From wank_report:

Someone has decided that enough is enough, and it is now time to cleanse the Pit of Voles FF.net of all that ails it. And that someone is the Literate Union! Motto: "well here are the people who are going to give it anyways!"

"It", apparently, being concrit or flaming. You know, whichever you prefer.

"The LU -- The Literate Union -- is a society that helps to improve the quality of stories on FanFiction that either break the rules or are poorly written. In the case of the latter, we try to help the author, bringing their piece up to standard. Difficult cases are reported to the admins."

( And we got to go in with our hydraulic system, and blast him out! )

First attempt at posting, although I've been barracking from the sidelines for about a millennium now ...

astolat posts A Matter Of Inconvenience, which is American Idol slashfic (Kris/Adam) with a 'Regency' setting. At least, that's the general idea, and harmless enough you would have thought - assuming that AI AU RPS is your thing. (Alphabet soup!)

zvi, however, takes exception. Amongst other objections, A Matter of Inconvenience is not about race, thoughtlessly invokes colonial issues, and just doesn't put up any warning flags for those who are about to read it. Also, apparently, this is a thing Astolat fucked up. Everybody, please to endeavor not to fuck up like that with your next happy fun sexytimes historical.

What starts off as moderately polite discussion about historicity in slash fanfiction is, however, quickly derailed by willow who offers the following reasoned evaluation: In the middle of the cuppa tea, the empire waist dresses and the ass-sex of your AU Regency - please to be remembering the hydra heads of colonialism and imperialism and what that means for and about your whitey white penis salt lick fan thought of the moment.

liviapenn tries to calm things down a bit with some entertaining stuff about plumbers and blow jobs but this only serves to upset willow further. Why is it that everytime I see you lately, you're happily shoving your foot into your mouth via your hindquarters? ... You keep claiming to understand your privilege and say you're reflecting on it and then you start chomping that feces encrusted shoe leather again. willow's User Info states "'M brown and I have an attitude." No kidding.

astolat's attempt to explain herself gets stomped on, and the desirability of historical accuracy in a Kris/Adam Regency alternate universe is lathered, rinsed and repeated for those who missed it the first time.

Small, but strangely vitriolic given the subject matter. It's difficult to imagine why people are getting quite so over-excited about one piece of costumed fluff in a universe of lesbian cars and tentacle porn, but it may keep us entertained while we're waiting for next incarnation of VB.

ETA: Okay, I get the message, I got it wrong - or maybe I just don't have a sense of humour? Either way, it was obviously a bad call. Lesson learned.

It all starts with what people are already calling LJ Genderfail: the newest beta version of LJ added a mandatory "gender" field to the sign-up process and eliminated the "unspecified" option (LJ quickly responded that the mandatoryness and binaryness of the new question were an accidental bug, and that the code was not going to go live. Of course, not everyone believes them about the "unintentional" part).

Well-known SGA BNF, former lj staffmember and co-founder of Dreamwidth Synecdochic made a call-to-action post that included the line,

It's been a while since I've been furious with anything LJ has done; having DW has done a lot to calm down my knee-jerk "AUUUGH NO" whenever Moscow does something stupid again.

A few people, some Russian and some not, are offended by this, and object. Synecdochic apologizes and edits the post after a request for clarification, but that is not enough to stop Ivorygates from making her side look bad.

Furiosity (who identifies as Russian) had objected to dismissing an entire culture because you're mad at some of its representatives, and Ivorygates takes the opportunity to school her. In her own cultural history. Because, you know, Russians don't understand freedom: it's not in their culture! America's special history of free speech can't be truly respected by them! (At this point Synecdochic freezes the thread.)

But Ivorygates isn't done! Bell had commented to Synecdochic that saying "Moscow" made a decision wasn't the same as saying "San Francisco" did because "Moscow, in US rhetoric, is that creepy place with commies and weird politics and gangsters". Ivorygates PMs her about this claim,

Are you actually -- are you actually seriously -- suggesting that identifying as a Russian national -- online, where you are safe from physical attack and can maintain anonymity -- presents you with duress identical to the harassment and persecution that transsexual and genderqueer individuals experience not only on-line, but in every facet of their lives?

Furiosity also posts to ask people to apologize instead of getting defensive when informed that they have offended "someone's race/culture/language/sexual orientation/gender identity/whatever". In her post meddie_flow comes to Synecdochic's defense with the ever popular Bingo square of "She didn't mean anything by it" with a side-order of "don't turn everything into a lynch-mob". Being offended by russophobia is also likened to being offended by the color red, and I'm honestly not sure if the irony there was intentional or not...

