Okay, yeah, like Jon said it looks like it should belong to a six year old little girl, but she was just so cute and pretty!
And my account had expired, because I got Spike more than a year ago…. and since we’re all supposed to have active accounts at school, I figured, yes, I will get her.

Her name is Aurelia, which is from Latin and means ‘golden’.

You’re welcome, world.

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Because of that, each of the staff members gets to have a webkinz, haha. We all chose one that we wanted, and after much consideration, I went with the porcupine.

There are so many really cute ones, that it took forever to decide. And you know how I’m indecisive to begin with. But in the end, I liked the porcupine. Not sure what to name him though, haha.

Going through the Webkinz catalogue, I found one that looks a lot like my father:

I told my mum to look it up, because it really does look lke him! Especially when he has a moustache.

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I, in the course of like, two hours, received 139 spam comments on Pink-Spider.net. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of spam we’ve been getting on S-T lately. What gives?

No one really comments on P-S so it’s not a huge deal here, but on S-T we’re also getting a lot of legitimate comments being placed in the spam queue. I don’t even know why; there are no links, no bad words, nothing that remotely looks like advertising.

It’s weird.
And irritating.

Originally I created that one because I felt like there were people I couldn’t trust on my current LJ. I don’t feel that way so much now, and hey, there’s always filters.

I’m not even sure why I’m thinking about moving. It’s not a fresh start, because that one hast posts in it (and wow, I sound insanely creepy), but I feel like hey, that’s the username you have everywhere now, maybe you should move over to keep it like that. Maybe it’s kind of like growing up.

I’m undecided.

Luckily, the filter on WordPress is pretty awesome, but it does make me wonder what in particular attracts the spam bots to certain posts.

On Pink-Spider.net, they seem to always post on the “I’M KINDA LIVID” entry.

On Shattered-Tranquility.net, they go on pretty much any post, but lately we’ve been getting spam comments that read, “Some may disagree…”. Seriously. The link is in the commenter’s name, which is where the advertising comes in. But that comment hardly ever works for things on S-T.

For example, the entry will be about an upcoming release, and the comment will read, “I think some may disagree…”. Well, no, they really can’t disagree that a single is being released. It’s on the band’s OHP and was sent out in their mail magazine. What the hell?

I don’t know. It amuses me, for some reason.

This was supposed to be shorter, so here’s the point form notes if you don’t want to actually read this whole thing:

• Shattered-Tranquility.net was not an idea ‘stolen’ from someone
• If you have a problem with the site contact me so I can fix it. Bitching about it elsewhere doesn’t help matters, it makes them worse
• We work hard on the site and don’t appreciate your negativity; constructive criticism is extremely different and we welcome that
• You may think you’re being helpful, but when someone is constantly hounded for stupid things, your ‘helpful advice’ or ‘correction’ can come off snarky and irritating when you word it in a snarky and irritating way
• We are human; mistakes are bound to happen
• If you don’t like the site, don’t visit. I know, it’s a revolutionary idea, but it will do wonders for all parties involved
• Visual kei fans are horrible to each other for reasons far beyond my comprehension
• We’re all in this together, so why the hell are we being ridiculous to one another?
• I’m a silly girl who wants everyone to get along, and wants to get along with everyone and would prefer to actually work out differences than argue and stomp away
• I do love S-T, and I hope we can continue to make the site a great resource for English speaking fans

Being the creeper that I am, I’m always looking for what people are saying about the site. I want to think that it’s only natural; I mean we put a lot of effort into that thing and there has been a lot of things (both good and bad) that have happened because of it.

One that that really irks me are these rumours I hear about the formation of the site. The biggest thing I hear is that we copied the idea from elsewhere — which in a sense we did, but not where people are saying from.

So let’s sit back for the tale of how Shattered-Tranquility.net began…

It all started on Octber 4th, 2007. I don’t really know what came over me, but I guess I was feeling restless and wanted something to do. I mean, before that I had the podcast, which got to be too much work and I lost interest in. Then we had Visual-Shinbun, which never went anyways, even though it was a brilliant idea. I guess with that site it was we had too many people, doing too little… meaning that nothing got done.

