I have held back no water in its season

Opening Celebrations and Public Service

2009-05-03T15:06:42Z

~~So, I have filled my invite request list and still have two DW codes free! Anyone want them?~~ Taken!

In other news, it keeps coming to my attention that OpenID intimidates people. It shouldn't. It's exactly like any other log-in, only easier.

To do my bit for a distributed internet, allow me to offer the following extremely simple, step-by-step (there are only two) directions for using OpenID on DW:

1) Go here and enter your LJ/IJ/JF/etc. username (like this: branchandroot.livejournal.com).

2) When the confirmation page comes up, click on "yes, always".

That's it! You're logged in, congratulations. Go comment or make an flist or load a userpic or whatever.

Now, to be really spiffy, you can add a third step.

3) Go here and enter an email address. When you get the confirmation email, click the link to validate.

Now you can receive email notification of replies to comments you make while you're logged in like this.

To log in again, just go back to that first linked page (which is also linked from the log-in form with the handy text "log in via OpenID") and enter username.livejournal.com again. Because you selected "yes, always", you won't even have to deal with the confirmation page again, because it's now automatic. For greatest ease, check the little box on the "welcome back" page that says "remember me".

OpenID is not arcane. It's just another log-in. Only easier.

Here we go

2009-05-01T14:14:14Z

*claps hands* Okay! DW open beta is here, and I have my first fistful of invite codes!

My list currently stands at:

takerzmuse
haruyuki (lj)
kemis
netmouse (lj)
the_rck

If any of you have already gotten a code (if, frex, you had a validated OpenID before open beta kicked off) could you let me know? And if not, let me know if you still need a code? And I'll get one right off!

*bounces off, excited*

Moving notice

2009-04-26T00:46:32Z

Okay, it's time for me to move my IJ content over to DW.

I will also be moving my posting over to DW.

Alas, the new crossposter doesn't support filters yet and may not for a few months to come. So I won't be crossposting at once.

I'll be more than happy to put any IJ people who want a DW account to read with on my invite code list, to be executed in a bit less than a week!

Any IJ people who don't want to get a DW account can still read my locked and filtered posts over there, of course. All you need is a "reading account" (aka OpenID).

What you do is, you go here and log in with your IJ url (username.insanejournal.com). When you submit that it will bring you to an IJ page asking if you want IJ to confirm your existence. No passwords or any such will be given out, just a confirmation that you're a registered user here. It's easiest if you select "Yes, always", so you don't have to go through this page again.

When you have selected a button, you will be taken back to DW. At this point you need to enter an email, so you can receive replies to your comments! You can also set up a profile and select a style for your journal and load a few user icons to use over there. Basically you can do everything with an OpenID account you can with a free account except post.

When you get your email validation message, validate and you're ready to go.

Subscribe to everyone on DW you want to follow. Lo, you now have a DW reading list.

My favorite approach to these things is to copy the link of your DW fpage/reading list and put it into your links list over here. Then you can easily click over, just like reading an fpage filter. I actually link to all my reading pages (on four services, now) on every service, so I can check any of them from any of the others.

Of course, one of the things cooking at DW is the ability to read your whole flist from LJ or IJ or etc, even the locked posts, on your DW reading list. I will be so geeked when that one comes out. And Squeaky is thinking of maybe switching IJ to run the DW codebase, so you could, hopefully, read fpages from other services right here eventually! Progress is so cool.

I hate technology

2009-04-25T20:53:14Z

*wails* My post! My comments!

*sits down and sulks mightily*

Id-candy safety

2009-04-25T20:51:43Z

Notice: This is a repost of an entry; the first was cruelly devoured in a crossposting glitch and all the lovely comments with it. If anyone wants to comment again or more I will be perfectly pleased to carry on the conversations.

So, here’s the thing. I’m all in favor of having books that are id-candy, brain-fluff, that demand nothing from your intellect and instead go straight on to punch your emoporn joybuttons.

