Blarg, LiveJournal

[melayneseahawk]

It seems so minor in comparison to the RL stuff, but this, at least, is something I can happily rail about.

For serious, LJ, y'all suck.

Now as much as my lovely friends tease me, I'm pretty vanilla in my fannish writing/reading/shipping/etc. I don't ship or even like any pairings that could be construed as pedophilic (there's a canon 13-year difference between Jack and Daniel, but I only ever read/write them in a relationship when they're adults); I'm ambivalent about consensual incest in fic (I read certain pairings by authors I like, and I bitch about 'cesty moments in film, but I don't actively ship any 'cest pairings [Crazy Space Incest doesn't count, nor do my jokes about Luke/Leia]); and while my slash background starts in non-con (I was young and needed the gold?), I have ever been wary of the treatment of rape in fiction, be it fannish or not. Even the sex I write, while there is a lot of it and it's queer as hell, is boringly vanilla (just like me! :P) and always between consenting adults (was looking over my Remus/Sirius stuff today, and I noticed they never so much as kiss until they hit sixteen).

That being said, I'm the daughter of a librarian and a dirty pinko commie hippie liberal, and I'll fight to the death against censorship and treating customers like shit. Just because someone ships Snape/Harry doesn't meant they're pedophiles (though that pairing makes me cringe for entirely different reasons); just because they ship Sam/Dean doesn't mean they're screwing their sibling or even want to. Yes, I'm in support of forcing pedophiles of the web, but this wasn't the way to do it.

After all, of all the things they could TOSs people for, why was it only queer art/fiction?

I've been a big fan of ponderosa121's work for years; the piece of art she got TOSsed for, while graphically NC-17 and in the Snape/Harry vein, did not show Harry as a minor, consensual or not. And then arguing that LJ had the right to determine if the piece "contain[s] serious artistic or literary merit" that "offsets the sexual nature of the content"?* Get the fuck off your high horse, folks. Where the hell do you get the right?

All this being said, here's my the status of this journal and writers_island: I paid for a permanent account, and I'm staying unless the rest of fandom jumps ship or for some reason I get TOSsed. Nothing will be locked, nothing will change in the way I post. And if LJ feels the need to take me on, I'll be more than a little surprised and rather flattered.

A few links, for those of you who are less informed and want to know more:

The innocence_jihad (badly-named comm, but what can you do?) post about the most recent aspect of this debacle.

An article about burr86, one of LJ's spokesmen, mocking fandom (screencaps of the original comments can be found at the first link).

Another article on flocking, specific to recent events.

The post from brad's journal about why he's leaving LJ. It's ridiculous that a kid like burr86 is an LJ spokesman, but losing brad, especially right now, is awful.

I've sort of set up journals on vox (also run by Six Apart, so I'm not sure moving there would really help) and insanejournal, but I don't anticipate doing anything with them unless the situation here gets much worse. That being said, if any of you move, do let me know where you're going so we can keep in touch.
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*Both quoted from here.

Comments

[ibneko.livejournal.com]

::wanders in from reading the efc community, burr86's commented thread in particular:: People take things too seriously and missed out on that community's purpose. Although, granted, it took me a good deal of reading to grasp the undercurrent of mock flame wars. Wasn't too wise of him though. And it vague annoys me that I've met him in real life, spoke to him, and took the same class as he did, and he has yet to friend me back. Although he did strike me as somewhat arrogant when we spoke briefly after I recognized him as one of the important LJ people.

As for moving away... if you're really worried about free speech, I would recommend Nearlyfreespeech.net. You'll have to setup your own blogging software and such, but they make promises not to censor you. And they're cheap - you pay for what you use, unless the monthly fees of most hosts.

[melayneseahawk.livejournal.com]

I think the reason everyone got pissy about bur86 was because he's supposed to be one of the public faces of LJ, and there he is mocking paying customers. I understand that it was supposed to be a joke, but in this instance it's not funny and inappropriate for him to be involved in, especially using his public face journal.

Thing is, I'm not so much worried about my own stuff as others, since I'm far from the first one to be TOSsed. The general populace seems to be muttering about insanejournal, greatestjournal, and journalfen, so I feel like those are the places to watch.

[ibneko.livejournal.com]

Greatestjournal seems to have been around longer than insanejournal - at least I know I have an account there. Or there's Deadjournal, which is... almost as old as livejournal, but definitely older than all of the other LJ clones...