like to keep reading. Your posts are interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking. No kicking here.
no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 04:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, the Iron Curtain line was the point where I just about did myself a damage. Made me think of my own experience, of having to tell a kid -- one I otherwise liked, and generally liked having around -- that he'd need to leave my shop, but he'd be welcome back if he changed his shirt. It said something like, "Fuck this shit."
And it was a Saturday afternoon, and a woman with two small children were in my shop. She had an armful of books and I was looking forward to doing at least $100+ sales to her... but if she turned around to find her daughters sounding out what was on the kid's shirt, who do you think would bear the burden for that?
Not the kid; what's she going to do to him? It'd be me, because I'd been standing there, I'd said hello to him, and by silence alone I'd indicated his apparel was acceptable. The chances of him ever walking in and blowing $150 in my shop were null, but the chances of her doing it repeatedly were pretty good. So I went with the one who'd be paying my rent, and I asked him to either find a way to cover his shirt or leave the shop & be welcome back with something less... non-kid-appropriate.
He did fuss, but when I said, "look, if you like hanging out here, and you want me to be here for awhile, don't damage my business, okay?" (The mother thanked me afterwards, though not in a smug way, just rueful; she probably wouldn't have cared if not for having kneegrabbers in tow.) And the kid did return, with a button-up shirt over his t-shirt, closed just enough to see only "this".
I had no idea, upon opening a business, that I'd ever need to make a policy about what people wore. It just never occurred to me in a hundred years, and although I don't know if I really was that graceful in handling it (mostly from being baffled that I'd even need to address it at all), at least the other folks were mature enough to take it well.
I guess with things like that in my own history, I give SA/LJ a bit more credit than -- it seems -- many of my fandom peers.
no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 10:54 am (UTC)So no. No kicking here at all.
no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 11:52 am (UTC)People put too much stock in freedom of speech.
And after the last LJ eruption, you think people might have learnt that this material had the potential to cause problems for them.
(I also must say, a bit OT, that I find it so shocking that people post fic and art without having a back-up already. Why would you do that?)
no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 12:50 pm (UTC)Meh, fandom is full of entitlement. This be more of the same, methinks. I do miss lj the way it used to be, but I'm not going to tell them how to run their business. What is so hard about flocking things?
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Date: 5 Aug 2007 12:56 pm (UTC)Yeah, pretty much. I get so annoyed at them, especially the ones who go on and on about freedom of speech. That doesn't apply here people. Imagine sites like they were print publications: you can't just write anything and expect a magazine to print it just because you have freedom of speech. Get your own site, then you're safe (or safer at any rate).
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Date: 5 Aug 2007 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 03:14 pm (UTC)Also, you are cool so I am going to friend you ^_^
no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 04:52 pm (UTC)I mean, technically, free speech is not a right, it is an area the government has pledged not to infringe. There's an assumption of a pre-existing right, granted, but the key is that the laws (Bill of Rights) in fact only delineate where the government's power ends: it sets the outer limits of the government's scope, but makes no attempt to define what it means on a personal/private level.
And besides, it's especially silly (to me) to wave a free-speech sign with one hand while you're busy stealing other people's characters with the other hand!
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Date: 5 Aug 2007 04:56 pm (UTC)I guess I also am looking at the free speech thing with a Canadian viewpoint, because our Bill of Rights does have freedom of speech which doesn't just apply to the government, but it also is "within reasonable limitations."
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Date: 5 Aug 2007 01:20 pm (UTC)Okay if I friend this LJ?
no subject
Date: 6 Aug 2007 06:32 am (UTC)Used to work with a woman who announced one day, "I just talked to someone from a foreign country!" She was quite excited, so I asked, "what country?"
"Hawaii."
