*blows dust off*

Well. Haven't been here in a while. I gather LJ is being terrible again and has sparked another round of terrified DW-journal creation, so I thought I'd just drop in to remind y'all that I am next_to_normal over on DW, if you are looking for friendly faces over there (though I haven't posted there in quite some time, either, lol, but that's due to being preoccupied lately). I've also been all-DW for nigh on seven years now, so if anyone has questions about how things work or where to find stuff, I... might be able to answer them? Either way, come say hi.

I already made this announcement at DW, but in case you missed it, I am accepting icon requests for Galentine's Day. So if you'd like some icons, head over there and leave me some screencaps.

Originally posted by gabrielleabelle at National Protest Against the War on Women

If you'd like to leave me feedback, you can find my fic on LJ or AO3.

Today, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system.
This bill can pass. If it does the Internet and free speech will never be the same. [Learn more here.]

Do you support this bill?

First, let me say that this question is absurdly biased.

Second, yes, I support the bill, and not just because I'm being paid to. :) I generally don't like to take my work home with me, but the scare tactics on the website linked in the question are ridiculous and someone needs to balance things out.

That's not what the bill does, AT ALL. That website is a complete load of bullshit designed to scare people who have no idea what the legislation actually says. Before you post something, take a look at the other side.

The bill focuses specifically on foreign websites that are dedicated to infringing activities (that is a direct quote from the bill). Sites that have some copyrighted material, but have other uses besides providing illegal access to copyrighted material, would NOT be affected AT ALL.

Tumblr and Facebook are NOT in ANY danger of being shut down. In fact, since they are dot-coms, they're not even affected by this law. If they were infringing sites, they could ALREADY be shut down by ICE. They haven't been, because they are not dedicated to infringing activity.

Furthermore, this is NOT simply a push from the entertainment companies. The bill actually encompasses a TON of hard-goods industries that experience counterfeiting, including auto parts, military equipment, pharmaceuticals, smoke detectors, clothing, and more. It's a health and safety issue - sure, no one's going to die if you steal Dexter, but people can and have died from getting pharmaceuticals online that were laced with cement or lead or other nasty stuff. Imagine if a soldier or police officer is shot in the line of duty - not realizing that their bulletproof vest is fake? Or if you don't realize your smoke alarm is counterfeit, and you're counting on it to wake you up if your house catches on fire in the middle of the night?

The ability to misuse the law is also widely exaggerated. There are strict due process requirements, and the burden of proof to get a court order is extremely high. It's not going to be used to shut down websites willy-nilly. It can't be.

Actually, it doesn't "shut down" websites at all. It simply cuts off access for American consumers. If you're outside the U.S. or are technologically savvy enough to figure out how to get around it, the websites are all still there. The bill is an effort to get American payment processors and ad networks to stop doing business with these websites, so that it will no longer be profitable for them to pirate content.

I would also point out that regular, middle-class working people (including the ones I represent) rely on residuals from downstream markets (DVDs, Netflix, iTunes, etc.). It's not just celebrities and big production companies making money here. Piracy actually hurts independent artists and filmmakers more than the big studios, because they rely ENTIRELY on downstream revenues, since they don't get the big blockbuster release in theaters. It makes it that much harder for them to recoup their investment, and if they can't make money, they won't make movies.

I've said before, and I'll say it again - I'm not going to lecture anyone about how downloading stuff illegally is wrong. For one thing, I'd be a hypocrite, because I'm not totally innocent on that front, either. But that's a moral decision that has nothing to do with the bill. People are gonna do what they want - which is why the bill focuses on choking off the revenue streams rather than suing college kids like the old days. But this kind of misinformation is pretty irresponsible, and if this is the kind of thing LJ is going to allow to be spread around without checking the facts (or at the very least, presenting the other side of the issue), then I'm glad I'm not giving them my money anymore.

WOW, it's been a while since I posted here. But in the interest of keeping ficcy things all in one place, I'm posting my pretty award banner from No Rest for the Wicked (wicked_awards) for my Cordy/Doyle ficlet, Denial. Ain't it purty?



Thank you to whoever nominated me, as well as the awards mods for running the show. (Is this a voting one or a judging one? I don't even know! Thanks to you, too, whoever picked me!) And since the fic was nominated from AO3, this is as good a time as any to note that (almost) all my fic is now archived at Archive of Our Own. I'm kind of thinking that if I ever write more fic, that'll be my primary home, but I don't have any plans at the moment.

Also, since I have recently become an icon maker ~extraordinare (lol), and people are actually USING them (yay!) I figured I should post a PSA for anyone who comes to my LJ looking for them. They're not here! They're at my DW journal, next_to_normal. Go forth and enjoy the little squares of pretty!