Just some links that might have got lost in the faily shuffle of the last post:

cesare finds thanfiction's icons interesting.

Guess the celebrity in thanfiction's "original" artwork.

FW's nemesis old friend FanHistory owner and Fandom's Public Enemy #1, Laura Hale joins the circus.

His son? A bird. (PROOF!)

Turimel updates her LJ with screencaps.

Famous last words. :( :( :(

ETA:

HOLD THE PHONE, IT JUST GOT BETTER! BLAME IT ON HIS EVIL TWIN SISTER!

Can this get any more ridiculous? I can't even imagine, but I'm sure VB will think of something.


ETA, again: Link courtesy of sockpuppeteer and luvscharlie: Witness Andrew Blake dressed up as Bill Weasley!




Reminder: please use male pronouns when referring to VB/thanfiction, and leave the transfail in the other post, thanks.

We begin our saga on the fair hills of house_wilson, where the grass grows green and the House/Wilson shippers occasionally throw shit fits over whether or not David Shore is dicking around House/Wilson shippers.

One day, this (relatively) peaceful comm is visited by slow_mo_panda, who had arrived to bring to everyone her thoughts on yaoi The Contract, a love-it or hate-it extreme-whump fic amongst House fandom.

The masses do not react well. (And euclase wins the "most over-the-top reaction to criticism" award for this week.)

Having been thrown out by her ears, slow_mo_panda once again continued her travels, landing on the shores of fanficrants, where she hoped to be greeted with open arms and kind words telling her how everyone else is a bunch of mean bitches.

Alas, she had no luck on that front, either.

After a number of negative comments, she deleted that post and was banninated from fanficrants. And there was much rejoicing.

Hearing the commotion, ffrantsrants and sf_drama arrived on the scene so that they could point and laugh.

However, this is not the end of our story. slow_mo_panda, apparently having not learned her lesson yet, appeared once again, this time in ffrantsrants in order to talk about how oppressed she is. Or something. ETA: Now locked down, but here's a text-version:
( also long )
ETA2: And now doire brings the screencaps.


Caps courtesy of xayeidemon.

ETA: Removed links to locked fanficrants content.

ETA2: Apparently, our friend has left a review on ff.net on the original fic:
( cut for length )


ETA3: Now a tl;dr post in her personal journal. Man, she really doesn't know when to stop, does she?

C&P'd from wank_report:

"The original post was deleted, but there's caps a'plenty at sf_drama. These are probably the most complete: http://pics.livejournal.com/halrenna/pic/000e0zr0

So. chiibiusa, co-mod of sm_secrets, announces in sailormoonfans that she's thinking of shutting down the comm (at least temporarily, but possibly for good), because there aren't enough secrets being submitted, and she's tired of it. The first commenter, tenchichan, suggests that chiibiusa needs to calm down.

DON'T. TELL. CHIIBIUSA. TO. CALM. DOWN.

Cue raeg, increasingly incoherent responses, a small amount of "OMG don't leave us we love you!" fangirling, and some sighs from people who thought their comm had outgrown this shit.

Then the whole thing hits sf_drama: http://community.livejournal.com/sf_drama/2556609.html?page=1#comments

Bringing chiibiusa with it: http://community.livejournal.com/sf_drama/2556609.html?thread=404234945#t404234945

She is STILL replying to comments left on the sf_d post, as well as randomly friending comm members. There are rumors of a post waiting in the sf_d mod queue, presumably telling us all how gullible we are for falling for her trolling, and how we've all been lol!pwnd! There's been a few comments from people who claim to know her and say that this is really unlike her, so it's possible that this is all leading up to the classic "I GOT HACKED!" defense."

ETA! Chiibiusa flounces: "i amno longer updating this journal from now until ever. and 'ever' is subjective is until i am ready to open it back up again."

Aptly, she's back for more. I guess in the recession, the exchange rate for 'ever' is approximately 45 minutes.

ETA 2: Oh, lordy, more posts. Courtesy of sistrelwood.

ETA 3: *facepalm* First rule of fight club, y'all.

Dearest little wankahs, what makes a perfect wank?

I'm not asking this because I'm trying to perfect a Get Wank Quick scheme*, though. Honest.



*Voodoo, not trolling.

Thanks to the mousie at wank_report!

Remember this wank? Which involved this guy? Well, if you're wondering what that rattling noise you hear is, it's the sound of head-desking over at TV Tropes, and it's all thanks to him.

