Meta Roundup

rubyfruit_pixie: Too Much for (Hurt/)Comfort: The most Topic-Hopping Post EVER!: "Most people who read Hurt/Comfort fics want to see their favorite characters hurt and subsequently comforted, and it's really not my fault that my favorite characters Just So Happen to be female." (Warning copied from author's note: "The topic of this here piece of ranty meta (and possibly the comments as well) will deal with potentially triggering subjects.")

elfwreck: So-called self-identified bi women: "Plz to ignore the huge swarms of bi women writing & reading slash--because hey, they're maybe fake!"

LiveJournal:

stewardess: Your Journal - Your Money? My Ass. (explains how LiveJournal's new Google AdSense program called Your Journal - Your Money actually works, has links to related articles/blog posts e.g. LJ's ads serving malware)

General Meta:

the_shoshanna: A handy guide to media fan convention art shows: "So just as fans shared fanfic and art in the zines that were and are displayed, shared, bought, and sold in convention dealers' rooms, one of the places that fans shared, admired, and bought and sold fan art was in convention art shows."

elfwreck: Ethics of commenting: "Is it proper to comment (squeefully) on the fic of people you know don't like you? How about people who you suspect don't like you and might rather just forget you exist?"

beccastareyes has some short thoughts on Flash Fiction.

Fandom-specific:

[Supernatural] yourlibrarian: SPN 5.11- Where have I seen this before?: "One of the issues I have with all the Kripkeing that goes on in this fandom is that more often than not the fan version is better. And as we head through S5, I have often read/seen the fan version first, so the show really needs to do something special with its take." (With quite detailed episode discussion starting after the first three paragraphs, is therefore spoiler-heavy)

[Queer as Folk] xie_xie_xie: I love my big gay show... (commenting on InsaneJournal QaF fandom): "We all have our favorites, and our least-favorites, but true character hate is just not something we see a lot of here."

General Meta related to the debates about a) m/m slash and b) misogyny in fandom:

tigresslilly: A Few Questions I Haven't Seen Asked or Answered: "... it occurred to me that I haven't seen anything about threesomes. It all seems focused on m/m or f/f pairing and I wondered if it had a place that had been excluded here too."

magpyr: Half-baked thoughts on the male slash debate: "Can't we ditch the m/m debate everybody's so sick of, and talk about the serious lack of femslash in any fandom but The L Word? Why is it so easy for people to see "queer subtext" in a work concerning straight male characters, but not females?"

musesfool: it's all how you use it: "It never fails to amaze me that we place female characters in such an awful catch-22." (One example given in the text: "They can't be interested in (ew!) traditionally feminine pursuits or they're setting back the cause, but they can't be too tomboyish, 'cause then they're just men with boobs!")

havocthecat: Misogyny is wrong. Who knew?: "You know, just because I can generally structure my fandom experience to avoid misogynistic jerks - by avoiding adding them to my friendslist or circle - doesn't mean I can avoid misogyny in fandom altogether."

spacelogic: tossing my two cents into the slash debate: "The point is, to me, slash has always been a queer narrative: I, the queer reader, am seeing someone like me, and it is making me happy."

das_dingsi: Why the current m/m slash/appropriation debate is making me feel exhausted: "... as a gay trans man without ties to a gay community, who also is a slash reader, ... I feel like I'm being erased or shouted at from [nearly] all sides for Doing It Wrong."

telesilla: Write ONLY what you know and an unpopular fannish opinion.: "This latest round of gay men having fits about women daring to write about gay sex? Feels a lot more like "hey! Keep out of our fort! Didn't you see the big NO GIRLS ALLOWED!!!! sign?" than anything else."

InsaneJournal's daily backups have been moved from 1:30PM (EST) to 5:00AM (EST).

xie_xie_xie: Where on the fail spectrum am I?: "What is a lesbian who doesn't "write slash" generally but does have this strange fascination for one male/male couple and writes about them constantly, for years? Am I on the side of the outraged disenfranchised queers, or the women squeeing softly at the buttsex?"

spacelogic: what is a gamer?: "The reason girls/women don't play games, Serious Gamers? It's because you've defined "games" as the sort that (mostly men) play on consoles, and written us out of the history books for good measure." (Also about the definition of "serious" gamer.)

morgandawn: I'm Gonna Wash That Fandom Right Outta My Hair....or Dive! Dive! Dive! or Marketing Speak?: "What do we call it when a fan starts selectively 'scrubbing' her online presence (systematically removing some content from both online as well as archived blog/websites/mailing lists/forums) without actually leaving fandom?"

