Green Room - Week 14 - Weekend Edition

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

We have a poll going on - http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/689432.html - maybe you heard something about it!

Maybe you didn't though, in which case get yourself over there to read those entries and see what the fuss is all about!

***

Speaking of fuss, I want to thank everyone who sent me supportive emails. It meant a lot.

I also want to thank the people who told me to f-off and die. Notice that they *said it* but they didn't take their ball and go home? They stayed. Because they love Idol even if a twist is rough on their heart. More people should pay attention to that lesson!

***

It's Labor Day weekend, what are you laboring away at? What has your Union done for you? Will they be helping you cook out???

Comments

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

I also want to thank the people who told me to f-off and die. Notice that they *said it* but they didn't take their ball and go home? They stayed. Because they love Idol even if a twist is rough on their heart. More people should pay attention to that lesson!

Aww hell. How else would you know these theoretical people gave a damn? I mean, it's when ::cough:: those kinds of people are all quiet that you really have to worry.

(and I don't think anyone said to die, because nobody wants that.)

Edit: Also FIRST! (Is there a "the first will be last" twist?)

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

SECOND!

...and I'm on my way to bed just as soon as I put ointment goop in Max's eye. This is going to be interesting.

CUPCAKES ARE FINALLY DONE AND BOXED!

And I work on Sunday :p

[porn-this-way.livejournal.com]

What if we're supportive of you fucking off and dying? Does that count?

J\K. Only way I'm gonna be voting with my feet around here is giving you the occasional boot to the head.

[porn-this-way.livejournal.com]

Heehee. Yes. "Those kinds of people." *whistles innocently*

[lrig-rorrim.livejournal.com]

DUDE. As if you could chase me off with something like this. As IF. :P

Did I ever tell you how many stories I had finished before I signed up for second chance Idol in s8? A grand spanking total of.... wait for it... Two.

I now have a portfolio of more than a hundred stories (and goddammit most of them are good) and I'm submitting them regularly for publication. I may call you names and tell you I'm not thrilled with this latest rollercoaster twisty thing, but I'm not flouncing off anywhere. I like what Idol helps me to accomplish.

But I'm still gonna call you a jerk. :P

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

Two?

I would never have guessed. This IS amazing.

And again, a whole different bit of stretching with the non-fiction this season, too. :)

[ecosopher.livejournal.com]

I only read the drama this morning, although when I saw the poll announcement, I figured there would be fall out :D

I remember this happening a while back when we were in a threesome. I was the one who got voted out *sniff* STILL BITTER (not really)

Today is baby B's (aka baby Jesus) birthday! He turns one :D So a year ago, I really was labouring away. Today, though, I'm going to be labouring at making lots of food for the birthday tea tonight.

It's a windy day here today, which makes for a nice change. Now, I'm going to go and bake sausage rolls and pumpkin scones. Happy weekend, everyone!

[favoritebean.livejournal.com]

Happy Labor Day weekend. I'm kind of relieved to be out at this point, judging by what happened with the top 8. The pieces I've read so far are very good too.

My union doesn't do much, unfortunately. Then again, it's not one of the big time unions like the AFL-CIO.

ETA: I'm asking everywhere, but if anyone has any experience dealing with Air BNB, I'm wondering if it's worth checking out or not. Any travel anecdotes are welcome, even if you haven't used the service.

[n3m3sis42.livejournal.com]

Wow, really? That's awesome.

[acalculatedname.livejournal.com]

Actually, dude, you know what? I'm gonna give it to you straight.

The reasons some of us haven't "taken our ball and gone home" may have more to do with not wanting to screw our intersection partners out of a sense of having won the round fair and square... or as fair / square as is possible under the current circumstances. I did in fact seriously consider withdrawing my entry in protest when the poll entry dropped, but I knew it wouldn't "teach" you anything and might have unwanted negative impact of some kind on round-pardner AGNL going forward.

