The Return of Gumflabica

"Here he is, ladies and gentlemen. The one, the only, the exceedingly handsome, Gunflabica!" That's about the point where I start crowd-surfing on a for some reason physical wave of humans. Of coarse, nothing ever really does turn out as such. Not that it helps that most of my returning to this particular forum is a compromise between time limitations and not letting people down on my home forum, the RPG board.

But, no matter the case, there I was. Still compulsively clicking the RPG button rather than the Fan-Fic button as I routinely and desperately checked my inbox for something, anything new despite my activity. However, a wave of relief washed over me as my eyes drifted to the upper-right corner of my screen and noticed a green number one next to the envelope icon, no doubt another post in the ongoing conversational PM between myself and fellow writer KCSSHD. Wait, nevermind. He just spammed the same word a few times. How do I ever reply to that? Eh, whatever. Back to- Woah. That's orange. Right. Forgot I changed my profile pic. It's brighter than the last one. Has a way of catching my eye for some reason.

As I contemplated such interesting things as how to reply to some off the more off the wall things to appear on my screen under the username of KCSSHD and how orange my new profile picture was in comparison to the last, I scrolled over the text on said picture.

Oh yeah, the whole reason I made this darn thing was because I was going to write a Fic. This was just the logo or something. Yeah, I should probably do that soon. Wait, did I just say darn? What the ham? Wait, what? That didn't even forking make sense. WHAT!? Okay, I'm getting to the bottom of this.

Frustrated by a sudden surge of censorship, I refreshed the page once more, because maybe someone said something to me in the two minutes it took for me to briefly ponder why my procrastination extends even to things I enjoy while staring blankly at a wall. To my surprise, there was a green number one next to the flag icon this time.

Oh, nevermind. Just another battles poster trying to convince me Alduin's lore isn't enough to debate with. Dude, I gave you in-game showings too, and you're just choosing to ignore them for some reason. Why is everybody doing that? You can't seriously think that you beat Alduin with your sword. Do you even realize how badly they had to nerf dragons and their shouts it fit gameplay mechanics? Since when do we debate game characters with their mechanics? JEEZ GUYS

After spending ten minutes on the same pair content-wise that I'd sent to many others who had chosen to either not read the thread or completely ignore my posts, a thought crossed my mind. "I didn't curse a single time during that post. Is there something wrong with me? What the funk?"

Oh. Right. This farking bullshot. Might as well just let ducking autocarrot direct my life. Seriously, who's behind this? What is happening right now?

Once again realizing my goal, and avoiding the urge to refresh, I still refreshed and checked the RPG forum again because I'm lonely. This revealed a new topic on the forum I no longer called home. No, not the one made by the guy I know in real life that I got into Comic Vine. Gawd, that guy won't stop giving me shart about leaving the RPG forum. He just doesn't get it. But, yeah. New topic, and from a mod. It has a pin, so it must be important.

A quick once-over released that it had to deal with Comic Vine's new rules on profanity, and my ears began to ring. Ouch, who's doing that? It's annoying, please stop. Ignoring the ringing, I read further into the post.

"You've got to be kidding me. Now we can't even use censored versions of fark? I mean, fook? No, yammit. SLOT! Erm, F-f-f-u-u-u-u-lk. Great. Wonderful. ****." Scrolling down, another shocking discovery was made. "Wait, we can't even do ****? What? How does that even make sense? How can it get any more censored than ****? Wow. I know a lot of words that have four letters. Poop, for example. Pump. Grum, even.

After a few minutes of listing words that I knew had four letters, occasionally missing s five-lettered word, I decided to voice my thoughts. "What is this fracking buckshot? We can't even use variations or censorship a of a word? That's going to look ridiculous! What if we're writing a particularly badass character, who decides to drop an F-Bomb during dialogue, and says 'Frickin''? That would be stupid! Come on, you're killin' me here. Would telling the Fan-Fic forum to put disclaimers or something have been harder? I mean, why should we have to limit what we write? I get racial and sexual slurs and stuff, but c'mon. You're crossing the line here."