[comics, DC/Marvel] caithyra: By ANY other name?: "I know that the companies are there to make money, but the fact that the Big 2 manages to consistently choose negative words for their female-centred labels feel like deliberate sabotage."

Two posts by tigresslilly:

Isms in Fandom and the On Going Meta-Fandom Inspired Debate (Couldn't pick a suitable quote as the post touches on so many aspects of the discussion and finishes with some questions to people on either 'side')

[Dollhouse] Who/How is Echo and Other "Dolls" Whom Have Displayed Personality Throughout Dollhouse (Spoiler warning for the series, esp. second season)

rubyfruit_pixie: On Fic Lengths: "TL;DR Version: I don't think that fic length makes fic quality."

Note: I'm away for two days (family visit), so if there's a post you don't want me to miss, you can leave a (screened) reply here.

scratchingpost1: Thoughts on writing: "Those of you that write, how do you approach it? How long do you take to write? How do you know when to post?"

In House/Wilson: First Shot, yonmei explains the difference between canon and cannon.

rubyfruit_pixie: Also I Am A Horrible, Horrible Person (And That's Okay).: "Fandom should be fun, but it's not when I am basically told I don't know myself and should be offended by things that do not offend me personally because everyone else in my minority is, or even could be, offended by that thing."

maureenlycaon's Food for thought deals with, among other things, J.R.R. Tolkien's writing, MMORPGs, creativity vs. marketing, and the otherness of elves.

Fandom-specific

[DCU] shadowvalkyrie: DCU musings: "Specifically, porn. [...] Even more specifically, kinky porn. And the discrepancy of why the Bruce/Tim variety tends to be a great deal more popular than the Bruce/Jason one."

[Torchwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer] firefly124: Okay, so everybody else has probably already read this AfterElton article (the article compared Torchwood and BtVS in regards to character death, and the post builds on that. I'm not being more specific because I'm unsure whether details about Torchwood's third season are still considered spoilers.)

General

thete1: "I know it's racist, Te, but the special effects look awesome!": "This has been on my mind -- harshing *my* squee -- since that first Transformers movie came out and so many of you were full of excuses about why you were going to see it anyway. Despite the racism."

In a post titled Saying Goodbye, yourlibrarian talks about important changes in TV, reality shows, the demise of the WB, and that the cause for the popularity decline in music games could be "a stranglehold on copyright".

cluegirl: Thoughts Contingent on Reader Entitlement; the fandom edition: "So what is it that makes us as readers so much more ready to be spiteful about work we DID NOT have to pay for? Other than the fact that we can, and the writer in question is unlikely to have highly paid lawyers who might give us a telling-off for acting like arseholes, I mean?"

skuf: Where's all the meta?: "Remember back in the day - e.g. 2006 - when [metafandom] issues were posted about every other day and had shitloads of links? What happened? Brainstorming: ..." (Cross-posted to DW, where the big discussion obviously seems to happen, but I decided to link the IJ version on principle.)

xie_xie_xie: metafandom and its discontents: "But the last three or four times I submitted a link, either mine or someone else's, either QAF-specific or "big picture" fandom meta, it was just ignored. I never knew if they just didn't like it, or didn't get it, or what the problem was."

[Babylon 5] spacelogic: meta: squicks and siblings: "Claudia Christian mentioned in a blog post the other day that a B5 director (...) had told her to play her scenes with Sheridan more "sexy and coquettish" and I had such a strong "EWNOGROSS" reaction that I had to step back and analyze why."

[Stargate/SGA] rood: On Stargate And Why It Will Never Be Among My Favourite Series: "And not only are the languages pure decoration and occasional plot device: the cultures are, too."

As part of her reply to a five-questions meme, the_rck responds to Does it feel weird being a 'mom' in fandom?

IJ-related:

Permanently Insane accounts are on sale throughout December, until January 3rd.

squeaky explained that the issues with email notifications are apparently caused by spammers using the site. Some sub threads deal with different email providers and how to circumvent their blocking of IJ messages. It also says that, if your account is being suspended by mistake, you should open a support request in the Abuse category.