I hope you know full well by now that I like you, Gary, but this move of yours was utter and complete bullshit. No matter what you may think, it wasn't a Clever, Oh-So-Ghoooulish Twist. It wasn't a reminder-lesson in how aaaanything can happen when that zaaaaany Gary's at the Idol helm and/or his mythic all-encompassing Tough Love or something. No, it was simply straight-up bullshit of the purest, flattest, roundest, brownest grade... and extraordinarily poorly scheduled bullshit at that.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Or you could hit the poll button with your toes! That would work too!

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday Baby B! Enjoy your tea and scones!

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

The only thing I'm laboring away at is finding my way between and through four different (mostly nearby) convention hotels in downtown Atlanta in this humidity, along with maybe 50,000 other conventioners. At least I've located the nearest Starbucks now. Lol!

Went to several panels yesterday, changed a few from option A to option B (out of like a bajillion and three options) because some were too far away from each other (ie: 3:00 panel at the Sheraton, 4:30 at the Hyatt, then 7:00 back at the Sheraton? No thank you - I'd rather just stay at one or the other!) but I'm getting ready to have breakfast then hopefully make it to a 10:00 panel on YA literature, after that we will see!

[porn-this-way.livejournal.com]

There is only one digit with which I am going to be hitting any of the buttons in this poll, and it's definitely not a toe!

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

I said it yesterday and I'll say it again: People are butthurt over this because suddenly they're competing for a final 4 against a friend, or somebody they like.

It's no different from any other twist Gary would have thrown out at this point in ANY season.

It's basically him poking everybody with a WAKE UP THIS IS A COMPETITION stick because, up until now, things have been very quiet and almost dead around here. We could go into all the reasons for that (dearth of LJ, the season itself, how everyone is tired because both exhibits were back-to-back, etc.) But the fact remains -- if he doesn't throw twists out there to garner interest/encourage interaction, Idol will be just as dead as every other writing community out there.

I don't see why everyone is making such a big issue out of this:

Nothing is fair in a competition, no matter how much you like your fellow contestant/partner. That's just the nature of the beast.

AND

I think a lot of people forgot the whole "competition" factor, so this twist caught everyone unawares :points to the official Exhibit B icon: so, yeah, it's understandable why people are upset. If you're going to be upset, be upset at the fact that you haven't been paying attention lately to anything except your writing. Writing is only part of the game.

One thing this game has taught me is not to take everything personally. If I were still playing, I would have been hurt at the outset, but I would have shrugged it off because...hey, it's a game. And it took me a few seasons to realize that.

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

Before Idol, I wasn't writing regularly at all. Now I feel like the day's been wasted if I don't hit 750 words at the very least. ;) So I'm right there with you!

I'm sure if I were still in I'd be calling Gary a jerk right about now, too. :D But this sort of evil is a thing in Idol and I would have cursed it and then gotten over it. Mostly because I would have known I was doomed. ;) I don't poll well.

[whipchick.livejournal.com]

I've used AirBnB in Germany, New Orleans, India and a few other places. Had excellent luck--clean, pleasant places and good deals. I've done one with the hosts in the apartment, one with the host as a neighbor, and one with no host interaction and all were fine.

[acalculatedname.livejournal.com]

Let's put the whole "friendship theory" aside, and explore some other good reasons why folks might be "butthurt."

The original idea I pursued for my entry-- a completely different thing than what I ended up with-- would have involved a lot of unusually personal interaction with my partner, and in fact would have focused her as a central entity.

I pursued that angle under the assumption that this was an intersection, and at this stage any such intersections should be as closely collaborative / interwoven as possible, whether not Gary opts to have people voted out in collab pairs (something that hadn't happened at all this season, and which *other* word choices earlier in the week strongly suggested as a possibility for this round).



I privately wrote to another person during the partner-choosing stage that intersections, frankly, are already sufficiently dumb... particularly at the endgame stage. We came to be judged on our own writing in the LJ idiom. Yeah, yeah, community-building and all that... whatever. When I am required to work (or THINK I am required to work) with someone else and thusly need to compromise on some kind of interwoven pair of entries or whatever, that's not really 100% about me, my vision, or my writing any more.

And that's what I came to be judged on. MY writing. MY vision. So intersections - or suggested ones - already provide too much distraction from that reason for participating, and inherently contradict the core reasons most of us are here, even if they might end up fun for other reasons.