*dusts off unused journal*

Figured I'd put this one over here, since that's where all my fic is. Snagged from pretty much everyone:

Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Upon request, I will post a random line or two from any of these you choose. Assuming that the file adds up to a full line, that is.

* Bad Moon Rising
* Buffy Angel post-NFA
* Buffy
* Dawn
* Double Buffy
* Honesty
* IM new fic
* Little Children
* Never Too Late - there are actually FIVE different versions of this one, all saved in separate files, lol. I don't recall at the moment what the differences are.
* Not As It Should Be
* Pieces - FOUR versions of this one. IDEK.
* Possession
* Saving Angel's Soul
* Solving Problems
* Tell Her This notes - this is the stuff I ended up cutting out, but saved in case it was useful for something else.
* The First
* The New Slayer
* The Wank
* Tomorrow
* Vibrator

Hey, long time no see (over here, anyway. The party is happening at Dreamwidth).

Since I intend to keep my DW journal relatively fanfic-free - particularly now that I have RL friends reading it - I decided to put up my recent award banner over here:



I also saw this meme (snagged from beer_good_foamy) and it looked like fun. Probably hardly anyone remembers my fic anymore, but I've always enjoyed talking about myself, lol, so I just couldn't resist:

I think it would be fun to talk about stories, but the usual memes are like, "What happens next?" "Tell me about Character A?" Which isn't so much talking about stories as it is writing more of a story. But you know how sometimes you read something and you're like, "I got ___ out of this story, I wonder if I have that right?" or "What on earth was ____ supposed to be?" and it's too awkward to ask the author? Now you could totally ask!

I've heard people say that writing is hard because you have to make decisions, but we never really talk about the decisions we make with stories or why we make them. We talk about plot bunnies, but not about how we actually turn them into a story.

And it seems like a lot more fun to do that than to do working.

So, if you wanted, ask me questions! (Or use this to ask your flist to ask you questions).

What were you trying to do [here]? Why did you decide to ____? This is what I thought about xyz, is that what you were going for? What made you write ____? Why did you decide to do this? And so on.

Fic master list here.

(And speaking of fic, haha, yeah, I never actually got around to revising When in Rome or my alt season six. I still kind of cringe thinking about leaving them as is, but writing fic - and Buffy fic in particular - has been so far from my mind lately that it seems rather unfathomable to actually go back to it. Oh well.)

Boy, am I ever glad I don't have a Whedonesque account, because I'm pretty sure I'd get banned today. :) Instead, I will be channeling my rage into another really disappointing pile of crap. Read on for the review!

Fair warning - this entire book should come with a massive trigger warning stamped on the cover, which means the review is also potentially triggering.

( Read more...Collapse )

Hi, folks. If you missed my last post, and have been wondering where I've been, two weeks ago I moved permanently and full-time to Dreamwidth. You can find me here from now on.

I am stopping by for a couple reasons. First, as promised, I've been plugging along with my fic revisions project, and I've put up a new version of Evil Me. It's two chapters shorter, and I'm slightly tickled that it's now exactly 10,000 words. No particular reason for that - I just noticed I was at 9,999 and it was too good to pass up. :) I'm rather happy with this revision - aside from cutting out nearly a thousand words (much of which was unnecessary rehashing of what we already know), I added in a few little details that I think improve the logic a bit, which is always a good thing.

Next up is When in Rome, which seems incredibly daunting, because I want to throw out essentially the last two chapters (which is, um, half the fic), but I don't have anything to replace them with, which means actually writing a story. Not sure how I feel about that.

My second reason for posting is because my paid account will be expiring in two days. (Sorry for those of you who read this already at DW, it's gonna be mostly a repeat.) Unless I do something stupid like try to edit it, my layout should remain as is, so you shouldn't actually see much change if you're coming back to read old posts on my LJ.

The one thing I wanted to mention, and kindly ask your help with, is pictures. I have been lazy over the years and had been uploading a lot of my pics to ScrapBook instead of taking the extra step and putting them on Photobucket, which means that they'll all be deleted when the account expires. I spent one whole evening uploading everything to Photobucket and replacing the links. (Unfortunately, I forgot to change the "link to" link, so while the pictures should still appear where they're supposed to, you won't be able to click to view them at Photobucket, lol. Oh, well, y'all will just have to live with that.) I think I got everything, but if you're ever browsing my LJ for whatever reason and you see a missing graphic, please let me know and I'll fix the link!

I hope everyone is doing well. I am still sort of following my flist, since I still like knowing what's going on with all of you, but I have definitely scaled back my LJ time. If you've realized you miss me, you can follow the instructions here to add me as an RSS feed, and my posts will show up in your flist.