ETA: and it's over!
( Old text )

Help & writing resources

In an untitled post, bridgetmkennit explains the tags system and the four different types of warnings at the Archive Of Our Own, and how to use them.

lore: BloMo18: Tis the season of saving stories....: tips on saving fanfic stories "in a format that can be easily transferred to most reading devices without losing the author's intended passages of emphasis".

There have been a few posts on BDSM, community rules and terminology, intended as resources for writers and to clear up some common misunderstandings. In Hi! My name is Minxie…, the_minx_17 talks about general rules and some stereotypes. irana wrote On BDSM, Part I to explain the abbreviations SCC and RACK, and to talk about consent. On BDSM, Part II covers negotiation (both Scene and Relationship negotiation).

InsaneJournal

An InsaneJournal Holiday Sale just started. Self-Committed (i.e. paid) accounts and Extra Userpics will be available at reduced prices until November 27th. Friday the 27th will also have a short sale on Permanently Insane accounts.

das_dingsi: Updating habits: "The interesting part is how it made me view the update page more closely than usual and I consciously noticed all the things I don't use [on InsaneJournal]."

Other

bitterfig: where do they make subtext?: "I always wonder where stuff like (i.e. homoerotic and/or incestuous subtext) this comes from, is it intentional or just a quirk of chemistry?"

lilithilien: Why do we do it?, a short commentary on an AfterElton.com article titled "Why are Women Interested in Gay Men? It's Not Because They Want to Sleep With Them!", with discussion in comments.

novembermond: has a question about friending meme[s]: "[W]hat are the dos and don'ts ... ?"

[Supernatural] ep. 5x10 meta-ish reaction posts - SPOILERS galore!
the_shoshanna: Supernatural 5.10, "Abandon All Hope...": "Thanks SO MUCH for making women just the underbrush to be cleared away before the real stuff happens."
musesfool: lacrimae volvuntur inanes: "I would like to be able to talk about the episode on its own merits, because I thought it was a fantastic episode emotionally and a great way to go into hiatus, but I am SO FUCKING SICK of the way this show treats female characters."
yourlibrarian (in mind_over_meta): SPN 5.10 - A sign of hope: "There's nothing there right now for an audience to cling to, any more than a clear plot direction for Sam and Dean."

spacelogic: [SPOILERS] Babylon 5 and Women

[Harry Potter] cluegirl: Fanfic evolutions... a thinky-post.: "So... for awhile now, there's been something happening in the Snarry ship that distresses me, and it's only been just recently that I've been able to put words to it; Harry has become a moron."

[Supernatural] yourlibrarian (in mind_over_meta): Victimhood in SPN: "The end result of the four seasons of SPN so far, has been to equate the supernatural and those who fight it to a lower class status, and those who are victimized by it to higher classes."

[Twilight, Urban Fantasy genre] the_willow: Twilight & Other Creepy Thoughts: "I think I've figured out the appeal of Edward Cullen."

General:

rood: Why the AO3 needs to be translated (looking at it from a German, EFL speaker, perspective)

stele3: Meta: Movie recasts in fic: "So that got me wondering: what do people get out of those sorts of stories? Is it sorta like re-watching a favorite movie, but on your computer screen? Do you prefer your movie recast AUs to be changed fundamentally, or straight-up?"

InsaneJournal: in case you missed the news in announcements, there's a weekend-long sale of Permanent accounts, at the price of $40.

squeaky is also doing daily backups of the databases on the site, which causes "about 15 minutes of downtime each day". They're currently scheduled at 2:30PM (Eastern/US time).

LiveJournal: the_shoshanna: LJ search can turn up locked posts.

yourlibrarian: Random fandom tangents: "There was a lot of attention paid to Merriam Webster's addition of fan fiction into its entries this year [...] What do you think of the definition though?"

branchandroot: 'Training wheels' my ass: "I am sick and fucking tired of fanfic being presented as "training wheels". That's a load of BS."

