LJ community standards will feature input from the community.

Between the individual apologies and that statement, I'm nearly satisfied that LJ/6A isn't going to ruin the service. After all, they're totally fucked if they do something stupid to a vulnerable population again and they seem to fear the wrath of the fen enough to keep sufficient free speech for my standards.

I really hope that they clear up the "interests" kerfluffle so that, say, listing "Abu Ghraib" does not mean to them that I say, "Hey, that was great what happened at Abu Ghraib, let's do it again!" but rather that I like to study and/or talk about it.

Even without that, I'll be completely satisfied with the disaster recovery if they offer refunds to paid users who were subscribed before this happened; I may not take one now, but giving people the option to get out of prepay if they're now committed to not using LJ would be both nice to the users and a great PR move. And I might actually give them money again at some point, if my total LJ usage adds up to something worth what they're asking for one account's paid time plus whatever frills I decide to get.

And I know it's been Paris overload so I'll keep it brief, but I'm totally happy to see her go back to jail. Driving sober without a license isn't a hideous crime against mankind and she is indeed being treated more harshly because she's a celebrity. However, it's blindingly obvious that she has never had to deal with the OMFGTRAUMA of real life before and the enablers surrounding her are never going to make her do it.

How annoying - the only "support" available is the community-run type. I has a question, and I don't know if LJ-abuse would answer it since it's not an actual case of abuse.

The ToS lists 18 as the minimum age for nude or arousing photographs. However, it says nothing about illustrations or text. I assume illustrations are also 18, as US Federal law prohibits the sale of pornographic images or games depicting characters under 18.

Text, on the other hand? The Bible, and Romeo and Juliet (I hope I'm not crossing into bahleetion territory by using these particular examples), both have underage sex, and as famously noted, Jesus was the son of an unwed teenage mother. And then there's the L-book by Mr. N., but I hear a comm for that's been bahleeted already.

Robin/Amon: Legal in Japan, Canada, and Michigan, if they were real people, but not in Virginia - she's under 18 and there's more than a two year age difference. (Ah, Virginia's elaborate age of consent laws...I honestly find them more sensible than Michigan's.) "Legal" as a fic on LJ? I'd like to know.

You probably know what I'm talking about. Enough said.

I may not play in any LJ RP, but I still think it's pretty fucked up if some of the stories about non-pedophilia-related RP/fanfic being deleted are true.

Coincidentally, I was already thinking about cutting this account down to work-and-school updates and taking all of my fannish and crafting stuff over to my "real" blog. (URL will be provided privately if you don't have it, and want it. Those of you who know my personal domain name, just add /blogger to that and you're set.) This will also hopefully cut down on the amount of mindless squee that I write. Anything I don't want to release publicly, I'll probably put in a password-protected directory; I'll deal with that when the time comes. I at least have that great a command of the interwebtubes.

I will still check in here to read, as well. I just wanted to make it clear that my decision to mostly-GTFO is partly based on the drama, and partly not.

My broke little Scrapper just sold some rare salvage for over 1.2 mil. She's...not broke anymore. XD

Also, the set bonuses available to her are made of not just win and awesome, but also cake. Focused Smite's 4-set gives 1.5% XP debt protection. Squee!

GFM tells me that Stupefy is also good, but I knew that already. Anything by Disturbed is good.

I can't wait to see what I can get for Stalkers. With some of the additional status protection I'm seeing here, I might be able to make up for the fact that MA/Ninj's main status protection is (1) a click that drops stealth, and (2) Retsu. Not that Retsu isn't made of win, awesome, pie, love, sex, and a bunch of other things.

My back feels like someone sawed through my spine in two places, rotated each of the resulting three segments in a random and different direction, and then...well, there's no "and then." That's it. T.T

I will be taking a long soak before I bother with the website or the SG recruitment fair. This makes me sad.

Evidently, Bliz did a boob job on female characters recently?

What I want to know is, did they also give the succubus a breast reduction? She needed it, and I always hated the reskin they did. The original succubus was sexier, and more proportionate. (Of course, I'm a woman and have seen a number of healthy, naked women who have not undergone plastic surgery. My guess is that someone in Blizzard's modeling department has neither of those criteria. Maybe he should go to a few strip clubs with the Cryptic Assmaster.)

The others... *shrug* The female dwarves can use a nice big chest to go with their physique, but rarely do you see a female dwarf. The draenei females...well, it's not their front I'm looking at.

Not that it matters to me anyway. I'm just amused.

Oh, the other thing I should have predicted from the GLBT Prom thread, but didn't: WoW bashing. It's not like I was the only GLBT person who saw what Bliz did there.

