The last time I was here, it was December. The last time I was here, you were mine. I happen to know for a fact it's not December any more.

Vaguely obscure lyrics over and done with, welcome to the 15th edition of the forum newsletter!

People new to the series might be a bit confused, so for your liberty, I've constructed a small lesson of the forum newsletter.


conorschild's GUIDE TO THE FORUM NEWSLETTER

• Once a month, I convince myself that people actually care about the forums in a more than superficial way.



• After trying to remember if anything has actually happened, I usually rush together something based on limited ideas.



• I spent an age typing out html codes to link to the best comments or threads that this month has bought up.



• I realise that half of the stuff I bookmarked isn't funny, and link about three items



• Masturbation



• I add in a one-off feature to make up space, usually based on whatever I just wanked too.



• I submit the article and feel vaguely dirty

Well, with the introductions away, let's get on with the show! (By which I mean, news.)


The Forum News

Something Might Happen At Some Point In The Future

And that's an exclusive.

$lolly put up a journal this month about community development in 2008. The most important thing for this newsletter is:

Forum whores, pay attention. This is something you have been waiting for a long time to hear. The Revitalization plan is a focus on the social centers of dA, forums, dAmn and journals to a degree. A revamp of the forums is going to happen. Cleaning up old ones, killing stupid ones, condensing some, making some new ones, adding some additional functionality to them and just making them new again. Same with dAmn.
And on top of that more events/contests/activities/projects etc in the forums and dAmn.

Woo! Revitalization!


Bannings!

Three notable forumers were banned this month

!FieldMarshalGrant, !Comrade-Bea and !kingofshao. Grant for flaming, essentially, and Bea for linking to DIRTY PORN.

!kingofshao was banned because was deemed 'anti-semetic.'

Personally, I feel someone may have missed a joke there.


DarkApple is a Nonce!

You heard it here first, folks!


Forum Lessons!

Today's lesson comes from an old deviation by=angel-obsesser, and I'm not ashamed either: [link]


Forum Feature

So yeah, this is something new. Sometimes we forget that forumers are also artists! That's because they're not very good. But some of them are! (Not many.)

=laurart

As well as featuring prominently in the Forum Newsletter Awards, =laurart has a great variety of drawing styles in her gallery. Here's just some of her stuff:



Interview: My Day Out With Nonparael
This month I didn't have a lot of time for the interview, so I'm sorry if it isn't as good as the previous ones, however, Ara is a cool dude.


I meet ~Nonparael in the local park, where he sits by a chess table. I place myself behind the blacks, already set up, and he indicates that I should play. Looking into his wizened face I blurt out, “WHY ARE YOU SO OLD!?”

Nonplussed, ~Nonparael just smiles and says, “Oh I couldn't possibly answer that one cap'n, you'd have to ask my parents :B,” before taking his first move.

~Nonparael, or Ara, has been on the site for a long time and a constant since I’ve joined the forums myself. Under his previous account, ~Aramakael (the change was after he closed it, but couldn’t fight the dAddiction) he was the first person to meet the now obsolete ‘forum post-cap.’ ~Nonparael is actually his third account, and he’s been on the site since July ’03. “But I didn’t join the forums until around early ’04.”

Ara sees through my Hertz-Chettney maneuver and takes my bishop. So being on the forums a long time, what’s changed?

“What's changed? Oh shit man, a lot of things? Oh, you just mean on dA? The forums? Well, that narrows it down a bit cap'n. 'Forum whores' have come and gone, we've had at least two major plz purges, the rules have changed. Just about the only thing that's still the same is the topic of conversation. ”

The “cap’n” tag is starting to un-nerve me now, and I fear he knows about my time in the Navy-themed gay bar, ‘Seamen on the Stern.’ In an effort to avoid his toothless gaze, I look around at the other people in the park: but the wall of biscuit crumbs trapped in white beads stop me from checking out the ladies.

“If I ever had any influence,” Ara says, placing his knight behind my pawn, “it's over people who joined around the same time as me and've now left, I think. I'm just part of the furniture. Stop making me feel old dammit. ”

It’s true. Ara may not be one of the big posters in the deviantART forums, and is certainly not as celebrated as some of the louder ones. But he’s always there, hanging out in the dank corners of Complaints and watching everyone else, like a pervert hiding in a ball pit. It’d be interesting to know then, who he appreciates in the forums.

