nenena | Recent Entries

First!

gin_kyo have created a gorgeous-looking Kid/Liz anthology doujinshi featuring three short stories and contributing artwork from

aiwatan,

chiikaboom, and armoured-armadillo. You can find ordering information and all that jazz here.

Second!

terajik is going to be hosting Heroes Arrive Last, a fest for characters with (*ahem*) navigational impairments (i.e. those characters we all know and love who have no sense of direction whatsoever and/or get lost all the freakin' time) coming up on February 7th. The fest isn't just for fic either. As explained in the announcement post:

Original and fannish work is welcome; it'll be open for prompts, but party guests don't have to use them. All types of work, from graphics to podfic to FSTs to filk to meta (I'm very ambivalent about something I'm reading right now!) are welcome, too. ETA: Also, recs! Favorite bits of canon!

You can find more information here.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/354158.html

Because I apparently stan hard for cartoon ponies, I guess.

In the wake of last week's My Little Pony episode I've seen a lot of people on LJ, DW, and Tumblr bemoaning how Season 2 has gone downhill, is catering too much to Bronies, sucks compared to Season 1, and how the show just isn't the same without Lauren Faust at the creative helm. There's also been not a few people quitting the show altogether. Now, "The Last Roundup" was an undeniable stinker of an episode - not just for its squeamish depiction of "Derpy Hooves" but for being a boring episode all around - and I absolutely can't fault anybody for having their I am DONE with this show! moment, because hey, sometimes when you're done with a show, you're done with a show.

But I would like to point out that Season 1 had its share of stinker episodes, too. And has the show really changed all THAT much since Season 1? Other than the Derpy scene I can't find any evidence of outright pandering to Bronies - at least not any more so than the previous background pony shoutouts from Season 1 - and heck, the episode "Babycakes" even mocked the overinvested Brony fanbase at one point.

So, in a kinda-sorta defense of the idea that Season 2 actually hasn't been going downhill so far (with "The Last Roundup" acting as an admitted gigantic asterisk to that notion), here are five episodes from Season 2 that I absolutely love:

Episode 3, "Lesson Zero"
Hands-down the funniest episode of the season, possibly of the show overall, and one that presents an unusually complex moral to boot. Yes, Twilight Sparkle was clearly wrong for losing her perspective and blowing the horror of being late with one of her letters all out of proportion. But the real moral of the episode was that, when you have a friend freaking out about something utterly trivial, it's important to listen to them sympathetically and help them with their problem, NOT laugh at them for freaking out about something trivial. That's a pretty complex moral to have in a show for little girls, and it's a beautiful example of how MLP refuses to talk down to its audience. And yeah, in addition to the moral of the story, like I said, this is possibly the goddamn funniest episode of the show so far, from the depiction of Twilight's slow descent into madness to all of the bizarre comic touches like Big Mac running off with Smartypants at the end. Definitely one of the best episodes of the season.

Episode 4, "Lunar Eclipsed"
Even if it weren't for Luna's return to the show and the awesomely hilarious storyline involving her awkward attempts to fit in with Ponyville ponies, this episode would still rank among my favorites if only for the fact that it brilliantly displays how gorgeous and detailed the animation for this show is, on every possible level. The backgrounds! The costumes! The colors! The lighting effects! All of that and: PIPSQUEAK THE PIRATE. Best. Baby. Pony. Ever.

Episode 7, "May the Best Pet Win"
There's something deeply satisfying about watching Rainbow Dash actually learning a lesson, something that happens far too rarely in the series altogether. There's something equally as satisfying about watching the turtle that nobody thought could do anything finally proving himself to have actually been the best pet all along. It's a classic underdog story and I have to admit I am a complete sucker for a good underdog story. Plus this episode had a great musical duet by Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. Tank the Turtle's story is epic and so is this episode.

Episode 10, "Secret of My Excess"
Every single moment of Rarity's final confrontation against Spike was not only hilarious but sweetly touching as well. Rarity is hands-down my favorite pony, and although she's gotten a few great episodes completely focused on her this season, this episode - which is much more about Spike than Rarity - is the episode that actually provides my favorite "Rarity moment" of the season so far.

