Many years on the internet have left me on the receiving end of many an email.  Although having live mailto links on an old site means that I get my daily quota of male body part enhancement, illicit pharmaceutical, refinancing at these super-low-rates-now! offers as well as a Nigerian bank scam thrown in for variety, it also means that I get email from fans that visit my tributes to 80s and early 90s cartoon fun.  Most of these are great, they're notes from other fans letting me know that they've enjoyed their visit to my site or giving me feedback about a story, or even asking a question in the hopes that I can provide them with some information.  These are nice to get, and always brighten my day.

Then there are the other types of emails.  The ones that make me say, "Why do I have my email address online again?"  Not necessarily the flames ('cause hey, at least those can be funny!) but the ones that make me want to introduce my head to my desk at high speed or reach through the monitor and slap someone upside the head. 

My fellow webmasters know the type of email of which I speak.  The entitlement whiners who seem to think I exist solely to update my site for their amusement, and to their specifications, on their timetable and my dime.  The ones who do not share my sense of humor that can apparently read well enough to type out an email complaining about something, but whose reading comprehension failed to comprehend the warnings posted two lines above the content they're complaining about.  The ones who ask me how much I am selling this or that toy for, when I have previously stated that something is not for sale.  The ones that demand to know when I'm putting the show back on the air.  Those that demand fanfic updates now, either on one of my stories, or for me to post theirs after they just mailed it to me less than 24 hours ago.  And the list goes on and on...

Thus, this section is born.  Before you email me, or at least before you wonder why I might not have answered your email or responded in a tired, cranky, and decidedly cranky tone, please read this page. 

Why don't you update more often?

Because I don't feel like it, because I'm not being paid to do this, because my free time is limited, and mostly because it's a fan-run site run by one fan (me).  I like it that way, and I maintain my site for fun.  I am in no way, shape, or form obligated to update any part of the site any more often than I feel like doing.  Also, nagging me about a lack of updates in whatever section you feel isn't getting adequate attention isn't going to make it fun or encourage me to update more often.  What it will do is get you put on my virtual ignore list.

Your captions, fanfics, fan art, and other miscellaneous submissions will be on the internet forever.

So think twice before you send me something to post on my site.  While I'll make a reasonable effort to accommodate a request to remove something, I am not going to drop everything and fire up my FTP just to take off a fanfic or a picture caption you sent me seven years ago when you were lolz 16 on teh intarwebz!  Nasty emails saying "I asked you to take this off ten times" when I haven't updated that particular section of the site in over a year are going to get your emails deleted and/or mocked.  Besides, even if I do take something off, who's to say it won't pop up in the way back machine someday anyway?  So in short, say please, don't nag, and anticipate the possibility that if you send me something, it might very well still be here years from now.

For the last time, I'm female!

While I understand that "Cheezey" is a rather gender-neutral name, for the record, I am female.  It doesn't make me mad, but it does make me roll my eyes whenever anyone refers to me as the wrong gender or calls me "man." Admittedly, I am more inclined to forgive the Voltron fandom for this since I'm the "voice" of a male character, but you Thundercats and DWD fans have no excuse.

I'm also married, so please don't hit on me.

That's cool that you and I are apparently into the same fandoms.  It's also cool that you've seen a picture of me somewhere and find me attractive.  It's not cool when you don't respect the fact that I'm married, not interested in hot IM cybersex, or other less virtual acts with you in real life.  Also, inferring things about me from mature-rated fanfics I write or online RPing is really creepy and silly.  Do you think people who write torture fics kill people in their spare time? 

Where did the name "Cheezey" come from anyway?

Not from an obsession with nachos, cheeseburgers, or pizza, from an inability to spell "cheesy," a Voltron space mouse (them's fightin' words!), and most certainly not the batshit theory I saw espoused by a troll on Mumm-Ra's board about it being a reference to unclean male genitalia.  The name came from a nickname I had for a cat I used to have, who passed on many years ago now.  I kept it because I like it, and it's somehow appropriate considering how campy the shows my fan sites are based on can be.

I know my videos are ancient and in a crappy format, but I don't care.

Way back in the olden days of the internet, before the days of high speed internet, people had dial-up.  Not just 56k dial-up (that was fancy stuff) but slow 14.4 modems where downloading just 2 MB could be a few hours of your time.  And if you got disconnected, there was none of this "resume broken download" stuff that we have today. 

