Title: With Permission
Authors: unstealthy and msilverstar
Pairing: Dom/Rachel Weisz
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Consensual non-con roleplay
Disclaimer: This is not true, we made it up.
Summary: Rachel pays a flying visit to Dom in LA and fulfils an unfulfilled fantasy.
Notes For all fics in this universe in chronological order, please see the Push-Pull-Push Master List.

With Permission

Title: The Good Ones More Than Once
Authors: msilverstar and unstealthy
Pairing: Billy/Dom, Elijah
Rating: NC-17, warning for some S&M
Disclaimer: Completely untrue, absolute fiction.
Summary: In New Zealand, kinky sex is new and exciting, but it sometimes leaks out into the rest of their lives.
Notes For all fics in this universe in chronological order, please see the Push-Pull-Push Master List.

"The Good Ones More Than Once"

(first posted at monaboyd_month)

I'm trimming deleted journals and inactive communities and stuff like that. I'd like to get my friendslist down to below 500 so I can see it in a text list again. If I accidently get you and you wonder why, it's because I'm a dork and hit the wrong button. Please comment here and let me know.

TORN has it from Variety and also from stuff.co.nz (which has an interesting picture of Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson)

...in that "it's a selfish grasping onanistic power play disguised as utopian openness and universal freedom." (by almostnever, used with permission)

( Anyone who thinks that male assumptions of privilege and sexual objectification don't exist any more, and female safe spaces are not necessary... )

(cut because I got all ranty and used italics and bold)

And HAH: apparently he is a Heinlein fan.

ETA: when I told my husband about this, he was literally speechless for a while. He's one of the aware & respectful guys, and has helped socialize some of the geeks in his gaming circles, giving them Stern Talks about bad behavior and disrespectful comments and worse. It was kind of fun to watch him open his mouth, shake his head and look pained, as I talked. Because really, what is there to say besides WTF?

About a hundred more from my del.icio.us/msilverstar recs list.

( Gorgeous LOTR RPS fic )

( LOTRIPS series I recommend  )

( A couple of good LOTR RPS archives )

I have no idea why I didn't post them before. Anyway here they are, and you can always find more at del.icio.us/msilverstar

( a whole lot of good fic, from last year and earlier )

( LOTRIPS archives and fic lists )

Apparently InsaneJournal's problem had something to do with databases and server machines and the hosting service. Arghhhhh.

Squeaky is updating frequently at http://twitter.com/insanejournal

mirabile_dictu is who I want to be when I grow up. She's been through it all and come out the other side with grace and happiness. Beautiful inside and out, and a wonderful writer, her stories sing to me long after I read them. Happy birthday dear heart, may the good times roll!

I'm trimming my "friends" list, removing mostly dead communities and journals. If I got you by accident, and you want to read my personal whines entries, please let me know.

feelforfaith and I are planning to start lotrips_remix signups later this month after the Slashy Oscars nominations are closed.

( Yet more fandom stuff )

Happy (late) Birthday to sophrosyne31, who still stops in to post, sometimes angry, sometimes content, always wonderful. I am SO glad we got to meet that time, even if it was raining!

And early to yueni: I hope your China plans work out and you find things more exciting and satisfying there! Please let us know how it goes, good or bad, ok?

I don't know exactly when Dani's (juke_box_dive) birthday is, but it's coming soon. You are one of my favorite writers in fandom, able to weave details into an amazing tapestry of words. You write with such empathy, bringing me in to every emotion and sensation as I read. You are also a pinkly fabulous person! Happy birthday!

So. My hard drive was dead, deceased, no longer of this world. Possibly backing up my Mail folder sent the drive controller over the edge, argh. This is the kind of dead from which gobs of money does not restore ones data, so I chose not to spend gobs of money. At least the apple tech guy installed the replacement, which is 30 GB bigger than my old one. Anyway: Incremental backups are your friend.

And now I'm embarking on a voyage of discovery, and learning, just what did I back up and when? I did get my Firefox preferences as of early February, and I think I have most of my email, but XJournal seems to have lost track of me and yikes, it's going to be a pain to even figure out what I'm missing :-(

Note to self and Mac-using friends: do not forget to back up the Library folder, as it has really useful stuff like preferences and keychains, as well as the aforementioned Mail folder.

Please, everyone, back up early and often!

I slipped on a magazine and wrenched my leg, the one that was broken. Still kinda hurts and I'm being very careful today, mostly sitting.

