It doesn't count if I don't directly solicit donations, right? I mean, I can't help it if people are overcome by my brilliance and fling cash at me.

Has this been a life problem for you to date? Cause, damn, I picked the wrong fandom if so.

people are overcome by my brilliance and fling cash at me.

That used to happen to me on a regular basis back when I was a stripper.

If by "brilliance" you mean booty.

I made fun of her here, I'm pretty sure. I do my part.

Oh, yeah, she took some crap for it. But she was also supported by a lot of people, whereas pretty much no one is supporting cousinjean.

It doesn't count if I don't directly solicit donations, right? I mean, I can't help it if people are overcome by my brilliance and fling cash at me.

I totally want to have this problem.

I wish I had been a stripper before it was too late. I'm going to have the most boring writer bio ever. Should I publish anything.

[edit: Cassie Claire also had a lot of people supporting her for barefaced plagiarism.]

I think it makes a big difference if you ask for the money yourself. And what it's for. An iPod? Not very acceptable. But there was a whole kerfuffle about a woman who needed an operation and had no health insurance, and that seemed (more) legitimate. She still got harangued by a lot of people.

[edit: Cassie Claire also had a lot of people supporting her for barefaced plagiarism.]

Yeah, I was trying not to remember that bit. Sigh.

I keep seeing the Cassie thing referenced but I'm not sure I remember the deal.

I whined so much that a group of lovely people sent me to LA. But I am a giant kvetch. I was not thinking that they would do that, and were it not for the check being, you know, written already, might not have accepted graciously. (The PTB kind of took the trip back as revenge, too. bastards.) Short answer being I'm pretty broke, but I would die a hundred times before I'd do that. I just have good friends that helped me once. Which is important for me to remember when I think people suck.

See, erika, that's a whole different kettle of fish. That, or sending someone cookies, or buying them LJ time, or whatever - THAT is one thing. CousinJean, however, is displaying the kind of infantile sense of entitlement that makes me want to get her head and smash it repeatedly into the wall.

...for some reason this pings me kind of the same way that the recent RWA kerfuffle did, inasmuch as there seems to be a quite astounding failure to understand how bloody priveleged one is, and that other people's lives are every bit as valuable and ordinary and precious and real as one's own, and quite often significantly shittier. Showing footage of Tiananmen Square to the tune of Don't Worry, Be Happy is something you can only do if you are incapable of making the imaginative leap to seeing that this thing really happened to real people not very long ago - and we LET it. And describing one's circumstances as desperate, when one is living with a parent, working part time and trying to get strangers to give you money so you can GIVE UP said part time job and still have a fancy wedding? REALLY indicates a lack of understanding about what poverty is. And work. And what it means to be an adult.