So to create that kind of "distraction," empty worry, whatever, and then use it against us is bullshit. Felony-grade bullshit.

As for the necessity-for-twists theory: LJI is like Facebook. It has a community because it developed that community in the right place at the right time. That's the main reason for ongoing mindshare. But I know plenty of truly great writers who might be interested in getting on board (or *re*-boarding) were it NOT for the number of arbitrary "twists."

I don't take LJI particularly seriously myself and I certainly don't take this kind of thing personally, except to the extent that I feel it sours any sense of actual competition. It's Gary's game and I've chosen to play it, whatever, and we've all got our own ideas on how we'd do things differently, and opinions are like assholes.

But even if I were pro-meaningless-twist, I would still feel the same way about this particular "twist" - Gary twisting his wrists so as to put both middle fingers up at the eight writers remaining for reasons unknown.

I'm not going to take that personally; dude, it's a "contest" on the Internet. But, in my mind, it's the very sort of gesture that calls into question why any of us should continue to bother. Is this shit really about writing (I know, I know; at least 75% of the time, it's definitely not), or is it about wondering when Gary will take his next snort of clown powder and decide to mass-teabag everyone still left in the game?

[acalculatedname.livejournal.com]

Speaking of clown powder, I'm not sufficiently caffeinated, and so my tl;dr response doesn't correctly lead up to or address the main reason I feel butthurt is justified in this case: Misdirected effort, wasted time, and possible voter misdirection.

The three (count 'em, three) third parties originally involved with my intended entry (including AGNL) could probably correctly tell you how many hours I ultimately wasted trying to come up with an interesting and interactive "true intersection." In the end, it didn't work out - so I wasted that time anyway, right?

But if it HAD worked out successfully, the resulting entry would have been completely ridiculous after Gary pulled his stunt. The incorporation of my partner in my own entry would have confused the hell out of voters.

Assuming that everyone else made the same "mistake" of thinking they better work together closely, it's impossible to know in these particular sets of entries WHOSE ideas you are really voting for, no matter whose name they appear under. And that, my friend, is the main source of the bullshiticity of this particular move.

[porn-this-way.livejournal.com]

bullshit of the purest, fattest, roundest, brownest grade

I lol'ed.

Part of me considered an epic flounce as well (though every time we had to do an intersection this Exhibit, I swore up and down "if there's one more of these goddamn things throwing a wrench into my life and my plans, I'm gonna self-elim and say exactly why" - obviously that didn't happen) and part of me was just embarrassed as fuck for having fallen for this particular "gotcha" given I not only knew he'd done this exact same thing before with groups of 3 rather than partnered pairs, but I knew the way he'd done it was by specifically not saying the word "intersection" in the topic post. I was looking for the wrong thing - my Red Alert radar was keeping a watch for three-way intersections, thinking there's no way he'd pull this where it meant dropping half the contestants. And by the time the Top 10 hit, it didn't occur to me to look at all, because an intersection in the Top 10 was evil and twisty enough. *sigh* Famous last words, right?

I'm enough of a prankster and a chaos spirit that part of me thinks if I fall for an "old joke" that I reasonably could have seen coming, then I deserve to be had. So part of me that's pissed is pissed at myself for not looking at the wording and immediately calling shenanigans loudly, publicly, and from every rooftop available. But just because part of me somewhat buys into some twisted sense of prankster justice, that doesn't mean anyone else here (other than Gary perhaps) does, and apparently the first time this crap got pulled wasn't as infamous as I thought it was - so a bunch of people truly got 100% blindsided as opposed to falling for something they'd seen before, which pushes it farther into Evil Bullshit Territory. But on the flip side, this is Idol, not some Srs Bzns stuffy-ass literary competition, and we *did* sign up for this shit. Then there's part of me that just flat-out thinks this is complete BS, but not even the brown, round, useful grade of BS that might have a nice future as a fertilizer, but rather the liquid, nasty, diarrhea-type BS that ain't good for anything other than making a mess and stinking the entire place up, and I just want to growl and rawr about it. But even saying *that*, I feel like pimping is far and away the greatest Idol evil and balance fucker, not twists like this, because everyone gets fucked equally by in-game twists whereas with pimping, you've just got people losing to each others friendslists and twitter followers and people who could just post "ooga booga" for the entire content of their entry and stay in the game by tweeting at the known universe to go vote for them while Shakespeare himself could get voted out for not having a facebook account with enough people friended.

