Because I'm your fan

[lolaraincoat]

I set myself up at Greatestjournal a few years ago when LJ was down for a few days. Now at least the fannish half of my f'list here seems to be migrating in that direction, or in many directions really, because LJ has been banning users whose content they don't like (depictions of fictional characters who appear to be under 18 having sex.)

I'm undecided about what to do - stay here but read journals on three or four other sites? move most of my posting over there but keep reading journals here? something else entirely? There's a fan-run not-for-profit journaling site currently in beta-testing, so that will be a good option soon but not yet. But I don't want to lose track of you while I dither. So! If I have you friended here, and you have set yourself up at Greatestjournal, and I haven't yet friended you there, it's because I haven't found you. Please ping me and let me know your username there. And if you're migrating to some other journal but not Greatestjournal, please let me know that as well. I don't want to lose track of you all!

cubby66, dailyplanet, mulberryfields, stillwell, slit, t_ktl, telurian: THIS MEANS YOU.

Comments

[fabularasa.livejournal.com]

I'm over at GJ too, though the journal's currently blank. (Also, keep in mind that I'm fabularasa, and fabula_rasa is someone else entirely.)

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Ah-hah! yes, that other GJ Fabula was clearly not you.

[laughingrat.livejournal.com]

I miss Dailyplanet. Is she over there?

If you and Centeroffate move over there, please let me know. I will get a Greatestjournal or whatever just so I can keep up with the people I like. *hug*

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

And here I was just about to edit your user-name into the post ...

I will update on any decisions, should I ever make a decision. But meanwhile I'm trying to import my f'list over to my journal on GJ as much as I can.

[laughingrat.livejournal.com]

Aw, *smooches*. :) Is GJ sort of intergrated to LJ? Can you read LJ from there?

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

No - there are ways to do RSS feeds of journals in other kinds of journals, but I've not looked into how that works and it makes me tired just thinking of it.

Man, I really, really don't want to leave lj, or maintain more than one journal.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

I'm namesquatting ellen_fremedon at GJ, but I haven't posted there, and I don't plan to unless there's a major exodus.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

What I fear most is a major exodus of Potter fen but not everyone else at the same time. I like it here!

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

I am worried that there will be no lovely art and no yummy fanfic hear for me to nibble on. But my friends list is mostly my pagan RL friends who don't care about the right to post scetches of imaginary 15 year olds in flagrante delicto. I'm pretty sure they will stay put.

I think I'll end up with 2 journals unless I can figure out the RSS thing.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I'm still sticking with LJ--there's an Erma Bombeck book called something like "Madly in Love or Too Tired for an Affair?" and at least ATM, I'm assuming that if we allow ourselves to be chased off LJ, not only will The Terrorists Have Won, but they'll take it as a victory to be replicated journal by journal.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

For the moment, I am staying here too. But I have that other journal at GJ under my name, just in case. And, just in case, I want us to be able to find each other!

[florahart]

Well, yes, but once banned, the email says you can't even make another LJ here, here if a number of fairly prolific or well-known authors get banned, then there will probably be moving.

The written word is more protected than the art, but honestly, I have posted... I have no idea how many fics. I'm guessing several hundred--for instance, I have 68 posts at pornish. If ONE of those, even one written as crack in January of 2004 or, say, the series of TriWizard limericks from November 2005, gets reported and deemed underage/obscene (and actually, I reckon it's the teeny ones like limericks and drabbles that's more likely to happen to because they are more likely to be deemed without literary merit), all that goes. Personally, I'm all for taking action to prevent that from happening. Heh.

It is true all sites will have to follow the law. It is not true they will all choose to interpret "obscene" the same way, or that they will all choose to choose the interpretation of child porn to mean drawn images (which were, as recently as 18 months ago,explicitly protected as NOT child porn). LJ isn't responsible for the laws, but I do hold them accountable for how they are choosing to interpret them and why (sponsors).

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I wasn't clear--when I said "journal by journal" I didn't mean Fan X and then Fan Y, but from LiveJournal (the most established) to Greatest Journal, Insane Journal, etc.

Because I can't seem to put this under a cut...