Episode 12, "Family Appreciation Day"
Loved loved loved everything about this episode. The bond between Granny Smith and Apple Bloom, the Cutie Mark Crusaders starring in a story that wasn't about their Cutie Marks, the bizarre magical apples, the epic story of how as a filly Granny Smith saved her family from starvation and freakin' FOUNDED PONYVILLE while relying on her smarts and courage alone, the fact that the show finally remembered that Twist and Apple Bloom are still friends, and all of the comical moments actually being quite funny. A perfect episode.

...So those are my highly-biased picks for the best episodes of Season 2 so far, episodes which I would also present as evidence that Season 2 isn't actually going downhill and/or significantly changed from the tone and style of Season 1. Of course not every episode in Season 2 has been great, or even good - but then again, not all of the episodes in Season 1 were either. I also can't deny that the pacing of the episodes this season has been pretty bad (two Rainbow Dash episodes back-to-back? Three Rarity episodes bunched together in the first half of the season? Really?!), nor can I deny that I completely understand why "The Last Roundup" was the last straw for a lot of viewers. But as for me, I'm going to keep watching, and keep hoping that the second half of Season 2 will provide a few episodes as great as some of the episodes that we got in the first half of the season.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/353749.html

Quoted from ladiesmakingcomics:

I’m sorry, I have to do this, because it seems like everywhere I turn people are going “Did you hear the Supreme Court took some stuff out of the public domain and put it back under copyright??? CORPORATIONS WILL SOON OWN ALL OF CULTURE ARGLEBARGLE!!”

That is not what has happened.

The Supreme Court has interpreted an international copyright treaty to enforce copyright on foreign works that are still under copyright in their own countries, but that were in the public domain in the U.S. only due to the U.S.’s own jumbled copyright history.

Is there a risk of U.S. works being taken out of the public domain? Yes, but only by an act of Congress—which is not very likely. I know everyone is worried about SOPA and PIPA and ACTA and think that every aspect of free expression is under attack, but unlike Internet law, copyright law has about 225 years of precedent in the U.S. and even further back in English law from which the American legal system descends. The only direct effect I can see this case having on any American works is probably going to be Margaret Mitchell’s estate running to Australia to get Gone With the Wind put back under copyright there.

Here’s the thing— those media conglomerates that poured millions into SOPA/PIPA/ACTA? They have little interest in touching the current public domain. All those Sherlock Holmes movies and TV shows, all those Jane Austen adaptations, all those high school comedies based on Shakespeare that they make means that they benefit from the public domain as much as anyone.

So, stay vigilant about future copyright legislation, but the Supreme Court made a good decision in this case.

TL;DR version: Stop freaking out about Golan v. Holder. Take action to stop ACTA instead.

And asdfghjkl;asdfghjkl; the misleading reporting about Golan v. Holder from major news outlets that should know better has been driving me up the wall.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/353508.html

The internet presents: Star Wars Uncut: The Director's Cut.

I'm just going to let 4thletter explain what's going on here:

The idea is that several hundred groups had been tasked to recreate Star Wars: A New Hope… 15 seconds each. Each party is assigned a specific 15 seconds and has to remake the scene however they see fit. Then all of it is stitched together to form a completely bizarre and hilarious interpretation of the full movie.

You’ll go from seeing someone’s kids dressed up as Stormtroopers to trippy animation to special effects and acting out of Be Kind Rewind to claymation to silent film to puppets to someone talking upside down with eyes drawn on their chin. There’s plenty of gold in there, such as Lady Gaga Darth Vader, C3PO getting way too sexual, a basket of ferrets reenacting the garbage scene, an Anti-Monitor action figure playing the role of R2D2 and my new favorite impression of Chewbacca. Sometimes the footage will go into completely different universes, like turning into a Disney movie, World War II dogfights, a western, The Seventh Seal, Tron, Yellow Submarine and even at one point The Big Lewbowski.