Deutsches Meta: mllesatine (in deutschesfandom): Wie koordiniert man seine Betaleser?: "Ich habe also Probleme mit der Reihen- oder Rangfolge der Betas, mit der Zeit und mit dem Aufwand. Wie geht ihr vor? "

InsaneJournal issues: There've been instances of comment notifications not getting through, or only belatedly. You can check the Recent Comments page for replies to entries on your own journal; there the notifications seem to be listed correctly. In the message center (Inbox), they showed up as well but with a delay of up to 10 hours.

yourlibrarian: Reactions to a few articles: "Henry Jenkins' post on the Future of TV surprised me by not mentioning what I consider the most important change to TV in the last five years -- shortening seasons. [...] I do wonder about fandom effects of ever briefer shows."

spacelogic: [SPOILERS] Babylon 5 and the LGBT community: "Today's post looks at Babylon 5 as a queer-affirming work, while acknowledging its many failures, and attempts in a lovingly biased way to determine its overall queer-friendliness level."

InsaneJournal-related: There's been an influx of anonymous spam comments. The IP seems to be 110.132.116.84. You can edit your comment settings to disallow anonymous comments. When deleting these comments, don't forget to mark them as spam so the site administration will be informed about this.

skuf started a Mini Meta Fest, "geared towards those of us who want to post more informal meta, but need a little kick in the butt to get going", with user-generated prompts. The rules are detailed here. It's posted to both DW and IJ, but not all prompts on DW have been taken, and the IJ post had no prompts at all.
Responses on IJ so far:

helkamaria: Youth/minors-appropriate fanfic and Incest Fanfiction.

ishtar79 wrote about Geek social fallacies and Character bashing.

elfwreck: Fannish Entitlement and Chapters vs. long oneshots.

yourlibrarian (in mind_over_meta): Drug use, alcohol, smoking in fanfic, with special focus on BtVS and SPN.

Other

das_dingsi has questions about syndicated feeds.

This is the rest of the links to IJ posts dealing with Survey!Fail, I haven't found any new ones since.


justhuman: I am so not taking that Survey

lady_ganesh: And the fail continues!

slashpine wrote a link roundup titled ScienceFail, part 3

the_shoshanna reposted the official response from Boston University on Ogi Ogas and SurveyFail!.

Specifically about Ogas' comparison of slash to porn fetishizing trans women, and the fannish response to it: the_willow: Shit That Upset Me And Keeps Me From Sleeping.

slashpine dissects Ogas' apology: Ogi apologizes by insulting fandom some MOAR (rev.1)

In the aftermath, keieeeye wrote: hahaha: "I have a lot of thoughts about fandom as separate from mainstream society."

Something that had sort of spun off into its own topic was a manip by alchemia, depicting "RPS, exhibitionism, partial cross dressing, and tentacle porn". The original post, re: the recent SurveyFail...., has since been edited, and alchemia also made a follow-up post: Ugly is in the eye of the beholder. The responses to this overwhelmingly seemed to have happened on sites other than IJ, though.

Note: I have a backlog of links dealing with Survey!Fail and its fallout, but for easier navigation I'm going to put them in a separate entry.


[Stargate SG-1] catness: thoughts on design: " ... By using a device (the Stargate) which allows instant transportation to various planets, the authors do not need to invent the interstellar travel and all the technology associated with it ... So the show is either an 'away mission' or 'medical mystery' ..."

[Disney movies] dragovianknight: Thots. I haz dem.: "...I don't think I've EVER been in Disney's target demographic."

spacelogic: why I love Babylon 5

In Making stats public, yourlibrarian discusses activity on Dreamwidth and compares it to InsaneJournal (and a bit of LJ).

skuf created a poll titled Do you self-identify as a 100% heterosexual woman?: "The outsider assumption about slash fen that annoys me the most is that we're 100% heterosexual women. I polled on this back in my LJ-posting days, but since my f-lists have changed, I thought it'd be interesting to re-poll."

On -isms in Fandom / Acafen discussion

logovo: That word might not mean what we think it means.: "Are people now using that word [acafen] interchangeably with fans who are just into meta?"

telesilla: too many acafans, not enough porns: "Those of us who are either lacking in certain privileges or who just give a damn about our fellow fans who lack privilege don't have the luxury of playing Pretend."

the_willow: And then there are these assholes: "But it's not as if I'm important as a human being or anything and deserve a place where I don't see crap flung in my face for other's squee all the damn time."

morgandawn: The Person On The Other Side - My Thank You To Fandom: "In all of this, we often forget that there is a person on the other side of the debate."

telesilla: "no, this is how it works/you peer inside yourself": "One of the discouraging things that I've seen come out of the latest round of meta about meta and how it harshes squee is a couple of comments I read somewhere about how discussing about Important Issues in fandom is a waste of time because you're not going to change the world doing it."