---

Notes on the Source Material: There were 14 pages of comments, and just after I finished documenting the hijinks on page 12, everything got bahleeted. I snagged screencaps of pages 2-11 (which is more than Google cache got) but the most comprehensive record of this wank comes from my raw notes. Below the cut, you'll find a summary of the wank with links so you can bamf around and read the just interesting bits of the raw notes. The screencaps can be found here.

---

( Cosmetor Saves the Internet )

These two comments, made shortly before the bahleetion, are rather telling:

(15021) Dire Sloth: So... that Fan Dumb thread... it's kind of dumb.

(15022) Tzetze: I don't want to hear about that thread again.

---

ETA the 001: (Thanks to galateus for linkage, and ari_o for linkage that led to more linkage)

( Cosmetor Has Saved the Internet Before )

---

ETA the 010: (Thanks to boomstickjones for linkage to the latest, hottest, breaking news!)

Internet Does Not Want to be Saved, Banninates Cosmetor

2; Fast Eddie: After review ... People tried to reason with him. This is the second time he's been around, spreading chaos. He didn't really break any rules, but being around him is a pain in the ass.
Block installed.
7; Fighteer: Whew, thanks. That Fan Dumb argument felt like it was sucking the brain from my skull.
9; Some Sort of Troper: It feels wrong to me that the thread was deleted, it should have a more fitting end. Something like the house at the end of Poltergeist, it should have imploded and been sucked into hell.

A certain well-known person in the Hikaru no Go (Aja aka bookshop, whom you might remember thanks to other kerfuffles she's been in) claims that some BNF's had their fics plagiarised. And posts about it in her journal. Citing excerpts of the fics by both "victims" and "culprits" (which, in this repoter's opinions, aren't THAT similar) and a *very* wanky call to fandom.

So, yeah, SHUN HER, discredit her, go forth and spread the word. Let the trumpets of indignation sound!

And people start commenting about it. Some excerpts are here:

- What a skeeve. Can't you use your BNF to make ppl troll this journal?

- "She deleted her DW!" "that's the power of the BNF lol"

- The author tries to defend herself. And is hatepiled on. Errrr...

- "Please understand, I'm not implying that *any* of these fics are plagiarized, I'm saying that I'm not sure but I suspect..."

- A post on it by one of the supposedly plagiarised authors

One of the so-called "culprits" accused has had it, though! And she's NOT gonna take it! Watch as Aja keeps insisting that there was plagiarism, pretty much making an ass outta herself, and people come to umareawareru's defense.

... And finally, Aja snaps. And SCREAMS.

( HNG fandom. Please leave me THE FUCK alone. Kthx )

Thank you so much, mousies from wank report!

ETA: mischif tells us that Aishuu has written about the subject. Thanks to ya too!

A Loyala University professor does, and I'm not kidding, a soshul experiment on City of Heroes. Long story short (because long article is long), David Myers, in his persona of "Twixt", is a general asshat in the game and then gets a paper out of talking about how awesome his character was and how mean people were to him.

If that mess wasn't wanky enough, arguments have broken out in the comments. Some feel that since "Twixt" wasn't breaking any rules, nobody has a right to complain.
( Heroic cut! )

EDIT: Sorry, I went out before this made it through the queue. Cut is in place now.

As you all know, we've had a lot of n00bs join fandom_wank recently, and we've been suffering some growing pains. Once again, we urge you to read our user info and learn about the rules and how to contact the mods and all the non-fun business.

Since we have so many new baby wankas, we need some help gently reminding the young ones (and some not so young ones) of the rules. We want you to be the FW Nannies, and help us guide our sweet n00bs through this harsh, wanky world. So, if you see any of the following things:

thoughts on yaoi
out of control boobie trains
excessive posting of recipes
unfunny macros
wank reenactment in the comments
trolling, trollbaiting, trollbiting, trip-trapping across my bridge
any random breaking of actual rules

please, feel free to use the comments of this post to tattle report to us. We've set up a new community for our baby wankas, fw_timeout to spend some time, if they are caught. Make sure you join!

Remember, this will make us a stronger community!

Supernatural Media is a site that posts previously unseen stills and promotional shots for the TV show Supernatural. This morning, its front page made the following announcement:

Let's play a game! Find something strange on the site then click on it and admire the first preview from the season 3 promotion pictures.

Cue general fangirl irritation.

Which leads to a shiny new tantrum announcement!

You want unseen pictures but you don't want to visit SPNMEDIA because it's horrible site. You are also not ready to play a game because it's a pathetic plea for attention. Well, then don't visit the site and don't play the game.

You do realize that the website has been created for the fandom? It's an immense effort to get all the pictures and to keep the site up-to-date. But why should you care, it's your right to get all the pictures immediately. Forcing you to find a link in a description is an incredible crime.

