This month is Mental Health Awareness Month, so the LiveJournal team is offering users a chance to support the Depression and Bipolar Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping improve the lives of those suffering from mood disorders. Proceeds from purchases of the Emerging Sun v-gift during May will be donated to the DBSA, so feel free to buy one. Or, if you really want to rack up some good karma points, get a bunch!

And don't forget: Mother's Day is this Sunday. Be a dear and check out the v-gifts shop. Send something that'll make her smile.


L to R: Emerging Sun, #1 Mom, Gift Basket, Chocolates, A Dozen Red Roses


We know how you salivate over the prospect of new themes, especially when they're designed by users with a unique handle on both form and function.


L to R: Shiny, River at Night, Live and Learn, Vector Drips.

( Winners of the HP 'What Do You Have to Say?' Theme Design Contest )


We'd like to remind you that the nomination process for LiveJournal Advisory Board user-representatives has begun. If you think you're fit for the job, now's the time to nominate yourself! After all, you're the only who can do it. In two weeks, on the 22nd, the voting process will begin; we'll remind you about it again here.

If you're interested in keeping up with the nominations, watch lj_election_en. We'll post the results and announce the winner by the end of the day on May 30th. The new user-representatives will be seated on June 1st. Further details can also be found in lj_2008.

Advisory Board Nominations Begin

This morning we are opening the nomination process for the user-representative positions on the LiveJournal Advisory Board. A full description of the process can be found here.

To get you started, here are the basic things you should know:

- You may only nominate yourself
- Each nominee will need 100 motions of support in order to be eligible to be a candidate
- We ask that you keep your comments on the nomination posts to "I support this nomination" or something to that effect; be kind to those who will need to count the "supports", please.
- Although the nominations and election poll will take place in lj_election_en, you do not need to watch the community in order to keep up with the election; we'll announce everything here as well.

Everyone here at LiveJournal is looking forward to this first-ever User-Representative election! We'd like to thank everyone who is participating. Some words from our current Advisory Board members:

danah boyd: “LiveJournal is filled with very passionate users. These users have helped shaped LJ's various communities over the last decade and it gives me great joy that LJ is recognizing and incorporating users' voices into the decision-making processes. Having user representatives from different parts of LJ on the Advisory Board will help make sure that the company is meeting the needs of its diverse constituents.”

Esther Dyson: "I'm sure we'll learn a lot from the process, and later on from the two users selected as well. Especially, I hope that the discussions before the voting will be more meaningful and more focused on policy than those in some offline campaigns."

Brad Fitzpatrick: "It's cool that SUP is getting users involved with the LiveJournal decision-making process. I look forward to seeing who the community elects and the results of our efforts working together."

Professor Lawrence Lessig: “The user elections will provide a critical check on LJ's process of maintaining a valuable and trustworthy environment for the LJ community. The mandate of the elections will give the user representatives pride of place among the members of the Advisory Board. Each of us will look to them to guide us in our judgment about how best to make LJ the community we all aspire that it will be. I look forward to welcoming the user representatives, and learning a great deal from them.”


chasethestars has also made some banners for you to use, if you'd like to show your support for the candidate of your choice!

( Banners + code for you to use! )

For your convenience, dear badfic warriors, we present you with the following review, which can be adjusted to suit your badfic needs.

Dear Suethor,

You have created a badfic. 

(Dallas/Darry/Johnny/Ponyboy/Sodapop/Steve/Two-Bit) is horribly out of character. 

He would not (fall inexplicably into puppy love/abuse Ponyboy from "his" armchair while reading the paper/inexplicably forget about his shyness and distrust of strangers/become emo and start cutting/forget his girlfriend and/or heartbreak over said girlfriend and fall for a Mary Sue/become a sad little abused woobie/act like a stupid, drunken clown). Go back to the source material and re-read. Take notes on said greaser's characterization.

In addition to failing at the characterization of the aforementioned greaser, your character is a (Rebel!/Emo!/Mother!/Helpless!/Goth!/Asskicking!Action!/Soc!/Bleeding!Heart!)Mary Sue. 

A Mary Sue is an idealized character. She is the author's attempt to insert herself into the story. Mary Sues are blatantly obvious and annoying to the reader because their characterization is flat, they are the focus of the story instead of the characters which fans want to read about and the author refuses to give them flaws or make them fallible in any way. 

She is perfect, and everyone loves her. A character like this is extremely hard for a skilled writer to make likable and impossible for an unskilled writer. You fall in the later category. 

Also, your plotting abilities are weak. Your plot (drags/skips from scene to scene without explanation/introduces elements without explanation and/or follow up/doesn't have a direction). An outline, instead of "pulling it from your @ss," so to speak, would help immeasurably. You are failing around, and it shows.

You also have atrocious grammar. Grammar is important, because if you have bad grammar, it makes readers doubt your writing abilities, and rightfully so. If you don't practice care in this most basic part of the writing craft, what is to make us believe you would practice it anywhere else?

It doesn't matter that you've said (this fic is AU/no flames/don't like, don't read/my story, I'll do what I want/shut up you stupid hater meanies), this fic doesn't deliver for the reader, despite the three repeat reviewers who write grammatically incorrect sentence fragments telling you to update soon, plz.

Either improve this or chop this. Do it because you want to honor what Susie did, not because you want to share your fantasies of sexing up Matt Dillon, who would likely be uninterested in your jailbait @ss anyway. He has a Cameron Diaz-level of standards.

Love,

A badfic warrior