Yes, at one point, Chewbacca is played by a dog.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/353218.html

It's rare that Friendship is Magic actually has a bad episode, but when it does (i.e. Season 1's "Bridle Gossip," "Feeling Pinkie Keen," and "Over a Barrel") they are spectacularly bad. So much so that Lauren Faust actually apologized for "Feeling Pinkie Keen" (although she and Jayson Thiessen are still holding their grounds on "Bridle Gossip" and "Over a Barrel" because oops we really borked the moral of a faith-vs.-science story is probably a lot easier to admit than oops we made an episode that was kind of racist but whatever).

And yesterday we had Season 2's first failtacularly bad episode, "The Last Roundup." How bad was it?

1. "Derpy." Others have already written at length about how uncomfortable and cringe-worthy her first official speaking scene in the show was, and I have nothing more to add in that respect. But I would like to quote

the_sun_is_up from the comments of her own post on the matter FOR GREAT TRUTH: "The fandom portrayal of Ditzy-Doo ranges from okay to iffy to gross, but the canon portrayal just went straight over to the 'gross' side of things. When there are 4chan bros who are more sensitive and classy than you, that's how you know you've failed as a writer."

2. This is getting a lot less attention than "Derpy" but it still warrants mentioning in my book: In the episode Pinkie Pie claims to have invented chimicherrychangas, and the fandom seems happy to credit the show for introducing this culinary delight to the universe. Um, NO. Sorry, fandom, but a quick Google search for "cherry chimichanga recipe" yields over 113,000 results.

Has the majority of this fandom actually not heard of cherry chimichangas before?! Are they ALL ~~sheltered neckbeards who never leave the confines of their parents' basements~~ people who have never eaten at Mexican restaurants before?

Also, Equestria Daily managed to spell "chimichanga" wrong. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised that most of these people seem to have never heard of cherry chimichangas before.

The only recipe that My Little Pony CAN claim to have actually invented is the potato chip muffin recipe from Season 1, and even then not entirely. Potato chip muffins have been around since before My Little Pony. The only thing novel that the show introduced to the recipe was adding worms to the batter. And that is not perhaps a culinary contribution for which we should be thanking the show.

I hate being so negative about colorful cartoon ponies, so I will end this post by saying that last-last week's episode, "Family Appreciation Day," completely won my heart and (in my opinion, at least) is one of the best damn episodes of the entire series so far. So here's hoping that next week My Little Pony will be back on its streak of wintacular episodes. Because episodes full of awesome and win are just par for the course for this series anyway.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/353019.html

STUDENT A: Oh my God I want to see that movie so bad because finally a black guy gets powers and doesn't die!
STUDENT B: How do you know he doesn't die?
STUDENT A: 'Cause there's more than one and they can't all die!

------ Seventh graders discussing Chronicle.

I think it's very telling that kids that young will pick up on race-based Hollywood tropes while some adult creators and critics still continue to DENY DENY DENY that they exist. Kids do notice these things, especially this generation of media-savvy consumers.

(Having seen the trailer for Chronicle, though, I'm not sure if it's right to assume that the black guy isn't going to die. And there does appear to be only one of him, so I dunno exactly what the kids were talking about...? But we'll see.)

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/352684.html

I am not participating in the "internet blackout" to protest SOPA today because, Jesus tapdancing skateboarding Christ on a cracker, of all the ineffective protests ever conceived in the history of armchair internet activism, this has got to be the least effective of all. (ETA: I mean ineffective in the sense that the I'm not going to post to Tumblr or Facebook today because I'M PROTESTING! "blackout" is ineffective. The major websites like Wikipedia turning black and redirecting visitors to information that helps them contact their legislators? WAY more effective! But most of Tumblr and most of my Facebook contacts seem to have interpreted "blackout" to mean let's not use the internet today, which, uh, NO. Not an effective protest!)

