I go around a time or two, just to waste some time with you
My brother's wedding went off without too many screw ups, I've managed to trick Louise into living with me (or maybe the other way around), and through the constant application of cheap alcohol have managed to resign myself to paying the enormous fucking flood damage bill. All that's left is to move the rest of my possessions into the house, and then get through the other huge thing looming in late September, early October. And whatever kind of bizarre Halloween party Louise wants to plan, I guess.
More on the wedding to come later, including a stop at a McDonalds that was decorated in a very peculiar and specific theme of "The Lady of Shalott." I kind of wondered if I'd accidentally slipped into Faery Land or something.
Ever since Diana Gabaldon had her meltdown about fanfic back in May, I've had a vague intention to read her Outlander series so I could better appreciate where people were coming from in regards to discussion of her work. Surely it couldn't be full of that much sex, I reasoned. It's a big book! Like, a couple inches thick! Surely that can't all be sex. I checked it out from the library, since I certainly wasn't going to give her my money.
…Jaysus. I was clearly wrong. All sex, all the time. Often, in HIGH DEFINITION TECHNICOLOR RAPESTRAVAGANZA FORMAT.
I don't get it. Does Claire's snatch smell like freshly baked cookies or something? Why do the majority of the male characters want to throw her down and rape the everliving shit out of her? Does she give off pheromones? Is she that hot, that no man can avoid ripping lustily at her bodice (I lost count of the number of her times she had either a boob hanging out, or she was on the brink of being exposed, often before a crowd), or muttering hotly into the side of her neck about one of her physical attributes ('white velvet skin' sticks out in my mind, as do various contemplations of her hair.)
The simple explanation for this is basically the one everyone mentioned at the beginning of the furor, that Claire is essentially a self-insert and a ginormous Mary Sue. And the male character, Jamie, is essentially the same thing, only with a penis. I do applaud Gabaldon for the male character having the red hair rather than the female character; that's a diversion from the usual set-up. Though I hear Claire's daughter got the red hair and her parent's rape-magnet gifts, so maybe not so much.
The thing is, while rape is certainly a present issue through history, Outlander left me with this distinct impression that Gabaldon's opinion is everyone in 18th century Scotland will want to rape you. (And given what I've heard about the later books in the series, this is not a phenomenon contained to Scotland. It's everywhere and everyone. The King of France himself wants to get all up inside your business.) It is a non-stop rape festival. And when you are not getting raped or narrowly avoiding getting raped by British officers and soldiers and jailers and Scottish highlanders, you are having mad-wild monkey sex with your superhot Marty Stu husband.
Right-o.
To give Gabaldon her due, the plot is generally better than your usual romance. It moves along and the writing itself isn't the usual poor slop you get with a typical bodice buster. However, given the number of times the plot is ignored so the characters can get busy or try to avoid ravishment, I think it definitely lands the book in firm Romance country, as opposed to Sci Fi/Fantasy, as folks have said she prefers to be classed.
And that's, you know, fine! There is nothing wrong with writing romances, even the ones where people are having improbable sex all the time. It is, however, a mite hypocritical to complain about the aesthetics of people writing porn about your characters when your own book throws a porn scene every five pages.
The thing is, when it comes to writing and when it comes to writing sex, we often bring our own experiences and desires to the table. Again, nothing wrong with that. I think there's definitely skill in writing sex that people want to read about-not necessarily experience, though that's quite often part of it as well. Some of the best written sex scenes are about embarrassing or painful or even uninteresting sex-encounters we don't necessarily want to have, but tell us something of significance about the character, or advance the plot, or give us realizations about our own selves.
But then, there are the sex scenes where it's just an excuse for the author to get themselves off on the printed page.