The Rikti War memorial? Sappy. But it's nice to see characters from more than one religion represented in the emotes going on independently...including a Buddhist that GFM and I haven't met before. Dharma power!

I was going to post a set of links, but Gmail is not cooperating. So, all I have is the first one. u.u;

Starcraft sequel announced, Koreans rejoice. No, seriously, most of the article is about how excited the Koreans are.

Vibration defense: the secondary all the ladies want to feel - uh, I mean see! (New primaries? Meh. I still want cultists primary for MM, but Tankers have leeeeess primaries, so apparently this makes it more impooooortant. /Bloo)

Victory (one of my secondary servers) hosts a GLBT prom and it is revealed that "gay" is bleeped out by the forum censors. A mod replies by saying that the banlist is under review. But, while NC/Cryptic may be on board the GLBT love train (and zomg do I hope Ghost Widow is there), not all players are...I predict wank.

Got more to do in LJ-land, but I'll save it for tomorrow/Thursday.

Yay for triggering off of something that shouldn't even be triggery...and likely doesn't even have to do with malicious intent, either.

I still say you* didn't win, though. If you won, then Israel won when they bombed Lebanon.

If anyone's still watching, feel free to chuckle at the mental image of me as Syria. I'm chuckling too.



* Targeted you, not generic you, but quite sure it's not anyone related to the post I'm triggering over, just in case anyone connects the dots and worries about that possibility.

Sing and rejoice, for I have finally gotten a spare key!

Should have realized that Home Depot would probably have a key machine, and I can get there quite easily from home. I don't even have to go out on a main road.

They also have...well, various hardware bits that are good for crafting, including jumbo spools of copper wire in a usable gauge (I forget which) for a really good price. I have a feeling I'll be going there more often.

Oh, and the Zipfizz man at Costco made me happy too. He said they'd exchange my citruses for pink lemonade or berry if I bring them in while there's a sample man around. So I'm going to have to start carrying my spares when I go, because I don't drink it often enough to warrant buying a new box. And it will make him happy too, because most Michigan people prefer citrusy tastes because they crave the vitamin C. I guess I don't feel a need for more vitamin C in my life.

He also said something about how, considering I'm not a big citrus fan and I'm aiming for low sugar, I should eat beets and it will reduce my sugar cravings. I don't remember the exact details of this beet-eating scheme, but I suppose I could try it and see if I like them.

The title says it all.

( RP gripes )

The Cape's gotten better since the last time I listened, but their newest DJ needs some help. Her name's DJ Angel and I've consistently disliked nearly every song she's played tonight...then she played The Kinslayer, and I thought there was hope. Until it ended. Her commentary:

*ominous voice* "Good wombs have borne bad sons." *ahh* "I love Marko."

I weep at the thought that she loves Marko, but beyond that...Kinslayer is pre-Century Child. That's not Marko. learn2fangirl.

It's okay, though. I have my own music for now, and we're guaranteed techno and industrial in less than 10 minutes.

And Shoggoth Army has been recreated. We will be full of much win and lulz, no matter how many or few people join.

ETA: Oh, and she's in Global Threat... @.@

I knew I loved the Freakshow for some reason. I just wish, for this one night, Captain Bishie could be a villain.

(Explanation for those who can't see the pic: There's a techno/industrial party going on tonight; every villain on the server is invited to go clear this place out and dance. The dress code for the party is, simply, "your best leatherwear.")

Mayhem Mission >>> Safeguard Mission

Even if you're just running down the street kicking over parking meters while the others blow everything else to bits. Maybe especially then.

Made a new friend tonight, too. I hope he's around a lot; I have to delevel pretty far to hang with him, and I was running around without Stamina, but it was so much fun I didn't really mind.

There's the thing: I felt deprived on WoW because you don't get your speed increase until 40, but on CoX you don't get Health until 12-ish (I forget the exact level) and Stamina until 20, and you're just a wriggling little ball of fail without both of them. Well, unless you're a /Regen Scrapper, in which case you suck and I hate you. And levels are longer in CoX, so it feels like an eternity to get to 20. @.@

My very first killstealing report on CoX... *snif*

GFM and I rolled new characters on a friend's server, and some shithead Blaster was following us all around the tutorial zone sniping the mobs for the badge there.

Fortunately, splitting up meant at least one of us was getting defeat credit, but it still pissed me off. You have to get 100 of them for the badge. That's enough without possibly failing to get credit for some of them.

NC responded promptly as usual and they actually share XP between all parties who damage the mob, so they generally don't consider it killstealing if someone of roughly the same level follows you around and whacks on your targets.

