Tribute:
Intelligent, witty, and pulling surprises out of nowhere, not to mention her giant spider pets, and those crazy questions, Magnus Lensherr has been a friend of mine on MyOtaku for a while now. She has decided to follow a new path, one that guides her away from the community here and on to other things. All I can do is wish her all the best, and hope that she does keep in touch in one way or another.
Magnus, I don't know if you'll even come around to my site to see this, but I'll sure miss you, please don't be a stranger, and at least send me an e-mail once in a while, just so I know you're okay?
This is shaping up to be one heck of a year for me so far. I lost an Otaku friend in January, AnimeFF screwed over my chances of putting together an animé convention, my aunt died, and now I'm losing another MyO friend. To be as honest as I can, I'm not feeling too good right now. The last time I felt like this, I was still in school, the odd man out, even in Theatre which I called a home. It's disturbing to me that I'm feeling this way because there's nothing I can do to make myself feel better. I'm feeling low and sick all at once and it's distressing to me. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow, only time will tell.
Comments:
Angel Slayer:
Sometimes it feels like I'm going to hack up a lot more than a hairball, but I manage. Having a Fisherman's Friend (funny name for a cough drop but they pack a punch) when I have a coughing fit usually helps. Usually my allergies get my nose and head, not my bronchial area.
If you tell the guy what you posted in your blog, about not wanting to hurt him more, I'm sure he'll understand. A little pain now is worth the cost to prevent far more damaging pain later on.
death alchemist03:
My body's been here, but my mind is out to lunch.
Yeah, it makes one wonder.
A lot of people seem to think the vigilante system is the way things are done, I don't like that and I report that kind of user moderation, because when you boil it all down, one user telling another user "TAKE THIS WORK DOWN IT AIN'T YOURS" is harrassment plain and simple. On the TechTV message boards, the moderators were as hard on "user mods" as they were on trolls (the posters who regularly posted spam and flamed topics).
Thanks for the comments on the artwork (that applies to everyone), I do appreciate them, and for that last piece, so does my sister.
NekoMimi16:
If I didn't like MyO, I would have left in 2003, but when I joined up, I saw a community that was small, but very friendly, and possessing the potential to turn into something spectacular. Is it spectacular yet? Well that depends on who you ask, but I have not been let down by the community yet, except for one user I know having to leave because of repeated plagiarism accusations and general harrassment (maybe that's why I don't like to see it now).
redmoonchick:
I have been to other animé communities and non of them are on MyO's level. Even TokyoPop's site leaves a lot to be desired, but I'm only a member there to get the free manga magazine.
the real yojimbo:
Tell me about it. I'm the master of firing off hot letters without thinking. I still haven't taken action on this yet, I'm not sure if it's worth it at this point. By now I'm sure Adam sees my e-mail come up is is like "What's he whining about this time?"
timechaser:
That's a possibility, but it shouldn't be an excuse. When I was younger, I had a measure of common sense, self control, and knew a thing or two about something called tact. To be respected as mature, it has to be proven in word and deed that a person is mature and knows how to handle matters of honor with diplomacy and grace. A lot of my friends here do try which I applaud, I don't think I've seen any one of you guys posting rude messages about possibly plagiarised art.
I wouldn't fit in on Anime-Pulse, I'm still offended by the podcasters' comments back in Episode 9 of the TheO podcast which they never made amends for. Since I know it would be a combative situation, I won't put myself into it.
Some doctors are brainwashed by the pharmaceutical companies into thinking that chemical drugs are the only solution to all ills. the Chinese have been using herbs and natural remedies for thousands of years, what makes a couple decades old experiment any more valid than 2000+ years of proven results? Kudos to your doctor if he's open about natural treatments.
It was a happy accident, we don't really know how it happened to not gel like it was supposed to, the leading theory is either it didnt' get enough Pectin, or it didn't get any at all. Actually we used white grapes, so it was very mild, and the right blend of sweet and tart when it came out. If I get enough grapes again (the house I lived at in TX had grapevines), I'll certainly try to make the syrup.
That one's on my backlog list, along with just about every other manga known to man. Not having a job really sucks. She was thrilled to see the comments, she's like me in terms of being creative, but she's a little less open about showing off her works, so I had to put up that collab project because it was just too good not to show off.
InuYashaFan4-ever:
Yes, yes it is.
It was a shock to me, and that's all right, I didn't know how to respond either, that's why I brought it up. Just seeing that others are finding the comment out of line is telling me my feeling wasn't so wrong.
Yeah, I think the cough is a bit of the cold that's lingering on, my sister had it for two weeks at least. Funny you should mention Chuckie Finster. I used to be like him in many ways (scared of my own shadow, timid, easlily walked all over by the Tommy Pickleses of society who don't know how to leave a scardy cat alone) now I just have the red hair and goofy glasses.
Really? Now that's a coincidence if ever I heard of one. Is your violin teacher a man or a woman?
alphonse13:
A lot of people would disagree with that comment, yet no one's said anything about it in the comment thread about it. I have yet to se another animé site come close to the level of community MyO has.