Worse, I came out this morning and found my laptop screen all black and the fan running loudly. After I powered down and up again, the poor thing couldn't start, it just clicked a lot and showed me a blinking folder with a question mark on it. I looked up the symptoms tried everything I could, but it may be a disk failure or disk head failure. But I bought AppleCare on it and I have an appt. tomorrow at the local store "genius" bar.

The worst part was that I was doing an overnight backup.

Anyway, I have access to other computers, but I won't be on nearly as much until the MacBook is fixed. *hugs to all*

I don't think people not posting for 24 hours will do any actual damage to LiveJournal. It's a symbolic gesture of solidarity.

You may think it's a silly gesture, not the one you'd come up with. That's how it goes. It's going to happen, a lot of us will be doing it, numbers count. I invite you to stand with us, even if it's silly.

We know it has their attention because that Nossik guy said so. I read his defense and it's clearer than the original article, but still. He knows only his part of LiveJournal. Fandom seems to be far away from his experience. All the people who own the system need to learn that we (I'm a fan, fanfic writer and reader, slasher, female, American: you are all some of those things too) are not like them. They can't assume that we'll want the same things as they do so they have to pay a lot more attention to lots of different groups. 6A clearly never learned that, I hope SUP can do better.

My part in this strike has nothing to do with religion or ethnic heritage, as my family is Russian Jewish on both sides and I could well be related to them. *waves to the ancestral homeland*

See you on the other side -- InsaneJournal, JournalFen, or back here, approximately 24 hours from now.

PS I got clearance to walk again! Slowly, and not much, and it hurts a bit, but hey! I can climb stairs and leave the house!

The head of SUP (LJ's new Russian overlords), Anton Nosik, just does not understand a huge chunk of the LJ user base. He knows it would solve the problem if new accounts could step down to Basic status, but he won't do it because... he thinks: In a situation where people are trying to scare and blackmail us, threatening to destroy our business, there are business reasons for not rewarding such behaviour." WHAT A DUMBSHIT.

The correct response is, "Oops, we didn't think this through, we'll change it back and try a different process next time, to avoid mistakes like this."

(Also, he means extortion instead of blackmail unless someone has some real dirt on him.)darkrosetiger has the whole thing translated properly

And this is what is driving him crazy:

ONE DAY CONTENT STRIKE

For one day [Friday, March 21, midnight GMT to midnight], make no posts. Make no comments. Let there be NO new content added to LJ.

This will create a permanent downward spike in the daily-posts statistics, a permanent reminder of the power of the userbase. From the original boycott post.

Some of us might activate old accounts and do it there too. And there are, of course, icons and banners! And if you're not sure what your local time is compared to GMT, check right here.

On Friday, come see me over at Insane Journal -- I think my layout doesn't have any weird smily faces and Adblock takes care of the rest of it. And consider migrating to InsaneJournal yourself.

I've read a hell of a lot of LOTR RPS, and I've never seen one which used the exact words of the original, without author credit

But the evidence of extensive copying and pasting of text from "Jane Eyre" into the published version of namarie120's story "A Hidden Passage" is compelling. I admire caras_galadhon for bringing out into the open.

My problem with this the situation is that the author accepted the praise, awards, and publication as though she deserved credit. If she'd said something about how great a writer Charlotte Brontë was, and explained that a huge part of the story was lifted from the original, that would have been appropriate attribution. Accepting those compliments was more than just a lie, and accepting the award it wronged the writers who wrote every word of their fic.

( the original fanfic Disclaimer and the published Author's Note )

an anon said: i was betrayed by someone i trusted. i was made to feel a fool for lavishing praise on someone who claimed someone else's work..

That makes me very sad. I don't want namarie120 to delete her journal and run away. What I'd like to have seen, and to see now, would be an acknowledgment that large parts of the story were not hers, an apology for misleading people, and for her to return the Slashy Oscar award so it can be given to the runner up.

What should we do next time, if we see something in a fic that's way too familiar? I don't really know, but in this case, emailing to her clearly did not work, because several people tried that. Perhaps friends in a group could approach the author and encourage her or him to come clean. And, as a final step, posting to a journal or to a community might be necessary. Because it's a moral and ethical error to plagiarize, and the faster we get it over with, the better. Anyone with other thoughts or useful experience, please tell me, I want to know!

More useful posts on this topic by caras_galadhon (the original post), slashfairy's meditation on it, telesilla's lively discussion, and jasmineskie's comment.