That's always been a squick of mine. A skilled author can pull it off, I don't deny that. But generally, I like to come away from reading a sex scene focused on what it means to the story or character, not uneasily wondering if I now know way more about the author's personal fantasies than I had ever wanted to. When the fantasy is as bizarrely rape-heavy as Outlander (or as stalkerish and creepy as, say, the Twilight series), it makes the reading more awkward. A well written sex scene needs just as much careful choreography as a well-staged play, and in both cases, you're not supposed to see the people working behind the scenes. It throws you out of the moment.
It's not always about the author's personal fantasy, and there's always an exception to the rule, but Outlander left me with an unusually creeped-out sense of authorial presence, hiding in the pages and masturbating furtively. Not having much incentive to read onward, I think I shall not read any more of the series.
But, then again, I don't think I'm part of her desired core demographic, as seen by these conversations below.
***
ThorneScratch: No one should be a robot. Look how that turned out for Mikage. You're trying to think rationally about boning either your hot inspector or her terminally ill younger brother, and suddenly you've burned down your lab building and killed all your lab assistants and you're stuck in some weird time warp down in a basement greenhouse. Bad times.
***
ThorneScratch: You wanna talk about it, or should we just do Utena metaphors?
kadrinheroschool: Scandalous tape.
ThorneScratch: Is Chuchu gonna wind up lodged up someone's nose?
kadrinheroschool: And the odd crocodile thing that may or may not represent Touga's penis.
ThorneScratch: Is there anything on the show that does NOT represent Touga's penis? Only the things that actually represent Akio's penis.
kadrinheroschool: The Chairman's Tower is actually only 1/8th scale.
ThorneScratch: Whenever Akio scores, the bells ring.
kadrinheroschool: One bell for each time.
ThorneScratch: And the four o'clock special.
kadrinheroschool: And Midnight Madness.
ThorneScratch: Really, no-one gets any sleep at Ohtori.
kadrinheroschool: Saionji has learned to sleep while slapping.
ThorneScratch: Then, Touga made a lewd inference about the term "sleep-slapping."
kadrinheroschool: Then Saionji slapped him, because he'd been up for a while.
ThorneScratch: Later, he moodily wrote in his diary about how he'd had accidentally had sex with Touga again.
kadrinheroschool: Now he can just write diary entries that say "Fuck", and later he knows what he means. It's a double entendre.
ThorneScratch: Cleverer than usual for Saionji.
***
ThorneScratch: I'm just going to dumpster dive over there a bit.
twig collins: So I'll have to febreze you is what you're saying.
ThorneScratch: Did you know of all the stories in the Aladdin category, the majority of them involve sex with the tiger? I'm kind of surprised by that. That tiger gets AROUND.
twig collins: .....................ded.
ThorneScratch: Victory!
twig collins: This has been another edition of "Things I Did Not Need to Know"
ThorneScratch: "And Now You Do. And Have Lost An Important Fact To Know Them." Hey, dare me to look at the BBM section?
twig collins: Is the tiger there? Crossover madness!
ThorneScratch: YOU NEVER KNOW.
twig collins: Ennis is a streetwise thief who has never known love...
ThorneScratch: Man, don't even joke about that, it will totally be written. Surprisingly, that fandom has some of the most batshit AUs ever.
***
Flidget: Should I still plan on coming to see you in April, loaded down with silver and holy water?
ThorneScratch: Yes. I would love to have you. I certainly do not have a cage. Hopefully, we'll have some cherry blossoms here in DC.
Flidget: ...will they be ominous cherry blossoms?
ThorneScratch: The type of cherry blossoms to dance wildly through the air as Tom Daley lifts his troubled face to the spring breeze and closes his eyes. A single crystalline tear slips down his cheek when Blake Aldridge places a heavy hand on his shoulder, and he shudders imperceptibly.
...Oh God, I feel like I've made the world a worse place for having written that.
Flidget: I'm not visiting you anymore.
ThorneScratch: *cries. like Tom Daley*
Flidget: I mean, technically Aldridge is just his backstory now.
ThorneScratch: That was a flashback scene. When we cut back, we see he's actually alone under the sakura. Old memories, you know.
Flidget: ...I both hate and love you.