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

Miss Leslie Gore will now sing you a song of stalking. When she sings "He" or "Him" let yourself hear "Lolaraincoat" instead, OK?

Love him, I love him, I love him,
And where he goes I´ll follow, I´ll follow, I´ll follow.

I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go.
There isn´t an ocean too deep,
A mountain so high, it can't keep me away.

I must follow him, ever since he touched my hand I knew,
That near him I always must be.
And nothing can keep him from me,
He is my destiny.

I love him, I love him, I love him,
And where he goes I´ll follow, I´ll follow, I´ll follow.
He´ll always be my true love, my true love, my true love,
From now until forever, forever, forever.

I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go,
There isn´t an ocean too deep.
A mountain so high it can't keep, keep me away,
Away from my love.

I love him, I love him, I love him,
And where he goes I´ll follow, I´ll follow, I´ll follow.
He´ll always be my true love, my true love, my true love,
From now until forever, forever, forever.

I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go,
There isn´t an ocean too deep.
A mountain so high, it can't keep, keep me away,
Away from my love.

And where he goes,
I´ll follow, I´ll follow, I´ll follow,
I know I´ll always love him. (Repeat to fade)


Seriously, if you leave, tell me where you have gone. I will follow.

Re: Because I can't seem to put this under a cut...

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

EEEEEEEEEEE! Filk! I adore you.

Anyway, you can find me here:

http://www.greatestjournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=lolaraincoat

though I expect to keep using this as my primary journal for a while, and who knows? maybe forever. But just so everyone has a backup location and can find each other again ...

You do know lj has started closing down journals or threatening to close them down again, right? I'm not terribly het up about it, but I am concerned that half my f'list is likely to migrate to somewhere else.

Re: Because I can't seem to put this under a cut...

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

I AM het up about it. I'm afraid I will never see another drawing of imaginary minor Draco Malfoy sucking imaginary Voldemort's huge, throbbing, imaginary dick. (Not that I would want to see such a thing, mind you. Just thinking of the imaginary trauma that poor, imaginary boy will have to suffer for the rest of his imaginary life because of his imaginary exploitation makes me want to wash my eyes out with imaginary Lysol.)

Hey, what about that smut you posted over 2 years ago? Do you think the forces of truth, justice and the Amerikan way would look that far back in your journal in their quest to save young minds from whatever they think they are saving young minds from?

Re: Because I can't seem to put this under a cut...

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Everything in my journal prior to 2007 is now f-locked anyway. The forces of oh-whateverness will be spared the desperate looking around for pr0n - at least in this journal.

Course, it's all still easily accessible on three large-ish archives, but that's another matter.

I'm not het up because I recognize that it is 6Apart's right to exercize control over the content of our journals here. I do think that they are doing this in a stupid way, but it's their business.

It's just that I do want there to be a space we can all feel secure in while posting our Filch/Stephen Greenblatt non-con (which swear to god I wrote last night) or whatever, and in which our communities can all grow and thrive. LJ is not that place anymore, alas, for at least some of us. But I don't see my whole f'list - or even everyone in the half of it that's primarily here for fandom purposes - picking up and moving to the same place all at once, either. And that is a worry to me.

[winterthunder.livejournal.com]

Aww, I have a fan? I feel loved! :D

I'm winterthunder over at InsaneJournal and GreatestJournal and hopefully soon at JournalFen as well. I'm not posting to any of them at the moment, but I'm working on backing my journal up at all of them. I'm also looking into trying to set up something that would automatically post to all winterthunders when posting to one, so I wouldn't have to maintain more than one journal.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah! And ah-hah, there you are, I've friended you on GJ.

..

[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

I'm just here, but admittedly I'm hardly ever online anyway. My take on the whole controversy is still that if you're doing something society disapproves of, you should probably do a good job of hiding it from prying eyes. Eventually greatestjournal and all the others will follow lj's suit and ban anything even remotely depicting pedophilia of any sort.

I'm wondering, though, if there's some sort of attack going on: a small group of people infiltrating fandom and campaigning to shut down all the controversial sex involved in it. Somebody keeps pushing lj to do something about all this stuff. My guess is they'll simply follow everyone to greatestjournal and do the same thing there.

