I have held back no water in its season

How not to cross genres

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:05:22 GMT

Genre crossing, when done well, can be a very effective storytelling technique, allowing the author to hit the reader with unexpected plot turns and presentation that is sufficiently unusual that it will make the reader think twice about the scene. Alas, when not done well all we get is a hot mess.

Amano is currently demonstrating Not Well with Katekyou Hitman Reborn.

This is especially a shame considering that her first cross went off very well. When she had written sixty issues of a gag manga, full of underwear shenanigans, and suddenly decided she wanted to write a serious, indeed dark in places, battle manga, she made the transition quite smoothly. The underwear phased out and was replaced in a plausible way, the change presented as a moment of personal development for our main character, such as we might expect in a good battle manga. The initial premise, that our hero is slated to inherit a mafia family, offered plenty of material for a darker turn. So far so good. The next two and a half arcs were a marvelous sweep of fast-paced action with personal development and growth for the whole ensemble of characters.

And then we hit the bump. Possibly even the shark. Somewhere, for some reason, the decision was made to extend the Future arc with a new set of villains, and the storytelling fell apart. The pace jinked and faltered, new characters got no background or development, the fights were truncated and disappointing compared to the intense confrontations of previous arcs, and even the first half of the Future arc.

Worst of all, Amano turned back to the gag genre, and, at this juncture, failed to make it work.

This is most evident in our hero, Tsuna. Tsuna has always flailed a lot, to be sure, but less so as time went on; indeed, when he came to the future, the pressure of events and responsibility seemed to wash the flailing out of him and push him toward a more mature presentation even when he isn't wrapped up in Dying Will. With this latest turn, however, the flailing is suddenly back to early levels, to the extent that his weapon reflects it and allies comment on it. The plot provides us with no explanation for this.

This is characteristic of the gag genre: character development is neither necessary nor, in most cases, desired. The character quirks that are used for gags must remain constant, and the nature of the genre is such that readers are usually willing to suspend any disbelief and accept them, however implausible. It's part of the genre expectations.

The genre expectation of a battle manga, and especially a serious one, is that characters will develop, both technically and emotionally. Sudden backsliding of personal development needs some kind of cause or explanation.

As I said at the beginning, these expectations can be crossed, if it is done well. Many battle manga use brief gag moments to break tension; bathroom humor is a favorite. Even the development of the hero can be let to fail briefly, for the sake of increasing dramatic tension. But if the audience is not to reject that tactic, it must be framed, supported, explained in some way--it must be presented as a dramatic moment, in order to be accepted as such. Tsuna's reversion is not.

Hence my fear that Amano has no clue where she's going with the current sub-arc and has fallen back on her roots because she is at a complete loss. If this is due to editorial pressure, to draw out the Future arc more, I hope someone kicks that editor in the teeth soon. If it is due to Amano losing her grip on the story, paging editor!Reborn, please. In either case, the current issues are a fine example of how not to do it.

Public Service: Yes, get the vaccine

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:53:57 GMT

Okay, this has come up one my reading lists, so I figured I should give the short version, here.

Very short low-down on swine flu, aka h1n1 novel virus: It's not horribly deadly it just spreads really fast and no one has immunity to speak of, so yes, you should get the vaccine.

Less short but still short low-down: The swine flu is, by and large, no more dangerous than any seasonal flu. It hits with about the same intensity, so we're talking three days to two weeks of general urgh to acute misery. As always, there can be complications that lead to death; that's influenza for you.

The reason it is rated a pandemic is because of how fast and widely it spreads, due to the unfortunate fact that it is a new virus and no one has more than partial immunity. Older people have gotten more flus and have more chance of that partial immunity, young people have less.

The fear, therefore, is mostly that it will hit everyone in an entire area/campus/town all at once and cause severe problems in basic functioning because everyone will be sick at the same time. No groceries, because there's maybe one person well enough to work at the store, no bus routes, no mail, that kind of thing. This is, of course, of especial concern when it comes to health care workers being hit right when they're needed most. If the ambulance drivers and nurses all have 104 fevers for five days, this is a huge problem.

The particular danger signs are intense nausea and the inability to keep food or liquids down, sudden dizziness, shortness of breath, or showing signs of a secondary infection like pneumonia; ignoring those signs and not getting to a hospital if they appear is a stupid thing to do, but that won't stop some people, especially young people who are used to throwing off even bad illnesses. Hence, deaths.

In summary, you should get the vaccine because, even though you may not ever get enough seasonal symptoms to notice, you are probably still a transmitter and the critical point is to stop the spread of this one.