Blarg. Clearly I have Lots Of Opinions on this and I haven't quite sorted out what they are.

[kathrynrose.livejournal.com]

if he doesn't throw twists out there to garner interest/encourage interaction, Idol will be just as dead as every other writing community out there

I disagree. While there are some people who say they like the twists (until they are personally adversely affected by them), there are plenty of others who dislike them and who eventually throw their hands up in the air and walk away.

Consider the percentage of people who dropped this season because of "real life" or "work" when all those intersections were required in the early weeks. And even as much of a pain as they were, they weren't as much bullshit as other twists that have happened in other seasons.

I mean, hell, as late as it is in the season, I still don't know if the number of "eliminated by the poll" contestants has caught up to the "self eliminated" contestants in Exhibit B.

[acalculatedname.livejournal.com]

Amen.

[acalculatedname.livejournal.com]

LJI shill biddin' aka "pimpin'" certainly troubled me a lot early on, and I agree it's always been a problem. It's not going to keep a bad writer in the game forever, but in past seasons I've tried out, it's certainly kept them in the game long enough to kill off and subsequently discourage much more promising "lights."

However, it's definitely possible to get pretty far, maybe even like actually all the way in the polls WITHOUT an LJ vote-army behind you. At one point I didn't think it was possible... more recent evidence suggests otherwise.

[porn-this-way.livejournal.com]

A'ight, fuck it, I'm in the mood to not give a shit about pissing people off because fuck this poll and everything to do with it, so here goes.

I don't think there's anyone here who likes every single twist (spoiler: I hate this one), but speaking for myself anyways, twists are a love-hate relationship and despite the initial fist shaking at a lot of them, it's way more love than hate. It's kinda like going through a haunted house at a carnival. Part of it might be exhilarating, part of it might legit scare the shit out of you, part of it may be campy and hilarious, part of it may startle you and make you scream at first and then you burst out laughing instead, and even if you come out of the haunted house all pissed off that "OMG why'd there have to be a goddamn [spider, clown, other thing you're personally phobic of] in there?!?" or you say to yourself as you go in "if there's a fucking [insert phobia here] in there, I am *so* leaving" - you can leave or not or get mad or not and debate about whether the room full of [insert something super scary or gross here] went too far but you're the one who went into a haunted house so you don't get to bitch too much that it didn't turn out to be the Tunnel of Love. The answer isn't that the haunted house would be great if only there was nothing scary in it, because then it would just be one more of a billion boring empty buildings, and honestly, if that's what you're in the market for, then it makes no sense to line up at a haunted house.

Personally, I think pimping is what ruins the game, because it means some people get bodyguards armed with flashlights and tasers to shield them from everything as they go through, so in effect, those people aren't even really going through the same haunted house as the people who sign up to actually go through the haunted house, and NGL if I had my way, the only people who'd be allowed to vote would be the people who'd actually competed in Idol at some point in the past season or two, or at least competed in Idol at some point at all. None of this twitter or Facebook bullshit. And I fully expect that a ton of people are reading this comment, rolling their eyes, and thinking I need to STFU because there are a million reasons why pimping is an important part of Idol... and that's exactly my point. I loathe pimping and I hate that it's not considered cheating. Other people hate certain twists, or hate all twists, or hate tribes, or hate no tribes, or hate gatekeepers, or hate that [insert type of post here] is allowed, or think that using a beta reader is cheating, or whatever the fuck else, but the bottom line is, if any of us like it bland and predictable, we shouldn't be lining up for the haunted house. Believe me, I'm saying this through a ton of anger at the current twist. But I'll take that twist, and the bullshit pimping too, over a dumbass Tunnel of Love any day of any week.

[porn-this-way.livejournal.com]

Lmao... I shoulda read this comment before posting my own rant below. Your last two paragraphs are absolute art. Laughing sooo friggen hard for real.