Which is perhaps to say that fandom needs to figure out a better response to all of this than simply say "fuck you lj" and flee somewhere else. If someone contacts lj and says: here's an instance of pedophilia, how is lj supposed to ignore the issue? Unfortunately, I really think the burden is on the artists to do a good job of keeping themselves under the radar. Personally, I think this whole thing sucks; I hate this kind of censorship. But realistically, wasn't all this only a matter of time?

Re: ..

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Answering these in reverse order ...

Yes lj had to respond to complaints once it got them, though it doesn't seem to be responding in a very clever way. But it's a corporation, and corporations aren't clever. Which is why greatestjournal et al are merely stopgap solutions.

Fandom, to the extent that it can be considered a single entity, is doing exactly as you recommend: taking steps. A definitive solution won't be found so much with the keeping under the radar, which is impossible collectively though easy enough individually. Instead, there's a couple of efforts underway (begun during the last Great Strikethrough) to set up fan-owned and fan-operated journal and archive sites, and they are thinking very carefully about how to avoid this kind of unpleasantness; I am fairly sure solutions exist as long as the sites aren't intended to make a profit and don't have to answer to shareholders. So I expect eventually a lot of us will wind up on scribblit for journaling and fanarchive for archival purposes. My concerns are that lots of people I like will remain on lj or wander off in other directions in the interim.

And yes, this does indeed appear to have resulted from a small group of people (possibly just one) complaining to lj. But I don't think any of them infilitrated fandom - that wasn't even necessary. They just looked at fan sites.

Re: ..

[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

I was just being lazy using the word "fandom" there as a single entity. But it's good to know there are some people working on the issue. I see a lot of this kind of drama in the music-sharing communities I belong to, which also operate in a legal grey area (well, optimistically-speaking). What they tend to do is to create invite only groups, so that no one in the group will alert anyone outside to anything "controversial." Anyway, there are tons of potential solutions to the problem; people have been finding creative ways to get around censorship for millennia. The "fuck you, I'm fleeing" response is probably the least effective of all, and every time I see it I cringe.

I know what you mean, though, about having your friends list split in pieces, forcing you to have to be on two or more sites just to keep up with what you now only need one site for. That's why I'm not on greatestjournal; I just don't have the time to commit to more than one journaling site. And anyway, my music communites are still here.

Re: ..

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I bet music sites do have very similar problems (though with Stealing From Artists OMG!!! substituted for Endangering Children OMG!!! in the related inflamatory rhetoric.)

The problem with invite-only groups is that they don't work nearly as well for the kinds of fandom where fans aren't there primarily to share copies of existing artworks. People in the kinds of fandom that I hang out in are mostly engaged in legal activities - legal, that is, in most jurisdictions that I know of - in the kinds of communities that thrive with low or no barriers to entry.

But I agree that there will be solutions that work for us; I just wish very much that those solutions included everyone staying on lj, and expect that this won't be the case.

Re: ..

[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

I find that invite-only doesn't work extraordinarily well for music-sharing, either, but it seems to be the way some of the best ones have gone.

I find, personally, that I kind of like the Victorian method of dealing with censorship: adding a subtext that only those in the know will understand. So one can write about the most explicit taboo subjects using keywords that pass completely under the radar of anyone trying to censor it. Probably that already happens to some extent in fandom, and I'm not really suggesting that it should be adopted en masse, but I do think that done skillfully, it can often enhance the erotic charge of a text rather dramatically.

f.y.i.: downloading music for personal use is perfectly legal in Canada; uploading could potentially get one in trouble (contorted legal reasoning, I suppose).

Will you join my "hotmail is evil and sucks ass" club? As the second member, you can be honorary vice-president.

Re: ..

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

But then, one definition of fanfic is that it is the fiction that makes the subtextual textual - not always or primarily sexual subtexts, either. So that kind of fanfic both depends upon coded sexuality in lit/film/tv/whatever, and can't itself use coding as a strategy.

