July 1, 2009
*pointing to calendar*
You know, since I'm on a tear already...
It's July.
It's 2009.
If you're still stewing about something that happened on a fanfiction site three months ago, six months ago, one year ago, two years ago -- there's this whole vast universe out there that could really use your attention. Amnesty International is always looking for a few good letter-writers. There are soup kitchens that could manage a couple of extra hands and maybe someone to write grant proposals for more funds. There are publishers out there just dying to get submissions from people who can punctuate dialogue.
I'm looking ahead. I occasionally attempt to find a coder for the site so the skins can come back. I try to make myself useful in small ways around the site without modding the queue because there's only so many times a body can paste the words "dialogue errors" into a rejection letter without wanting to add certain colorful four-letter words. I delete spambots' posts. I try to raise good questions for writers to ponder. Stuff like that.
Apparently I pour gasoline on flames.
You know how an overfull balloon will just pop at the slightest jar, it doesn't take a pin, it just takes a bookshelf or sometimes even a wall? Okay. No point in blaming the bookshelf, no point in blaming the wall. Blame the yoyo who filled up the balloon in the first place, if you have to blame someone. Remember your ideal gas law and turn down the heat. Something. But reeling off this incident and that incident and the other incident doesn't solve anything, because incidents are by nature past. Futures are malleable, probably. Pasts aren't. All you can do is cool them down a bit, or yourself.
/cheap philosophizing
I really am tired of wondering every few months if this (fill in the blank with what this is) will be the end of the site. There have been times where I thought it would be a good thing if this was the end of the site. Not lately, though. It's a good site. It deserves to cater to its better members instead of constantly having to worry about some little snot making a big stink in a small room over very little. There have been big issues. Very, very few of them, but there have. April Fools was not one of them, the book is not one of them, and a good many other things were only big to the three people who happened not to like them. Okay? Perspective.
Perhaps this looks contradictory. The site is a small thing. The friendships people seem to be willing to shoot to hell over it are not.
ETA: What I'd actually been talking about, two or three posts ago, may be found at http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61043. Absofrickenlutely classic.