I don't know if defeat credit is also shared, and I wasn't really counting...but if that ever happens again, I will be noting that it was on open-air-only badge mobs. T.T (The only other Infected available for heroes to wail on is a single spawn in Recluse's Victory, a PvP zone. Bet you it's camped to high heaven by both sides.) But that's kinda nice how they did that...yet another incentive to help people instead of being an antisocial shithead.

I still love you best, Cryptic, even if your code is pretty sad in other ways.

ETA: GFM got a more detailed response...

( crunchy detail and lulz )

The LotR devs got called out on bungling some dialogue with Gandalf. I am amused.

And I have to say I'm glad people like this are in the game community. It gives me hope.

Just finished Caverns of Transcendence. Now I realize why we haven't been running it until we get sick.

The other two unlockables so far are fairly awesome. This one...let's just say it lives up to the fact that you have to unlock it in the Hollows.

I still plan to offer to TP newbie friends around the Hollows so they can do all of the missions and unlock it, though. The Hollows is good for you. Puts hair on your chest. Reminds you to get a travel power as early as you fucking can.

VirtueUnited was amusing for a brief while. We got some nub who was bitching about one of the quirks of the code, and then complaining that he couldn't override the disabling of non-supported features. What he didn't explain until questioned was that he was running under WINE, and that erroneously labeled his drivers as not being up to date. He really had a bug up his ass about the software believing WINE and all that, and didn't like VU's suggested fix of, "Well, don't do that then."

I, uh, don't imagine he could go talk to the WINE community either, since WINE is the app that's causing the error, or maybe even look into the problem himself since he seems to know what the devs should have done... I just hope he never needs to work with any government contractors who write code unless I get to sell tickets for it, because I've heard some stories, let me tell you.

My most highly recommended possible fix, though, is to go play Warcraft. He's already mastered talking in the wrong channel. /help, nub.

phpBB is now on version 3. T.T I just installed a mod for the Ravens, and had to debug it after I evidently fat-fingered part of the code edit. I hate you, phpBB. I hate you for making me work.

On another note, setting a board so that all accounts require verification is all right, I suppose, except that by default it sends an e-mail to all admins. And despite demoting myselfto user, it still things I'm its fwiend. Of course, blocking the e-mail address works too.

GFM asked me to look into changing the color for each category of forums on the Ravens' board, because we've now got a mad insane number of games that are going to run their communications through there. (Main campaign, two spinoffs, two supergroups.) Annoyingly, phpBB doesn't make this easy. One of my bitchy "why don't you just give me even more work, huh?" solutions from the original, very poorly communicated on both sides conversation actually turns out to be more feasible. But I'm still too asleep to really process what it's saying, so that will have to be later.

And I've discovered the styles database, so I'm now going to drool over it for a while instead of doing anything productive.

I think I'm going to like the new game economy. The prices are mostly reasonable, though epics are mad expensive as you'd expect, and I'm guessing the very limited storage space will encourage people to sell so the supply will remain high and the prices low.

Double blind auctions are totally better than the buyout-dominated economy of WoW, too. The CoX AH is a lot like the FFXI one, but with a nicer UI. (Of course, dissing the FFXI UI, especially on PC, is kind of like beating Stephen Hawking in a foot race. It totally doesn't prove anything, and doesn't subtract from your opponent's positive attributes.)

And so far, at least, it's more affordable to get IO Enhancements than it used to be to get DO's and SO's. And they're better, even the common ones.

Plus, Enh's that do more than one thing and sometimes give set bonuses are exciting. This is funner than running an instance twenty times to get your set armor drop, any day.

ETA: Oh, and I should add that IO's are sellable to other players, meaning it's possible to profit off of skilling or off of making something you didn't realize you couldn't slot. It's cheaper to buy premade than to make it yourself, generally, but making them gives badges. Thus spawning the most amusing line in VirtueUnited tonight: "Remember, your equipment was made by the lowest bidder."

Try saying that on most other games.

1. If you were a nocturnal animal, what nocturnal animal would you be?

A cat: picky, moody, demanding, and fond of teh gooshyfudz.

Oh, and all too many people seem to think I'm cute even though I have fucking annoying habits.

2. Which is better: to obey the law to avoid punishment, to obey the law because the law makes sense, or to obey the law because everyone should?

Because it makes sense. Assuming, of course, it isn't a known logical fallacy, because that would just be silly.

3. Who is your favorite all time movie villian?

*headdesk* I have to pick between Jareth and Roy Batty? The pain!

4. Are any kind of ethics involved in wearing a hat?

That depends on what kind of hat it is and why you're wearing it. Who are you to say that the meat yarmulke is not offensive?

5. When is the best time for you to take a 20 minute nap? Why?

At the start of my 7 hour sleep. Otherwise, it doesn't work so well.