This is, after all, why I own three quarters of everything Mercedes Lackey has ever published.

But, first off, id-candy is a different thing from good writing. The joybuttons don’t care about bad grammar or triteness or slop, they just resonate to the character shapes that hit one’s kinks. Kinks are often trite and cliche, when you think about it. Id-candy is enjoyable exactly because it doesn’t make your brain engage, it doesn’t deal in subtleties, it doesn’t make you do any work. To get enjoyment out of genuinely artful prose, you generally have to think, to ponder even, to put in some work.

Saying that you enjoy your id-candy immensely and saying that your id-candy is great writing are very different statements. Among other things, the first is true and the second generally isn’t. (Unless you’re using a completely Utilitarian definition of “good”, and when people try to compare Rowling and Tolkien it is unfortunately clear that they are not employing such a definition at all.)

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying the hell out of trite, cliched slop, of course.

Let us consider Misty, for example. She’s the Queen of Exposition, has a tendency to extremely moralistic and preachy narrative, and drives home her morals with a ten pound sledge. She is guilty of the most egregious cultural flattening and caricaturization and the only thing that comforts me even minutely is that she does it to everyone, whitebread, ‘noble savage’ and orientalist alike. (I maintain that Ancient Egypt should take out a restraining order on the woman.) Her characters are flat, their angst is repetitive, and half the time the stories read like SCA handbooks instead of novels.

Nevertheless–three quarters, right there on my shelf, and I reread handfuls of them at fairly regular intervals. This is because they are excellent brain-fluff emoporn.

Also because they are not toxic. Her moralism can get wearing awfully fast, but at least they are morals I can agree with. Mostly.

That’s the second thing. You have to be careful of the id-candy that uses a moral framework that’s harmful to you.

The Twilight books are a prime example of this. The writing is no worse than most id-candy, but the value system those books are hung on is poison. It’s misogynist, racist, deterministic, conflates obsession and stalking with love, and runs the mobius strip of nihilism and femininity myths at full speed with special emphasis on death by/for childbirth. (I would not want to be this woman’s therapist, not without hazard pay). This id-candy has a razor blade in it.

Some people probably bemoan the loss of innocent fun now that we chop up Halloween candy before eating it to make sure there aren’t any evil surprises in it. I expect some people feel the same about their id-candy. But, you know, I’d much rather take the time to chop and evaluate than swallow a needle.

Demystifying Dreamwidth some more

2009-04-18T21:07:01Z

Since I've seen a number of odd notions running around lately, I figured I'd post some quick explanations.

DW is not a clone. It is a fork, like a fork in the road you know? It means starting from the same code but then changing it. In the case of DW, this means both cool new features (which may well also pop up on LJ given the extent of cross-site brainstorming already taking place) but also a lot of major re-writing of the code that won't be visible to most users but will allow more cool new things to be done in the future.

DW is not elite. No, seriously. What DW currently is is broken. It is under construction. That's why registration is not open yet and invites have gone out only to those known to have a reasonably strong interest in the project (who hopefully therefore know about the unfinished parts and won't mind helping test them, sometimes catastrophically). If a hypothetical reader wishes to convince me that being unable to flush the virtual toilet yet is elite... I'm sorry, but no. Pull the other one, it's got bells on. In about two weeks the major construction should be finished and anyone who wants to risk the virtual breaker tripping when you turn on the virtual microwave or virtually sitting on wet paint will be able to venture in.

Users will not, once the site is actually open, ever need an invite to create an account.

Users will need an invite to create a free account. This is because DW does not use ads to support the service (which costs money, after all) and therefore must have a way to make sure that there are only as many unpaid users as the paid users can support. Corollary to this...

DW is not expensive, at least not to the average user. Someone without a code can make an account for as little as $3. If you want to let it lapse back to free after that payment expires, the account will still be there, in all it's free-account-level glory.