I do, however, count myself among those who realize that SOPA is a horrifically dangerous and poorly-written law, and it SHOULD be killed with fire. Why?

This article by Chris Heald explains exactly why SOPA is a bad law, breaking down the actual text of the proposed law point-by-point and explaining how that would impact internet usage in the real world. Meanwhile, PIPA, the evil twin of SOPA created by the Senate, is so poorly-written that six of the Senators who originally sponsored the bill have asked majority leader Harry Reid to CANCEL the upcoming January 24th vote, due to concerns that the bill as it currently stands is, well, a poorly-written and dangerous mess.

What can you do if you ACTUALLY want to take action to stop SOPA/PIPA?

Contact your Representative and Senator. By phone, as that's the best and most direct way to persuade them.

The Reddit article linked above gives a pretty good idea of what you need to do and how to go about doing it, but just to repeat some key points:

1. Read up on SOPA/PIPA before you make your phone call. Have a couple of talking points ready.
2. Be calm and be polite. You are going to be more persuasive if you sound like an informed citizen than an angry internet nerd.
3. You are probably going to be talking to an aide instead of your actual Representative/Senator. That's okay. It's the aide's job to take phone calls like this and relay voters' opinions to their bosses. Your call won't be ignored. Trust me.
4. Don't be surprised if the person that you talk to has never heard of SOPA/PIPA or has no idea what the heck any of this is about. That's exactly why these phone calls are so important!

I called my Rep last night, talked to an aide, and it went pretty well. From my time in AmeriCorps I can definitely say that direct phone-call-to-lawmakers action is always the best way to seriously get shit done.

Please please please take a moment to make a phone call. It shouldn't take more than three to five minutes of your day. Your internet will thank you later.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/352281.html

1. Free official Adventure Time books available for download or online reading at Scribd! "Wit and Wisdom in the Land of Ooo: Great Quotations from Adventure Time" and this enormous collection of episode storyboard books are free to anybody who wants them.

2. It's award season in Japan! So the nominations for the Japan Academy Prize's "Animated Film of the Year" were officially listed yesterday, and to nobody's surprise both the K-ON! movie and From Up On Poppy Hill made the list. Also nominated were a gorgeous Osamu Tezuka adaptation, this year's Detective Conan film, and a CGI film that is, no joke, actually titled "Tofu Boy." Also, The Manga Taisho Awards have also posted this year's nominations. I Am A Hero got nominated for the second time. Not sure how I feel about that.

3. Kate Fitzsimons is hilarious and her tongue-in-cheek comparisons of recent Sherlock Holmes TV, movie, and comic adaptations is a must-read.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/352042.html

So there may, someday in the future, be a Tiger and Bunny musical.

Dear universe: PLEASE LET THIS HAPPEN.

Also, Masayuki Ozaki is *surprised* that Tiger and Bunny gained more of a female fanbase - specifically, more of a middle-aged female fanbase - than it did an otaku male fanbase.

Okay, so, let's run down this premise again: A middle-aged single father with superpowers participates in a reality show about superheroes and ends up being partnered with a much younger prettyboy angstbucket superhero who doesn't trust his new partner at all and they have to power through all sorts of BUDDY-COP DRAMEDY TROPES in order to strengthen their friend/partnership that takes exactly half of one episode to start being overtly colored with homosexual overtones.

And Ozaki is surprised that this series gained a much larger female fanbase than it did a male fanbase.

As for why older women were watching the show? Well, that's fairly obvious. Japanese television is always suffering from a dearth of non-teenage protagonists - yes, even if you count live-action dramas, which for the past few years have been overwhelming focused on high school or college student characters - and Tiger and Bunny is the first anime series in a loooooong time to have a middle-aged father as its handsome, quirky, charming protagonist.

Again, the fact that this character led a series that gained popularity amongst an older female demographic really shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. Unless you're Masayuki Ozaki, I guess.

I guess I really should stop making fun of him for this, and to be fair, Ozaki did say that he intended for older working people and non-otaku to be watching the show, it was just the gender makeup of the resulting fanbase that surprised him. But still, Christ on a cracker, does the man live under a rock?!

