Okay, here's how it's going to be.

My two main journals are now my Live Journal and my Insane Journal.

My reasons for this and my thoughts on the various options, let me show you them:

( Live Journal )

( Insane Journal )

( Greatest Journal )

( JournalFen )

( Blurty and other LJ Clones )

( Scribblit and the Fandom Flies Project )

( A non journal style blog )

I thought long and hard about posting this as a comment in response to this post by zorrorojo and in the end, decided to post it here instead.


I've never, to my recollection, criticized JF anonymously, however I have done so under my own name. And now I'm going to do it again.

I like the idea of JF and for years I did my best to encourage people to buy accounts. I often stated my appreciation for the JF Admins allowing the Establishment to be the first RPG allowed on the site and for hosting Fandom Wank. I did my best to be understanding when there were outages; I knew that you and Robin were doing the site on a shoestring basis.

So what made me change my mind? Banning Elfy for something she posted in a locked post had a lot to do with it. But even more than that, it's the utter contempt you seem to have toward your users, many of whom maintain more than one paid account with JF. These people are your customers and yet you constantly express scorn and dislike for them in a way that, frankly, is not only mockable but also kind of embarrassing.

I understand the grind and I'm sure it's not easy busting your ass for people who have introduced the word robust as a fannish injoke. But honestly, expressing public contempt for the users is only going to make things worse.

You know sometimes coming back to my JF really makes me feel like I'm returning to an abusive relationship.

When you have people who are willing to give time or money or both, people who want to help by doing things that don't require shell access and who have wanted to help for a long time and you continually ignore them or turn down their offers, i really think it's out of line to fling the word "entitled" around.

People with entitlement issues don't offer to help. They don't offer to spend their money. In spite of the fact that my fandom_lounge post was more a call to see if system could get together with the users and maybe figure out what could be done to make JF an actual fannish alternative to LJ, people still offered money in the hopes that they could do something to help. Yeah, that smacks of entitlement to me.

So once again, this whole thing could have been a huge opportunity for JournalFen. Only not so much; it's just more of the same old, same old and how dare a segment of fandom that lives to snark snark about JF.

Oh well, maybe next time there's a time when fandom needs something by fans for fans, JF won't hit us again.

So my question after a longish absence is:

Is JF robust enough to take the place of LJ as far as fandom is concerned? If it isn't, is there any chance that ZR and Robin are interested in making it robust enough?

Obviously it's not robust enough now, she said after attempting to make this post three times.

Maybe it's just me, but does this bring back Bit of Earth/Tentmoot/Victoria Bitter/Orange Blossom/Turimel/When a Fan Hits the Shit memories to anyone else?

Also, I'm going to say it again. The idea that you can post something like this and not have people go contacting the main players is, in a word, stupid.

Have the bad_penny mods actually read the JF TOS?

Particularly this bit?

V. JOURNALFEN.NET PRIVACY POLICY
Personal information required in the course of registration remains confidential. Journalfen will never release your personal information, to anyone, except as may be required by law, or in the course of any possible legal proceedings. Information you make publicly available on your journal is up to you to protect. Journalfen will never sell, or otherwise make available, information that is not required for the normal display of your journal.

If there are real death threats going around this is not a matter of one or two fen passing on info to someone on a con com. It's a matter for the legal authorities to take up with the site's owners and not the mods of a community on that site.

According to someone who has apparently spent rather disturbing amount of time observing Nancy and me, it is my habit after being involved in a wank storm to write a "barely disguised grudge rant," call it meta and pimp it far and wide.

Whoever you are, I hate to disappoint you, seeing as you're so terribly fascinated by me, but I really don't need to do that this time. Everything I would want to say about the inherent problems that come with bad_penny's definition of trolling was summed up neatly in this LJ post by caras_galadhon.

As for my own behavior in all this, I'll admit that replying to the "I kick puppies" post with one of my many JF socks was wanky and that I would have been better not to do it. I think it goes without saying that in a situation like this, it's hard for me to back away when I'm being attacked.

However I stand by the original comment that led to me getting banned. pyratejenni was being stupid and is still being stupid. I calls it as I sees it.

Good times. Good times.

I don't know if anyone is still reading this journal but I thought I'd say something about this whole msscribe thing here because my LJ flist isn't really the place for this rant.

I understand that because of what charlottelennox uncovered and posted, people are going after the people who defended msscribe back in the day.

To quote the lovely Claudia Jean Craig, "Wow, are you stupid!"

The whole method to msscribe's madness was to give people a believable enemy. She used "nutty Christians" and people from a website who were already not on good terms with her target--Cassie Claire's inner circle. Should ari_o have looked up the police report? Maybe, but I don't find it strange that she didn't. Trust me on this one, fan run cons do not have professional security; the hotels handle the serious stuff. The con committee side of security is all about telling people not to smoke in the art room and making sure that the cosplayers are decently attired and don't swing dangerous weapons around in a crowd.

