W00t! We're up and running!

Okay, so we have no furniture, my bookcase is ... *looks forlornly at the corner* not even halfway put together, I have books ALL OVER THE PLACE, our bedroom looks like Mount Clothesmore, but dammit all -- we have internet!!

I am, at the moment, taking a lunch break -- a little late for lunch, I know, but that's what happens when you push yourself until passing out feels like a good idea. Bleh. So I went down the street to Panera Bread and got a sandwich (mmmm... roast beef on asiago bread), and decided to fool around online for a bit.

The move is going better than I had thought it would. Of course, I tend to "worst-case scenario" things so I'm never truly disappointed. *grin* I'll be a lot happier when I get the bookcase together and can clean up some of the floorspace in here.

I've been driving G's mother's Jeep Grand Cherokee, carting things to and fro, and I've got to say -- I never thought I'd ever say this... My god, I love that frickin' thing. I am SO spoiled it's not even funny. I don't want to give it back at the end of the week! *wail* I know, I know -- gas guzzler, SUV's are evil, blah blah blah... but mygod, it's SO nice to drive!

I've been finding, with so much time spent driving around, that my mind has been wandering in the oddest directions lately. I burned a couple of CDs to listen to while I drive, and on one of them I have "Hanyou Inuyasha" and "Youkai Sesshoumaru" back to back, and I found that as I listened to them, a lot of the same instruments are used in both songs. They both seem to be very string-heavy, but Inuyasha's theme makes more use of brass instruments while Sesshoumaru's theme seems to make more use of wind instruments (I'm fairly sure that's an oboe on the beginning, and I'm nearly positive that an oboe is a wind instrument... or is it not because it has a reed? I can't remember). Anyway, it seemed kind of neat that while both songs are clearly different, the more you listen to them, the more similarities your ear (or, rather, my ear) will pick out.

Um, I did mention this was while I had thirty miles of highway in front of me, right?

Let's see... the drive has also given me a lot of time to meditate upon upcoming events in OGAM and the FB fic I'm working on with Evvie.

And, actually, that reminds me of something. Normally I wouldn't jump around like this, but, hey -- it's a journal, and I'm not the most linear of thinkers. (Besides, it's my journal and I'll be nonlinear if I wanna be.)

WTFF is up with people leaving these fricking RUDE "reviews" for authors, essentially trying to insult them into updating? I've seen more of my friends (has not happened to me yet, thank everything that's holy, unholy, and otherwise) get these incendiary reviews that basically scold them for not updating.

Um, hello? WTF? One person actually suggested that because an author chooses to start writing a story, he or she has taken on this load, and has a "responsibility" to finish the story, or let readers know if and when the story goes on hiatus.

Pardon me while my jaw drops.

In FACT, this person went on to compare writing fanfic to going to college and dropping out when you're only a few credits shy of graduating.

Again I say -- WTF?

The analogy this person is trying to posit is flawed on the most basic level. First of all, writing a FANFICTION story is NOTHING LIKE going to college. When you're done college, you have a nice shiny degree that you can use to woo employers into hiring you and giving you scads of cash. When you finish a fanfiction story, what do you have? A few reviews and possibly a couple of people telling you that you ended the story wrong.

Where do people get off suggesting that fan-authors are "obligated" to finish the stories they're writing? Obligated? Excuse me? I'm "obligated" to go to work, pay rent, pay my student loans, pay my credit card bills, and pay my utility bills. These are my "obligations." They do not INCLUDE writing chapters of any story I'm working on. I obligate MYSELF to work on my original stuff, but that's different. Writing fanfiction is a break. It's fun. It's a departure from the suckage that abounds in the real world where I pay rent, student loans, credit cards, et cetera. Obligations are not fun. And the second writing fanfiction ceases to be fun, I will stop.

I'm not ranting because this has happened to me, like I said before. But because it's happening to authors I know, and have befriended. And it pisses me off when the people I care about are insulted under the guise of a "review."

I have no real problem with people begging for chapters. I try not to beg for chapters, because to me it's rather like a whiny child in the backseat of a car saying "Are we there yet?" over and over again. I figure the author will get around to it in time. And, yeah, I wish people wouldn't beg for chapters in reviews, but that's only because I know that I get a little buzz of joy when I see that fanfiction.net bot in my inbox, and when I click on it and see: "PLEZ UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111" it's sort of a buzzkill. I mean, I don't email these people and leave "PLEZ REVIEW!!!!" messages, though I probably could.

But rudeness? There's no fucking excuse for rudeness. There's no excuse for someone to try and insult the author, hoping if he/she gets angry enough he/she will update.

You want an analogy -- I'll give you an analogy. --A better one than the whole "someone who drops out of college six credits from graduating" analogy.

These rude, spiteful, hateful "reviewers" are more more like an abusive spouse yelling, "Why do you make me hurt you?" Seriously! "If you'd just update, I wouldn't have to yell at you!"

Wow. I didn't know I had such a rant in me. Forgive the length -- I'm not at my home computer and am not sure how to insert a cut.