And so, after thoroughly disturbing anyone in my general vicinity after my literal thinking out loud, I flipped open my laptop. Nope, no new replies. Then, being the passive-aggressive little clump I am, I set out to write a somewhat humorous post voicing my, well, no. I'm just whining at this point, instead of, y'know, actually writing that thing I've been wanting to write.

What a great second first impression.

So yeah, good ol' Gumflabica is back in action.

And also using an RPG alt because I'm too lazy to log out. Sorry, too lally. Wouldn't want to offend anybody who's lazy or something :P

@geth: Actually, we got notified of the same thing in this forum too. It's a site-wide policy, and as much as it doesn't make sense for some characters, what they're telling us is this isn't the place for those characters. It's not an unreasonable rule- just very farkin' inconvenient. I don't really see the difference between a censored version of the F word and "creative replacements" of the F word, but what the heck? I can do creative replacement. So cbishop's F word replacement, coming to a fan-fic near you. <shrugs> And moving on.

@geth LOL. I love how you mentioned me spamming a word in the PM.

We have other conversations besides that you know. :D

Oh and that snapshot of your mind makes me see how similar I am to you. Well except for the losing concentration part.

@cbishop I'm glad I read this post because I had no idea about the new rule.

OMG I would have been banned as soon as I posted the next 5 chapters of my book.

So wait why? I mean, in my opinion, that just removes the types of characters you can create. It closes off the amount of personalities you could have. Now it's going to be ruined by regulations. (Just like everything else)

(EDIT: Typed to fast. ************** Mac Autocorrect)

I'm guessing, but Comic Vine has always tried to be a family friendly site, but now it's a little more so since they are owned by CBS. You can still write your book, and even have the F word every other line, but you just can't post it on CV. Good news is: CV is not the only place in the world to post writing. You can try Wattpad, where book publishers supposedly actively scout for new books to publish. On CV though, you have to tone it back a notch.

I would suggest writing your book chapters in Word (or whatever the Mac equivalent is), then running the "replace" function so that it turns F-bombs into F-butterflies, and otherwise edits harsher language before posting it to CV. It's not hard to do, and as much as it might take the reader out of the story every time they come to an F-butterfly, there shouldn't be anyone reading on this site that doesn't understand that they're seeing F-butterflies because CV requires F-butterflies.

It's the new normal, man... and really, the change has been around for about six months, so not even all that new. Just shake your head, make a disgusted noise, and move forward. ;)

Edit: And P.S., I was going to answer this last night, but right after I opened the tabs on CV, I lost my Internet connection for the night. I love my cable company, IlovemycablecompanyIlovemycablecompanyIkindadon'tlovemycablecompany...

@kcsshd: lol true we have other conversations but a good half of them are obscene Kappa

And also littered with Twitch emotes

@cbishop: I, uh, I actually got KC off of Wattpad because of a lack of attention to his work, and brought him here for the community.

I'm in four years, a bit too late for me to leave CV now :P

@geth: Oh! I was by no means suggesting leave CV! Just offering an alternative if the rule is too much to bear. Really though, the language rule has always been in place, they've just updated it with "no F-bomb whatsover." Is it silly? I think so, but when every kid trying to escape mom and dad's scrutiny of their Facebook page comes here to go wild in the Off-Topic forum, some rules have to be set in place.

@geth: And concerning Wattpad- I named that site, because it's the only one I could think of off of the top of my head, but yeah... I tried it and didn't like it. It's overrun with unfinished stories as much as CV is- I don't know how publisher scouts could find anything usable there.

He left me... for.. *sucks up tear* the Fan-Fic Board.

@cbishop I am thinking about trying Wattpad again. But that's not going to be my only place of expansion.

I have been planning on opening social networks that way I have more potential reach than just on CV forum.

Do you have any recommendations, besides Wattpad, for where I can post my stories?

@kcsshd: None whatsoever. I actually don't recommend Wattpad unless your book is finished. I can only imagine that publisher scouts are tired of seeing unfinished stories on there. Beyond that, I have no idea. Amazon has some kind of program where you can make your book available digitally, by chapters, for free, to get exposure... actually, you might get paid for it, but I have never looked into it.