The Seed accounts, basically permanent accounts, which are two hundred dollars, will go on sale for one time only, to raise money for the first year of operation. There are only four hundred of them being sold because the site really doesn't want many people to buy one; it will be far better for both the economic health of the site and the flexibility of the user if pretty much everyone who wants paid account perks buys regular paid accounts.

DW will not force you to reveal who you read any more than the LJ friends list does. Reading filters are (or will be in a few weeks) available, including the ever-popular Default View filter. If you wish to subscribe to someone and not include them in your Default View, this will be just as invisible a decision as it is on LJ when you friend someone and leave them out of Default View. The subscribe/access split of the friends list can be used in exactly the same manner as you have used the friends list if that is what you wish to do.

DW is not by or for fans. One of the owners is involved in fandom. That's about it. DW is by users for users--any kind of users. There are going to be features that fandom, among other parties, may find quite useful, but if anyone is suggesting that DW is a fandom project, they are mistaken.

DW has nothing to do with OTW. I suspect this one is the source of the above misconception, in some cases. OTW is a non-profit fan-run fandom organization which is working on an archive, a wiki, a journal and some other projects. DW is a LLC which is producing a social media site and software based on a fork of the LJ Open Source code.

Both are Open Source projects; this means that the various software involved is freely available for other parties to use and alter without paying licensing fees to the originators. Open Source is a philosophy, not any kind of organization to which the projects in question belong. LJ is partially Open Source itself--the early development, at any rate. Most additions after the sale to 6A are proprietary and may not be used by other parties, which is why DW is having to completely re-write a few things, using volunteers who have never looked at the LJ version. Fun times.

DW does not want to sink LJ. LJ will get wherever its going on its own without help from anyone. While many users who wish to move to DW will undoubtedly encourage (beg, bribe, etc.) their friends to come along, the goal of DW is simply to be as good as possible at being what it is: a small, sustainable social media site, committed to providing its users a good place for personal and creative expression of all kinds.

Indeed, there are LJ volunteers currently involved in DW, and some DW concepts have already been integrated back into LJ.

DW does not need a ton of users, though it is built to accommodate them if they show up. It needs, rather, to have a good ratio--to always have enough paid users to subsidize the unpaid users, regardless of total numbers, and that is what the invite system is there to ensure.

*****

As for any personal accusations against the owners, based on Denise's time working on the LJ Abuse team, I suggest anyone who has genuine concerns read the diversity statement, the guiding principles, the FAQ and the business FAQ. It's best to get things from the horse's mouth and make up your own mind.

[Fic] It’s the Motion

2009-04-08T16:41:05Z

Fic post from my archive.

It's the Motion

Gokudera thinks it's unfair how good Yamamoto looks on a motorcycle; Yamamoto thinks it's the perfect opportunity. Written for DW's inaugural comment porn meme with the prompt: Yamamoto/Gokudera, motorcycles as aphrodisiacs. Porn without Plot, I-4

It was easier, Hayato decided, when Yamamoto was actually driving the motorcycle. And it was easier because Yamamoto was an idiot, and liked to do silly, flashy moves, and it was easy to roll his eyes at someone popping a wheelie and laughing like a kid.

The hard part was when Yamamoto was holding still on the damn thing. And the hardest part was keeping his eyes away from long, long legs spread casually over a sleek machine and not, not, looking at the way worn denim pulled taut over Yamamoto's thighs.

In which Dreamwidth is not Microsoft

2009-04-08T14:59:19Z

So, as Dreamwidth approaches the next big production step, I thought it would be worthwhile to make a post about this thing that comes next.

Next is open beta.

Open beta is NOT site launch.

Contrary to what Microsoft has tried to train the public to think for lo these many long years, "open beta" does not equal "stable product". Open beta is the smoke test. It's when we say "this seems pretty stable and the big things are done, it's time to load it up and jump up and down on it and see where the smoke comes out so we can fix that before actual product launch".