General Meta

lastscorpion suggests in an untitled entry: "Part of the reason why SG-1 and SGA and AtS were cancelled, even though they still had strong overall ratings, was that there were too many women watching -- we messed up their desired demographics."

yourlibrarian: Invisible women: "I thought it surprising that in the [Newsarama.com] series on "The Fangirl Invasion" they don't discuss how involved women have been in fandoms for decades."

Also by yourlibrarian, Targeting the fans: "But what the article reveals is the death of ComicCon as anything resembling a fan event, as opposed to a marketing trade-show for the entertainment industry."


The Fan Fiction Survey by Ogi Ogas ("The Cognitive Neuroscience of Fan Fiction")

Note: these are all InsaneJournal posts about this topic that I am aware of at the moment. Some of these mainly just copy from or redirect to entries on DW or LJ, but I've included them because there is (or still might be) discussion happening in comments. metafandom covers non-IJ links, as does the Linkspam community on DW, which you can follow via linkspam_dw_rss (created today).

1. Link posts / signal boosting, mostly short, but some with quotes and/or a bit of commentary:

alchemia: That fandom survery going around... DONT TAKE IT

yohjideranged: Fanfiction Survey = Failboat

shadowvalkyrie: Important Fannish PSA

oconel: About the fandom survey

keieeeye: lol guys

the_shoshanna: signal boost: do not take the "neurobiological" fan fiction survey.

aerynvala: Signal Boost: Why NOT to take the "Neurobiological" Fandom Survey

2. More in-depth posts, dealing with specific survey questions, background information, underlying theory and assumptions made, that sort of thing:

slashpine: Some scientists sure have nerve, or, How Not To Study Fandom

and a follow-up, How many kinds of fail in this question? Or, Are You Smarter Than A Neuroscientist?

zellieh: Another "survey" of fans by outsiders who FAIL rather spectacularly.

yourlibrarian: Commentary!: "I like reading people's fic commentaries too, but I suppose there are a number of things holding people back from having such discussions."

darkrose quoted a blog entry by Leverage showrunner John Rogers (wherein he answers questions about his attitude towards fan fic) and comments: "But especially coming out of SGA fandom, and Joe Mallozzi's condescending and dismissive attitude toward fans of the show, it's pretty damn cool to see a showrunner who gets it."

Quick Questions:

drachenmina has a question about copyright: "When is it legitimate parody, and when is it plagiarism?"

msilverstar: "Anyone have a nice delicious to LJ/DW script that runs on Macs?" (Scroll down; it's at the bottom of a recs post) You can either use the ?style=mine link and scroll down, or jump directly to the question)

rood: Plagiarism, What It Is And What It Isn’t, An Idiot's Guide

IJ: the Permanent Account sale is going to end this Sunday, prices being $35 for a perm account and $75 for Insane Userpics (5000 icons). There's been a suggestion in comments to find other ways of getting revenue on the site, e.g. lowering the prices for paid accounts, which apparently wouldn't be hard to implement - squeaky said he just needs time to code it (source).

amalthia: Reading Habits / Rant: "The ability to save a fic quickly is very very nice for the readers. If you want to set your story apart from others in a big way, make your story easy to save."

rubyfruit_pixie: I can has Genre Rant?: "I love romance, as a genre of both books and fanfictional forms, in varying configurations of het, and slash, and femmeslash. But there are things that I wish would just go away ..."

In Romance in Fiction, beccastareyes asks if anyone knows examples of characters in long-running series that hook up and are still having adventures as couples.

After iMeem closed its doors, morgandawn posted Copyright Policies: Blip.TV, BAM Video Vault & Viddler (Updated 7/2/2009), with short notes and links on these alternative sites for vidders.

P.S.: if some of you were wondering why there suddenly was a huge influx of post-by-email entries on your flist, or notifications, the reason was possibly that the post-by-email feature has been fixed and all the queued-up content got through now.