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/351943.html

Not! is on hiatus this month.

And this month's chapter of Soul Eater is very, very silly.

You know, there are times when Soul Eater is deliberately funny, and there are times when it's just plain unintentionally hilarious. This chapter is definitely an example of the latter. This whole chapter. This whole fucking chapter.

Here, let me spoil everything above the cut: Stein's eyeballs turn into bunny ears, Spirit makes a sword pun, Spirit tells another man to "use his body," clowns explode, Justin makes a French Revolution pun, Ohkubo makes an electricity pun, Sid misses an opportunity for a booger pun, Kaguya makes a bamboo pun, Kaguya makes a Buddhist bamboo pun, Kaguya makes another bamboo pun, a gigantic tower-monster fights a gigantic clown-monster, there are some Arabian Nights puns that are too obscure for even my Google-fu to dig up a explanation for, Waffles is openly turned on by ALL OF THE YELLING, and throughout this entire mess not one character - not ONE character - makes a single penis joke.

Where the hell is Black Star when we need him?

Also I am not kidding about any of the preceding paragraph, that is a 100% completely accurate summary of the entire chapter, minus a few unimportant details.

But hey, if you still want to read the detailed version of this recap, then here we go.

( From Stein's point of view, everything is sparkles. )

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/351516.html

Prio is selling doujinshi from her website again and the Soul Carnival color anthology is currently up for grabs.

Soul Carnival, by the way, is just a really neat freakin' book in the way that it's put together. The selling point is, of course, that it's 20 pages of color illustrations by 16 different Soul Eater artists (including this gorgeous illustration by Prio herself and an amazing Maka/Kid/Star pic by Tepopomura), but it also comes wrapped in a "cover" that's actually a paper bag decorated with Blair on the outside and 16 circle-cut illustrations from each of the anthology artists on the inside. Also there are Halloween-y type tassles affixed to each cover, and my copy came with an extra boobalicious Tsubaki pamphlet tucked inside.

Here's a picture of what the book looks like inside and out (and please to be ignoring the stuffed monkey as she is only there to hold open the book pages for y'all to see):

I know that a few of you reading this are doujin collectors and I would definitely recommend this book based on the fact that a) it's a pretty unique item put together in a unique way and b) it has TWO - yes, TWO - gorgeous pics from Tepopomura in it, and her work is always so freakin' hard to find especially since she has no web presence. Okay so one of the two Tepopomura pics is actually her circle-cut illustration on the inside cover of the book's outer wrapper, but even still it's a completely adorable drawing of the Troika in Halloween costumes so it's an automatic win in my book.

If you live outside of Japan you will need to use a proxy service to order from Prio's website, and you will probably want to order more than one book to justify the cost of the service fees. I HIGHLY recommend the other two Soul Eater Boy/Girl anthologies available on her website, both of which are huge (each 76 pages respectively) and surprisingly high-quality throughout. The original Soul Carnival anthology of black-and-white drawings, as well as a beautiful Black Star/Tsubaki book (Viola Mandshurica) are also available, but I don't know for how much longer.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/350934.html

Dallas teen missing since 2010 was mistakenly deported.

From the article:

There are still many unanswered questions about how an African-American girl who speaks no Spanish is mistaken for a foreign national. Immigration officials are investigating and released a statement late Tuesday.

They shipped her off to Colombia. She was forced to work as a servant in somebody's house and later held in a Colombian detention facility while the US government flailed around uselessly.

Since the publication of the linked article, the girl HAS been re-united with her family, so this story at least has a happy ending.

But Jesus F. Christ, ICE. Makes you wonder how many other times this might have happened before.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/350289.html

Subaru, or Volkswagon?

Actually, Subaru has had a string of really clever, funny ad campaigns for the past couple years. And Volkswagon ads never disappoint. (Does anybody remember the "stinky chair" ad from the 90s? The one with the "da da da" song? Yeah. I still do.)