Site launch, in another handful of months, is what will declare "yes, this product is stable". Site launch is where we say "okay, this is a (though not the because we keep developing) stable product, this is version 1.0, we're open for all public business".

So, for those who are thinking of coming in during open beta, remember, not everything will be done. Not everything will work. It is just about certain that we will break something as we jump up and down on it at full load. Because that's what open beta means.

Come ahead, intrepid testers and explorers! Just remember this is not Microsoft and no one is pretending that it's all done and ready yet.

People are weird about food

2009-04-05T15:35:09Z

Lois remarked on a book she'd read, today, The Diet Myth by Paul Campos. She included a quote I thought was right on the money:

The weight loss industry exploits cultural anxieties about fat to sell its customers products that don't work, over and over again, by convincing those customers that it is *they* who are defective. The failure of these products is ascribed to the moral weakness of those who purchase them, thus allowing the cycle to go on indefinitely. But the situation is more complex than this. It takes a great deal of cultural distortion to cause normal market mechanisms to break down so completely (blaming your customers for the catastrophic failure of your products isn't usually considered a sound business practice.)

The obesity myth thrives in contemporary America because America is an eating-disordered culture. Moreover, the prime symptoms of this situation -- our increasing rates of "overweight", bulimia, and anorexia -- are also symptoms of, and have become metaphors for, a broader set of cultural anxieties...

And it's dreadfully true. The diet industry is more pernicious than the tobacco companies, not least because of all the other industries that have formed themselves around this bizarre notion that humans should be skinny. US culture has astonishingly unhealthy standards of "beauty", and I believe they tie directly into the equally unhealthy sedentary culture. After all, if it's obvious on the face of it that one is never going to look like the models/actors/athletes/etc. without truly heroic and life-busting measures, and probably not even then, why bother trying at all? The lack of a sensible or sane target and body-image promotes apathy, and the lack of results from the "diets" does the same. The results of random negative stimulus are well proven.

Saimono News Flash

2009-04-03T13:09:48Z

SAIUNKOKU MONOGATARI: PUBLISHER/FAN LOOKS INTO BUYING LICENSE TO TRANSLATE NOVELS.

Go vote in her/his interest-gauging poll if you have any interest in seeing the light novels published in English. And spread the word. Each volume has to sell a couple thousand copies to be cost-effective. Surely there are that many of us!

Answers to Dreamwidth questions

2009-04-02T17:09:32Z

Our lovely co-owner has been watching the DW posts and put a post of her own together to answer some of the questions that have come up frequently.

DW fact sheet

Just to add a few of my own:

The current default journal style will not likely be the final default style. It's just the first one that got ported over completely! There are still a few bugs with it, as with all things during closed beta. (If anyone currently in testing wants to make use of the Core 2 Testing skin I made, instead, feel free to copy this into a theme layer.)

The default site scheme is still being poked at a bit, but it should be readable now at high res and low, no matter your font size.

On other topics, I'm interested to see the culture that's developing. A number of people are a lot more open in their posting and disclosure of identity. Being the web-cynic I am I hope this doesn't come back and bite anyone as time goes on, but right now it's all very bright and cheerful. Some people are using DW for a new start and some are importing all their history. Special interest comms are starting to pop up. There's still sawdust everywhere and the wallpaper isn't hung, but the roof seems to be on and the plumbing is working!

Comment porn!

2009-03-29T23:17:47Z

*giggling* So, Dreamwidth is having an inaugural comment-porn event, just for the fun of it. I've posted some prompts from the anime/manga side, if anyone wants to go and look or leave some more.

Dreamwidth Open Beta Date Set

2009-03-26T21:35:28Z

Dreamwidth's open beta is coming!

The date is set, and on April 30th the site will launch open beta on full production hardware. At that time, the one-time sale of seed accounts (permanent accounts for $200) will begin.