Shireishou:
I wish I could make more sense of it for you, but I'm still trying to figure out how someone who's on the news team could say something like that and not raise some contention. When I first came online back in 2003, I was on the TechTV message boards, and I was here. Both were welcoming communities that encouraged and taught me a lot, not only about animé, but about the web, and even HTML, and now CSS. I've been welcomed here, and I've met a whole host of good people here, people like you, and all my friends, who have stood by me when I needed it, and haven't been afraid to ask me for help or advice when I could give it. What's so wrong about that? How is that a bad thing? At least I can say I don't agree with that staff member's opinion of TheO and MyO, I think much higher of it.
That makes a lot of sense, if the community isn't doing it for the that staffer anymore, why stay on? I'm still not sure how to officially react, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.
necury:
It's at the very bottom of one of the early comments, and the comment is quite lengthy. Just look for all the usernames with "News Team" under their name and read those posts, you should see it.
Hopefully in a couple days I'll have something up, I don't want to promise that, but I'll sure try.
Yensid:
The OtakuBoards and I havea love/hate thing going on, I'm registered there, but I haven't posted yet. I used to be a member there, but technical issues, coupled with a rude response from the boards technical staff made me stay off of there for a long time. I recently joined again, but because of their double sided approach to enforcing the board rules, I'm reluctant to post anything at all. A forum is no fun if you're constanly under the big brother-esque fear of stepping on the wrong toes and being banned.
The O is my homepage, and I read the comments to everything, especially the podcasts. I don't listen to them anymore, but by reading the comments I can gauge how the podcast went. The Offending comment is in relation to something that must have been said on the podcast, I haven't heard it yet so I don't know. I know it's inappropriete for a staff member to say that kind of thing about the community they serve.
I'm not aware of too many mainstream ones anymore either. I have seen a few come and go from the spotlight. MyO's blog is by far one of the best, I have yet to see any other community that lets the user create his or her own formatting and page designs to the extent one can do here. Most other sites use that contemptable WYSIWYG editor for their blog posts, no thanks, I like being able to combine CSS with HTML in my posts so that I get just the look I want.
For me, numbers don't matter. I appreciate the votes and views I get, but I don't obsess over "OMG I g0tZ 22 vus 2day!" kind of stuff. I learned in theatre that a comment I may not like is usually the one that's the most truthful about how I need to improve. I like getting that kind of feedback because I can't improve if I don't know where I'm suffering. I welcome constructive negative feedback because it helps. The advice you gave me the other day about using multiple layers for shading to add depth, some people would have thought that was a negative comment. I welcomed that advice and as soon as I'm done working on my current projects, I'll open up Punk Scout again, dig up a tutorial on how to do that layer shading like you mentioned, and give it a go as best I can. If it makes the art look better, I'd love you to no end for helping me improve. Some people just don't see that when someone is pointing out a problem area, they're not doing it to be mean, they're doing it to help.
I can't even begin to figure out the wallpaper thing. I go the safe route and take my own screencaptures and use those to make my pieces. Ther are a lot of open ended questions about what is and isn't plagiarised in terms of wallpapers, I've seen a lot of different wallpapers made from the same base image, submitted by different users.
To me, flaming is posting any deliberately rude comment with the intent to hurt the person the comment is directed at, the plagiarism accuations are the best example of that I have. I don't think profanity is an issue because a person can be just as insensitive without using vulgar words as a person who uses them (I fit that bill myself, I can insult a person far more eloquently without using vulgarities). Blog entries are ambiguous in terms of "should this be reported or not" because it's hard to report a blog, and questions of free expression would undoubtedly come up. Now every comment has at the bottom a "report" link, so if a comment on your site (or anywhere) offends you, that's the right way to go about handling it. The same with a piece of art. Say you're browsing and you see that someone's taken one of my pictures. I'd be really upset if anyone came to me and said "I really gave that theif what for for taking your art." I'd expect everyone who saw it and knew it was my art to find the "report" link thats under the stats on the left side of the pane with the comment link in it, and use that (and of course tell me about the artwork so I could go report it too). The same applies to Wallpapers too.
Never apologize for sharing your opinion with me, I woudln't have posted that if I didn't want a full and fair look at it.
Caprice:
That's a truth in and of itself. I've known grown adults to act like immature children, and children to have a maturity beyond their years. Age is a number, it doesn't mean a person is any more mature than someone who's number is lower. I'm mulling over some thoughts on responding, all of which are in good taste and tactful. I think I'll let it go another day or so, to let my mind find it's center again after this hectic week.
PSP is just way too high end for me, I just don't need all those bells and whistles and do-dads yet. I kind of took a crash course in layers back in 2003 when I tried Pixia for the first time, so I know a little bit about them, I havne't mastered all the subtle things that can be done with them in Pixia yet, but I'm getting there. Because I don't have a lot of patience, I just don't think PSP is for me, I need something I can crash my way through and still get a halfway decent end result. It is a program I would recommend to someone who wants a high end image manipulator and can't afford Photoshop though, I will give it props for having a lot of neat tools and stuff.