To end on an up note (via ruuger), a fabulous pastiche with a very distinctive and un-Brontë voice: JAYNE EYRE! (Link found in Fandom_Wank)

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, (attributed to Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein and lots of other people). Is the insane one LJ continuing to screw up, or us continuing to give them money?

LJ staff posted a fauxpology today. It said nearly nothing, and was not exactly reassuring. Is good that they've noticed we're upset. But getting the "right tone when communicating" is not nearly as important as NOT DOING STUPID STUFF. (Kudos to j_crew_guy for the term "fauxpology". )

Joke's on us, they posted at 8pm (Pacific Daylight Time) -- and no staff has even tried to answer comments.

stewardess has summarized LiveJournal's greatest customer service disasters, going back to April 2005, in Nostalgia: 6A/SUP's Greatest Fuck-Ups.

So far, the no_lj_ads community has found three LJ Advisory Board members who say they were not formally asked for advice, and when the topic of killing Basic accounts was mentioned in passing, they said it was a dumb idea. They are: Brad Fitzpatrick, Esther Dyson and danah boyd,

Here's the best (or at least the snarkiest) response yet to the killing off of Basic account creation, (found via princessofg ).

More tomorrow, including my thinky thoughts about the LJ business model.

Crossposted to msilverstar.insanejournal.com, as always.

As of NOW: Basic Account is an option available to accounts which were created before March 12, 2008. No account created after this date can be turned into a Basic Account. Basic Accounts will not have any advertising displayed on their accounts, but will have fewer benefits and features.

The official statement is buried at: FAQ #38 Did they announce this in news? lj_2008? lj_releases? Nooooo they did not. This was discovered by the folks at no_lj_ads!

And "Jason Shellen, VP of Product Development for LiveJournal" says it was to make the registration process "easier for new users to understand" To which I say, Apparently they think their users are STUPID. The new ones for needing it "easier" and the old ones for taking that crap.

ETA: No one asked Brad. And he's on the LJ Advisory Board -- that was the whole point of the advisory board!

Gacked from all over, I'm very curious to see what people ask. Lurkers too!

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other.

Source: Australian blogger TigTog (who is a big LOTR fan)

The Colour of Magic / Light Fantastic tv movies are premiering out this week -- the event is on Monday March 3rd 2008 at the Curzon Cinema Mayfair. The producers are encouraging anyone who would like to come along and wave and cheer before the first screening [6:30 pm] - costumes are, of couse, most welcome. This is the one where Sean Astin plays Twoflower.

I'm slowly updating my recs on del.icio.us/msilverstar (as a feed: msil_fanfic_rec), mostly LOTRIPS and a few Torchwoods and other fandoms. ( very hot cross-dressing Billy/Dom rec )

And birthdays! Hopes for a fabulous year to bunniewabbit, airgiodslv, rosiespark, rosamundeb, and v_angelique!!! *Sings various embarrassing birthday songs*

PS I am still stuck on chair or wheelchair, so rather bored. Talk to me, people! Lurkers, come out and say hi!

According to trianne, Billy was on the Channel 4 Richard and Judy show this morning (Feb 26). This was on their site this morning (but it's gone now):

‘Empty’ is a new six-part sitcom starring Rab C Nesbitt and Love Actually star Gregor Fisher and Billy Boyd of The Lord of the Rings fame. Fisher and Boyd play workmates Jacky and Tony, who clear and maintain houses in Glasgow for a property contractor. They join Richard & Judy to talk about the comedy.

Anyone record it? Or can you get it from their site? I've asked my source, but no luck yet, so please reply if you can upload.

ETA: the BBB has it.

For those of you who haven't seen them yet, there are giant high-res pictures in the fantastic sparklies.org Oscar gallery.



PS. yeah, I'm spamming, cos I'm bored. But I'm trying to keep my posts short at least.

I just got an AIM message with a scary content from flakz18:

your private friends-only posts have been stolen: http:// msilvrstar.on.nimp.org/?u=r4l

But a quick web search shows clearly it's a malware site that hijacks JavaScript to do bad things to your browser. If you get something like this, block the sender and close the window!

At the Oscars last night, Viggo says hi to Cate and admires her pregnant belly



Then Viggo has an idea and it involves the San Lorenzo flag...



Note: I do not know the exact order in which things occurred. But the last picture is not a manip, I swear!