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/350106.html

So, Makoto Shinkai. I used to not be a fan.

My first encounter with Shinkai was Voice of a Distant Star, which was based on a thought-provoking and utterly haunting premise (the length of time it takes to send and receive messages across the vast distances of space) but executed in the most anime-cliche-riddled, ridiculous way possible (cute teen girl in a cute school uniform fighting space aliens in a giant mecha and hallucinating the shit out of all of her emotional revelations really Shinkai?!?!). Then there was The Place Promised in Our Early Days, which was unbelievably stupid on almost every possible level - the characterizations sucked, the characters acted like plot-puppets instead of real people, the science-fiction elements were so stupid and poorly thought-out so as to be almost insulting the intelligence of the audience, and the dénouement of the film was anti-climatic yet at the same time utterly ridiculous. Yet for some reason this was the film that seemed to give everybody and their dog a massive throbbing boner for Shinkai and he was being praised left and right as "the next Miyazaki."

Well, I will say that Early Days was a very, very pretty film to look at. Gorgeously animated and just dripping with beauty from every frame. But the story and the characters and the sci-fi elements were just. so. bad.

I was so disappointed by The Place Promised in Our Early Days that I admit I decided not to waste my time on 5 Centimeters per Second.

But a lot of people whose taste I admire were gushing about Shinkai's latest film, Children Who Chase Lost Voices Deep Below, and the film was specifically recced to me as a film that was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE any of Shinkai's previous films. Well heck, I didn't like Shinkai's previous films, so as far as I'm concerned, "this movie is absolutely nothing like anything Shinkai has made before" is a good enough reason for me to try it.

And wow, you guys. This film. I have a lot of feelings about this film. ( More behind cut. )

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/349766.html

So I'm sitting at a gate at the Atlanta airport, waiting for my flight home, when all of a sudden my phone is like "HEY YOUR GATE JUST CHANGED" and I'm like "WTF Orbitz app, you are obviously mistaken, I'm sitting right in front of the gate monitor and it clearly says that this is still my correct flight number and destination" but the phone is all like "NO YOU ARE WRONG YOUR GATE IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE AIRPORT NOW TRUST ME FOR I AM SMARTPHONE AND I KNOW THESE THINGS."

And I hear at least two other phones buzzing, and a few other people at the gate are starting to look around like they're really confused.

So ten minutes pass, and there's no change on the gate monitor, no change on the big arrivals/departures monitor down the hall, and the TVs all around the gate area are still flashing reminders that Flight XX departing for City YY is about to depart from Gate ZZ in fifteen minutes. That's still my flight and I'm still sitting at Gate ZZ.

But my damn phone is still all like "HOLY SHIT WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOUR GATE IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS GIGANTIC AIRPORT AND IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR ASS MOVING RIGHT NOW YOU ARE GOING TO MISS YOUR FLIGHT GODDAMMIT ARRRRGH WHY ARE HUMANS SO FUCKING STUPID!?!?"

Eventually I see a girl on the other side of the gate walk up to the flight attendant behind the customer service counter, point to her phone, and ask the attendant a question that I can't hear. The attendant laughs and waves her hands dismissively. I couldn't hear a word that they said, but I can guess the contents of their exchange well enough.

A moment later, the flight attendant announces that we're about to start boarding Flight XX departing for City YY. Phone, you are still wrong. I think it's time to shut you off now.

Smartphones, y'all. Not always as smart as we'd like them to be.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/349667.html

So, the Louvre actually commissioned a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure spinoff graphic novel.

The Louvre commissioned a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure spinoff.

The Louvre commissioned a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure spinoff.

The Louvre commissioned a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure spinoff.

The Louvre commissioned a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure spinoff.

This is a real thing that actually happened.

Dat cover.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/349384.html

2012年賀状 by シマダット on pixiv. Click through for full view.

Have a safe and happy Year of the Dragon!

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/349042.html

Shamelessly copy and pasting from

rydra_wong:

Open account creation at Dreamwidth is currently scheduled to close at the end of 2011.

