picked a handful of violets in my name

helens78

"PROMPT REQUESTS SWEET FRIENDSHIP OR G-RATED ROMANCE; FILL IS SET IN BDSM CLUB."

I get the whole "want one thing from a prompt, get something radically different" thing, and I understand that FYFF macros are frequently sarcastic or ironic. In this case, though, it's by no means the joke premise that I'm objecting to. It's the wording of the joke itself.

It's a joke, but it's one that, intentionally or no, highlights and reinforces a lot of stereotypes about BDSM -- none of them good. It's kink-shaming, and it's full of negative ideas I can't just let stand without saying something.

thingswithwings

I started writing some vidder's notes for that vid about manpain that I made, and they just got longer and longer, and more and more speculative and meta-y, and eventually I had to give up on making them notes and make them into their own separate post about manpain. So, for those who are interested in my opinion on manpain, here it is! For those who just want to watch the vid, I have neatly cordoned this meta off from the vid so that you don't have to care about it. It's almost unforgivably long, so do feel free to skip.

forthwritten

And so, when we were about 16 or 17, one of my friends discovered fanfiction in general and slash fiction in particular. In a way, we used it as a silent, secret rebellion, swapping these stories underground (no, really; our common room was in a basement). It fascinated me. Here were stories about people who presented as female one day and male the next, who loved people of their gender, who negotiated sex, who didn't have happily-ever-afters but who had to talk and argue and reconfigure their friendship. The screen did not coyly fade to black and the story often did not end with sex; instead, there were morning-afters and misunderstandings and confusion that had to be resolved. The people had agency and were active participants and, as the_shoshanna notes, sex did not fundamentally change them.

denise

dw_suggestions

So, you want to learn more about the dw_suggestions process! This entry will be made the "sticky entry" in the dw_suggestions community (replacing the existing one, which was starting to show its age) to serve as an introduction to the Suggestions process, Dreamwidth development, and just what the heck people should be keeping in mind while they're discussing things here.

dw_maintenance

We are therefore temporarily pausing the existing import jobs until the traffic clears up some and we are able to further modify the importer so that it is even less of a load on LJ. We are also temporarily stopping the ability to queue new imports, so that once we bring the import queue back up, it will give the queue the chance to clear a bit. (Also, we'd like to minimize the impact on LJ.)