There was also no YouTube and no massive file sharing anywhere other than newsgroups.  People who encoded their VCR tape episodes (DVDs, hah!  The only Thundercats on DVD were illegal bootlegs made from episodes taped off of Cartoon Network!) had their work cut out for them just making clips that the average person could download, view, and open without getting a crash or a disconnect somewhere in there.  So back in the day, especially when Thundercats wasn't being aired and it was hard to find even VCR tapes of the show, these were the only glimpses many fans had of a show that had been off the air for years.  Nowadays, these clips are obsolete with legit DVDs on the market (hence the reason they aren't going to be updated), but someone who wants a quick flashback to remember the show or a particular character might find them useful, so for now they'll stay up.

No, I won't send you whole episodes or post them on my site. 

Before the Thundercats DVDs came out, this was almost forgivable, even though for a while before that it was easy to find someone selling bootlegs on eBay or on various forums.  However, asking someone to host illegal bootlegs on their webspace is pretty nervy and demanding it is outright obnoxious.  Asking for someone to email or copy/burn bootlegs is just a shade less so.  I've already said that I don't copy episodes for people, so those who email me asking that anyway really tick me off.  Don't ask.  Especially now that there are DVDs out.  This also applies to Voltron fans, although so far everyone's known better than to ask Cossack for that.  If you're a DWD fan that found this site, and you feel like you need to point out that the whole series wasn't put out on DVD, yeah, I know.  But I'm still not going to piss anyone off by hosting bootleg copies for download.

Why do you still code your page in HTML?  You could have a far more interactive site with cool scripts instead of this out of date so-1990s format.

Did it occur to you that I might like my out of date 1990s format HTML site?  Yes, I could have scripts.  I could also have headaches having to learn how these things work, dealing with security updates, hackers, spam bots, and all that annoying stuff.  Or I could just leave this like it is.  Yeah. I think I'll do that.

Think of this fan site like an old house in a historical preservation zone.  With the invention of LJs, wikis,  Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and all that jazz, the fan site itself is a dying breed.  One that doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles is even rarer.  Like a nice old Victorian mansion with its quirky towers, narrow staircases, single pane windows, and fuse box still in the basement, it may not have the efficiency of vinyl siding and thermal energy star windows, but at least it doesn't look like every other McMansion on the block, and it has its own unique charm.  So have respect for your old sites and crotchety old webmistresses, kiddo!  Just because it's old-fashioned doesn't mean it doesn't work just fine.

My toys are not for sale, and I'm not buying yours, either.

I've said this in the Thundercats site's toy section, but it bears repeating.  I don't care how many years you've been looking for a Tongue-A-Saurus, I'm not selling you mine and I don't care how much you offer me.  If I want to sell something, I'll make an announcement to that effect.  Don't harass me about parting with my stuff because you've gotta have it.  On the same token, one note saying you have something for sale that I might be interested in is cool.  Several that get increasingly demanding with each email are not. 

You say that the losers who flamed you are wanky, well, so are you!

No U!

And wasting two minutes of your life sending me a funny email saying that somehow proves that you are not?

About that argument you had with me/my best friend/my boyfriend/my grandmother's dog five or more years ago...

Well, I hadn't thought about it in years, but since you asked, yes, most likely I still do think you're a jackass.

Why are you so obsessed with the villains?  The heroes were so much cooler!

We're all entitled to our opinions.  Mine is that for Thundercats, the Lunatacs are awesome and highly underrated, for Voltron, that the Doomites make the show, and for Darkwing Duck, that Bushroot and the other Fearsome Five guys are awesome.  If you don't like it, you're more than welcome to build a fan page, write fanfic, and/or draw fan art featuring the characters that tickle your fancy.

Why don't you ever show up online?

Because I run all of my contact names restricted and tend to run those programs on invisible mode on top of that.  If you want to know why, the short answer is that too many years on the internet and too many asshats have turned me into a crabby virtual hermit.  I prefer to interact primarily over email, forums, LJ, and the chats I already attend regularly.  If I know you from one of those places, then I'll be willing to chat with you on AIM or Yahoo when I'm in a social mood.

Back to the Lair of Cheeze