Writing...um?

[brightrosefox]

 So, I finally, finally, noticed that link thing that tells me to switch to the "new" Friends pages, which a noticed many people complaining about and being angry about and writing rather long posts about how much they dislike it and why and comparing it to sites I've never been to.
And then I scrolled through it.
And so... what's the problem, again?
It's bigger. It's clearer. I can read it more easily. It's... how do I put this... more stretched along the page? With fewer distractions? Is that sense making? I don't know. I honestly an unable to find the problems.
You guys, what are the problems with the New LIveJournal Friends Pages?

Also, my writer block... stagntation? issues? make me cry. I am so stuck at the end of of this one chapter (20? 21? Fuck, I forget) in which the sympathetic villain and the central heroine are in a stalemate and I the writer want the villain to come across as Mentally Interesting Person Who Just Wants To Do The Right Thing And Needs The Help Of The Heroine Except That What He Wants Is To Destroy, Delete, And Reset Reality To His Liking. And a big big important note is that ALL my characters are Mentally Interesting. This is my substitute word for Crazy and Mentally Ill and Disabled. Something is... Not Typical about anyone in my novel. I do not actually come out and name any diagnosis because this is, what, the 2100s, and the DSM has probably evolved into a beast of a book that bites your hand if you get things wrong. Really, the only characters who are most fleshed out as Mentally Interesting/Crazy/Disabled are the Sympathetic Villain and the Central Heroine. Except there's a lot with the Sympathetic Villain. He is quite Delusional and psychotic... but is he a sociopath? A schizophrenic? A schizo-type? Obsessive-Compulsive Personality? Bipolar? Oh, who the fuck cares. He is who he is. And maybe that is part of why I am blocked? Must I give him a Thing with a Name? My Heroine has Severe General Anxiety and Major Depression and PTSD and Epilepsy and Obsessive-Compulsive and Sensory Processing Disorder, Attachment Issues, and and extremely mild Attachment Disorder conflicting with extremely mild Avoidant Disorder.
And now we come to the Why? Why, Joanna the Author, do you have to do this? Why do you want to do this? Why does this matter? What is the point?

Comments

[alumiere.livejournal.com]

I can see the new layout working for lots of people, but it doesn't work for those of us who have light sensativity issues. I cannot spend a significant anount of time looking at black on white or any high contrast screen without eyestrain and headaches moving toward a migraine. And the new layouttakes away my primary reason for using lj - the ability to set my own style/text size. It is an aaccessibility issue for lots of people, and even for those without light sensativity many still prefer to view things in their own style.

It wouldn't be such a problem if we were allowed to choose. But as of right now, they're saying everyone will have to switch. So we all get pages that look all too much like facebook (which I can spend about five minutes max on) rendering lj inaccessible or something we don't want.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Ohh, okay. I see now. LJ really doesn't seem to care about people with disabilities, eh?
Hmm. I do have sensitivity issues, so I will see if the new layout actually hurts me in that way.

[shadowwolf13]

The excessive white gives a large majority of the LJ Community migraines and eye strain.

The continuous scrolling is also a pain for a lot of readers not to mention it has a habit of locking up a lot of computers.

People are happier now that they've been told that some of the features will be given the option to be turned off, but when the changes were first presented it was not an option, everybody was simply going to be forced to use it. Plus, a lot of the Russian comments were translated as though paid accounts were going to be canceled, as Russian apparently doesn't have a word that means change.

The biggest issue is that they put out these notices of change in Russian only so all other languages have to rely on poor translations until the people in charge get around to giving us the information in the news posts.

[celtic_maenad]

My main complaint is that they've done away with the Page Summary. I use that to start reading my friends page from where I left off and continue reading in chronological order.
Also, I prefer the ability to choose the look of my friends page (as in the theme/style that I've chosen), but that's of less significance to me. The new page makes it very difficult to just jump to the post I want to read.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

I see that now... Hrmm. Argh.

[notadoor.livejournal.com]

If it helps, give him a thing with a name. Or several things with a name!

But I know for me, a lot of times when I'm like "argh I need this specific detail to be accurate, cannot write until it's sorted", what is ACTUALLY going on is that the bit I need to write is really important, and I'm scared. I want it to be perfect. I don't want to fuck it up. And I'm using these little things as a way of putting off the big scary thing. So rather than focus on adjusting these tiny details, what I need to do is say, "no, actually, I CAN do this. If I fuck it up the first time, then I will figure out how to do it better and I will do it again."

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Sounds VERY familiar! It's like, What if a reader yells at me because I did not portray their specific issue properly, etc.

But I must remember that I am in familiar territory. I'm not doing any sort of Flanderization. I'm trying to show that my Sympathetic Villain has mental issues but they aren't why he's so... umm... fucked up? Or at least they contribute? *headwall*