It was recently suggested to me by a friend on this forum that, considering I have so much to say on various topics but sometimes find myself unable to fully articulate them (for a variety of reasons I won't go into yet), I should give blogging a try. It's actually funny that it never occurred to me until now.

Or no, that's not accurate. It has occurred to me before. But typically when the thought pops into my head, I'm at work or out with friends, or at home with Husband, or watching a movie or a TV show, or playing a video game, and I don't really want to stop doing what I'm doing so I can vomit my thoughts onto a keyboard for the all of ten people that will skim and immediately disregard what I have to say.

On the other hand, I really do have a lot of shit I want to get off my chest, and I might as well put it somewhere. Why not here?

"Well," says the LoversLab terms and conditions, with a polite clearing of the throat and a bespectacled scan of the rules. "You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this Blog system to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive-"

Oh, I think. That's not too bad, I'd never post anything like that.

"-vulgar-"

Um...what definition of 'vulgar' are you using, exactly?

"-hateful, harassing-"

Okay, we're back to things I'd never do.

"-obscene, profane, sexually oriented-"

...Have you seen this forum? I mean...you're aware that this is a site with video game mods that allow players to rape NPCs, right?

"-threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise violative of any law."

Okay, TOC. Look. We need to have a chat.

I realize that you're only trying to cover your legal ass, here. I realize that there are people in charge of this forum, and that those people might be criminally liable if, say, someone were to use this blog to coordinate their drug empire, or host illegal pornography, or spew Neo-Nazi propaganda. But your wording makes it clear that you aren't even really trying, here. It's like you were just copy/pasted from a legal website with little to no thought about your location. Even that last line, 'violative of any law', forgets that screenshots like the ones I've seen here are highly illegal in many countries, regardless of the fact that they're only video game characters. I mean, really? 'Any' law?

I realize LL is not 4chan (and thank fucking god for that). I realize that it's not Reddit, or Tumblr, or even Facebook. But what we are is a community that acknowledges that the things we do in video games are for fun, and that we can open up about those things in a place without the fear of public shame or rejection. This site has furries. This site has necrophiles. This site has lolicons. We're all thrown into the mix together, mostly because society has shamed us into hiding in a dark corner of the internet, and we band together because misery loves company. But through it all, we find ourselves so strangely tolerant of each other, in ways that even I find surprising sometimes. I might find lolicon offensive, but I don't cry to the admins to delete their mods that makes NPCs look like little girls. Why? Because I want the same acceptance in return. We all do. It's why we're here.

So, I'm sorry, TOC. I'm going to post things that are obscene. I'm going to post things that are profane and sexually oriented. I'm going to *gasp* violate the laws of many, many countries (just not the laws of the country in which I currently reside). Maybe you're not to be taken seriously. Maybe you're just put there so the Powers That Be can tick another box off the laundry list of legal requirements. Or maybe you really are the law of the land, and any day now an admin is going to see my blog and shut me down. If that happens, we'll know which way the wind blows on this site, and I'll be very disappointed.

But until that day, TOC, you will be ignored.