ThorneScratch: Story of my life.
Flidget: What I meant was actually also pretty horrible. Surely it is time for him to acquire a new abusive seme? Or maybe it'll actually be really quiet for the next decade, and then we'll find out that he's being mean to his nubile young dive partner.
ThorneScratch: A CYCLE OF ABUSE. I don't think he's hit growth spurt yet. He still has a couple years of being a cowering uke in him.
Flidget: EVERY SYMPATHETIC ABUSIVE SEME NEEDS HORRIFIC BACKSTORY.
ThorneScratch: Wait. WAIT. Didn't we have this?. Like, Blake Aldridge's former partner got hit and killed by a car?
Flidget: Yeah we did, but I think we assumed that Aldridge was the guilty party there.
ThorneScratch: Right, right. Poor Blake, we didn't even give him the benefit of the doubt. We assumed right away he was evil. Though he hasn't really given me reason to believe otherwise, so, I shall stick with our fanon that he is evil, yes.
Flidget: But wait-- so, if it wasn't Aldridge, then who? Is there something more sinister... and possibly mystical behind this?
ThorneScratch: The IOC?
Flidget: OH MY ORGIES. IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Johnny Weir spurned their advances.
ThorneScratch: IT'S ALL COMING TOGETHER NOW.
***
Flidget: ALSO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ero_guro
ThorneScratch: Erotic grotesque nonsense!
Flidget: Yes! It is actually a thing! And way more artsy than just gore hentai!
ThorneScratch: ...I still don't regret leaving.
Flidget: See, I thought you did, more than I did.
ThorneScratch: Nah. I'm not into guro. I would've just gotten antsy and whispered to you a lot. And the moderator would've given us the stinkeye, like in the Maid Cafe panel.
Flidget: I dunno, everyone seemed pretty drunk at that stage.
ThorneScratch: That's true. But there might've been eye socket fucking. No one wants that.
Flidget: There might have been. I never got that. The eye socket's not really big enough for it. Well, deep enough. ...and sadly that was my first thought when examining the human skull we found in the drawer at work. "I totally couldn't fit my dick in this."
ThorneScratch: ROFL LMAO. I adore you. Anime eyecockets tend to be bigger, of course. Eyesockets.
Flidget: I think eyecockets is a good term, actually.
ThorneScratch: Freudian slip.
***
kadrinheroschool: But, yes, I know the feeling; we can have friends who have aspects of which we disapprove. Such as the aspect of you that keeps hitting me with the baseball bat. Dirty pool, man.
ThorneScratch: I wouldn't keep hitting you with the baseball bat if you'd just PAY ME MY MONEY... honey.
kadrinheroschool: And I SPENT your money to make me look more attractive so I can earn you MORE money. CREDIT IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SYSTEM. YOU MUST SPECULATE TO ACCUMULATE. LUKE CAGE.
ThorneScratch: LUKE CAGE IS GOING TO SPECULATE TO ACCUMULATE WITH HIS FIST!!!
kadrinheroschool: HIRED MUSCLE STOCK IS CURRENTLY A BEAR MARKET!
ThorneScratch: IS THIS BEAR IN THE TERMINOLOGY OF "A STEADY DROP IN THE MARKET OVER TIME" OR BEAR IN THE TERMINOLOGY OF "HAIRY, BURLY MAN SOUGHT AFTER BY TWINKS"? BECAUSE DR. DOOM IS NOT A TWINK.
kadrinheroschool: BEAR/BEAR RELATIONSHIPS ARE FINE. BUT, YES, ONLY QUICKSILVER IS A TWINK. PERHAPS ALSO CYCLOPS.
ThorneScratch: CYCLOPS IS TOO PREACHY TO BE A TWINK. UNLESS IT'S WHEDON VERSION CYCLOPS, I GUESS.
kadrinheroschool: WHAT, NOW IT MEANS MORE THAN JUST BODY TYPE? OH, GAY PARLANCE IS SO BEYOND ME NOW.