*headdesk*
no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 02:16 pm (UTC)Frankly? I'm lazy. I don't want to do the whole "checking everyone in my comm" since I have about 600... if they whap me, c'est la vie. It's not the end of the world.
no subject
Date: 6 Aug 2007 06:33 am (UTC)Way I see it, due diligence is within reason -- I mean, if someone complains bitterly, still appears that LJ is willing to give a person the chance to fix it. Then, yeah, I'd guess taking the effort would be worth it. Until then, what do you do, demand to see ID at the door? What door?
no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 6 Aug 2007 06:36 am (UTC)I was flocking most of my posts until I hit a point that I realized I really could care less whether or not the fandom hates my guts because I speak my mind. Any fandom, for that matter. I've nothing to gain, nothing to lose, from locking essay-posts.
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Date: 5 Aug 2007 05:32 pm (UTC)Nice to see someone put on a logical spin to another chapter of the LJ saga.
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Date: 6 Aug 2007 06:40 am (UTC)You want to be liked, you want your regular friendly customers to come back because they make the place lively, even if they don't spend even a third what the non-lively folks spend. The truth is, the folks who aren't spending a lot do contribute but in non-monetary ways: they make a business fun, they make the day colorful. The everyday people are, in fact, coming to the business (whatever kind it is) in part because they're enjoying the atmosphere created by those colorful, lively folks -- but what do you do when a line gets crossed? How do you know when it's crossed? How long can you look the other way, and when it's clear you really must say something, how do you do it without alienating someone?
People feel entitled, once they've settled into a space. I understand that. I also know what it's like to be on the other side of that entitlement, as the one who pays the rent and balances the books and deals with the distributors.
no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 08:51 pm (UTC)That reminds me of a popular saying here in Chile: "The difference between crazy and eccentric is the amount of money in your bank account." Which is not to say that I think fanart and fanfiction have all that much artistic merit in general, even if there are some select few cases in which I'd be willing to say they do.
I'm rather worried over the turn of events, I can't really say LJ/SA are doing something wrong (the protection if minors is, in the end, adult responsibility, and overexposure to sensual material has had an impact on kids nowadays -- this at least, is what I see as a teacher) As a business with business interests, what they are doing is quite coherent.
I'm more of the mind that LJ is just handling it badly.
And we're already mutually friended, so I guess I'm just saying I'll stick around. :)
no subject
Date: 6 Aug 2007 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 6 Aug 2007 06:57 am (UTC)I cannot even begin to count the number of times I handled something badly in the shop, and maybe that's why I give SA/LJ a big huge hunk of credit for at least trying. Failing sometimes, maybe, but trying.
Thing is, what people seem to forget is that no business decision -- especially one that affects a large part of one's regular customers -- is made quickly or easily. With the exception of true entrepreneurs, business owners are a cautious lot, and highly conservative: you've got a lot riding on every single decision. Trust the wrong person's word, one bad check, and your business could be under in three months. (It happened to a friend, and her business had to close from the snowball effect.) So everything gets debated, considered, argued out, put off, debated... and then, finally, made.
By the time you announce a decision -- like, "we're not taking personal checks", it seems so completely obvious and rational that when a customer looks at you in astonishment like you've grown a second head -- and then gets mad at you -- it's almost like being slapped in the face. It just doesn't compute. Can't they see how much I thought that over? Can't they see it bothers me as much as them, that I have good reasons for deciding this, can't they see it's not personal? Why do they have to make it so?
I used to flee, some days, to the company of other business owners where I'd sit in concert and bemoan my bafflement. Some of them had been in business in our town for well on twenty years, and reported still feeling the same way. It's like the second you tell a customer "no," for any reason, you're abruptly the frickin' antichrist for stomping on their sense of How The World Works. How dare you change anything, let alone feel wronged -- you're just the business owner, you aren't even human, are you?
There's just no 'right way' to go about it, and no way to really handle it well. Bad enough that these things almost never have landmarks, well-trodden paths for how to adjust one's business policy. Worse still when your soon-to-be-former customers insist on making it personal. You think you're being fair and supportive, and you get slammed as a business -- then slammed as a person, repeatedly. It hurts, to be honest, on a level you don't want to admit to any but other business folks, because these irate entitlement-happy customers were quite wonderful and fun and you thought you were kinda, y'know, casual friends at least -- until the second you tried to assert even the simplest of courtesies.
