Oct. 23rd, 2012

edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Some people do not know when to let a dead horse die. (Yes, I am apparently among that number. *wry*)

And a special message on behalf of some deeply concerned anonymice! I know you are aware that I never asked anyone to attack the members of Critics United, but apparently neither the lack of such a request or invitation nor the lack of such an attack (because I also know you have better uses for your time) is enough for some people to be certain that an attack was not somehow subliminally ordered. They fear it may be lurking in the metaphorical wings of the internet, waiting to descend like an avalanche upon the denizens of the Critics United forum. So let me be explicitly clear: please, everyone, DO NOT GO FEED THE TROLLS.

This is my Sisyphean argument, and I am perfectly capable of sending reasoned letters to ff.net as long as necessary. :-)

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To whom it may concern,

I would like to report yet another instance of attempted intimidation by a member of the forum group calling themselves Critics United (http://www.fanfiction.net/forum/Critics-United/78623/). They continue to insist that rule 5 of the allowed content guidelines, which says:

5. Any form of interactive entry: choose your adventure, second person/you based, Q&As, and etc.

applies to all stories written in second person, rather than to INTERACTIVE stories that happen to also use second person to directly address the reader as a character. My story, "Me, Myself, and Die" (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8616496/1/), is NOT interactive. Second person is used as a basic POV alternate to first or third person and the viewpoint character is a canon character, which is made abundantly clear both in the summary and the text of the story itself. Additionally, no reader input is solicited for future chapter content, because the story is complete as it stands.

Here is a copy of the review in question, and my response:

ExpandWishingDreamer5 review and response )

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This makes FOUR members of Critics United who have attempted to intimidate me into deleting my story and/or have reported me for breaking a rule that I did not break. That is a clear and persistent pattern of bullying and abusive behavior, which is not in keeping with the spirit of your website. The members of Critics United are not helping unleash writers' and readers' imaginations. Instead, they are attempting to stifle creativity.

I repeat my request that the wording of rule 5 be changed to clarify that second person is not forbidden altogether, but only when used in an interactive fashion. That should prevent future spurious abuse reports of this type. I further request that an administrator contact Critics United and tell them to stop their campaign of intimidation against writers in general, and the Homestuck fandom in particular.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth Culmer (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/461224/Elizabeth_Culmer)
Member since 2003
edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
I have two fannish names: Elizabeth Culmer and edenfalling.

Elizabeth Culmer is actually part of my legal name -- my two middle names -- and was what I automatically reached for as a pseudonym when I started writing fanfiction on FictionAlley in April 2002, since I'd been using it as a pen name for original fiction as far back as... I guess eleven or twelve years old? Anyway, when I was a kid I decided that I needed to become a famous writer in order to continue the Culmer family name and have children in order to continue the [redacted] family name, since Vicky and I were the last of two family lines at that point. (We have since acquired a Culmer cousin, so I figure that name is now his responsibility. I have also realized that I am asexual, so I figure the [redacted] family name is on Vicky's shoulders, not mine... unless I do become a famous writer under my first and last legal names, not my middle names. *grin*)

Edenfalling is something I grabbed more or less at random when I got a livejournal in November 2003. It is taken from Eden, a short, pretentious Harry Potter 15-minute fic I wrote and posted anonymously on a prompt journal, which was lucky enough to snag [livejournal.com profile] isiscolo's attention as part of her project to hand out invitation codes to members of fandom. (This was back when LJ still required invite codes.) It has nothing to do with any statement of religious affiliation -- if anything, it was a statement of my own depression at the time I created my journal -- though I realize in retrospect it can easily come off that way. :-/

So if you ask my name, I am much more likely to tell you Elizabeth Culmer than to tell you edenfalling, because the former is my name, whereas the latter is just a journal name. Except! People tend to get identified by their journal names online, so over the years edenfalling has effectively become a second name, and I have gradually become acclimated to that shift in identification. I even finally merged the two on AO3, where my user name is edenfalling but the only pseudonym I ever use is Elizabeth Culmer, so I always appear as "Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)". (That was not by choice, incidentally -- it was a side effect of AO3 not allowing spaces in user names -- but these days I like the way it officially links my two fannish names.)

The thing is, because I started out thinking of myself as Elizabeth Culmer and not as edenfalling, the nickname I use online is Liz. Not Eden. It's not technically wrong to think that Eden might be a reasonable nickname, and I can certainly understand that people using that nickname are talking to me, but it's not a name I have ever voluntarily used. And it does annoy me (to a greater or lesser degree depending on the person and the context) when other people call me Eden -- you see, it projects a casual familiarity rather than the moderate formality of Elizabeth Culmer and edenfalling, while simultaneously demonstrating that the person using that nickname is not actually familiar with me at all, because if they were they'd call me Liz.

...

In summary, names are weird. Then again, they are one of the signifiers most closely bound up with who we are, so it's not surprising that people can get touchy about nuances in how they are addressed.

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edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Elizabeth Culmer

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