This journal is no longer being updated. This is in response to livejournal's censorship and bad business practices. If you are interested, I talk more about it in this entry.

All my old entries are still here under f-lock, and I am still using this journal to read other people's entries and to post in communities, so keep me friended! (And if you are a new person and want to friend me, go for it!) However, my own journal is now located at inksome, a fandom-friendly lj alterative, here. I have syndicated the feed for lj, so you can subscribe by following this link. You can also follow the RSS feed, which is at http://www.inksome.com/users/belmanoir/data/rss.

Inksome is still in beta-testing, so you can't yet sign up for an account there. I will let you all know as soon as it is open for account creation and I hope some of you will follow me, because the site rocks! (If you want more info about inksome, you can follow tsfkas.) However, I very rarely make f-locked entries so you don't need to worry about missing anything. If you want to comment on my entries, you can either comment on the syndicated posts (which I track, so I WILL respond) or you can comment anonymously or using openID at the original post.

(The one drawback to the syndicated feed is that lj-cuts do not work in rss feeds, so some of my entries may kind of fuck up your f-lists for which I apologize---I will be careful about spoilers! And as soon as community creation is open I will set up icon and fic comms for myself, so that you don't get pic- or porn-spammed. In the meantime bear with me.)

I'm also belmanoir at journalfen, greatestjournal, and insanejournal, although I don't really use those much.

If you're looking for my fanfiction, it is all up at my website!!

http://blackmothfic.twonth.com

This information will be updated when it changes.

This is just to let you all know that I've done a f-list cut. I don't use filters and my f-list was kind of raging out of control, so while I like everyone I've cut, I just didn't have time to read everyone's posts anymore. Maybe we haven't interacted much for a while or we're no longer in the same fandoms.

Anyway. Feel free to defriend back or stay, whatever.

(And while I'm breaking my own rule, let me remind y'all that, while I'm still reading my f-list religiously, I'm no longer posting here. My scribblit journal is syndicated on lj here if you want to read it.)

Happy holidays, everyone!

I know there are some new folks on my f-list who I may have forgotten to mention this to, so I just wanted to remind everyone that I am not updating here anymore, even though I still use this journal for reading and posting to communities---I'm posting on scribblit now, here:

http://www.scribblit.com/users/belmanoir/

If you want to, you can follow that journal using this syndicated lj feed:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/belmanoir31/profile

And now the exciting part---I am offering drabbles and icons for y'all here, since I was too lame to do cards on time this year. So come on over and comment! The more the merrier.

I now have a JournalFen account!! I'm belmanoir there too.

I've also backed up my journal here on greatestjournal. I've f-locked everything in this journal except the posts about strikethrough and moving. I apologize if links to entries no longer work; if you're not on my f-list and you're looking for something specific and can't find it in my gj, go ahead and comment on this entry and if I can I'll try to find it for you. In addition, I'll be re-posting all my fic at scribblit as soon as the site is done beta-testing. I know this is a pain, but I want it to be clear I'm not using this journal anymore.

Also, if you want any icons I've made, go to blackmothicons and download them now, because all those images are hosted on ScrapBook, so when my paid account runs out they will be GONE. I'll probably delete the community at that point.

ETA: If you're on JF, please let me know so I can friend you there!
ETA2: If you're NOT on JF but would like to be, you can request an account here on leavin_eljay! That's where I got mine, and it was super fast. Thanks so much!

So. When I got home from work, I saw that my flist on lj and scribblit were both in an uproar about some new post on lj_biz. I ignored most of the posts, figuring that it was just more of the same---that some lj person had said something stupid about fandom, that they had offered some new vague and unhelpful explanation of something or other. Instead, I eventually discovered that they had posted changes to the Terms of Service, including:

* How do these policies apply to images of minors who are not real?

To ensure that we are compliant with child pornography laws, we have decided to treat any content which contains a graphic visual depiction of a minor (anyone under the age of 18, as defined by Federal and California state law) engaged in sexually explicit conduct as a violation of our policy regarding illegal content[...]In short, we want to eliminate child porn from being hosted on LiveJournal.

In short, fanart is banned! Fandoms affected: Hogwarts-era Harry Potter, obviously. Any pre-season 5 Smallville art. Any Bob/young!Harry art. Pre-season 4 Buffy art. And those are just the ones I'm in, that occurred to me off the top of my head.

It is ridiculous that they are pretending this is "illegal content." This content is not illegal! This is content their advertisers don't want, that's all. If you read carefully, they even say they will ban this stuff "even if the content itself is not illegal and may be protected by the First Amendment."

They've already announced they won't be banning pro-ana comms or comms devoted to fundamentalist Christian parenting techniques that include the physical abuse of babies starting from when they come home from the hospital. You know what? I don't really think they should bann those comms. I believe in the First Amendment. What makes me furious is that...well, as always, bookshop says it best in this post:

If that alone doesn't outrage you, then take a look at this thread, in which a livejournal spokesperson says that it will not ban pro-anorexia communities because they, simply by existing, do not explicitly "incite harm."

The implication is that a pro-ana community, by its very nature, DOES NOT incite harm to teenagers, but that Ponderosa's depiction of an older Harry having consensual and by all accounts very gratifying, extremely intimate sex with Snape, does incite harm.

Just think about that for a moment. Think about what kind of horrifically backwards message that is sending to kids and adults alike: that livejournal tacitly approves of communities which enable people to alter their bodies and encourage a grotesquely damaging and harmful self-image; but endowing fictional characters with alternate sexualities and allowing them to express that sexuality without shame is "morally repulsive" to Livejournal, and explicitly "not wanted."

I'm just glad they started with Strikethrough '07 BEFORE the permanent account sale, or I would have bought one. I will never post on livejournal again, except to update my flist as to where I'm moving to. I still plan to use my account to read my friendslist (if anyone's even left on lj after this mess) and comment, but that's it. I'm beta-testing scribblit and loving it (please, lj ppl, please subscribe to the syndicated feed of this blog here, I don't want to lose touch with you!). I've applied for a JournalFen account. I'm following fandom_flies.

Fuck you, livejournal.

so, lj continues to be assholes to fandom...they've now banned several users for posting fanart featuring underage characters. i'm leaving lj...not right away, but as soon as i've figured out where to go. hopefully, i will be going to twocorpses's new by-fans-for-fans blogging site (which uses lj code), www.scribblit.com!!!

scribblit is in the beta-ing stages, and i am a beta! so, so y'all can keep reading my journal even though i'm not posting here anymore, and also to test the rss feeds, i've set up a syndicated feed for my journal at scribblit:

http://www.livejournal.com/friends/add.bml?user=belmanoir31

and check out my cute layout and mood theme and everything at http://www.scribblit.com/users/test31!!

please let me know if you notice anything wrong with the syndicated posts (weird formatting, broken links, etc)! (also, i will try to check comments on the syndicated posts, but i may forget...i'm not ignoring you! another option is to post anonymously

(don't worry, i plan to keep reading all your journals even if i move. i will probably syndicate them for the new site, or keep a journal here just for reading. i love you all and i plan to keep in touch!)

if anyone else is thinking about moving, check out fandom_flies and twocorpses!