So, it occurred to me that it would be cool if there was a news and gossip site — like PerezHilton.com, for the visual world. I mean, I hadn’t seen anything like that before, and even if there was one I certainly had never stumbled across it. With these happy little thoughts in mind, I updated my LiveJournal, wondering if anyone was interested in creating such a site.

If you really need proof, you can seen the screen shot here.

At that time, only two of my friends replied — Hideko and Mija. There were a lot more people on my LJ friends list at that time, and there were a few people I would have pegged to want to be part of it, but they didn’t. I figured, if they didn’t reply they weren’t interested. We started talking about it and getting our ideas together. We somehow pulled Yanique into the whole process as well (<3), started thinking up names, creating a layout… installed wordpress, got the domain name, and we were off. Well, two months later on December 6th, we were off.

And since then, it’s been one hell of a ride.

Initially, I never thought the site would grow to what it has. I wouldn’t say now that it’s something huge that everyone knows about it, but I think we’ve made a nice little name for ourselves. I also never thought that the drama would come along with it.

Oh my god the drama.

If you know me, you’ll probably realize I am not a dramaish person. I avoid conflict. I don’t mind the occasional fight every now and then, and yes, I’ll admit that I can allow myself to be pulled into petty arguments. Unfortunately, after about ten minutes I’m over it and want to move on.

… this fandom does not work that way. They like to beat things over the head until someone dies. Or thereabouts.

I’ve probably been kind of bitchy and snarky on the site from time to time, but when you feel like people are always jumping on your back over stupid reasons, it’s hard not to be. I mean really, commenting because you see a typo, is that necessary? Can you understand the post? Yes, you can. Generally speaking, my typos (which I do admit to making) do not impede the message of the post in such a way that it is rendered incomprehensible. So why be a jerk?

Then you get all the people commenting to correct you — which is fine if you make a mistake. Naturally, it’s preferable if people email us so we can get it and fix it right away, but for some reasons, fans of this fandom seem to think that’s the worst way to do things. I do not understand why.

I mean, we’re human. We make mistakes. We try not to, because no one wants incorrect information about their favourite band floating around out there, but it does happen from time to time — especially as our staff grows. And yes, we would like to know if we’ve made a mistake, but sometimes the way people comment is just so… disheartening.

Let’s say you worked hard to get the information and put it into a reasonably easy to read format for English speakers, and five minutes later someone was posting a correction in a snarky manner. If you can honestly tell me you would be totally okay with that, you deserve a medal.

There have been fights over photos, over hotlinking (which I mean come on, Hideko pays for the space, upload it to a free server if you want to use the images on the site, it’s not rocket science), news and of course, stealing.

I’ve also had a number of interesting things said about me, and a lot of people have accused me of ‘stealing news from them’. This also makes little sense to me and really irks me, and although I know I shouldn’t react to it because I know that I don’t do that, I can’t help it. You feel like it’s a personal attack (well, I guess it is). Why would I take news from you when I can read it myself? O_O That’s what I don’t understand. I don’t frequent other visual kei sites at all, mostly because a) I can find news about the bands I want myself and b) I’m not as into the whole scene as I used to be, so why and how am I ‘stealing’ this news from you?

And yes, I’ll admit we’ve probably jumped on people from taking from us in maybe not the best fashion (even though we generally try to contact them privately first), but when you spend your free time translating things (even easy things) it’s irksome when people go select, copy, paste, and don’t say hey, thanks person for translating this for me because I didn’t do it myself.

I think the worst part of the whole thing, is that when there’s an issue people go and bitch about it elsewhere instead of talking to one of the head staff (which would be Hideko, Mija or myself) about it. I mean, I think I’m a reasonable person and I want to get things resolved and fixed in a timely and appropriate fashion, but instead of messaging or emailing me, people just start more and more drama. And what’s the point? What do you get out of it?

Then we get the people who hate the site or hate a certain staff member. Well, I’m sorry that you stumbled on the site and found it so repulsive, but if you dislike it… why come back? O_O It’s very easy not to point your browser in that direction again. Or better yet, why not help us improve the site to make it better, that way everyone wins.

