alias_sqbr

Something I really wish existed, but I am SO not up for creating/moderating is a comm for discussing romance novels from a social justice perspective.

Basically I want somewhere I can ask "Which Loretta Chase books that I haven't read aren't TOO horribly racist?" and "Are there any regency romances where the hero isn't of noble birth? Are regency romances doomed to a certain amount of classism?" and stuff like that. There's Smart Bitches Trashy Books (Which I was not subscribed to until now, for no good reason, but have made a feed for: smartbitches_feed) but that's a blog and I don't like commenting on blogs so I'm stuck being a passive consumer.

I poked about for existing comms and there's a bunch about romance novels, but for example note the first response to this post on the romancenovels lj-comm asking about historicals with interesting class issues. What's the bet the Pasha's secret is that he's white? :/ (EDIT: I checked the Amazon page, and sure enough he is)

EDIT: Oh hey, I meant to post this to sqbr, oops. Meh, it can stay here, it's not like it's a Deep Analytical Post or anything. But no imbroglio-ing in the comments!

EDIT 2: Posted to create_my_comm, thanks for the suggestion torachan!

Yay! AO3 finally has "category" (het/gen/etc) as ticky boxes rather than a dropdown menu. That's been bugging me since I had to set my very first uploaded story as "multi" when it's "f/f + m/f", since everyone's going to assume that means "m/m + m/f" and/or polyfic.

Of course my most recent "multi" stories have actually been m/m/f but that's not the point :)

My dropdown menu still says I don't have any f/f which kind of defeats the purpose, if it's still not showing up later I'll have to send a report. EDIT: wait, no, I just forgot to click "update" after previewing. Next thing I would like implented: editing the header of works without previewing the whole thing. EDIT 2: Wait OMG you can! Double yay!

Also: Icons!

Plus: Livejournal FINALLY has the option to disable comments but keep them visible. Oh, the number of times someone put their foot in their mouth and had to hide the resulting discussion in order to halt it. Of course people will still decide they don't like the comments they've been getting and hide/delete them, but now they have less of an excuse :)

Sometimes I get paranoid that people find it annoying when I post pictures of stuff I've drawn to my lj, especially when I'm going through an arty phase. Thus, a poll.

For some ideas of sizes:
a thumbnail
a small image
a full size image



EDIT: Poll is refusing to work dammit. So, if you have strong feelings just let me know *mutters*

Not that I have any intention of stopping posting all together regardless of what people say (my lj and all) but it seems polite to find out the best way to tell people about stuff I've done without being annoying.

Lj comment notification appears to be entirely borked for many (all?) people, but I noticed that for some reason "recent comments" doesn't seem to be, so you can at least see comments on your own lj:
http://www.livejournal.com/tools/recent_comments.bml

Am I being paranoid in not wanting to touch any of those links with a ten foot pole? Trashy_eats hacked! DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINKS

One of the main reasons I got a livejournal was to be able to get comment notifications when I replied to people. And one of the main reasons I switched over completely was that I liked the comment threading and notifications, they created a much more vibrant discussion that I ever got at my blogger blog. I used to spend a lot of time in forums etc getting frustrated at having to constantly check all the threads I was in and being forced to engage with the WHOLE discussion on a post/topic rather than just the bit I was interested in, eg any time there was a troll everyone got derailed.

Having gotten used to lj style commenting I am loathe to get involved in any online discussions that don't have comment notifications and threading. Most places have comment notification now (Thank GOD) but most blogs and mailing lists don't have threading, or not to the full extent of lj. I was surprised in a discussion about comment policies at Hoyden About Town by some people who hate threading, but I guess I can see how that would be annoying if you always DO want to hear the whole conversation at once and don't like things splitting off.

I also am lazy and can't be bothered reading stuff I can't navigate entirely by my friendlists and email, though I'm not as bad as the people who refuse to read feeds or more than one flist (I have 4, though I never check my insanejournal) Thus I can't bring myself to engage with forums, even stuff like Starship Earth or the Jane Austen forums which aren't replicated elsewhere.

I remember when I had the feed to my blog people kept commenting on the feed (which I didn't get notifications for, and which vanished within a week or two) rather than clicking to get to the blog itself. This was very annoying.

Anyway, this post was inspired by wanting to comment on an article at the F word and discovering that their comment policy is "you send us an email, and if we like it we add it to a monthly comment digest". !!!

So how do you feel about commenting? I realise it's not a very exciting topic but I felt like talking about it :)

If you missed it, my dreamwidth is sqbr and is different posts to this one. To read it either get an account (see below), get an OpenID or just friend the feed.

I have a request post to get access to locked posts, so if you want to read those you'll have to at least get an OpenID.

If you want a Dreamwidth account and don't have an invite, I have two left, send me a private message with your email address. Preference to people I know. All gone!

Since people often ask I decided it would be fun to see what you guys think my username means. If you're torn, vote for all the ones you think are plausible. Answers in the comments, so vote before reading them!

[Poll #1389510]

One of the interesting things about Dreamwidth is that they have divided the lj "Friends" idea into two separate things: subscribing to someone's journal, and letting them read your locked posts. (Neither of which is called "friending") See my userinfo.

I'm curious to see how this plays out. Myself I'm friending subscribing to pretty anyone who subscribes to me on the assumption that reading filters will come in before it gets unwieldy, but am only giving access to people I'd be comfortable reading my most private locked posts. When/if I actually *do* a locked post I'll reconsider it.

But I would say that a lot of people are giving access to everyone they subscribe to, and possibly then using access filters. See for example denise: she is one of the founders, and uses this account for Official Announcements. She is also currently subscribing to everyone who joins dw. So she's a logical person to subscribe to (and I have) but unless all 668 people who've given her access are her close personal friends...(a roughly equal number have subscribed but not given access)

There's been some interesting discussions about it on metafandom, I'm curious to see how it all plays out:
http://giandujakiss.livejournal.com/770305.html
http://skuf.insanejournal.com/79081.html

(nb am feeling VERY TACTLESS today which is why I decided to keep myself busy with a hopefully uncontroversial subject)

So, Dreamwidth is starting up soon(*).

I find it and the OTW (specifically an Archive Of Our Own) interesting (I think I have an invite for that if anyone's interested, btw). Both were formed by groups of mostly female fans(**) who got sick of being messed round by badly written and run online facilities for fandom and decided to create their own, egalitarian, professional, fan-run alternatives. Time will only tell if they work, but they seem to be doing ok so far. (EDIT: Dreamwidth is not just fannish)

They make an interesting contrast to more "male" geek open source projects etc. From my limited experience I'd say there's a lot of differences and a lot of similarities too, certainly the camaraderie and idealistic imagery. I guess fanfic writers and open source programmers both tend to emphasise a free and unfettered sharing of ideas (especially those who are both, like Naomi Novik :)).

Now I'm wondering if there's much/any fanfic written about Linux...

(*) There's a lot of broken links still, if you're interested in seeing what an actual account looks like here's one off metafandom.
(**)I'm not sure how much crossover there is between Dreamwidth and OTW. I'm sure there's some, they certainly seem to come from the same broad social group of lj based fanfic writers, but they're not formally affiliated afaict.