(Remember the fiasco about "how dare you not let me have naked boobies on my default icon!?" Same kind of furor over something that, taken objectively, was a simple and logical policy to set to balance parental-customer needs and everyone-else-customer needs. But did any customer take it that way? Oh, nooooo.)
The real risk is getting sick of giving the benefit of the doubt and getting nothing but grief. Eventually you just don't care if you're being fair or not because it clearly don't make a damn bit of difference. Nothing you do is gonna please them, so take their money and fuck 'em all, you don't care no more.
That, m'dear, is the point when I'll know SA/LJ is not the place to be.
no subject
Date: 5 Aug 2007 09:38 pm (UTC)I am not so much angry at LJ/6A as I am disappointed. Mostly disappointed for myself because I so enjoyed seeing Pond's artwork and posts here on LJ. I'll still be able to go to her website and GJ account but I'm lazy. It was nice having so many of my interests and favorite things in one handy place. Also, I think lots of people get so used to seeing something, like Pond's artwork, that when it gets taken away it feels like a personal slight and a miscarriage of justice. It's kind of like squatters that have been on a piece of property for years but have no legal recourse when the owner comes to clear them out.
no subject
Date: 10 Aug 2007 08:12 am (UTC)I think you just described fandom -- every fandom -- in a nutshell.
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Date: 6 Aug 2007 12:31 am (UTC)...and I dont have any boots on anyway.Lol.
no subject
Date: 10 Aug 2007 08:20 am (UTC)So given that, I can't blame folks for leaving in a huff. I'm simply the kind of person who won't act that quickly without serious consideration, and if I choose that decision, I won't leave without making LJ pay -- in some manner -- for forcing me to waste the time and energy to consider the change, as well as make it. (See my latest LJ-focused post for what I mean.)
Fandom will always out, though, you're right.
no subject
Date: 6 Aug 2007 06:20 am (UTC)I am over eighteen, and the one thing I've read up to now I've enjoyed.
no subject
Date: 10 Aug 2007 08:20 am (UTC)The one thing? I'm curious, now. ;-)
Would you be my friend?
Date: 6 Aug 2007 06:37 am (UTC)Re: Would you be my friend?
Date: 10 Aug 2007 08:17 am (UTC)You can blame much of this most recent rash o' postings on the combined efforts of some reviewer on FF.net, who sent me comments on every bleedin' chapter for Drums, along with
Sheesh, just can't get away. It's like, like... the ultimate tarbaby!
no subject
Date: 7 Aug 2007 12:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 10 Aug 2007 08:15 am (UTC)And since I'm rather attached to having my head attached to my body, so to speak, I figured... hey, might as well do something, right? ;-)
Also, added!
no subject
Date: 7 Aug 2007 03:28 am (UTC)Uh, I friended you a little while ago 'cause I really enjoy your fic and analysis, but I'm terrible at commenting, so I'm not really sure if I've ever said hi. In fact, I'm sure I haven't. I'd really appreciate it if you added me, though - I'd miss your writing.
no subject
Date: 10 Aug 2007 08:14 am (UTC)Me, analyze? Naw. Who told you I analyze stuff? I, uh, I'm just here for the entertainment factor. Really.
More seriously: I don't know if it'll blow over. I still lean towards understanding and empathizing with the difficult business path, but I find myself more and more annoyed, the less and less chances I see of any professional behavior coming from 6A or LJ. Sigh.
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Date: 9 Aug 2007 01:35 am (UTC)All that said, I was wondering if I could add you as a friend and vice versa so that I can keep reading KMO, which is quite possibly my favorite GW fanfiction of all time. And, since I've delurked, I might as well go all the way... so I promise to comment too! Thanks.
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Date: 10 Aug 2007 08:13 am (UTC);-)
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Date: 28 Apr 2012 06:52 am (UTC)Thanks!
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Date: 28 Apr 2012 10:51 pm (UTC)