Meta Roundup

Posts about race and cultural appropriation:

brownbetty: Dear racefail apologists: "Please stop making the argument from capitalism." She also wrote a post on the 'tone' argument and how "for a lot of people 'polite' means not upsetting the status-quo".

branchandroot: One more try: when it’s not about you: "In any discussion of privilege, stereotypes, oppression, agency, if you are on the plus side of the particular issue, do not try to join in with comments about your experience. It may seem like a gesture of sympathy and solidarity, but it isn’t. It’s you taking the focus away from the injured party."

spacelogic: two separate thoughts on Racefail '09: "In brief, I believe that the correct action if you are an ally and your actions or words are deemed racist/representative of cultural racism is to apologize and try to not do it again, and that everyone should have a right to decide whether to disclose their real name, but that the emphasis on pseudonyms may be excessive."

amilliondays posted a summary titled fifteen simple steps to poison your own well: "Elizabeth Bear did it, and now you can, too!"

ms_treesap: A question: "Would you say that Avatar (the original cartoon, not the fail!film in production) was appropriative of Asian cultures? My first thought was 'no', but the (white, male) creators took influences from many aspects of Chinese, Japanese, Tao etc. cultures which I'm not particularly familiar with."

Other:

[Supernatural] yourlibrarian: It's About Power - Hospitalization in SPN: "So even though realistically speaking Sam and Dean should both be ending up in a hospital on a regular basis, why is it Dean that's always lying there near death?"

[Queer as Folk] xie_xie_xie: Justin Taylor is not a "girl" -- and neither are you: "I put 'girl' in quotes because I don't mean, Justin isn't female, although of course, he's not. But being a 'girl' isn't about being a young woman; it's about that stereotypical dependent stand-by-your-man 'girl' of the old-fashioned romance novel, the one for whom love is the rock on which her life is built, and everything else comes second."

[Gilmore Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer] zombieallomorph: Buffy, Gilmore Girls und Transamerica. Massive Spoiler. (vergleicht die beiden Serien in Bezug auf deren Darstellung von Frauen, Sexualität und sexueller Gewalt, sowie im Hinblick auf Idenitifikationspotential.)

This time all fandom-specific posts contain SPOILERS, some more, some less.

[Fruits Basket] branchandroot: Hell in a Fruits Basket: "No, the part that really gets my goat is twofold. One is the whirlwind of heteronormativity ..., foreclosing any possibility of expressing the homoeroticism that is waved in our faces all the way through, or even just continuing to dangle the possibility. Two is the lack of consequences."

[Dollhouse] tigresslilly: Feminst take on The Dollhouse (takes a look at Cast and Creation, and Show Content)

[Dollhouse, but also fandom in general] the_willow: Got Answers?: "I'm wondering at the difference between telling a good story and setting up a series - in television. Is it possible to have both in genre television, barring spin-offs and sequels were a built in audience is already assumed?"

[Gundam 00] caithyra wrote two posts dealing with the most recent episode, comparing Lyle and Anew to Neil and Tieria, and speculating on further events.

Multifandom: this week, celandineb's Fandom Friday Poll is about cross-posting to communities.

One place for discussion of the deletion of the scans_daily LJ community is here in 07refugees (started by stewardess).

On the subject of pseudonymity on the internet and race fail '09:

telesilla: That James Tiptree, Jr was one heck of a fella...oh wait....: "Pseudonyms are part of the rich, proud SF/F tradition. For two people--and before them both TNH and PNH--so involved in SF/F as Shetterly and Cramer- to pretend that pseudonyms are A Very Bad Thing is mind-boggling."

darkrose: "I am she as she is me...: "Everyone understands that Mistress Super Domme and Sir Gary of House Stuart are really Mary Sue and Gary Stu when they're not at a playparty or an SCA event, but if you've interacted with them in those contexts, then you use the name that's most familar, the one that they've chosen to use in said context. / And you know what? / Shetterly and Cramer have been around long enough to know that."

musesfool: just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong: "The conflation of pseudonymity with anonymity, the sheer stupidity and hypocrisy of the arguments used to justify outing someone who has chosen to keep her online life and her professional and/or personal life separate, and the insistence that they be apologized to when they were the people who fucked up and were wrong in the first place is such a huge display of ass-baring entitlement and privilege that I don't even have words."

spacelogic: fannish distinctions II: the difference between liking something and being a fan of it: "I used to be an admin on a very active Harry Potter forum and spent most of the day, every day, there, enough to worry my parents. Because it wasn't about the books or the films, really. It was about the culture."

