Would like to invite folks to check out this round of Seasonal Spuffy - this is my first time as a participant of the LJ community - hope you will take a look and if anyone would like to help me out with how to post with a "lj cut" I would really appreciated the help.

http://community.livejournal.com/seasonal_spuffy/

An lj cut is one of the few things I can do. lol   It's easy, you just skip a line or two and put <lj-cut> wherever you want the cut. On the main page, it will show (read more) as a link and when the reader clicks on it, it opens the rest of your post. Now, if you want to know how to call it something other than "read more", that's trickier and i dont' usually bother with it.  Someone will pop up who can give you the code for it, though.

if you want to know how to call it something other than "read more", that's trickier and i dont' usually bother with it. Someone will pop up who can give you the code for it, though.


LOL You just use  <lj-cut text="whatever you want to say in here">

Oh, and you have to close the cut. </lj-cut>, or it won't cut.

CM

Sorry to put this in here, but I can't ask on the site I saw it and Google doesn't have any answers. What does ETA mean in chatspeak? Edited Time AFter? I have no idea but it is used very often and i'd really like to know! Please answer.

Usually ETA means estimated time of arrival. 

LJ cut: If you're using Rich Text, you can also click the box with the little gray lines, and that will prompt you to add the cut text, and does all the coding for you. Once you make the cut, a gray box will appear, and whatever you type inside the box is inside the cut.

ETA: In posting, it usually means Edited To Add, or some similar variation. It means you edited your post and added something after you posted it.

You only have to close the cut if you are wanting to add something AFTER the cut section. It will cut just fine without closing it.

<lj-cut>

I don't have to add anything else other than <lj-cut> ?  I thought perhaps I needed to insert the link, which is what I tried to do.  when I right clicked on the banner I used as a sample the file link appeared -   I had to solve the cut problem by showing a small thumbnail and posting the link to flickr or directed people to view on my LJ page.

     <lj-cuthttp://farm4.static.flickr.com/3029/2943242940_b2ac7ab027_o.jpg>

Thanks to all for your help - I will give it another try.

In the mean time, I have my last two images at Seasonal Spuffy posted now - hope that you will take a look. 

http://community.livejournal.com/seasonal_spuffy/

Seasonal Spuffy Poetry Round is now posting - some wonderful things to read and see -  http://community.livejournal.com/seasonal_spuffy/

This is my day for posting - would love to have some of you check out my submission and get some feed back comments would be great appreciated -

Some splendid Pablo Neruda works and one of my own humble attempts at poetry are part of my entries - Neruda, IMO, is a great voice for the Spuffy relationship -

Check  out the neat icons goldenusagi posted at Seasonal Spuffy today -

Have a question regarding how people use LJ and how the various communities are visited.  I ask the question, which I sincerely hope some members will take a few moments to help me with.  I have been trying to get more attention for my Buffyverse work and my gallery site - but I can't seem to make any progress in getting more people interested.  For instance at this Seasonal Spuffy round - every single person who has posted work has been viewed has received comments in such greater numbers than my entries.  My work from what I can see is fairly equal in quality and interest, yet I have had very few people look at my submission. 

How does the viewing process work at LJ - do the "friends list" play an important part in the selection of what you view?  If you belong to a community like Seasonal  Spuffy - do you view only selected members or do you look at all the entries and then decide which you find personally interesting and just skip what looks like "not so hot"  - does name recognition have a lot to do with people taking some time to look at what is posted?  If I thought my efforts were total crap compared to everything else that is posted I could understand but I don't see a big difference.  I would really appreciate any replies -  

Now I am officially "confused and bewildered" - what am I doing wrong when icons will generate tons of views and great comments and one of the Great Poets of our time can get only 2 people to bother -

nmcil - several things play into community responses.  One is a time issues. There is so much out there that many people use their filters when they're busy and come back to their communities later when they have time to read or look at stuff. So, you can get responses to posts at communities long after the original post.  And, if people are skimming, then name recognition will be an issue - you might click on your personal friends' posts, but skip over those from people you don't know. Again, to ocme back to later, perhaps.  I look at both the name and the summary or description of what's behind the cut, so you may want to take a look at your "come on" and see if maybe it needs to be a bit more specific or sound a bit more interesting.