ThorneScratch: I THINK IT ALSO HAS TO DO WITH DEMEANOR? GET WITH THE TIMES, PATRICK.
kadrinheroschool: I REFUSE; I'M GOING TO STAY AT HOME AND KNIT.
ThorneScratch: THIS IS WHY YOU NEVER GET THE TWINKS.
kadrinheroschool: I'M KNITTING MY OWN TWINKS AND YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY.
ThorneScratch: YOUR KNITTED TWINKS ARE SUBSTANDARD AND ITCHY.
kadrinheroschool: MY KNITTED TWINKS ARE OF THE HIGHEST QUALITY.
ThorneScratch: YES. NO. WAIT. WHERE ARE MY PANTS? You could sell them overpriced on Etsy! I think 90% of my flist is into knitting or yarnwork of some kind. Me, I'm just terrible at it.
***
Lastly, two things-
One, I would hope it would go without saying, but please don’t cross-post any of my journal's material to facebook or twitter. I don't feel like I need to add any sort of threat or promise of repercussion to this, because the vast majority of us are civil and intelligent people who wouldn't dream of doing it in the first place. So, thanks for being awesome and not doing it!
Secondly, as always, when livejournal does something stupid, some folks are migrating off to other journal services. Best of luck. I have a dreamwidth under the same name I am on lj, but I rarely use it. I should probably start crossposting. You're welcome to subscribe; I have the same friending policy I use here. But, honestly, I don't see myself switching over fully from livejournal to another service any time in the near future. I'll try to check in on my dreamwidth friends, and to remember to crosspost. (I, uh, probably won't remember. Sorry in advance.)
When one quits livejournal, do you just quit posting, or do you call a complete ban on reading anything on livejournal? It's actually kind of an interesting question. Certainly I can understand people refusing to pay for a service that doesn't satisfy them, and I think that's a good way to show your feelings on what lj has done. However, I also think that since the main chunk of fandom people are still on lj, so is quite a lot of fandom work. Are there people who are eschewing reading or interacting with everything on livejournal, in order to uphold their principles on not supporting the site?
…if so, I probably wouldn't get an answer from them since this pondering question is, in fact, posted on livejournal.
More on the wedding to come later, including a stop at a McDonalds that was decorated in a very peculiar and specific theme of "The Lady of Shalott." I kind of wondered if I'd accidentally slipped into Faery Land or something.
Ever since Diana Gabaldon had her meltdown about fanfic back in May, I've had a vague intention to read her Outlander series so I could better appreciate where people were coming from in regards to discussion of her work. Surely it couldn't be full of that much sex, I reasoned. It's a big book! Like, a couple inches thick! Surely that can't all be sex. I checked it out from the library, since I certainly wasn't going to give her my money.
…Jaysus. I was clearly wrong. All sex, all the time. Often, in HIGH DEFINITION TECHNICOLOR RAPESTRAVAGANZA FORMAT.
I don't get it. Does Claire's snatch smell like freshly baked cookies or something? Why do the majority of the male characters want to throw her down and rape the everliving shit out of her? Does she give off pheromones? Is she that hot, that no man can avoid ripping lustily at her bodice (I lost count of the number of her times she had either a boob hanging out, or she was on the brink of being exposed, often before a crowd), or muttering hotly into the side of her neck about one of her physical attributes ('white velvet skin' sticks out in my mind, as do various contemplations of her hair.)
The simple explanation for this is basically the one everyone mentioned at the beginning of the furor, that Claire is essentially a self-insert and a ginormous Mary Sue. And the male character, Jamie, is essentially the same thing, only with a penis. I do applaud Gabaldon for the male character having the red hair rather than the female character; that's a diversion from the usual set-up. Though I hear Claire's daughter got the red hair and her parent's rape-magnet gifts, so maybe not so much.