Should Heidi have believed the GT admins when they offered her evidence that msscribe was running all those sockpuppets? Ideally, yes. But come on fandom, can any of us sit there and say we'd believe someone from the other side of a fannish feud coming to us to discredit one of our most loyal supporters?

This is why it worked. Really I can't emphasize that enough. This is why it's so fascinating in a fucked up way. She worked the system we all think we know and she worked it perfectly.

I'm not saying that the so called Inner Circle was all with the innocence and sweetness and light. bnfshavemorefun can vouch for that, as can anyone involved with Charitygate. These people are far too concerned with their status as BNFs, and they're all about the fun of their positions in fandom without giving a damn about setting a good example. If you want to bitch Heidi out for not dealing with charitygate well, knock yourself out. If you want to mock ari_o for showing up in every wank involving Heidi and defending her like a pit bull, be my guest.

But early on in all this, when they protected their own in what looked like your garden variety wanky fannish argument? They were acting the way fans in that same situation have done as long as there have been kerfluffles.

Be honest with yourself and ask yourself if you, at that time, with what they knew, and who the accusations were coming from would have done differently.

And any other Jason Isaacs fan still on my flist. Promo shots from Showtime's upcoming show Brotherhood.

*flails and drools*

( OMFG Jason Squee! )

Man, when Sarah T tells you that your essay on mean girls vs nice girls is flawed, you've fucking hit rock bottom.

...AIM turned on us like the rabid dog that it is:

butterflysteel, the rest of Blood Histories is here. I'm not mentioning it as I repost on LJ because the Jason/Liam stuff needs reworking, but if you want to read it all with that understanding, there you are.

Also *hugs* to everyone who as on when the room died.

Stupid AIM! *kicks it*

Happy Belated Birthday, dragonkal!!

With love from me, Viggo and David!

Come and play!

Headache and then when I was feeling better, Nancy came home and we went out. Ate waaaaaay too much -- but OMG nachos with carnitas and three different kinds of cheese are soooooooo yummeh -- and so I'm sort of lying about in a heap and probably won't be on tonight.

Happy Birthday, saxony!!

May it be filled with porny glee and cake!

We haven't had a good anon meme in a while, so yeah, here you go. Anon commenting is off and I don't log ISPs, so say whatever is on your mind about anything at all. Doesn't even have to be anything to do with me. Just let it all out. You'll feel better.

you know you want to

Show's over folks.

Someone decided to use this post this to spread unfounded rumors about a person that could get that person in trouble with JF's admin team. That's where I draw the line.

I'm getting that same excited feeling about Sable Knot becoming active again that I got back when establishment was new. OMG So many good characters and so much truly excellent writing! *bounces* I love the world we play in and I love my pups: my nobleman, William John Neeson, Viscount Longford; my ex-boxer turned brothel slave, Ioan "the Griffin" Gruffudd, and my shy, confused, maid/bed girl Marian Johnson.

I love the complicated Neeson family. There's Liam, his straight older son Will (an NPC), his very very gay younger son Ewan (who does things that Liam Does Not Approve Of), and his young, mostly lesbian, second wife Natalie. His late and much lamented first wife Caroline was the sister of one Sean Bean who thought that Liam was nowhere near good enough for his sister and still loathes Liam to this day. And there's Liam's slave, Jason who still is a little embarrassed at how much he likes being buggered. And Liam's former slave, a young man by the name of Jonny Rhys-Meyers who now belongs to Lord Sean. This morning I was telling Nancy that I really think we need a family tree or something. *grins*

It's not that I don't still love the Est; Gods know I do. It's my first baby and because of it, I've made so many wonderful friends, RPed with so many great writers -- several of whom have become co-writers outside the Est -- learned so much -- not only from the things I did right but from the things I did wrong -- and met the lovely and talented darkrose. I'm still insanely proud and more than a little protective of it.

It's just that SK almost died and now it's back with a bunch of new players and new pups and I'm kinda excited.

Just in case you couldn't tell. *grins*

Please to be not misusing the word squick"

Almost everyone reading this journal knows about establishment, the RPF RPG about a discreet, world-wide kinky sex club for the very wealthy and famous that I started up back in April of 2003.

There is another game I've been instrumental in founding -- along with one of my frequent partners in crime, darkrosetiger -- and while, for various reasons, it's been very quiet for the last year, it's been picking up again lately. I'm talking about Sable Knot, an RPF RPG that takes place in an Alternate Universe England.

( Edwardian England -- Through a Glass Darkly. Come play with us. )

Even if you aren't interested in playing, be sure to check out the list of scenes Grace collected. There's some good (and very hot) writing in there.