'Training wheels' my ass

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:27:07 GMT

Brief rant, apropos of a passing remark that broke the camel's back.

I am sick and fucking tired of fanfic being presented as "training wheels". That's a load of BS. Fic is its own practice, with its own locally variable stylistic and presentational rules and its own systems of distribution and compensation, all of which are thoroughly distinct from commercial writing practices. Authors may enjoy writing both. They may write both sequentially. But fic is not somehow an annex of commercial publishing, nor is commercial publishing some kind of evolution of fic. Face it. Those first hundred thousand words are going to be crap no matter how you slice it; if they're written as fanfic instead of drawer-fic, it may appear that writing fic helped one get better. In fact, writing period helps one get better. Do not fall into the logical fallacy of mistaking the venue for the mechanism.

What pisses me off the most is the fanwriters who naively embrace this myth because it offers fast validation. Do they not see that this is the same political maneuver (albeit on quite a different scale) as saying "give us rights because we can't help being deviant" instead of "give us rights because we're human beings too, fuckers". No, of course they don't see it, never mind. The point is this "validation" is only available to writers who implicitly agree to denigrate their fanfic work, to be a shill, a practitioner of fanfic who presents it as of lesser value than commercial work. This offends me in purely logical terms, the two not being commensurate in the first place. It also gets me wound up in defense of my community, even considering that I want to give the vast majority of my fellow community members a good trouting on a regular basis.

So rather than being bamboozled into apologizing for our activity, try this one: "I write fanfic because I like it."

Jaundiced at page 250

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:35:03 GMT

The thing about David Brin is that, while he can write impressive worlds and plots (provided he limits himself to one volume), he simply can't manage to write the world from the perspective of anyone who is non-white, non-male, non-Western. This leads to most any character of his who is not a white, Western male being caricatured or hollow.

A Maori character contemplates the hierarchy of "ethnicity chic", the top standing in which belongs to the most tribal, the most primitive. The very concept of ethnic chic (as hooks et al have pointed out for years and years) can only exist from a white viewpoint. Only from an outside perspective, the viewpoint of someone who has sufficient privilege and cultural capital to not be affected by it, does this "hierarchy" have meaning or even existence. It's fetishization, plain and simple, placed in the mouth of a victim thereof.

It isn't that Brin doesn't try. He does. He just fails. He can't quite manage to write a depiction of another culture or gender or ethnicity that doesn't come out either cartoonish and overblown (eg "Dr. Pak's Preschool") or as a sort of mask over a character-shape that is, at core, white and male and Western (eg Fibbin, Athaclena, Teresa Tikhana).

Bingo!

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:44:57 GMT

*just kind of stares*

Okay, let's get something straight (Ha. Ha.). There is a small (quite small) portion of slash fiction that manages to overlap with queer fiction. But the vast majority of slash? Is not queer fiction.

No. No, it's not. No, shut up and quit making asses of yourselves while you demonstrate at length that yours is very probably not.

Queer fiction deals with queer people, emphasis on people. It does not deal with the paper-doll id-fic that constitutes the vast majority of slash, and against which I have nothing. Id-fic is a lovely thing; I write it myself. But it's not queer fiction. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the experience of queer people, of whom I suppose I should say I am one.

Given all this idiotic howling, I find the initial issue, which is the Lambda awards committee specifying that award candidate fiction must be written by people who identify themselves as queer, makes perfect sense. It becomes abundantly evident that there are plenty of clueless straight women (mostly) who are so willfully blind to the appropriation they perform that they will stampede right over a queer-affirming community space if measures are not taken to defend it.

As has been demonstrated.

Yes, like that

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:33:31 GMT

Rape prevention tips guaranteed to work.

Auxiliary tip: print out many copies, roll into substantial mass, and beat college/youth work administrators about the head and ears with it.

Shin tenipuri

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:08:01 GMT

Okay, I've finally overcome my aversion and skimmed the new PoT issues. Conclusion: we are heading rapidly into Dragonball land, wherein reality takes a distinct and lasting second place to increasing power-ups and disbelief is not just suspended but hung by the neck until dead. Not really surprising.

On the other hand, we did get a Yukimura-Sanada match that did not suck and for that I will ignore a good deal.

I was also actually pretty interested by the last few issues, because they seem to be snapshots of the different teams' ethe, and particularly teaching methods. Tezuka wants people to figure it out for themselves and never, ever give up. Atobe acts like a total bastard but grooms and guides his successor carefully, and even affectionately in his own way.

*takes a moment to once again disbelieve that Kaidou is supposed to be the next captain, but that's just me*

And Yanagi hammers Kirihara 6-0 and resigns at the last minute with the admonition to stay at the camp and go further. Which is really just Rikkai in a nutshell. There is no mercy because that would be, after all, an indication of contempt.

