Another Emo Post About scans_daily

In the post over here explaining why Scans_Daily was suspended and what the mods are trying to do about it, the amazing and fantastic pandanoai has the entire comm, from 2005 through February 6th, saved as an LJArchive file and available for download. I'm reading posts right now, because nothing makes me feel better than seeing Bart be adorable, Hal Jordan get hit in the head, and Midnighter kiss his husband. It's great she did that, really incredible - it's a huge resource that I can't imagine losing. I go to S_D to check obscure plot points and make sure I'm not screwing something up in my stories; to giggle over Context Is For The Weak when I need a pick-me-up; to decide what titles are worth buying and which aren't; to indulge my new-found love of characters I've never heard of before by reading every panel they appear in. I'm so glad I'll still have that, even if the comm is gone for good.

But man, having the posts available to me now is making me realize how much I miss Scans_Daily already. Because it's not just the posts - it's a wrench every time I get to the end, and there's no comments. No one clarifying a mistake the poster made in their explanation of the backstory. No one making icons. No one offering their philosophical critique of Grant Morrison's writing. No Didio and Quesada hate. No Liefield mocking. No people remarking how insanely gay Green Lantern and Green Arrow are for each other. No motto.

Scans_Daily is what got me into comics a year ago. It's what fed my addiction. It's how I found out that I loved Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, Jaime Reyes, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Jean-Paul Beaubier, Connor Hawke, Tim Drake, Bart Allen - just about every character who matters to me. Every dime I have spent on comics is because of this comm. And I can't imagine going somewhere else, I really can't. Where else am I going to find real fans talking, with a mix of humor and seriousness, anger and love, about the real comics, not just what the PR people at Marvel and DC want you to see? Where else will I find a place that slash friendly? Where else, in a genre so dominated by men, and immature men at that, will I find a community with that many women ready and willing to post and talk about what they like and what they read?

I'm sorry to everyone on my flist who isn't into comics, because I'm sure it is really boring to listen to me whine about this. But I just feel so...gutted. I feel like I've really lost something special today, and it hurts.

(All I have to say about the consensus rumor that PAD is responsible for getting us the axe is that if it is true, I am never buying anything of his again. Which is sad, because he wrote Young Justice and I really wanted to eventually replace my downloaded cbrs with real comics, but if you disrespect and mistreat your fans the way he did, you don't get a goddamned cent from me.)

This Post Sizzles With Righteous Anger

Argh, I am useless. I was going to go shopping after I got off work today, since I'm almost out of groceries. I don't know why this is so shocking to me - I went five months with no groceries at all! - but suddenly the idea of not being able to nom funky cheese and apples and Japanese ice cream is just appalling. Appalling, I tell you! But I was up so late last night, and then work was boooooooring (except for an odd but interesting conversation on regional accents that got very loud very quickly), and I didn't know when, if ever, the bus was going to come, so I just said fuck it. I'm going to try to go tomorrow after brunch though, because I really want to have some food around, and it's not like I ever do anything productive on Sunday afternoons.

Does anyone know where I can buy hairsticks that aren't terribly expensive? I figured out how to do a wrap bun this week (holds well and takes five seconds to throw together, LOVE), which brings my repertoire up to 3 and a half (braided, wrap, Chinese, and baad cinnamon bun), and if this is going to be a regular thing, I'd rather use something that looks less lame than a pencil.

I promise I'll stop talking about Scans_Daily soon (I promise, really!), but I have one more thing that's on my mind right now, besides the shock of losing the community and my frustration at a generation of writers that just don't get how the internet has changed writer-reader interactions. But first, here's a story about  me.

When I was seventeen, my mom and me got kicked out of house because the owner wanted to sell it. There wasn't enough time (or money) to find a new place, so my mom moved us in with her boyfriend. I was out of the country at the time; I came home to find all my stuff in storage, waiting to be moved into my new room in the apartment of this guy I barely knew. Still, I'm pretty easy-going, and I usually like her boyfriends, so I was ready to make it work. Anthony...wasn't, so much. He got this idea in his head that I was a lazy little punk, and nothing I did could convince him otherwise. He treated me like a kid, he ordered me around, and he yelled at my mom when she didn't discipline me like he wanted.

One day she and him got into a fight over something she did, and because he thought I was involved somehow, he forced me to give him my housekeys. He said he or my mom could let me into the apartment; he didn't want me there by myself. I was, understandly, freaked out - what if I came home late from my dad's and they were gone, or asleep, was I just supposed to sit on the front step and wait for them? So not cool. But then a few hours later my mom came back into my room and gave me my keys back; I figured she'd talked some sense into him.

The next night, I came home from visiting my dad and let myself into the apartment with my keys. Anthony was sitting in the living room, and he immediately started asking me where the hell I'd gotten the keys. Then he accused me of stealing them. I told him I hadn't, but he didn't believe me.

This is a guy I had known for three fucking weeks, and in that time I had done absolutely nothing to make him think I would ever do something like that. I was LIVID. I moved out the next weekend to live with my grandparents, and for the rest of the time my mom was dating him (about another three months, all told), I made NO effort to get along with him. I didn't listen to him, I didn't respect him, I rolled my eyes at everything he said, I picked fights with him every chance I had. I hated him so much that thinking about him still pisses me off, and I made that blindingly clear to him.

Because, see, here's the thing. I'm a good person, I think. I don't drink, I don't use drugs, I don't steal or hurt people. I'm nice and polite and I hold doors open for people. I get good grades and work hard and all my teachers like me. I call my mom everyday and my grandmother every few weeks. But I have this knee-jerk reaction when I get accused of doing something wrong that I know I didn't do. When I do the right thing, and you still treat me like a criminal, like I've done something wrong, my automatic reaction is to say, okay, screw you. If I'm going to get into trouble for it anyway, I'll just fucking do it. I might as well. It's maybe not the right reaction, but it's how I react.

So Peter David, or Marvel, or Livejournal, or whoever holds the ultimate responsibility for pulling the plug on Scans_Daily, they're really pissing me off because they didn't give us the benefit of the doubt. They didn't give us the chance to fight for Fair Use, or to delete the post someone complained about, or change our rules (which the mods were doing anyway), or to explain ourselves in any way. They just decided to shove their way in and destroy a wonderful community that made hundreds of people happy and probably provided more free, positive marketing to comics publishers than any other site on the web. So you know what, to hell with them. If they're going to treat me like a thief, I'll be a goddamn thief.

All of which is a long and convoluted way of saying I need to find some illegal comics files to torrent.