Election News!

No, not national, LJ advisory board. Normally, I'd stay out of it, but since one of the leading candidate's primary appeal so far is that he doesn't want a "lame ass ... fandom dork" to win, I'm throwing in my two cents. It seems to me that having a person on the advisory board who clearly and publically dislikes and is scornful of a large percentage of the user base is a Bad Thing. And I would think it was bad regardless of whether or not I was a member of the group he didn't like.

A few days ago, there was a flurry of discussion in [candidate] jameth's journal, trying to figure out how they could get more votes. brendan (of ohnotheydidnt, which has at least 50,000 members) was brought up. Jameth asked "omg how can we get ontd," qweerdo went to Brenden's friends only journal and begged, and Brenden came through.

Yesterday, he posted a very strong, very cyber-loud endorsement, and between 7:00pm (when that was posted) and one o'clock in the morning, Jameth went from 17% of the vote to 20.4% (growing rapidly) of the vote because Brenden made sure they know that "SOME LAME ASS HARRY POTTER FANDOM DORK IS IN THE LEAD." He also seems to object to the fact that legomymalfoy is a voluntary member of LJ's Abuse Prevention Team, has been one of their main members for years, and has thereby dedicated many, many unpaid hours to the task of keeping LJ running and on an even keel, and thus knows at least something about every nook and cranny of LJ, not just the one(s) she is a member of. (Which makes her the single most qualified candidate, particularly as she's said from the beginning that the thing that makes LJ great is the community, regardless of what the community is formed around, and that she won't be pushing the agenda of any one of those communities on LJ--including fandom!--above another community's agenda.)

icarusancalion has compiled a comprehensive list of ways in which Jameth has based his campaign upon attacking fandom's place on livejournal in this post. He has shown that he has no respect for fandom as a voting body, does not understand the issues fandom is facing in this election, and is willing to play up negative fandom stereotyping in order to gain votes.

Please CAST YOUR VOTE for someone other than this dude, if you haven't already voted. The list of candidates is here, with links to each candidate's platform.

For those of you in fandom, here are the fandom candidates: legomymalfoy, rm, or vichan. More info on all three found here. (Why, yes, the idea is to vote as a bloc, so that we have a chance of getting someone who understands our issues. This is particularly important given the way LJ has proved repeatedly over the last year that they don't care about fandom and are perfectly ready to toss us to the wolves on no provocation.)

DO NOT put the same person in all three spaces--this will cause your vote to be thrown out!

Iron Man

Okay, I finally saw Iron Man. Nice flick, worth the price of admission, although I can already tell I'm not going to be fannish about it (what can I say, I'm a DC girl). Anyone who stayed through the credits knows exactly what movie they're making next. Tony was well played, and so was Pepper; Rhodey was under-utilized. While I can only imagine that the Iron Man fandom is going to go wild with Tony/Pepper, I'd like to see a well-written Pepper/Coulson (the SHIELD agent). They had some chemistry, and as the two people trying to ride herd on/manage Stark (because Lord knows he needs a manager), I can see lots of commiseration in their future.