I find all of this rather aesthetically pleasing, which I had almost given up on from Konomi.

Of course, this means we'll probably be rehashing advances that Kirihara has already made in the Regionals arc goddamn it, and I still haven't forgiven Konomi for rolling back that advancement. But as long as we get there, okay, fine, whatever.

Weekly manga roundup

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:29:21 GMT

TRC: ...for pity's sake, just write a damn /ending/ already.

Naruto: This is getting pathetically boring. The current fight has no draw to it, no magnetism, both parties have gotten downright annoying.

Bleach: *squeaks* Oo! Oo! Maybe they're back?! Also, Starkk rocks.

KHR: *dotes on Gokudera's glee over his explosives* On the other hand, I find it deeply annoying that Amano has reverted to spaz!Tsuna. Total characterization fail, Amano. The prospect of seeing Dino and Hibari fighting is lovely, but clearly only a tease at the moment. *grumps a bit over that*

Meitantei Conan

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:59:19 GMT

All right, here is the actual review of Detective Conan domestically published as Case Closed.

The genre of the series is murder mystery, but the setting is, shall we say, unusual. Our hero starts out as a high school student and detective and, like many murder mystery detectives, has lots of brains, amazing powers of observation, unreasonable amounts of knowledge about the details of fields he has never worked in, quite a lot of luck, and a predilection for formal wear. His name is Kudou Shinichi.

The story takes an immediate hard left turn, however, when Shinichi pursues some likely looking wrongdoers down a dark alley (as one does) and is caught by them and poisoned. Instead of dying, his body de-ages to that of a seven year old. Not much time is spent on the shock of this, as he makes the transition quickly to the knowledge that he must hide out and not let those who did this know that he survived while he tries to track them down in hopes of getting the knowledge to reverse the condition. So he winds up installed as, basically, a foster child in the house of his classmate, friend and secret crush Mouri Ran, whose father just happens to be an ex-cop and lame-duck detective. His new name is Edogawa Conan, after the author of Sherlock Holmes

All this is more or less the scene setting for the next seven hundred issues (and still going).

Most of the series is very episodic, in a murder-of-the-week sort of way. The death and detection is enlivened by Shinichi/Conan's need to present his deductions through the adults around him since no one will listen to a second grader. Woven through and around the detective action is the daily life of Conan, Ran, Conan's friends in second grade, his and Ran's friends from Osaka, their friends on the police force, and more friends who are spoilers and will not be specifically named. This interpersonal action moves very slowly, which I found interesting. Shinichi's daily life moves at the pace of daily life and relationships of all sorts take time to develop--but develop they do.

There is also a third plot line: the metaplot dealing with the people who poisoned Shinichi and his search for them. This runs underneath the murder-of-the-week and the daily life, surfacing every now and then in sudden and usually explosive ways only to submerge again. The most highly colored and dramatic of the characters appear as part of this plot, and I found myself hungry for more of it, which may be the point.

If you enjoy murder mysteries, you will most likely enjoy this manga. If you find yourself reading for the metaplot, you will likely end up skimming through the murder-of-the-week issues.

For myself, the thing that kept me from making a "greatest hits" collection, detailing only the metaplot issues and letting the rest go, is the daily life thread. I'm especially fond of the the complexity of the women's characterization. Ran, for example, makes herself silly over Shinichi repeatedly and leaps tall conclusions in a single bound, but she's also the karate champ who breaks down doors and apprehends fleeing criminals, and Conan has no hesitation in yelling for "Ran-neechan" to grab that dangerous killer coming toward her. Their friend Sonoko is a rich-girl fluffhead concerned with nothing but boys and she winds up with a boyfriend who is stoic and traditional and overbearing and constantly tells her that she needs to dress more appropriately or people will take advantage of her--and while she is absolutely gooey over his general manliness, she ignores him completely and keeps on dressing as fashionably as she pleases. I am especially fond of Ai, who constantly gives Conan what-for and keeps him trimmed down to size, which is a bit of a job. And, of course, there's the police detective Satou who... well, that would be telling.

As a grace note, there are also guest appearances of characters from one of Aoyama's other manga, Kaitou Kid, which provides a change of pace while Conan matches wits with a phantom thief cum stage magician. Neither of them exactly win those matches, which keeps them interesting.

All in all, I would call this an engaging series, though the murders-of-the-week thread may wear a bit for those who are not actual murder mystery fans.

Kazuki

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:14:34 GMT

You know what really frosts my cookies about the Getbackers manga?

