"this problems gonna last more than the weekend"

[seraphcelene]

It seems that more and more of my FL is pretty serious about leaving and me not being one for long goodbyes, especially when the ship is sinking and the rats have already begun to swim to shore, I am prepping to mostly suspend my activity on LJ. diachrony starting to cross post at GJ and IJ, fodian's decision to quit cold turkey and tkp's decision to leave have all left a really bad taste here for me. I will definitly be checking my FL here to keep up because there are communities and people remaining, but I think that I've lost my enthusiasm, possibly for journal's altogether, for Livejournal for sure.

The 6A debacle is ridiculous and stupid, possibly made worse in light of Brad Fitzpatrick's leaving (and doesn't that look like abandoning a sinking ship) and I also read the post by insomnia and an insane amount of commentary and debate, plus the mess over "miscegenation". I am tired of online right now. Hear that internet?! You exhaust me! IBARW is coming up and the necessity of something like that makes me depressed.

So. What's the plan?

-- I will be trimming my FL down to the journals that I actually read on a regular basis.
-- I used LJ Archive to archive my LJ on my harddrive and as soon as I remember where I put the How To link, I'll move the archives over to GreatestJournal and InsaneJournal. From what I can tell IJ trumps GJ, so that looks like its going to be journal HQ for me.
-- I will be cross posting to GJ and IJ as soon as I download Semagic, but that probably won't happen til the weekend. Sooner only if I get other RL stuff done early.
-- Essential Imperfect will be updated with all fic. If anyone on my FL needs a place to host their fic permanently (tkp, I'm looking especially at you) let me know. I have plenty of room.
-- I finally opened up a delicious account to dump all my memories. The plan is to use that on a go forward.
-- I've submitted seraphcelene over at fandom 411 for anyone who wants to find me.

My LJ will remain open because there are people who are staying (thawrecka, samdonne, katherine_b, moireach, kormantic, to name a few) that I want to keep track of. I'm only assuming you guys are staying because I haven't heard otherwise. There's also a2zmom and chrisleeoctaves who's plans I don't know. I guess we're all playing the waiting game, waiting and seeing.

I've never been especially good at waiting. I'm more of a Get it Done kind of girl, so here I go to get it done.

Traffic here has never been wacky so I don't think the transition will be all that painful. I've always worked to keep my FL low because I just couldn't keep track of too many people (I think I'm in the 30 or 40 area). It's the end of an era, my friends. I always thought I'd just get bored with LJ. I assumed I'd slowly lose interest as I did with fanart and Waking Moments. What a surprise to discover that this is going out with such sound and fury. I'm a writer at heart, always have been, and LJ and fandom have been about a community of writers and readers and there's the difference to all my other fannish activity. You see, I'm still very much attached, but I decided about a year ago to do this on my terms and, well, these are now my terms.

With that thought, I need to re-submit my fic to BFA. I know it went down courtesy of hackers and most of my fic was lost. I'm also thinking of submitting the smaller fandom stuff over to The Glass Onion. Things like my Roswell fic, Farscape, the one End of the Affair thing, the Peter Pan when it's done (and it will be finished).

And that's me.

This is odd because maybe it looks like I'm just following the crowd, and in a way I am, but mostly it's because, as I said before, the energy here has comepletely changed. 6Apart has managed to make fandom feel totally unwelcome and I don't like the way that they've chosen to handle the situation. So, I'm out. Not totally. I'll be around. But I am out.

Maybe this is a good thing. While the rest of fandom is picking a place to hang their hats maybe I'll get some of that Original fic written. I've got two original shorts laid out that need writing and revising. I need to update everything over at Essential Imperfect (new layouts included and that takes time, ya'll, cause I'm trying to advance my CSS coding skillz, yo).

How odd. How terribly, terribly odd.

Comments

[gloss]

...are you going to be the same username on IJ and GJ?

*clings*

[seraphcelene]

I am me across the board!! seraphcelene at LJ, IJ and GJ.
*squishes you hard*

[thawrecka]

I'm definitely staying (though I also have a Wordpress blog if you want the link for that. I probably won't update it much).