Or, it could be that they don't want to follow links to a site they don't know or trust. You may be better off to post one or two artworks behind the cut, rather than a link to a place where there are so many of them that viewers are overwhelmed or worried about time issues. One piece of art that is easily accessed is more likely to build interest in the others than is a link to a place they don't know.

Don't know what to tell you about the poetry entry. Not everyone likes poetry, and those that do have probably already read Neruda as he is very popular with Spuffy lovers. *shrugs* Or it may have just been a busy day when it was your posting day.

Those are my thoughts about it. 

Seasonal Spuffy - Banner Selection

Time again to select a Seasonal Spuffy Banner - Fall Round   Here is the link:   http://community.livejournal.com/seasonal_spuffy/

Once again, my submissions are DEAD LAST  - so if you feel like giving a little love to your BSV fellow member  - go check out all the neat banners - how knows, you might pick one of mine. 

Can't figure out why my works always get such a bad response from the people over at the LJ community.  I just wan a Best of Show, First Place for S, culpture, First Place for Pastel Paintings, an honorable mention for another pastel painting - and in a second exhibition, a Third Place for painting -  But I can't seem to please the Spuffy Fans - is my work really that bad?

Anyway - Please visit the Seasonal Spuffy  site and place your vote for the banner you like best - lot of very nice work to see.

Whaps nmcil up the side of her head.  Your stuff is great.  I tried to find your post on LJ but couldn't.  Will look again later when I have more time.  I really hate LJ. 

thanks for trying - fairly sure that you can tell my work - I worked from the episode and theme that were given for this round -

Hey mncil! Your seasonal_spuffy banner is absolutely gorgeous, and distinctive enough that I know it's yours. However, I do think that there is some confusion about what number goes with what banner. I read one comment specifically praising your banner, but then they voted for the wrong number! I put in a suggestion to clarify the numbering, but I haven't been back to check it. I've got to say, it was a hard choice this round! I don't know how we can be expected to pick just one!

I agree, Rebcake. I could easily have voted for any one of them.  It was a hard decision, and the unclear numbers made it even more difficult.  I think the last time I looked at it, there was an added note saying "numbers are under the banners" or something like that, so maybe that was added after your comment?   I hope that not too many people got caught voting for the wrong one due to numbering confusion.

I know that lj has always been the "home" of Spuffy.  Many fanfic writers got their start there and still communicate with one another there.  But (and maybe this shows I'm just a dunce!) I have a really hard time navigating through lj and figuring out how to find things.  Since I don't have an lj acct. myself, I usually cannot add comments to a story being posted there or send emails to the authors.  I am so sorry that a lot of those people don't also post their stories here at bsv because I think this site is so much easier to use--to see stories, leave comments, find updates, and join in discussions.  Plus bsv pages load faster on my computer, and I really like being able to go to the plain "print" option to read them and to get all the chapters together on the same page simply by clicking "whole story".  Let's hear 3 cheers for the moderators and designers of bsv!  To those of you who write stories on lj, I hope you'll consider also posting them here where you'll find a slightly different, but equally devoted, audience.

Thank you, Sensei! It's our pleasure.

Yes, LJ can be frustrating and confusing to get around. That's especially true if you don't have an account.  If the basic accounts are still free (I'm not sure they are, but they used to be) maybe you should get one just for reading purposes. I think a lot of people do that. They put a bare minimum of information on their info pages and rarely, if ever, post themselves.  Having that account makes it much easier to find fics as you can just "watch" or "join" all the Spuffy communities and "friend" your favorite authors and then you've got a lot of stuff right there on your friends page everytime you open it. 
There are a huge number of authors who treat their LJ accounts as their personal websites and don't bother posting their fics anywhere else.  Also, there are so many communities on there where fics get posted that they sort of take the place of archives for many people. It is, I think, a shame, but it's some extra work for authors to post at archives and if they're getting enough comments and readers on LJ, I guess they don't think it's worth the effort.
I appreciate you're encouraging authors to post here (some authors, anyway... but I have to admit that you'll probably get more reading material from joining LJ.  Let me know if you'd like to be walked through the process.