After that, free account creation will go back to requiring an invite code. There are always lots of invite codes at dw_codesharing; just check the codes available tag.

If you buy any amount of paid time (I believe the minimum is $3?), you don't need an invite code, and your account will lapse back to being a free account once the time runs out.

rydra_wong also has a fairly comprehensive guide to getting started on Dreamwidth.

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/348596.html

PSA: from now on I will be doing all of my journaling over at nenena.dreamwidth.org. I will still be crossposting to LJ, but comments will only be enabled on DW entries. Yes, you can comment on my DW entries with you LJ login, OpenID, or anonymously.

Why are comments only enabled on DW entries?
For one practical purpose: Backup. LJ's ongoing database fuckups - still not fixed since August - have made it impossible to use third-party clients like LJArchive to make a backup of my journal and comments. But LJArchive works just fine for making a backup copy of my DW journal and comments. I like to be able to make regular backups of my journal and comments. Therefore comments will only be enabled on DW entries so that I can continue to make regular backups of my journal and comments.

And now for some annoying DW evangelizing.
I normally hate it when people do this, but here goes: 1) I am doing more and more of my journaling from my phone and iPad. LJ's new release has made it impossible to comment from my phone and damn difficult to read comments from my phone, too. The staff has made it abundantly clear that they do not give a shit whether their site works on mobile devices or not. DW works beautifully on my phone, for reading, posting, and commenting. Therefore DW now works better for me. 2) I would much rather give my money to a company that is concerned about the accessibility of their services than a company who would push through a release that makes it impossible for screen readers to browse the website and then make it doubly clear that they do not give a shit about losing those customers.

So, those are my reasons, and that's what's happening around here.

Please pardon the mess on the Dreamwidth layout (for the time being!)
I'm still in the process of fixing broken YouTube and Devart embeds, tweaking the new layout CSS, and generally fixing the few things that were borked by the import. Sorry if things look a bit messy for now, but all of the above should be fixed soon!

Crossposts: http://nenena.livejournal.com/348296.html

Without making an official announcement, LJ has begun quietly deleting comments left by deleted journals on other posts/communities. That means that if you have comments on YOUR journal or community posts from years ago, that you still value, that happen to be left by users who have since deleted their journals: back up your shit NOW.

Or switch to an S2 style, if you have the ability to do so, since S2 styles seem to be (for now) avoiding the comment deletion apocalypse.

For now, the only working method of backing up your LJ entries and comments that I'm aware of is to 1) import your entire journal to DW and then 2) use the LJarchive tool to backup your DW journal and comments.

Because the LJ database break (still not fixed for five months now!) makes LJarchive impossible to use with actual LJ accounts, but apparently it works just fine for DW. Well, there you go.

DW is still doing the open account creation thing right now, so even if just for backup purposes y'all might want to jump on that.

If anybody knows of any other better method of backing up a LJ account and comments, please let me know!

ETA: New DW layout, hope it's not too fugly. It works pretty well on both my PC and my phone, though, so there's that.

Paper Moon

The Dreamwidth version.

Recent Entries

Two most excellent fannish things.

Responding to the "Friendship is Magic Season 2 sucks" crowd

What the US Supreme Court decision ACTUALLY means for "public domain" works.

These two hours = BEST TWO HOURS.

When My Little Pony fails, it fails hard.

Overheard in class today.

How to ACTUALLY take action to stop SOPA/PIPA.

Linkspam of Interest.

Oh brave new world with such musicals in it.

Soul Eater Chapter 94: Creation science, bamboo, and you.

Attn: Soul Eater doujin fans (or anybody who likes unique doujin products in general)

Fucking I.C.E.

Best Car Commercials 2011.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Shinkai (a rambly Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo review)

Welcome to the 21st Century

For the_sun_is_up

Happy New Year!

Last chance for free open account creation at Dreamwidth.

Moving in to Dreamwidth

And a merry fucking Christmas to you too, livejournal!