I sometimes get stuck in this rut where something happens that feels too huge for me to write about it, but then posting about other random stuff without acknowledging the huge thing also seems wrong, so then I just stop posting and I get very lonely. It's crazy! And it can happen just as easily for good things (last year's Houston moot, after which I didn't post for two weeks) as for bad (Fanlib, journal suspensions omg). So anyway.

Well, it is nice to see pornish_pixies back without the strike through their name. The fandom and fiction journals that were suspended are being brought back. I love that pornish_pixies replaced all their interests with "the internet's for porn" and are hosting a smutfest to celebrate their triumphant return. And I love that almost every time I refresh the profile at fandom_counts, a few more fans have signed up. I love fandom!


I used to say I loved LJ too. And I'll still say it in the sense of loving my LJ friends and the community we have here. I also still love it as a mode of communication and a place to read and write fic. I came to fandom pretty recently and all my fannish activity has happened here, so I never get nostalgic for the days of zines or Yahoo groups or even archives. Until this week I was fairly happy having my fics archived here (with backups on my hard drive) and nowhere else. One of the reasons that I've always preferred LJ to the other popular places for posting hobbit fic is that my journal is my turf, so I can post whatever I want without worrying about whether the site maintainer approves of slash or NC-17 fic or MPREG or songfic (because I ♥ my songfics, I really do!).

This is also one of the reasons I haven't ever considered locking my fics on LJ. (Er, except for a few particular fics, but that's all about my insecurities as a writer, heh.) I could be wrong, but I believe Berkowitz's apology was sincere and that their suspending fiction journals was a (huge, stupid, and easily preventable) mistake, and I never felt like the content of my relatively tame journal was in danger. But if LiveJournal/Six Apart as a company ever were to go after erotic fiction intentionally, well then, fuck them, I'd leave rather leave than lock down any of the fic I have here.

I sure would hate to do that! I'm already dreading having to decide, come August, whether to renew my paid account. I'm angry at the company and don't want to give them any more of my money, despite the apologies. I don't trust them anymore. (But damn it! I would miss my userpics and my polls. Hell, I already miss my little interests!)

I'm very hopeful about the fanarchive project and want to support and use it once it gets off the ground, but I'm wondering if I should be putting my fics somewhere else in the meantime. Not that I expect anything to happen to this journal, just that it's nice to have a backup, and I know some people prefer to read on archives.

Also, I can't get the ljArchive thing to work to save my journal on my own computer. I can download the program fine, but when I try to run it it says that it won't work because my computer doesn't have the .NET framework. And I'm supposed to be able to get that from Windows Updates or find the link from the ljArchive site, and it's probably something really obvious but I can't find it and I feel dumb. :( Help? Um, got the NET thing (thanks, b_briarwood) but it still isn't working to archive the journal. Eh. Will try again tomorrow.