(no subject)

[cleolinda]

Whoa, what happened to hogwartshouses and hh_express? All I've heard is a terse "We're working on it"--I hope no one pulled any shenanigans.

ETA: Well, they're back now. About 30 seconds after I posted this, the comms were undeleted. Or something.

Comments

[etherealshores.livejournal.com]

Lots of changes are going on,I understand.I barely pay attention,though.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

See--literally, 30 seconds ago they came back. Both communities had been deleted and their comm names were struck through.

[etherealshores.livejournal.com]

That's really odd.

[rosiegalbasi.livejournal.com]

Post up now. x.x

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I finally read up on all that when I got back from the hospital today. I'm so sorry y'all are having to go through all this.

[rosiegalbasi.livejournal.com]

Thanks. ^^ Hospital obviously more important.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, it was just a couple hours of tests. I wasn't on my deathbed or anything. :)

Seriously--I already tracked down Bunny's journal and left her a comment about this, but if there's anything I can do to help, let me know. And I'm not jockeying for a mod position or anything--I just mean, as a plain old member, if there's anything I can do to help pick up the pieces.

[rosiegalbasi.livejournal.com]

lol That's good to know. ^^

Well, I don't have any kind of mod power or anything, so that's totally Bunny's place now. I'm sure she has a few little things that would help. You could always pimp out the new community since you have such a huge Flist. lol

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

Further proof that your will is law!

(Probably not, actually. I've noticed that a few communities are vanishing and reappearing unexpectedly. Are they maintaining the server and not telling us, or what?)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Nah, it looks like there were some maintainer shenanigans. (Oh, that my will were law. I would use my powers for good! No, really! Why are you looking at me like that!)

[kohler.livejournal.com]

Look in rosiegalbasi's journal.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I know shenanigans when I see 'em. :)

[yarha.livejournal.com]

Eh, the internet is full of shenanigans. They should rename it 'shananinet'. *cough*

Yarha, Or Something

[yarha.livejournal.com]

Or 'shenaninet'...whatever. Anything but Ralph, which always sounds like someone heaving. Could name it after its creator: alinet. Gorenet? A mind is a terrible thing to lose.

Yarha, Groping Towards the Light

[girlalmighty]

What exactly are those communities anyway?^_^

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Basically they're just fun Harry Potter communities--you fill out an application and post it at hh_express and the members sort you into a "house." I'm in Ravenclaw, for example. Then you can vote on new applications and participate in contests and talk to other people in your "common room" community (mine is ravenclaw_house). It's a network of several communities, actually--I think there's one to appeal your sorting if you really wanted to get a different house, there's one for Hogsmeade, and so on.

It looks like both of the comms I mentioned are going to shut down, however. I think they're going to start over with a new mod and build up from the ground, but I don't know how that's going to go.

[arrmaitee.livejournal.com]

Hey Cleo,

I just friended you with my primary account, arrmaitee. Could you friend me back?

Thanks,
Arrmaitee

PS: Are you at all interested in participating in a challenge between hphumor and tickle_me_harry? I'm working out the details with Tart (from Tickle_me_harry) right now, but it looks like our humor joint venture might happen right around the first of the year.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

You're lucky I cleaned all the people who had defriended me or deleted their journals off my friends list yesterday, because otherwise my friending capacity would still be maxed out. ; )

You know, I can't really say about the humor challenge. I mean, my brand of HP humor is pretty specialized. Like, "Movies in Fifteen Minutes" and... yeah, that's about it. Let me know how the challenge might work, and I'll see if there's anything I could do.

[arrmaitee.livejournal.com]

That's really funny. The reason I was able to friend you today is that I just cleaned out my friends list as well.

I guess great minds think alike :D

As for the challenge, I know you write fairly specialized pieces. But I will still keep you posted since we are working on all of the logistics right now, and it would be great to have you join us.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Sure. POA is done and SS is set aside for the book, but there's always COS that I haven't 15M'd or anything. Or, you know, maybe even "Goblet of Fire."

[arrmaitee.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read my fic, The Very Secret LiveJournals (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=arrmaitee&keyword=The+Very+Secret+LiveJournals&filter=all)?

That is my parody of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and HP fanfiction generally, spoofed in LiveJournal format. The reason I ask is that I am writing the sequel, which spoofs CoS, and I would love to coauthor a chapter wit you, since I think it's up your alley.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Actually, I haven't read any HP humor or fanfiction since I started writing "Fifteen Minutes," because I didn't want to end up accidentally poaching someone else's words or ideas, you know? (And I never read much to begin with, really.) I mean, I know that seems odd considering that I'm in hphumor, but there it is. It's just too much of a liability at this point. The other thing is that the "Very Secret" part is a little too close to Cassie Claire's stuff for me--I'm already trying to dodge CC comparisons (for similar "OMG YOU STOLE MY STUFF!" reasons), particularly with the whole published book thing. So I don't know what to do about that. I'm very flattered that you asked, though.

[arrmaitee.livejournal.com]

That's really funny that you are so concerned about legal implications. I am actually a lawyer (I just graduated from law school in the USA) and I know that unauthorized derivative works (like Cassie's Very Secret Diaries) have absolutely no copyright protection whatsoever in the USA or elsewhere, and neither do titles with generic public domain words like "very secret."

Honestly, the VSLJs was inspired by Cassie's Lord of the Rings diaries, though mine are for the HP fandom and are stylistically completely different (other than the similarity of the titles).

Although I knew that I didn't need to (because of the legal reasons noted above), I actually e-mailed Cassie to let her know that I was writing the series and I wrote a nice big "I am not Cassie" disclaimer on the fic. That was just to be nice, and that is more than enough for me.

As for your not reading other people's works, that is a shame. There is a lot of fun stuff out there to read, and I know that, as an author, I've grown tremendously be seeing what is out there.

We are all writing unauthorized derivitive works of HP. Theoretically, JK could shut all of this down (except for parodies like the VSLJs or your M15Ms which would probably constitute fair use under the Fair Use Statutes). So I guess I don't worry so much about "stealing" from other writers, and instead try to grow as a writer so that, when I branch out into my own original works, I am a better writer because of it.

Anyway, I do hope that you will take a few minutes and look over my VSLJs. I think you will enjoy it and if nothing else I'd love to hear your thoughts. but if you do decide to write a chapter or two with me, I would be delighted.

Cheers,
Arrmaitee

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I mean, it's not so much an actual courtroom-legal concern, I guess, as... I'd like to know what I can come up with on my own, you know? Just because of the way I know I work, I know that things I read or see around me tend to show up unconsciously in things I write, so I have to cut myself off from things every now and then, almost as a challenge to myself. It's too easy for me, personally, to get derivative.

That, and right now I'm trying to get the book finished by the end of the year, which is really only a few weeks, so I'm in a time crunch for the foreseeable future. Maybe I'll have more time in 2005; we'll have to see.

[arrmaitee.livejournal.com]

Ah, are you still writing that M15M for the Sorcerer's Stone, or what is this book about?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a book of ten M15Ms, and one of them is Sorcerer's Stone.

[arrmaitee.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool. I can't wait to read it.

Please post a link to it on hphumor when you are finished :D