I definitely support submitting your fic to archives. I still have such love for fic archives.

[seraphcelene]

I know! Last year was the first time I stopped submitting to archives because of the internet issue, but now I'm back on board. YAY!! Send me your Wordpress link. I expect to hear if you shift locales, but I'll still be checking my FL here, so I'll know what everyone's up to. I'm just not posting here anymore with any regularity.

[thawrecka]

Me at Wordpress. I'm not likely to shift locales but if I did I'd use beyond_lj to make sure people knew where I went.

[shrift.livejournal.com]

With that thought, I need to re-submit my fic to BFA. I know it went down courtesy of hackers and most of my fic was lost.

It took me forever, but actually I've repaired the overwhelming majority of the archive. So unless you've got a story listed here you're all set: http://community.livejournal.com/bfa/16056.html

[seraphcelene]

There is a reason that you're a superstar!! OMG! That's mucho work! Thank you for doing it. YAY!

[katharine-b.livejournal.com]

PS. You know I'm here (http://blog.katharinebeutner.com), too, right? There's an LJ RSS feed for that blog, too, at katharinebeutne.

*hugs again*

[seraphcelene]

I didn't know! I am adding it to my favorites post haste.

*hugs back*

[lettered.livejournal.com]

I skimmed this post when you first posted and resolved to comment when I was not half dead with lack of sleep, but now I come back and reread and find I need clarification. I understand the suspending the LJ activity, and needing a break from fandom, but...you're still going to like, write fanfic and host interesting fannish/non-fannish discussions (somewhere) and say random things that're going on in your life (somewhere) and link to cool fannish/non-fannish things and comment on cool fannish/non-fannish discussions...eventually, somewhere, right? I mean, I understand if you're not, but the community of writers and readers--I've only found that community comfortably in fandom, and I could never give that up for all that sometimes I need breaks or sometimes I need to leave the place that hosts us completely. I mean, even if you're not in fandom I would email you and I would hope we could maintain a friendship; I guess I'm worried most of all because I suck at contacting people and LJ is a good way to keep up with people--now it won't be LJ but it'll be somewhere for me, ya know. God this paragraph is long.

I hope you work on your original fiction. I haven't mentioned it to you but I've talked loosely with two other people on my flists about starting something for those interested in original writing. By "something" I'm not sure what I mean, but I have trouble getting peer feedback for my original writing, and that's part of the reason I can finish fanfic whereas I have so much more trouble with original. I think if there was a small, tight group of us who were really serious about writing, we could talk about it in a serious way and exchange work with each other, and then we could also talk about how to publish and where and each do research and pool it all together. (I don't know how serious you are about original writing. I'm not sure I've ever heard you talk about it in depth before. But I think you're a fantabulous writer and I know you like the idea of Projects. Well, I have this thing about getting ideas and then never doing anything, which is better than actually Starting and not Following Through, but still sucks. But anyway I wanted to say it because I am Worried and Rambley and it would be a way to stay in touch and I don't ever want to lose you!) Omg stopping now.

[seraphcelene]

Oh, honey bunny! I am a mess and all over the place.

I think you mentioned how you were on a downward swing with fandom when everything went pear shaped, and I think that I hit that downward swing *because* everything went pear shaped. And I don't just mean the HP/LJ/6Apart stuff. IBARW coming up and the ever ongoing Cultural Appropriation Debate of Doom, the miscegenation mess all brought me low all at once. I am ever ambivalent about my feelings towards LJ (I am typically in love with my FL, so it's not you guys) and fandom. And when I say fandom, I mean fandom at large, all fandoms everywhere. Because I am interested in my FL and because they are interested in varied, awesome things I get to run into interesting, fascinating, gorgeous, stupid, irritating, facepalming stuff all the time. And I love that. But I think I'm on the ready for a break.