Totally happy to join in any anti-hotmail activism. I promise to wield my newfound powers responsibly.

Re: ..

[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

*deleted rambling that probably made no sense anyway*

Oh, wait...flash of insight. Whenever Snape and Harry appear together in the books, we know they're actually about to hop in bed with each other...that's what you mean by the coded sexuality in the text, right? To recode it does seem a bit pointless, then. Fanfic makes explicit what J.K. Rowling was, of course, hinting to us all the time. She's the one who had to avoid the censors, otherwise all her smut would never make it into our grubby little hands!

I think I get it now. Ignore some of what I wrote in my other comments.

Re: ..

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I guess I should have said that making the subtext into text is ONE of the things that fanfiction does.

In the case of sexually explicit Potterverse fic, well, sometimes (I would say Remus-and-Sirius stories until they were degayed in the last two books) fanfic does exactly that, but sometimes it just comments on the general situation -- there's a whole lot of wand-polishing going on in Rowling's text, if you see what I mean -- or builds on fans' responses to the way that actors like Alan Rickman play the characters.

But also there's just the universal human urge for porn at work here.

Re: ..

[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Yeah, I understand how all this works to a greater extent than I can verbalize here (I'm way out of practice discussing any of this stuff); I have a pretty extensive background in literary theory and, more generally, in thinking about texts and authors and readers, etc.

Still, I was missing a basic point there, and somehow reading your comments and thinking about them finally bonked me over the head about some of the issues here. It's always a good thing when someone, like you for instance, challenges me on what I'm saying so that I'm forced to think more broadly about whatever it is I think I know what I'm talking about, which is sometimes dismayingly next to nothing.

Re: ..

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

One of the things I love best about fandom as a community of readers, writers, artists, archivists, critics, vidders and so on is that we spend a lot of time, collectively, asking ourselves and each other about what we do when we read/write/etc. as fans. And wow there are some smart and sophisticated thinkers out there working on these questions - you know cathexys, right? Me, I operate at a much more basic level, but yeah, thinking about these questions is just so much fun.

That's why we're all so nervous about either leaving lj or staying here: we have this community (or set of communities) which we all treasure, and uprooting it would mean losing so much of it ...

Re: ..

[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

I could be wrong about this, so take it with a grain of salt, but my instinct tells me that the censorship issue is being overblown. Fandom is an echo chamber, and those who are immature and/or frustrated and/or drama-seeking are fanning the winds of controversy to the point where any action by lj to censor something which is, after all, obviously controversial is immediately seen as a full-blown attack and the end of the world as we know it. I've seen this happen time and time again in lj, going back over six years, on many different kinds of issues.

I think, too, that there's no real solution. Fandom is an echo chamber; drama happens; people with more perspective still get caught up in it all because, as you've mentioned several times, the danger is a fracturing of the community, and maybe it's better to get caught up in it and move with the rest of the community than to keep one's head and be alone.

From my perspective, as an outsider to fandom, it's easy to come up with simple solutions, all of which simply require: keeping one's head and making small efforts to stay under the radar. In a word: compromise. But of course, it's not really that easy. Fandom isn't filled with outsiders; it's full of insiders who deeply care about what they're trying to do and for whom there are real things at stake.

But maybe people like you and cathexys and others who are, for want of a better way to put it, more grounded in life than some of those shouting "fuck you lj, I'm leaving" can find a way to damper the resonance. Or maybe I'm just thinking that while everyone is exploding, no one is writing or drawing. My guess is that for you (and maybe for many others), sacrificing a bit of the controversial matter would be okay if it meant keeping what's truly important: the community itself. Sex is a lightning rod, but controversial sex is a house without a lightning rod. *scratches head* (That's either clever or an utterly meaningless non sequitur.)

blah blah it's midnight and I'm losing my train of thought. I'm probably not telling you anything you already know; I just find it all frustrating to watch. And time-sucking in an endless-time-suck sort of way. Drama is addictive.

Re: ..

[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wanted to add, too: moving from one place to another is a huge pain. I'm trying desperately to abandon my stupid evil hotmail account, and even that is a lot more difficult than one would think. Grr.

