"And fate carries an executioner's axe."

[melancthe]

I've been wanting to lay out my thoughts about how I like my journal to function, and the way I would like to deal with problems (should they ever arise), just so that all my LJ friends have an idea of how they can expect me to behave. I'd normally find it awfully pompous and overly self-important to have a "friending policy" - it's really not my

Comments

[melancthe]

I know people like that in RL and on LJ: people who consistently miss the point of whatever it is I'm trying to say and latch onto something entirely trivial to make into the focus of their comment. For instance, picking a random and frivolous example: I'll make an angsty "WOE IS ME" post about how horrid my new haircut looks, and they'll reply saying "Glad to hear you got a new haircut!", missing the point that that's why I'm upset in the first place.

I'm obviously less bothered about it than you, though, because it won't irk me to any noticeable degree: I'll just smile to myself, knowing that I probably annoy people just as much with my random wenchiness. If I were to be seriously annoyed by it, though, I would likely de-friend the person in a drama-free way with a polite comment about how I didn't feel we were connecting.

If I noticed someone being consistently unpleasant to any of his or her LJ friends, it wouldn't be an inducement to comment, lest I face the same wrath for my random commentary on, oh, slashiness, my cleavage, or any of my other favourite irrelevant topics. It would also make me extremely wary about whether or not that person would someday use the same tone towards me; despite protestations of "oh no, you're too [witty/charming/interesting/whatever] for me to be rude to, melancthe", it's generally been my experience that people who're willing to treat another person with (consistent) contempt are likely to do it to me too, once I stop being the shiny new (LJ) friend. As I said in #6 of my original post: "it's my belief that if you treat others in a way that I wouldn't want to be treated, there's a fair chance of you doing it to me too at some point."

And heh, sadly the Iliad slash doesn't rhyme. I'm just reaching here, but I'm not sure that hot sweaty pr0n would have the desired effect if written in dactylic hexameter. ;)

[swashbuckler332]

I just want to make special notice here that I find it difficult to believe that your cleavage would ever engender any sort of wrath. Obsession, perhaps. Hypnosis, almost certainly. But wrath?

However, you do have a point when you say that the best way of dealing with such the above situation is to be polite and drama-free, an approach I certainly regret not having taken recently. I'm not particularly proud of how I acted at the time, and I have apologized to the party in question.

Has anybody ever attempted to gauge the erotic possibilities of dactylic hexameter? I mean, 'heroic' and 'erotic' are both three syllable adjectives...

[melancthe]

Well, I'm sure your apology was accepted and appreciated; after all, we all have bad days, and your general stress was understandable. The party in question certainly seems like a decent and tolerant sort: he'd have to be to put up with the flat-out rudeness I've seen towards him over the last few months. I'm entirely certain that I'd be much less pleasant about it; just one of the sort of comments I've seen made to him on previous occasions would have had me hitting "defriend" rather quickly. Heh. :)

(Of course, because I was impressed by the party in question's calm response to the drama, I friended him: his maturity with regard to that is the sort of thing I'd like to see on my f-list.)

And I'm positive no one has ever attempted an analysis of dactylic hexameter's erotic potential: I'm sure you could investigate and write a thesis on it. Or something.

[suitboyskin]

As one of the more vocal assailants of the gentleman in question I feel compelled to weigh in here. If I offended you by my lashing out at him then I am sorry for that as I don't like sowing discourse among my friends online or RL.

However, I will say, in my defense, that I've been consitant towards him from the get-go. I don't recall exactly what he did to earn my ire (he's a fairly trivial presence in my life) but I've been perfectly clear that I dislike him from that time on. Yes, I can be rude and abbrasive from time to timeas Swash can attest to. I'm not, however, unresponsive to the idea that people and my opinions of them can change nor am I fickle in my friendship or animosity. I could at some point warm up to the fellow, it would just take a pretty significant incident for me to actualy friend him just like it would take an equally significant incident for me to de-friend you.

Not to invalidate your concerns or your feelings that perhaps he was verbally attacked too visciously. As one of the people who makes the comments that you seem to be discussing I felt compelled to put in my $.02 and explain myself lest unwanted drama or bad blood develop.

[swashbuckler332]

In general I try to be the better me, but there are sometimes when under a lot of stress, when I'm not the person I prefer to be, and last week was, unfortunately one of those times. I'm not happy about it, and I'm doing my best to make amends.

The dactylic hexameter is a rhythmic device of the oral tradition, so I don't see why one couldn't implement erotic heroica.