Invite codes for free accounts will be released as the site proves it can handle the load, but anyone who wants an account can also pay $3 for a month of paid time, after which the account may then be let to lapse back to free. Or, you know, keep it paid and get all the frills.

Some major things that are in the pipe for open beta: journal importing, entry crossposting between sites, the watch/access split of the friends list, expanded standardized options for journal styles so that you can pick based on the look you like instead of being limited by the functionality you want, vastly improved maintainer options for communities.

A lot of other functions will not be finished by open beta. There will still be rough edges to be sanded down and anyone who moves over completely at that time can expect a few bobbles. I have to say, though, I've been very impressed by the number and vigor of DW's working programmers, so bobbles should be steadied reasonably quickly.

For those who want to look around the current testing site, you can start from Denise's journal. Check out the comms, look at people's journals to see what the closed beta testers have done while they kick the tires. Sign in with OpenID, if you want, and you will have a stripped down (non-posting) account to poke around with.

(And if you don't like pink, well, I submitted three alternate site schemes today, and you can see the screenshots here: Celerity, Blueshift, Gradation.)

Dreamwidth promises to be a very cool thing, and a project committed to Open Source. The improvements Dreamwidth is making are available to everyone to use, including LiveJournal. In addition to simplifying the installation of the software, plans include the ability to port LJ-based databases into the Dreamwidth system, so that LJ-based sites can easily switch over if they wish. No restrictions, no fee, no hook (and no more mind-bendingly complicated and undocumented code). And we're going to have drafts and real hierarchical tagging and memories that work and exporting to pdf in whole or by time-span or tag and and and... *waves hands* cool stuff!

I'm enthused. You can tell.

Take a look around. The testing site and all the improvements you can read about in dw_news and the other comms have been accomplished in nine months. Just nine. In people's spare time, because almost everyone working on this has a day job too. And this? Is just the beginning.

Not pros v fans

2009-03-08T03:13:22Z

One of the Racefail 09 issues that I would particularly like people to not just believe TNH et al about is that TNH et al represent the view of all pro writers.

Some people have wondered about the general silence of the pros on the topic, which is not surprising given the vigorous efforts of et al to polarize things.

Allow me, then, to present some evidence to the contrary: another pro writer who thinks that, indeed, et al are sailing the failboat.

Brilliant post is brilliant

2009-03-07T19:02:10Z

And everyone should go read it.

The author expresses clearly and concisely some of the knottiest issues of writing slash as a feminist. And, as a sample, let me quote the comment in which she actually manages to define feminism, which just knocked my socks off, because have you ever tried to do this? With any belief or philosophy you hold? It's amazingly hard.

Well, I tend to go with the "feminism is the radical notion that women are people" line most of the time. :)

But, of course, that tiny quote has a lot of implications -- for instance, it implies that a feminist is someone who acknowledges that we live in a society that systematically dehumanises women. We women tend to be valorised for doing things reduce our agency, that cast us as objects, etc, while if we do things that indicate that we're complex people who want to be in control of our own lives, we're automatically suspect. Another good quote, from Rebecca West is, “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.”

Beyond that, though, feminism is quite diverse and difficult to pin down -- because while there is a broad consensus on the need to differentiate ourselves from doormats, there are lots of different (and sometimes conflicting) ideas about how to do so. As I note above, a lot of the time, this is used, by both feminists and anti-feminists alike, to polarise feminism in very unhelpful ways, and I reject this completely, even as I acknowledge that there are feminists with whom I disagree strongly on some issues. To me, feminism is about taking all of those ideas, even those that I may initially dislike, and applying them critically, and seeing what I come away with -- sometimes, the ideas I dislike do not stand up against this process, and sometimes, I am forced to challenge my own assumptions about how things work (and sometimes I shift back and forth, undecided). I see this as an ongoing process with few easy answers.

