Watching the butterflies flutter by

This one was an assignment for my Swedish 211 class, last term - we were each given a picture and half an hour in which to describe the picture - basically, a story about what's going on in the picture. My prof commented when she was handing them back that, "in true Swedish fashion, [we] all wrote about death."

I included the picture under the cut, and an English translation afterwards, for those of you who don't speak Swedish. (Personally, it sounds much better in Swedish, though.)

Words: 212 (in Swedish), 221 (English)

( En gammal man )

I actually wrote this back in October, for the MacTaggart Writing Award. I'm posting it now because I didn't win, not that I was really expecting to: I wasn't originally planning on entering, so I didn't actually start writing the story until a week before the deadline.

Word count: 2,973

( Sleeping )

This one was mostly influenced by Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun. It's a book I read a long time ago - I think I was twelve - and it kind of loged in my head; I wondered, "what if the main character had made a different choice?" Obviously the details are rather different and I certainly don't have the backstory to my character or the world they live in; I'm not sure the book's all that widely read, either. (Certainly I don't know anyone else who's read it.) Another, more minor influence was Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, which does show up in some of the details.

I'm not entirely sure that second person was the best tense for this story, but I'm really fond of it, which might be why I'm using. (And I do actually have that piece I was writing about why I like second person so much sitting on my hard drive; I still don't feel like it's done, but I may post it as is anyway. I'm not sure I'll ever feel as though that one's finished...)

I wrote this story/scene about a year and a half ago. I'm posting it here now for the same reason I posted this one.

Looking back on the original (flocked) post I'd made for this, one of my teachers said it had "piqued her interest." I may still do something more with it.

( Untitled )

I posted this short story in my personal journal awhile back, before Christmas, but because I'm wanting to link to it, I'm re-posting it here. (Besides, etincelleux is intended in part to be for my writing, I might as well. ;) )

This was written as a practice piece for the creative portion of the Alberta diploma exam, and is written in second person. It was written in the space of an hour, so please excuse the errors. XD (If you want to give me concrit, however, I welcome it!)

( Breaking the Lines )

Given that this journal is intended for public posts, meta, fic, whatever... I'll address the issue that cause the creation of this journal in the first place - the termination of Basic Accounts.

When I heard about that, it was about 7:00 PM March 12th. I decided to try and grab a Basic Account before the clock hit March 13th. Alas, I failed. For that matter, my profile says I registered at 1:33 AM March 13th. Why, you ask? Because I was unable to get to Step 2 of creating a journal, where (I'm assuming? It's been awhile since I last did this...) you enter your time zone. While it was still 7:30 PM here, I live in Alberta, where it's Mountain Time. (-7 or -6 GMT, depending on Daylight Savings Time.)

I don't think it helped that I spent a good half hour deliberating over the name. I don't like having underscores or numbers in my usernames, and all of the ideas I came up with were, unsurprisingly, taken. When I found out that etincelleux was available, I grabbed it, fingers crossed.

No such luck. I'm stuck with a Plus Account, as much as I hate that. Still, I like the name etincelleux and I figure, I might as well use it, not that I have it. Given that my personal journal is 100% F-Locked, I might as well have a public journal for my writing, for fandom, for rants, for meta, for whatever. I may even use it as a NaNo-ing journal this year!

Anyway...

For me, I think, it's not as much about removing the Basic Accounts (though I am by no means happy about it) as the fact that not only did they not announce it to us, they lied about it.

One thing SUP had going for them over SixApart was that they'd promised communication. They created the Advisory Board...and then either didn't consult them or ignored them entirely. It's as though they invited us to dinner, and slammed the door in our face when we showed up. (And I use "we" because this is a community and this affects all of us.)

As surprising as it may be, that is not the basis for communication. Communication involves informing people, in this case the users, talking to them, and communication involves listening. Listening is not replying to all the questions and comments made on a News post or something, it's actually thinking about what the individual brought up, and if it's a very good point, taking it to heart. There's a lot of wank in response to such posts from LJ, but there's also a lot of good questions and concerns brought up that deserve to be addressed with more than just pat answers.

We tell them outright what they're doing wrong, what we don't like, what (little?) we do like, but they willfully go about doing what they're originally planned as though nothing had been said. That's just not a good way to go about running a business. It simply isn't. A big part of running a business is a little something we like to call "customer service" - something that LJ seems to have forgotten entirely as of late. When your customer base is consistently unhappy about something, do take notice. Barring that, please visit a doctor and get checked for amnesia.

Part of this "customer service" thing I'm talking about involves telling us about major changes. I brought up the whole communication thing already: it's a good thing. It's important. Do it. All users, even those with Basic journals, are a potential paying customer base. You're not going to garner votes by making major changes in such an underhanded way. If you had announced this change openly in a News post, though we may have been unhappy about it, I expect many of us wouldn't be half as annoyed by it as we are.

Which brings us to...the real reason behind the ads: money. Something we all knew, despite the fact they told us it was to "streamline" the registration process. Well, if three options was really all that difficult (implying that we're all idiots who are unable to pick between "free", "free with ads" and "paid"), then make the default Plus, and give us the option to "downgrade" later, right?

At least they came out and told us the truth. This does not lessen the fact that they lied to us initially. We're smart enough people to know the real reason, and if you give us your reasoning behind the change (how about you back it up with numbers? How much is LJ losing from the Basic accounts, exactly?) we're far more likely to be understanding of the change. But still unhappy.

I, for one, don't want ads on my journal, on any of my journals. My private journal is a permanent account, so I won't have to deal with ads there. But this one, for example, is rife with them. Sure, I could pay for an account. If, you know, I had a credit card. And was allowed to use it online (I'm 17 and living at home. My parents are notoriously, and with reason, wary of online purchases.)

Nevertheless, I would have been more okay with the elimination of Basic accounts if LJ had been open about doing it. For a Russia-based comany (I believe? I can't quite remember), what happened to glasnost? The word itself means "openness" - I vote they take it to heart.

(More information and useful links can be found here.)

(PS: I'm also etincelleux over at LiveJournal as well.)