Maybe we should stop running the website, stop releasing unseen high quality pictures and stop torturing the fandom. This is a non-profit website. The only thing we earn is a hosting bill and ungrateful fans. Okay, there are some who say from time to time thank you and that's great. So can't you just be pleased and stop complaining without any reason?

Shut up, mean fangirls. You suck.

In vergil_fangirls, rosiesintherain posts:

I know I'm going to be stomped with flames and insults for asking, but why exactly do people like Dante/Vergil?

It's something I never understood. I understand people appreciating the brotherly (FAMILY) love between them. The fact that they're so different and would definately be willing to kill each other, but they can't bring themselves to completely hate each other. Lady and Arkham had that too. Despite all the horribly things that Arkham had done to both her and others, she was still saddened when she killed him. Same with Dante. Despite what Vergil had done to him and was planning on doing to the world, when he left the human world forever, he was saddened by that too.

I don't find it romantic in the least and I don't understand why people try to make it out to be. I don't think someone can completely hate their family member, and DMC3 decided to play on that. And it's fairly obvious that Dante likes women. He hits on almost all the DMC girls, has naked pictures of women in his office, and totally got a boner the moment he saw Nevan. I don't think he's ever done that around Vergil.

Plus.... they're brothers. That's just sick.

So since there seems to be quite a lot of twincest fans here, I'd like to hear what they have to say. It confuses me when people dislike Dante/Trish because Trish is a clone of his mother, but turn around and say that two brothers fucking is hot.

Just curious.

( YAY WANK! )

ETA: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE GODWIN.

As an offshoot of the Lexicon wank, it appears Melissa wank has arrived.

As part of her "impartial" coverage of the lawsuit, Melissa Anelli of TLC apparently felt it necessary to qualify Steve Vander Ark's (signed under oath) statement that the advertising on the Lexicon "covers the cost of running the site" by reminding people that "The Leaky Cauldron houses and runs the Harry Potter Lexicon for zero charge, and has since it came under its current domain name. That is true as of this posting." However, on Feb 11 she admits to denying a request for the transfer of hosting.

This prompts SVA to release more detail than anyone wanted to know about the finances of the Lexicon. Quote: "If there was any income to me, it wasn't much, especially by comparison to the income other websites have earned." The "other website" he specifically mentions is MuggleNet, whose owner claims a "six-figure income" from the site. SVA doesn't mention TLC, but Melissa goes crazy.

A bit of digging reveals that TLC's finances have been discussed before over on I was a Leaky Lounge Mod. In May 2007, a mouse says: "I know for a fact that Melissa used Leaky money to buy herself a new laptop." In September 2007, Gina raised suspicions about who paid for Melissa's New York apartment ("the web provides a TON of information about purchase prices of condos which are pretty darn high to not have jobs *koff koff*") Over Sep/Oct 2007 the subject was raised again, and another mouse said:

"To take Melissa as the main example, as has been pointed out she lives in New York. That place is very expensive, not just real estate but the cost of living as well. She is in no way living off the advance on her book because let's face it, even if all her fangirls and boys buy it it's not going to be a huge best seller. The time has been and gone for that. She has left her full time job and therefore she must be taking at least a 5-6 figure salary from Leaky. If she is doing this and has deliberately registered it in a way that doesn't mean full disclosure, then that is appalling."

The matter was pretty much put to rest until Melissa forced SVA's hand. Ex-staff are pissed. Highlights:

There will continue to be no transparency about Leaky income. They've claimed for far too long that they make no money. I can only say that I actually know this to be total BS. I'd love to tell you my proof, alas I'm not able. Steve threw some stones but Melissa opened a door that, IMHO, that now begs the question of well, so, what DOES Leaky earn then?

and:

Since Melissa is bringing up money herself, she really should answer. If she is going to criticize Steve for trying to make this a full time job that she should be above that same criticism.

Arianhrod marches over to Leaky Lounge with this:

But since it doesn't appear that anyone else is going to ask the logical question, I will.

Just how much does Leaky make from all of this--in profit? Is this considered a hobby by the IRS, or is it a major source (or even sole source) of income?

And before anyone questions my audacity, Melissa has laid it out on the line and brought the subject of hosting and ad revenue costs into the open. It's no longer a private matter--the whole world now knows about it and as such this is a valid question, especially if TLC has been or gets dragged into this lawsuit.

I don't expect an answer--I do expect to get ripped to shreds, and that's fine. But at least I'm not afraid to ask.

Melissa ignores the question. Arianhrod calls her on it ("With all due respect, Melissa, that is avoiding the issue.") Melissa gets defensive.