Insert dolphin noises here

2009-03-07T00:45:14Z

I have a new favorite Tenipuri song: "Baby Knows" off Yukimura's album.

*dances between the office and kitchen*

DW twitter feed

2009-02-08T00:42:59Z

For those on IJ who wish to keep up with Dreamwidth's Twitter updates, I have made a feed journal for it.

dw_twitter

What /is/ this?

2009-01-30T18:36:01Z

Okay, seriously, what the fuck?

My rant on women in KHR was far from the first thing I've written castigating some anime/manga or other for presenting women as useless frills or objectified sex shows or whatever other negative stereotype was in question. I'm fairly sure it wasn't the first time such an entry has been linked on a meta comm.

So why is this particular entry drawing so much fire? I just ran across yet another (annoyingly clueless) screed against it while googling for a KHR timeline for pity's sake!

Is there really such a concentration of anti-feminist women (I shudder that such a phrase can still be written) in KHR, or did this particular entry just happen to fall into the orbit of a small knot of them and I have the bad luck to keep stumbling over their excrescence?

Rec-go-round meme

2009-01-29T16:20:45Z

Gacked from dancing_serpent.

Rec-Go-Round: Rec me one story you've written that you're proud of, any fandom, any genre, here on my IJ.
Then go forth and ask the same in yours.

A Different kind of Fan Soundtrack

2009-01-20T23:27:00Z

Okay, so I don't know about everyone else, but I keep having 'inaugural day' songs popping up in my head. So. Anyone have any nominations for the Inauguration Soundtrack?

I nominate:

The Nylons' "Kiss Him Goodbye" [listen]

Na na na na, Na na na na, Hey hey hey, GOODBYE

The Nylons' "Bop Till You Drop" [listen]

The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun" [listen]

And I say,
It's all right...

Registered users only

2009-01-04T18:51:37Z

Okay, sorry everyone who's still over on LJ, but I'm switching the journal to commenting by registered (IJ) users only. I hope it will be a temporary thing, but I'm getting a small infestation of anonymice, and they're annoying the living daylights out of me. I refuse to give time or space to people who won't even be bothered to give a name when they try to disagree with me, and cower behind their lack of a return address to boot.

*sniffs*

Ah, tradition

2009-01-01T05:09:04Z

People have always had the urge to sing and clang things in the dark stub of the year, when all sorts of psychic nastiness has taken advantage of the long grey days and the dark shadows to lurk and breed. Lately people had taken to singing harmoniously, which rather lost the effect. Those who really understood just clanged something and shouted.

--Hogfather, Terry Pratchett

*listens to the racket her neighbors are making and smiles*

Merry Christmas from LJ?

2008-12-27T04:26:49Z

So, um, why is there suddenly a copyright notice on the bottom of every site-schemed lj page, including pages of user content, declaring copyright of LiveJournal? I can see why it would appear on site pages, but to put it on user content pages is, um, blatantly inaccurate.

Now with extra fail for the holiday season?

Drabblefest!

2008-12-15T21:34:01Z

Okay, all interested participants, start your keyboards! The list of Drabblefest prompts is up here on Lys' journal.

Go forth and scribble stuff!

Drabblefest: Call for Prompts

2008-12-13T01:55:14Z

Come one, come all! annotated_em and I are hosting a drabblefest, because we're in the mood and the more the merrier! Absolutely anyone is welcome to contribute prompts and absolutely anyone is welcome to write comment-fic in response.

Feel free to comment on this post with as many prompts as you like from now until Monday. We will compile them and post the whole list on annotated_em's LJ, then, and everyone can post their fic-lets to that entry.

I should emphasize, this is a fest for comment-fic, so it's all short and informal and no-pressure.

Prompts can be general or porn-directed, and writers should feel free to respond however they like to any prompt. Prompts should be formatted like so:

Fandom, characters-or-pairing, prompt-phrase

Ex: Katekyou Hitman Reborn, Ken, Chikusa, house of the dead