Those are probably two too logical solutions and therefore would fail in this fandom.

It’s like when someone was mad that we were high ranked on Google searches. Because yes, we control that. We sleep with the Google staff to make sure out site gets high up on the search results (… no, we do not do this before anyone takes this seriously). Come on, we have nothing to do with that, it’s not our fault if the site appears first, third, tenth, fiftith. Heaven forbid you have to scroll an extra 10 seconds (and let’s face it, it would never actually be ten seconds extra… unless you have a morbidly slow computer).

There’s probably a million and one things I could say about the site. It probably seems like I don’t enjoy it from the contents of this post, haha. I do though, because it is fun and I do like finding and translating news, even if I’m not really into the visual scene as much anymore.

I like it when I can talk with people, because I’m shy and … well, awkward so I probably come off cold. But I like it when readers come and comment on the site, and I like how people from the visual community can share their opinions. I just don’t like it when people get all asshole about things. This is honestly the snarkiest, bitchiest fandom that I’m part of, and I can’t believe how the fans treat each other sometimes. We’re all here for the same purpose, so why are we being such jerks to each other? It’s not a competition, no one is better than anyone else. We’re all just here, trying to enjoy the same thing and simultaneously ruining it for each other by being ridiculous.

I’m not saying everyone has to hold hands, hug and love each other, but is it too much to ask to be mindful of other people’s feelings and respect other people’s opinions? Apparently it is. And I do realize that this is not just the nature of visual fans, but the internet as a whole, which really is it’s entire undoing. People fail to realize that hey, there is actually a real live person on the other side of that screen. Maybe you don’t take the internet ‘seriously’, but a lot of people do. The comments are still directed towards someone.

I am also not saying that I’m perfect or guilt free, or that any of the other S-T staff are, because no one is. But isn’t it time to give up on the competitive, bitchy attitude bullshit, and work together for something? I mean, really? We’re all human, no one likes their work criticized, it’s life. You get a bad grade in school, and your curse about the teacher (don’t lie, you’ve done it), you don’t get something you really want, and you blame someone else, that’s what we do. But why bring it on here and make it that much worse? It’s natural for us to want to stand up for something we work hard on, it’s not natural for you to go out of your way to harass us and try to bring us down.

I don’t remember what the whole point of this entry was, because it definitely ended up being longer than I had anticipated. I guess more than anything, it’s all this random shit that has been piling up over the past year and a half of owning the site.

I think that is all I have to say on this for now.

I turned twenty-four. It’s kind of fun, because in the younger classes we do ‘how old are you’, and I always start. So, when I said twenty-four, they were surprised. Also, one of my students has the same birthday as me. She turned three.

After work we all went to the Hard Rock Cafe.

Long story short, I had to wear a cake hat, go up on stage, and dance to the YMCA along with other people who were also celebrating birthdays or anniversaries. I think there is a photo of me in the cake hat somewhere.

But, I also got a nice big brownie sundae.

Everyone signed a card for me that Eri made, that was ridiculously cute. I’ll have to take a photo of it. Hanna made me a gift too; a box decorated with my name and stars, plus a Rabbid (from Rayman’s Raving Rabbids) inside. This makes no sense to most people. Mary got me some cute little cookies – three different types that taste really good, especially with some tea.

Aside from that, my family and a lot of my friends sent me birthday wishes via e-mail or snail mail, which was awesome! So thank you to everyone who did. The Jstone crew (including Yogi) sent some amazing photos. I’m so glad we have more ‘Native American’ themed merchandise.

Because it sells like hotcakes (read: we’ve sold three Indian statues in three years).

So yes. That was my birthday.

Hideko comes on Sunday, so I’m really excittttted. We have a busy week planned, but I think we’ll have a lot of fun. I’m also looking foward to hanging out with Kimkim a bit as well. And eating some gyouza.

And. AND. After much trial and many tribulations, I finally have the internet. That’s right. I am internet equipped. It feels weird being able to access it at all times now, so I’m working on getting back into my routine. Yes. I have an internet routine.