The thing is, while rape is certainly a present issue through history, Outlander left me with this distinct impression that Gabaldon's opinion is everyone in 18th century Scotland will want to rape you. (And given what I've heard about the later books in the series, this is not a phenomenon contained to Scotland. It's everywhere and everyone. The King of France himself wants to get all up inside your business.) It is a non-stop rape festival. And when you are not getting raped or narrowly avoiding getting raped by British officers and soldiers and jailers and Scottish highlanders, you are having mad-wild monkey sex with your superhot Marty Stu husband.
Right-o.
To give Gabaldon her due, the plot is generally better than your usual romance. It moves along and the writing itself isn't the usual poor slop you get with a typical bodice buster. However, given the number of times the plot is ignored so the characters can get busy or try to avoid ravishment, I think it definitely lands the book in firm Romance country, as opposed to Sci Fi/Fantasy, as folks have said she prefers to be classed.
And that's, you know, fine! There is nothing wrong with writing romances, even the ones where people are having improbable sex all the time. It is, however, a mite hypocritical to complain about the aesthetics of people writing porn about your characters when your own book throws a porn scene every five pages.
The thing is, when it comes to writing and when it comes to writing sex, we often bring our own experiences and desires to the table. Again, nothing wrong with that. I think there's definitely skill in writing sex that people want to read about-not necessarily experience, though that's quite often part of it as well. Some of the best written sex scenes are about embarrassing or painful or even uninteresting sex-encounters we don't necessarily want to have, but tell us something of significance about the character, or advance the plot, or give us realizations about our own selves.
But then, there are the sex scenes where it's just an excuse for the author to get themselves off on the printed page.
That's always been a squick of mine. A skilled author can pull it off, I don't deny that. But generally, I like to come away from reading a sex scene focused on what it means to the story or character, not uneasily wondering if I now know way more about the author's personal fantasies than I had ever wanted to. When the fantasy is as bizarrely rape-heavy as Outlander (or as stalkerish and creepy as, say, the Twilight series), it makes the reading more awkward. A well written sex scene needs just as much careful choreography as a well-staged play, and in both cases, you're not supposed to see the people working behind the scenes. It throws you out of the moment.
It's not always about the author's personal fantasy, and there's always an exception to the rule, but Outlander left me with an unusually creeped-out sense of authorial presence, hiding in the pages and masturbating furtively. Not having much incentive to read onward, I think I shall not read any more of the series.
But, then again, I don't think I'm part of her desired core demographic, as seen by these conversations below.
***
ThorneScratch: No one should be a robot. Look how that turned out for Mikage. You're trying to think rationally about boning either your hot inspector or her terminally ill younger brother, and suddenly you've burned down your lab building and killed all your lab assistants and you're stuck in some weird time warp down in a basement greenhouse. Bad times.
***
ThorneScratch: You wanna talk about it, or should we just do Utena metaphors?
kadrinheroschool: Scandalous tape.
ThorneScratch: Is Chuchu gonna wind up lodged up someone's nose?
kadrinheroschool: And the odd crocodile thing that may or may not represent Touga's penis.
ThorneScratch: Is there anything on the show that does NOT represent Touga's penis? Only the things that actually represent Akio's penis.
kadrinheroschool: The Chairman's Tower is actually only 1/8th scale.
ThorneScratch: Whenever Akio scores, the bells ring.
kadrinheroschool: One bell for each time.
ThorneScratch: And the four o'clock special.
kadrinheroschool: And Midnight Madness.
ThorneScratch: Really, no-one gets any sleep at Ohtori.
kadrinheroschool: Saionji has learned to sleep while slapping.
ThorneScratch: Then, Touga made a lewd inference about the term "sleep-slapping."
kadrinheroschool: Then Saionji slapped him, because he'd been up for a while.
ThorneScratch: Later, he moodily wrote in his diary about how he'd had accidentally had sex with Touga again.
kadrinheroschool: Now he can just write diary entries that say "Fuck", and later he knows what he means. It's a double entendre.
ThorneScratch: Cleverer than usual for Saionji.