(Aside from the appallingly gender-skewed and exploitative T&A which I page past as fast as possible and try not to see for the sake of my blood pressure, fuck you very much Ayamine. That one is a given.)

Aoki can't seem to decide whether Kazuki is the baddest badass in Badassville or the designated damsel in distress. His narrative position flips unpredictably from one to the other without anything in the way of signaling or set-up, and it gives me a case of story-whiplash.

I find it exceedingly predictable in shounen, to be sure; the polite ones are the ones you have to watch out for (eg Akabane), but the actively feminized male characters are either comic relief or, narratively speaking, women--women in a shounen manga, which means damsels in distress regardless of what minor skill they may have on their own account which allows them to mop up the small fry while reemphasizing that, in context, they are still weaker. Kazuki winds up written as both a and b, and rather randomly one or the other.

Second verse, same as the first: I actually have an easier time reading shounen manga when the female characters are absent, because the inclusion of female or even strongly feminine characters is almost invariably the signal for a rousing round of role reinforcement. *spits* Thus, again, my glee in any fic I find that ignores Aoki's inability to actually characterize across gender lines even when he set it up himself and takes on the work of reconciling Kazuki's character.

blinks

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:11:02 GMT

So... has anyone else noticed that gwaddiction.com has been invaded by malware? You can't even get to the site itself; the script is a random redirect.

Oy, Tyr, get on the ball, here. That archive is the only place a lot of those fics are available.

Life without photoshop

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 17:38:41 GMT

Some time ago, my Photoshop died. More precisely, it failed to migrate and only exists on the old computer in the other room with the keyboard I don't like. So I have, after many years away, gone to try out GIMP again.

Gimp is a good program. It is genuinely full-featured image editing software. You can do just about anything you need to with it, once you find the right menu/tool.

Alas, Gimp is originally a Linux application and the 'port' for Mac operates in the X11 windowing system. I hate Mac+X11 with a great and mighty passion. It treats all the program palettes and toolbars as separate windows which you must first click on to make active and then select your tool, layer, etc. There is really no excuse for it to exist inside the Mac system except to allow lazy programmers to say that something is ported when, really, it's no such thing and a usability disaster to boot.

The Mac not-a-port does, however, have pleasantly native visuals and is not written in Java like some video players or open source office software I could name. It thereby escapes the half second lag that is the utmost limit of infuriating.

Gimp has a fairly short learning curve if you know Photoshop already, but there will be an adjustment period where you have to hunt for the right tool and sometimes look up ridiculously basic things on the web to figure out, for example, how to clear a selection to transparency. In some ways Gimp gives you more control; it makes fewer assumptions about what the user really wants to do than Photoshop. On the one hand, this means you have to do it all yourself, but on the other it means you have finer control of, for example, the cropping of layers to the visible canvas size. I do find the fact that it does not paste selections in as a new layer a bit trying, though, since that means you must always remember to create a blank layer to receive pastes so you can manipulate them fully.

History is a tab within the same module as Layers, which I find irritating given the click-and-click behavior required by X11, but, on the bright side, Control+Z can be used to back up as far as you like. I've never been a fan of the Mac behavior that Command+Z is both undo and redo for the last action.

Mac users will need to be aware that the Gimp 'port' does not allow use of the Mac keystroke commands. Instead of Command+S you will have to use Control+S. This is annoying, but the cmd vs ctl is the only difference--S will still save, Z will still undo--so it isn't more than an annoyance.

My one ongoing issue with Gimp is the file navigation, which sucks dead rat. Without ketchup. It does not provide for column-view or list-view of files, instead you have to double click through folder view after folder view to get where you're going. And it's ugly to boot.

The quality of the images produced is much of a muchness, though, and if you don't want to or can't shell out six hundred dollars for a new edition of Photoshop, you may want to download Gimp and give it a try.

Oh, right

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:30:47 GMT

*looks around* Yeah, forgot to mention. Now that the crossposter is pretty well ironed out, I'm starting automatic crossposting to my IJ. So everyone who's on both IJ and DW can pick which they'd like to read me on.

Opening Celebrations and Public Service

Sun, 03 May 2009 15:06:42 GMT

~~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

Fri, 01 May 2009 14:14:14 GMT

*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

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:46:32 GMT

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

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:53:14 GMT

*wails* My post! My comments!

*sits down and sulks mightily*

Id-candy safety

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:51:43 GMT

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

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:07:01 GMT

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

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:41:05 GMT

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

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:59:19 GMT

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

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:35:09 GMT

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

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:09:48 GMT

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

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:09:32 GMT

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!

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:17:47 GMT

*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.