Re: ..

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Totally sharing your pain with that one. With the new job, I now have SIX email accounts I check regularly - including two I would love to get rid of on hotmail. Arrrggggghhhh.

Re: ..

[djinnj.livejournal.com]

Set them to forward to your Gmail and then set your Gmail to use the same reply-to address as the acct which received and forwarded them. MUCH easier to check, even if you've still got to keep the accts.

[gloss]

I *love* Insane Journal, where I`m under the same username - the owner has explicitly stated support for fan activities, the prices are reasonable, and the mood is refreshingly mellow compared to LJ.

That said, I`m still reading here, not least because I don`t want to lose track of you and Executrix et al. I`m not planning to post substantial content on LJ any longer, but I`ll try to post pointers and reminders to the IJ. (And, whoa, I just remembered, there`s an interesting - but f`locked - discussion of private vs. public kink going on in my IJ that I wish you could read. If you comment on a public post with your OpenID from LJ, I can `friend` that account, enabling you to read locked posts.)

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Okey-dokey, I'll do that.

I'm hearing mixed things about IJ so it's good to get a rave review. And I'm glad that you're still reading here, too!

[contrary-wise.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh! I am missed? I have a fan? This makes my mopey PMS-ish day So Much Better.

I've mostly learned about the fannish migration from your LJ and have been quiet for entirely unrelated reasons. One of which is that I've been half-heartedly posting at a new LJ and debating whether or not to move there permanently and/or ask my favorite LJers to follow me there.

Which is to say, I'm still here. And I'll let you know if I'm somewhere else too.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're still about. And of course I'm your fan!

If you do point people to a new lj, please point me there too.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Please don't move! That is, if you post elsewhere, please continue to post here.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Hee! that's the right icon for this post!

I have no immediate plans to abandon this journal. But I am very very very cyber-lazy, so am also loathe to learn to use the software that would enable me to post to GJ and LJ (or where-ever) at the same time. It's a problem ...

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Hiya Lola,

I haven't done much blogging this year. My little LJ is just sitting there gathering dust and I can't cope with checking too many different friendslists, so I have no plans to move.

But let me know if you do. I have one friend who has a MySpace blog and another is on a Yahoo service, I think, or Gmail or something. Haven't looked at Greatest Journal. But I have the vague sense that most ISPs have pretty much the same TOU--which is to say, they will allow anything at all, up until the day someone complains, and then they ban whatever subcategory they have randomly decided is Bad that day. It's all random and driven by PR and perceptions, and none of it makes much sense. But then, the flaming and bad behavior don't make much sense either. But somehow amongst all of that, the Interwebs seem still to provide plenty of room for unpopular ideas and bad fanfic.

If Net Neutrality goes under, that will be another kettle of fish entirely.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Hi! hi hi hi!

I know, I know, you haven't been around hardly at all. But I wanted to make sure we kept track of each other. And yes you are right about how the TOSes work for all these journal/blog/whatever type businesses. I hold out some hope for the not-for-profit, fan-owned and fan-operated ones. It will all be very interesting at least.

[luthien.livejournal.com]

My GJ is called ebonyx, since even when I set it up years ago someone had already beaten me to luthien as a username. I managed to be luthien on insanejournal, though that one is even less active than my GJ account.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's who ebonyx is!

That distant sound you hear is me slapping my forehead and asking myself why I failed to remember that. Thanks for reminding me.

[petronelle.livejournal.com]

I am Petronelle on InsaneJournal for the sake of consistency. My fandom is apparently migrating in that direction.

The only greatestjournal I have at present is from an old RP project, as Petra and Petronelle are both taken.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's looking like comics fandom is moving there, HP fen seem to be ... well, all over the place, but maybe vaguely headed to GJ, and I don't know about any of the TV fandoms or old-school and rare fandoms either.

It's going to be hard on the multi-fannish! But I will look for you on IJ, and thanks for letting me know.

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

Daily Planet? Is Claire still on here?

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen her in ages (and the people still listed in the post above are the ones whose non-LJ intar-web locations, if any, I still don't know) but I thought it was worth a shot ... I miss her!