***
ThorneScratch: I'm just going to dumpster dive over there a bit.
twig collins: So I'll have to febreze you is what you're saying.
ThorneScratch: Did you know of all the stories in the Aladdin category, the majority of them involve sex with the tiger? I'm kind of surprised by that. That tiger gets AROUND.
twig collins: .....................ded.
ThorneScratch: Victory!
twig collins: This has been another edition of "Things I Did Not Need to Know"
ThorneScratch: "And Now You Do. And Have Lost An Important Fact To Know Them." Hey, dare me to look at the BBM section?
twig collins: Is the tiger there? Crossover madness!
ThorneScratch: YOU NEVER KNOW.
twig collins: Ennis is a streetwise thief who has never known love...
ThorneScratch: Man, don't even joke about that, it will totally be written. Surprisingly, that fandom has some of the most batshit AUs ever.
***
Flidget: Should I still plan on coming to see you in April, loaded down with silver and holy water?
ThorneScratch: Yes. I would love to have you. I certainly do not have a cage. Hopefully, we'll have some cherry blossoms here in DC.
Flidget: ...will they be ominous cherry blossoms?
ThorneScratch: The type of cherry blossoms to dance wildly through the air as Tom Daley lifts his troubled face to the spring breeze and closes his eyes. A single crystalline tear slips down his cheek when Blake Aldridge places a heavy hand on his shoulder, and he shudders imperceptibly.
...Oh God, I feel like I've made the world a worse place for having written that.
Flidget: I'm not visiting you anymore.
ThorneScratch: *cries. like Tom Daley*
Flidget: I mean, technically Aldridge is just his backstory now.
ThorneScratch: That was a flashback scene. When we cut back, we see he's actually alone under the sakura. Old memories, you know.
Flidget: ...I both hate and love you.
ThorneScratch: Story of my life.
Flidget: What I meant was actually also pretty horrible. Surely it is time for him to acquire a new abusive seme? Or maybe it'll actually be really quiet for the next decade, and then we'll find out that he's being mean to his nubile young dive partner.
ThorneScratch: A CYCLE OF ABUSE. I don't think he's hit growth spurt yet. He still has a couple years of being a cowering uke in him.
Flidget: EVERY SYMPATHETIC ABUSIVE SEME NEEDS HORRIFIC BACKSTORY.
ThorneScratch: Wait. WAIT. Didn't we have this?. Like, Blake Aldridge's former partner got hit and killed by a car?
Flidget: Yeah we did, but I think we assumed that Aldridge was the guilty party there.
ThorneScratch: Right, right. Poor Blake, we didn't even give him the benefit of the doubt. We assumed right away he was evil. Though he hasn't really given me reason to believe otherwise, so, I shall stick with our fanon that he is evil, yes.
Flidget: But wait-- so, if it wasn't Aldridge, then who? Is there something more sinister... and possibly mystical behind this?
ThorneScratch: The IOC?
Flidget: OH MY ORGIES. IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Johnny Weir spurned their advances.
ThorneScratch: IT'S ALL COMING TOGETHER NOW.
***
Flidget: ALSO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ero_guro
ThorneScratch: Erotic grotesque nonsense!
Flidget: Yes! It is actually a thing! And way more artsy than just gore hentai!
ThorneScratch: ...I still don't regret leaving.
Flidget: See, I thought you did, more than I did.
ThorneScratch: Nah. I'm not into guro. I would've just gotten antsy and whispered to you a lot. And the moderator would've given us the stinkeye, like in the Maid Cafe panel.
Flidget: I dunno, everyone seemed pretty drunk at that stage.
ThorneScratch: That's true. But there might've been eye socket fucking. No one wants that.
Flidget: There might have been. I never got that. The eye socket's not really big enough for it. Well, deep enough. ...and sadly that was my first thought when examining the human skull we found in the drawer at work. "I totally couldn't fit my dick in this."
ThorneScratch: ROFL LMAO. I adore you. Anime eyecockets tend to be bigger, of course. Eyesockets.