A basic account is still free; see http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=38
You can't use so many user pictures (icons) = 6 and can only use 25 notifications but it's free.
It sounds as if you get a sponsored account when you sign up to LJ and have to downgrade it to basic ( http://www.livejournal.com/manage/account/  )

With a basic one you won't see that many adds.  But like a sponsored one (where you're forced to see ads) it's free. So why not get one? Then you can comment and recommend the archives to the authors.

Finding fics on LJ and navigating LJ can be confusing at first.  It was for me.  But most authors have their entries organized enough so you can find what you want to read easily.  Some don't, but most do. 

Some totally suck at organizing memories and tags...*cough, slaymesoftly, cough*   *pets website*

Thanks to everyone for the advice and encouragement about joining lj; I may give it a try...although considering how many stories I haven't read yet on bsv, I have no idea why I am considering going to lj to find even more stories I don't have the time to read!!!! ! 

Well I hope that some of the writers from LJ would post at BSV - I love reading here and at the FF sites - I am one of those LJ users that finds the site no particularly "user friendly" - especially for posting images but the groups like "Seasonal Spuffy" and other Buffyverse FF and Fan Art groups are great fun. 

The one thing that I really like about FF sites is the ease that categories, author and completed fics offer -

Seasonal Spuffy Fall is in full swing -

I posted my entries for this Fall round - Please stop by and check out my images, I would really appreciate it - always feel very lonely over at this Spuffy project.  Check out all the fine work from the writers and other graphics.  If you have an entry, please let us know.

Plus, I gave a small "shot out" to our own Daniel for his story "Songs of Lament" here at BSV - a small thing to do for him and his Spuffy efforts. 

I would expect that most of the authors who regularly post here at the BSV who have participated in this round of SS would also post their entires here. It is a Spuffy archive, after all.

I plan to post mine after the round ends over there. Which means it will have been up for 5-6 weeks on LJ before coming over here. What do other people do?

Hmmm - good question! I think I usually post everywhere at the same time - SS, my LJ, here, wherever else I might be posting and, eventually, on my own website once I get the page made.  I never actually thought about posting to a community and leaving it only there until a given date. But they may be just me not knowing that I should be doing it that way... It's hard for me to remember to do stuff, so I'm better off when posting to post everywhere at the same time or some thing is going to be left half-finished or skipped completely.

I would normally just post my Seasonal Spuffy story here the same day or the day after I post at SS, but this year, my story has a shanshued Spike.  He's not a vampire, so I'm not posting the story here.  I'm posting it on my own livejournal account.

Each community has it's own rules.  Every time I participated, I read the rules again.  For Seasonal Spuffy, they want the work to be created for that round or have the work debut during the round.  So it needs to be original and something you haven't posted elsewhere, before.  And then there was this rule:

(8) We won't forbid you from posting your work on your own website or journal, because... hello... it's your work. But please post all stories and graphics to community and avoid using outside links.

No rule forbidding anyone for posting elsewhere after it's been posting at Seasonal Spuffy. 

I'm pretty sure I have at least one or two Shashued Spike stories up here. Since yours has vamp Angel, slayer Buffy, and so forth, I think it would probably be okay. I'll check with the other two mods and see what they have to say.  The rules for the archive were written before anyone knew anything about a Shanshu prophecy, so a formerly vamped Spike wasn't on anyone's radar. They just didn't want any AH stories in which the characters weren't who and what they were on the show.