Of course I probably won't take a break. Going through and tagging all my old entries I realized that I quit fandom and writing at least once or twice a year, and I mean it at the time, only to come right back. You guys probably couldn't pay me to go away. :)

The 6A thing makes me very leery about remaining on LJ because I don't like how they responded to customer concerns coupled with the unthinking, reactionary response to complaints. I don't know if that sounds right, but the way that journals are being suspended and deleted with no warning. I would think that they could at least offer the "offenders" the chance to remove the offensive content. They're also being very vague in terms of helping LJ'ers understand what could get their journals deleted and while I'm not worried that mine will fall victim to the panic button, there is NC-17 content here and I am writing, with plans to post, a Peter Pan fic that features Wendy/Hook.

Re-interpretation of the TOS by 6A doesn't help and now I'm rambling.

Anyway, everyone is talking about leaving and I decided I might as well do it now rather than later or I may never make the move. I'm comfortable here with all my peeps. We're splintering and there's no one direction that everyone is headed so I decided to make plans. I can always amend them if everyone ends up in one paritcular location.

Plus, there's a part of me that hopes all of this will be resolved somehow and then I won't feel the need to be rightously indignant and move.

Right now I plan to make IJ my primary journal. I have the same user name on InsaneJournal and GreatestJournal. I'll probably just post links to my IJ and GJ here. It's going to be lonely over there for a while, but well, it was lonely over here, too at first.

Okay, I totally just vented at you and that isn't what I intended to do.

I think a writer's group would be phenomenal. I would totally be up for that. I don't talk about my OG fic much because this journal is mostly a fandom place and I haven't written much original work that I'd want to share. Anyway, if you do a writer's goup let me know cause I am TOTALLY in. :)

The long and the short of it is that I WILL be posting. I will be running around and commenting. I'm a little burned out and despondent right now, I think because racism and stupidity so make me want to pull out my hair and go live on a mountain in the back of nowhere.

There aren't a lot of people who make me want to send them silly packages so I can't imagine that we'll lose contact. You're one of my girls, yo!! And knowing me, if I get bored and lonely enough on IJ, I'll be right back here.

[lettered.livejournal.com]

a Peter Pan fic that features Wendy/Hook.

I think you mentioned that before--I'm so tickled!

We're splintering and there's no one direction that everyone is headed so I decided to make plans. I can always amend them if everyone ends up in one paritcular location.

Oh, okay, I get it. That's what I'm doing too. I really think that eventually fandom will find a new place, and I'll be there when that happens. If not I'm alright being a bit nomadic.

it was lonely over here, too at first.

Yeah, exactly. I dunno, I wandered in fandom 4-5 years before I found LJ. I was not *happy* during that time, because I rarely found anyone to talk to. I was just writing fanfic and *trying* to make connections, but things I wrote didn't get much notice and most of the connections I made were futile and weird and unsatisfying (bar maybe about 4 people who are AWESOME). Then I found LJ and was like a kid in a candy shop; I finally knew where it was at. But now that I'm leaving, I'm not too worried. If enough people move, we can have this kind of community elsewhere. If not--well, I still know where it's at :o)

I don't talk about my OG fic much because this journal is mostly a fandom place

I talk about wanting to do it, but yeah I don't talk about the actual writing that much. To me it's sort of private and not something I want to throw at a bunch of people until it's done and published. I'll talk more to you about the Writers Group Something once I figure out what the something is. Or if you have any ideas about it, feel free to brainstorm!

I'm a little burned out and despondent right now, I think because racism and stupidity so make me want to pull out my hair and go live on a mountain in the back of nowhere.

Totally understandable, and I feel a bit like that too. I just wasn't clear on whether you were ever coming back! Had a bit of a freak out. Although I'm answering comments and occasionally scrolling through the fl and everything, I'm kinda taking it easy a bit too. Er...which really means reading lots of Harry/Draco fanfic, but anyway, not actually participating in what currently seems so close to madness.

There aren't a lot of people who make me want to send them silly packages

Hee! I've loved them and really really want to send you one back! I'm just slow and lazy.

I'm glad you're taking a break, glad you'll be around in some form or another, and really really glad you're my friend. *mush*