Flidget: I think eyecockets is a good term, actually.
ThorneScratch: Freudian slip.
***
kadrinheroschool: But, yes, I know the feeling; we can have friends who have aspects of which we disapprove. Such as the aspect of you that keeps hitting me with the baseball bat. Dirty pool, man.
ThorneScratch: I wouldn't keep hitting you with the baseball bat if you'd just PAY ME MY MONEY... honey.
kadrinheroschool: And I SPENT your money to make me look more attractive so I can earn you MORE money. CREDIT IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SYSTEM. YOU MUST SPECULATE TO ACCUMULATE. LUKE CAGE.
ThorneScratch: LUKE CAGE IS GOING TO SPECULATE TO ACCUMULATE WITH HIS FIST!!!
kadrinheroschool: HIRED MUSCLE STOCK IS CURRENTLY A BEAR MARKET!
ThorneScratch: IS THIS BEAR IN THE TERMINOLOGY OF "A STEADY DROP IN THE MARKET OVER TIME" OR BEAR IN THE TERMINOLOGY OF "HAIRY, BURLY MAN SOUGHT AFTER BY TWINKS"? BECAUSE DR. DOOM IS NOT A TWINK.
kadrinheroschool: BEAR/BEAR RELATIONSHIPS ARE FINE. BUT, YES, ONLY QUICKSILVER IS A TWINK. PERHAPS ALSO CYCLOPS.
ThorneScratch: CYCLOPS IS TOO PREACHY TO BE A TWINK. UNLESS IT'S WHEDON VERSION CYCLOPS, I GUESS.
kadrinheroschool: WHAT, NOW IT MEANS MORE THAN JUST BODY TYPE? OH, GAY PARLANCE IS SO BEYOND ME NOW.
ThorneScratch: I THINK IT ALSO HAS TO DO WITH DEMEANOR? GET WITH THE TIMES, PATRICK.
kadrinheroschool: I REFUSE; I'M GOING TO STAY AT HOME AND KNIT.
ThorneScratch: THIS IS WHY YOU NEVER GET THE TWINKS.
kadrinheroschool: I'M KNITTING MY OWN TWINKS AND YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY.
ThorneScratch: YOUR KNITTED TWINKS ARE SUBSTANDARD AND ITCHY.
kadrinheroschool: MY KNITTED TWINKS ARE OF THE HIGHEST QUALITY.
ThorneScratch: YES. NO. WAIT. WHERE ARE MY PANTS? You could sell them overpriced on Etsy! I think 90% of my flist is into knitting or yarnwork of some kind. Me, I'm just terrible at it.
***
Lastly, two things-
One, I would hope it would go without saying, but please don’t cross-post any of my journal's material to facebook or twitter. I don't feel like I need to add any sort of threat or promise of repercussion to this, because the vast majority of us are civil and intelligent people who wouldn't dream of doing it in the first place. So, thanks for being awesome and not doing it!
Secondly, as always, when livejournal does something stupid, some folks are migrating off to other journal services. Best of luck. I have a dreamwidth under the same name I am on lj, but I rarely use it. I should probably start crossposting. You're welcome to subscribe; I have the same friending policy I use here. But, honestly, I don't see myself switching over fully from livejournal to another service any time in the near future. I'll try to check in on my dreamwidth friends, and to remember to crosspost. (I, uh, probably won't remember. Sorry in advance.)
When one quits livejournal, do you just quit posting, or do you call a complete ban on reading anything on livejournal? It's actually kind of an interesting question. Certainly I can understand people refusing to pay for a service that doesn't satisfy them, and I think that's a good way to show your feelings on what lj has done. However, I also think that since the main chunk of fandom people are still on lj, so is quite a lot of fandom work. Are there people who are eschewing reading or interacting with everything on livejournal, in order to uphold their principles on not supporting the site?
…if so, I probably wouldn't get an answer from them since this pondering question is, in fact, posted on livejournal.