on busy times on the internets

It's that time of year in which people are very busy, so I just wanted to say in one place at one time my general social policy.

In short: I will not call you, I will not text you, I will not try to see you, I will not ping you on chat, I will not @tweet you, I will not expect you to reply to any comments I might make in your journal, and I will not expect you to contact me in any way. I never want to be seen as any kind of social burden, or as someone who obligates other people socially. If you feel that I have done that, please let me know, and of course I will reduce my contact with you further.

• I do not initiate emails unless they are brief, urgent questions. I will state the relative urgency of the question and the time frame during which I need an answer. Otherwise, I will not email you.
  
• I do not @tweet people as a general rule. I do not DM on twitter, but I will reply to DMs.
  
• If you would like to chat with me, please ping. I am never on invisible, and when I'm busy I say so, so if I'm online I'm generally amenable. I will not attempt to chat with you, even if you are online and your status is "available."
  
• I trust that people who do not want comments on their journal entries will set them to have no comments. However if you would rather that I not comment on your journal please let me know.
  
• As a general rule, I reply to the comments on my journal. However I do understand that journal comments are not obligations for conversation, and do not expect people to reply to my replies.
  
• Similarly, I do not expect people to reply to the comments that I make in their journal unless I've asked them a question. However even in that case of course it is up to you whether you wish to reply or not. I do reserve the right to not comment in the journals of people whose consistent nonreplies to comments implies, to me, that they are not interested in people commenting in their journal. I will not think less of you for this; I just probably won't comment in your journal.
  
• I'm not really on facebook, but anyone on facebook probably knows this. I try to keep up with the invitations, though.
  
• I do not initiate in-person meetups, because I understand that people are very busy and don't really have time for that sort of thing. I hope that when they do, if they would like to see me they will contact me.
  
• I do not call people, unless I have a very time sensitive question and I know they're home.
  
• I do not text people except to negotiate logistics.
  
• I try not to post on LJ/DW more than ten times per week, so as not to spam flists.
  
• If there is a similar way in which I can reduce my social burden on others on tumblr, please let me know. I don't see tumblr as creating a social burden, but anything I can do to lessen social burdens on tumblr, I will do.

As for me, well, spending two weeks nearly entirely offline and having no one notice or look for me or try to contact me does tend to put things into perspective; I think I'm just not the sort of person who is missed or needed in that way. I'm pretty sure that if I got busy again, and took more time off, I would be able to do so without anyone being any the wiser. I am, fortunately for me I reckon, neither so in-demand nor so important to anyone that I need to make the kinds of announcements that are so popular this week.

Anyway, please feel free to contact me in whatever manner you choose.

thirty days of fanfic, days thirteen and fourteen

( previous days )

13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

I don't really understand this question. We all start from canon in a way, and of course being in a fandom we pull from the ideas of the people around us, and there are often little asides and in jokes. So I guess I pull from both.

I don't really like being one of the first people writing about a pairing. It's happened on very rare occasions, HIMYM Robin/Barney being the most obvious example. But that was in the relatively safe and supported environment of Yuletide, where everyone is just happy to have a story, rather than having very rigid canon ideas of how something should go.

(Canon whores terrify me, basically. If I listen to them too much I will never write anything because I get worried that I will never be able to meet their canon standards. Though that's probably true for me about most other people's standards. Rigidity always makes me anxious.)


14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you're writing is G-rated instead?

Obviously I'm comfortable writing NC-17, and some of it is relatively kinky. (Especially the het, because I think het writers don't write a lot of kink, which I think is really too bad.) Sometimes I'm surprised that I only need to go up to a hard R to get the effect I want.

I was surprised this year to write my first truly gen fics, that didn't even reference a background or off-screen ship. But again, I don't really discover that much of the story as I'm writing it, because I roll it around in my head so much before I get started. By the time I'm writing I'm not going to do that much that will surprise me.