It would be great if that could be clarified. I know MsClawdia didn't post her excellent "Restoration" because it was a shanshued Spike and she was concerned that it didn't meet the "vampires/slayers" criteria. I'm pretty sure that these "shanshu" stories meet the spirit of the law, but not everybody shares my view. I'd be for it (not just because my most recent seasonal_spuffy has a shanshued Spike), but there is the concern that people would take advantage and mix the shanshu with worldwide amnesia and end up with "Buffy is a waitress and Spike is a truck driver" type stories, but I doubt anybody would push it that far. I suppose I shouldn't underestimate people's capacity for finding loopholes...

Oh! How about if "shanshued Spike" was one of the new tags?

That's a good idea! Yeah, I'll do a poll of the admins and see what we come up with. I don't see it as a problem with new authors, because they'd have to be validated by one of us and if they were trying to slip an AH fic in there (or something too close to it) then they'd be busted - and rejected.

I'm working on one too, but Spike is a vampire 99.9% of the story.  You pretty much crash into that whole Shanshu issue if you write anything after S7.

Not that I have any say, but I look at Shanshu stories as very different from AH, because even if Spike has become human due to the prophecy, he's still Spike, and was still a vampire for all those years prior to getting the Shanshu.

We have quite a few Shanshu stories on here, and Shanshu Spike is already one of the suggested tags.

Thanks for clearing that up, Always.  I'm just careful not push boundaries.  Guess I should have read the rules here again.    It's been so long since I first started posting stories. 

The new round of Season Spuffy is on - please check out the Spuffy Editions Comic Book project  with text by Maryperk and graphics by nmcil - I think it came out really well - and we sure did a lot of work.  Would love for you to check out this round of Seasonal Spuffy and take a look at "The Amor Prophecy"  and all the other great stories and art created by this round.     http://community.livejournal.com/seasonal_spuffy/   Feedback would be great  this is our first full Spuffy Edition.  Niamh is doing the second edition which will be posted for the "Open Day" -

if you cannot view it at LJ it is also on my Picasa Web Album http://picasaweb.google.com/nmcil12B/SeasonalSpuffySpuffyEditions#

I always love when it is Seasonal Spuffy time.  Each year it just gets more and more creative.  Nmcil--WOW!  Now this is creative--not to mention impressive!  Cutsey text and unbelievable graphics.  I've seen some of your other work, but I am especially impressed wtih this.  This is the smoothest cropping job on pictures I've ever seen.  You either have a really steady hand, a great photo-editing program, a neat trick, or hey! maybe it's magic.  Yup, definitely magic cause it's soooo perfect.  You rock, lady!

(For those wanting to view it, I suggest using nmcil's picasa link because when I tried the seasonalspuffy link, I couldn't get to the beginning; it comes up on page 14.)

Maryperk and Nmcil - that was SOOOOO funny.  The pictures were beautiful, too.  Loved it.

I really am completely lost over at LJ with their posting system -  What kinds of problems did you have?  the link that I posted at Seasonal Spuffy should have taken you to the first set of images.  I can be pretty dense sometimes - I should have realized that I needed to post all the images in reverse order.  Plus, I refuse to post lousy quality images so I had to go through all the Links. 

If anyone can suggest a better way of posting this, please let me know.  I know the gallery mode is there for just this sort of group viewing - however, I don't know how that works. 

Maryperk gave me a great story to work with -

Writers and Graphics - Please post your links if you have work in this Season Spuffy Round -

I use Semagic for my lj postings and it is idiot-proof! It's a free download.

I have written several Shanshu Spikes fics, so it's nice to know that they would be allowed here if I ever wanted to post them.  Shanshu Spike fics are no way like AH (which I also happily write *runs for cover*) as Buffy is still a Slayer etc.

I'm doing Seasonal Spuffy for the first time this year, hoping to raise my profile a bit again, as not posted as often as I used for a while.  My date is 14th June and I'm hoping to have at lease one of my current WIPs complete by then as I have a longer fic for SS - funnily enough it is a Shanshu Spike fic!  Also have a couple of drabbles which I have never attempted before either - so should be good fun,

Grr! Typo! *slaps forehead* At LEAST! not bloody lease!  *scolds fingers for not hitting right keys* and who stole my commas! LOL!  Sorry been a very long day at work and I'm feeling a bit bonkers!