Something Just Like This

I really didn't want to post about this, but since this newest forest fire does affect me, I'll comment.

I'm sure by now most of you have hard about Warriors for Innocence and their attack on LJ predators. I won't go into the details because liz_marcs explains it very well here, with follow-up here.

Last night all of my Heroes fic comms threw up mod posts asking the members to flock their posts containing incest or underage sex. I was fully expecting that after having read liz_marcs's post during the day. These kinds of things have a way of traveling far and wide and inciting panic.

From what I have been able to glean from reading the various posts - and this is just reading, I'm doing any of my own investigating - LJ is suspending communities/journals that have "hot words" in their user info/profiles. I don't believe that they are looking at the content of actual posts. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

ETA: athenewolfe has done some research on this too and posted about it here.

I do not have, and never have had, any inflammatory words in my user info interests, not anywhere in my profile itself. I spell out the pairings (Willow/Giles, Spike/Angel – not Spangel, Peter/Claire – although I do have Paire) and even when my interests expanded to include slash, pairecest, and petrellicest, I never added those words to my profile page. I also do not mention the ratings of the fics that I write in my profile, although all fics are clearly rated in their posts.

As I've stated before, I do not condone RL incest. I just like reading and writing about fictional characters having incestuous relationships. And just in this one fandom.

So while I have complied with all mod-requested requests and flocked my posts that contain incest and/or underage sex, I will not be flocking my fic at my LJ. Fic and fandom related things are just about the only things not flocked on my journal. I do not friend back everyone who friends me because sometimes it's just for icons and sometimes just for fic. When people do not comment to my posts, I have no idea why they're there. I do not want to have to friend them back in case they are there for the fic.

Am I being naïve? Quite possibly. Should I be joining the mass hysteria and locking down everything that may be slightly offensive? I'd have to lock it all, and keep it locked. Almost all of my fanfic involves a younger woman/older man – Claire/Peter, Willow/Giles, Willow/Spike, Willow/Angel, heck, even Lindsey is older than Willow, although not by as many years. Two of those relationships aren't even with humans.

I joined Live Journal to communicate with my friends and share mutual interests. This wonderful community is being destroyed and compartmentalized and it is not the same open and welcoming place that it was when I got this journal almost three years ago.


I thought about locking this post, but that seemed hypocritical, so it's public.

As promised, I have updated my User Info page. Check it out. I'd love to hear what you think. Also, if there's anything you think should still be covered, I'm open to suggestions.

I just got home from work and logged back into everything. I go to my flist to see what's been posted since this morning and the layout is all wrong. It was fine at work. I looked at my Customized Journal settings and it was on "3 Columns" instead of "Flexible Squares". Very strange.

I have a question for those of you with archives. How many of you have LJ communities to go with the website? Do you find it used frequently by members?

Given how popular LJ is in our fandom, I've been debating creating an LJ Community to go with Hairy Eyeball, in addition to the Yahoo Group that I automatically set up. I figure it would act in the same manner that the Yahoo Group does: people can post their stories there with the understanding that they'll be archived at the site, post challenges, graphics, etc.

Or for the rest of you non-archivists, which do you prefer to post to: Yahoo Group or LJ Community?

Comments? Suggestions? Yay? Nay?