“I'm kind of embarrassed to realise I can only think of a handful by name after all this time...

“Firstly, !W-P-S and !dipstikk, for confusing and pissing off so many noobs and whores -and often showing how much more similar they are than people like to admit.

“~Nomaran, for his complaint against thread necromancy - I think we can all guess what happened to that one, repeatedly - as well as his epic list of dead horse topics.
“~happypelican, for not being just another asshat.
Several of the aforementioned asshats, for being good at what they do - which is making me laugh, they clearly have no other purpose.

I'm sure if I put my mind to it, I could think of a very long list that no-one would give a shit enough about to read, but I think that's pushing it already, so let's move on shall we? ” he says, sliding his queen in between my rooks.

Checkmate. The dodgy cunt.

I sit dismayed at the outcome, but I can’t be too angry: it’s just not possible with Ara, especially when he slips me a Werther’s Original. The cloying toffee tastes like his fingers.

Having established his longevity, we would expect Ara to have plenty of forum moments, but sadly senile dementia may have take it’s toll: “Oh man, this'll sound bad, but I can't think of anything specific. There've just been so many threads and comments that've had me in stitches that it's a big blur...

Rest assured; there have been some good times. ”




Best of the Forums!

Threads

Uhn-tis by =5-7x28mm

Why am I so sad? by ~emopelican

Make an album cover! by ~seigi

The Subway Diet: Burning calories by IRRITATING THE FUCK OUT OF YOU. by `vest

What have you learned from religion other than your own? by ~EmpressStarXVII

I have it. by *Unch

The Clientele of Applebee's by *lancekatre


Uhh. To be honest, I know something must've happened in Deviants this month, so I'm sorry for not featuring it at all


Comments

[link] (a massive plz account mural that I won't paste here)

_{[link] by =NoodleDoodler}



Food's a big part of my life. I'd die without it.

_{[link] by `vest}



Pansy. I eat brown recluse spiders for fucking breakfast!
Nothing more satisfying then a spider crunched by a volume of literature with such force that you have to break out the Spackle the next day. God fucking damn I love to kill intruders. Venomous little fuckers deserve what they get if you ask me. Outside, I got no beef with them, hell they can crawl around my feet all they want. No business of mine. When the little bastards get inside of my home the game is on and they are going to die with extreme fucking prejudice. Nothing fucks up a good buzz like having a spider around. No telling if you are imagining it or if it is really there...watching...waiting...to see who will blink first. Well I can tell you one thing it will not be me by god.

_{[link] by *Ikio}



An artist I came across had a photo-manipulation of Pee-Wee Herman and Justin Timberlake in their gallery, where they were draped lovingly across each other. Why they pulled it down is a mystery, but I'll always have the memories.

_{[link] by *scullysayer}



The next movie: Cutting In. The heartwarming story of a high school emo kid in a small impoverished town who has the chance of a lifetime to prove that he isn't a waste of oxygen.

Turns out, he is.

_{[link] by ~BlauerAuss}


Comment Chains

[link]

"Shit, every fool bitch knows ev'rytime a bell be ringin' an angel gets they wings!"

[link]

"God, I wish my vagina had hydraulics."

[link]

"Ferromagnetic man? Would that be the Paleolithic ancestor to Magneto?"

[link]

"QUICKLY QUEBRICK, WE MUST MAKE HASTE!"

[link]

"Snow ocean oar cheese count is fool or bunny, pass it on!"

[link]

"˙dılɟ ɐ ɹo"


Other things

The best plz account now? just looks awesome now, c'mon.

What's everyone talking about? Well, it seems to be: Fundies Say the Darndest Things!, a site that gathers the best (or worse, I guess) quotes made by fundamentalists on the internet. There's some really awful stuff there.


At the start of this issue, I mentioned the forum revitalisation. Well, it's a long way off, but what would everyone like to see change in the forums?

New forums? Deleting old ones? Comment on this article or note me, and I'll put the best ideas into the next issue.


AS WELL AS: Noting me with suggestions for the best comments/threads in February. I can't be everywhere at once and I know I'm missing out on them!

Forum Newsletter Backissues


I've managed to pack a lot in this issue, actually

NEXT TIME ON THE FORUM NEWSLETTER: WHO KILLED !?