[Merlin] lilithilien: Merlin and the Tarot: "But I do love symbolism and I think a greater awareness of it can help illuminate patterns and make sense of things. By looking at some of the physical manifestations of these symbols [of Tarot] in, say, a television show, we can often glean some additional meaning that (hopefully) will add to our appreciation of it."

[Dollhouse, Alias] bitterfig: echoes in the dollhouse (feminist analysis of the series, notes similarities and differences to "Alias". Contains spoilers for the first episode.)

celandineb has a poll that's partly non-fannish, but also has questions about fic reading and kink preferences.

InsaneJournal: the Permanent Account Sale is still going on (including the option to get Insane Userpics). Perm accounts cost 50$ this time, and the sale will last through the end of the month.

spacelogic: fannish distinctions I: the difference between liking a creator and liking their creation: "Basically, what I'm talking about here is the conflation of creator and creation. I know a lot of people do it, either in deciding to consume/not consume someone's creations, or in deciding how they feel about the creator. It makes a certain level of sense -- I'd rather not help to make a bigoted jerk rich, if I can instead help a nice person."

torino10154: Betas: What is their job? What sort of credit do they desire?: "When they rephrase a line, are you still the author? Should you change their changes to make it your own?"

xie_xie_xie:
[Queer as Folk, but also RPF/RPS-related] The actor thing: "When people watch Queer as Folk and see Gale and Randy instead of Brian and Justin, and talk about the scene that way, it makes me feel that they don't care about the characters, their stories, their reality above and beyond the artistry and craft of their creators."
Luring our muses back when they have wandered off: "Now, I know I haven't covered all the ways muses can be enticed to return from whatever safari, cruise, or spa vacation they're spending your hard-earned money on... how have the rest of you -- writers, icon-makers, vidders, artists -- gotten them back when they've gone missing?"

brown_betty uses animal metaphors to describe fandoms. (It's funnier than I make it sound.)

Tangentially fannish topic: A lot of people use bookmarking services such as Del.icio.us, Simpy, or Ma.Gnolia. Apparently Ma.Gnolia.com had an outage that resulted in data loss. elke_tanzer posted a collection of links describing ways to export/backup your Del.icio.us bookmarks, and some places where Ma.Gnolia users discuss data recovery.

General Fannish Meta

branchandroot: Stop trying to be on my side: "Let’s be clear about this: “you’re reading it wrong” is not an academic argument."

arionhunter: Slash: It's like a plague. A Gay Plague.: "Whenever someone engages with a text in some shape or form (unless they're using it as, say, wallpaper, which doesn't actually count), they are partaking in analysis. They are questioning something about a text, and then making an argument in support of their reading, even if it's just that adamantium can totally outlast Superman's heat vision."

spacelogic: "why we write ____fic": "Here I attempt to work out why I read, and write in my head, shipperfic."

branchandroot: Femslash: cross it up: "I think part of the reason for this trend in my own writing is that the f/f pairings tend to have hidden stories. You have to dig for them, for the possibilities, for the way these two women might interact. Rukia/Orihime, for example, has marvelous possibilities, but none of them are obvious because the two of them don’t interact enough in canon to create a strong template. Most of my m/m, on the other hand, comes out of dynamics that are pretty much shoved up the viewer/reader’s nose."

xie_xie_xie: Meanwhile out in Greater Fandom...: "I think that finding same-sex attraction and sex arousing in and of themselves is a kink -- to try a less judgmental word than "fetish." I don't think it has anything at all to do with wanting to insert yourself into the action or be one of the participants or anything. It's just a little thing in your brain that finds it hot. - I also don't think that liking a particular kind of pairing says anything about your own sexual orientation, and I furthermore don't think that liking a pairing that is made up of the gender opposite to your own means you have any kind of kink at all."

celandineb has a Fandom Friday Poll on Fandom involvement.


Fandom-specific

[QaF] not_yet_defined wrote a list of essential Queer as Folk asylums on IJ, including asylums that might not be focusing on QaF but have lots of QaF fans participating or hanging out.

[Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel the Series] yourlibrarian (in mind_over_meta): Sibling Rivalry: Spike&Angel and Dean&Sam (comparing their relationships from the canonical, as well as the behind-the-scenes angle)

[Criminal Minds] spoilers for 4x13, "Bloodline" brownbetty: later, ask me what I think about keen little gadgets in the shape of dismembered women. (Guess.): "To expand: Criminal Minds has had white serial killers and black serial killers and Hispanic serial killers. It has also had bystanders, cops-of-the-week, victims and white and heroes from all those groups. The Roma turn up, in this one episode, as bad guys."


Race & aspects of discussing race in Fandom

telesilla: Dear bare-assed white people: "When a POC tells me, a white person, that something I've done or said has racist overtones or reflects the racism that is sadly still a part of our society, it behooves me to listen because even being married to a Black woman doesn't give me the experience with racism that POCs have. I don't live with it day to day and even the fact that I am a member of a minority doesn't give me a true understanding of the ingrained racism because it's a very different dynamic. - We're all ignorant in one way or another, but to ignore someone who is, probably while heaving a sigh at having to do this yet again, attempting to educate me, moves me from ignorance into actual stupidity."

amilliondays: notes from the underworld: "I find it really fascinating, and by "fascinating" I mean incredibly disheartening, that in the recent discussion on race and racism in fiction of all kinds, when well-intentioned, smart, thoughtful white folks get up and say "no, you know, I thought I got it right but in listening, I clearly got it wrong" and these are, again, smart, thoughtful people, that barely two comments in other white people jump on them and say "YOU HAVE NOTHING TO APOLOGIZE FOR THESE MINORITIES JUST WANNA WHUP SOMEONE FOR BEING WHITE"." (There's a follow-up post of sorts, in the war on flame.)

stewardess: How to use white privilege to make racism disappear.: "Surprisingly, making the discussion about you is the only strategy you will ever need to make racism disappear; you can rely on it for years without repeating yourself. Here are some variations, but remember this is not a complete inventory. Use it as a springboard!"

[surrounding the Teresa Nielsen Hayden debate] elfwreck: How insulting can it be, if the audience doesn't understand you?: "Point of information: 'nithing' is not a cute LOLCAT crossover of 'nitwit' and 'nothing.' It's an old Norse/Germanic word. Our modern word 'nothing' is possibly somewhat derived from it... but it doesn't mean 'you don't exist to me.' It's a lot closer to 'you are so vile and horrific, the universe should re-arrange itself so you don't exist.' [...] And she expects--counts on--much of her audience not understanding some of her words, and is hoping this one will fly under the radar as 'mild insult,' so that only her nearest & dearest will recognize what she's really saying."


InsaneJournal:

The site performance issue should be fixed now (i.e. no blank screens during peak hours or similar), so squeaky expects having more time for looking into other issues. At the moment he's trying to find out more about the causes of comment rot (comments disappearing for seemingly no reason), if you experienced it you can leave a reply here.

Also, IJ now offers 1 month of paid account time for $5, which might be useful for people who want to make quick layout changes - when your paid time runs out, the layout you were using last stays as it is (until you make further changes).

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1. A last reminder for the people who were also on GreatestJournal: the site will shut down permanently at January 30th, so you have only a few days left to save posts, icons, et cetera. For tutorials on moving entries or communities, I recommend sherlock's posts on LJ-Migrate and LJ-Sec. To find other GJers on IJ, there's findgjers and gjmeetup. (Hat-tip to vampiress_diva.)

2. The third round of the IJ Asylum Meme has started last week. In short, people update asylums on IJ that have been "dormant" for a while, thus keeping them alive, and as a side effect get to know about various asylums because all contributions are collected in a master list. Detailed explanation and sign-ups are in this post. I'm hoping for breaking last year's record, where we had 21 participants updating 34 asylums.

A general note: over time I've noticed that there are fluctuations in the amount of meta content that's being produced, depending on other events that might have people busy writing, e.g. fic contests/challenges around a certain time of year, or political events. Meaning, fandom-wise at the moment there's not much to link to, while an Obama link roundup would have good chances. (*g*) But I'll keep looking!

Grouped by topic - first LiveJournal/InsaneJournal, then specific and general fandom meta...

News have made the rounds that LJ has fired part of their staff. twistedchick quotes from the Valleywag article and discusses the economical aspect in more detail: I did wonder why they were moving the servers away from the engineers...

Meanwhile, squeaky explains that IJ isn't going anywhere: "I have always taken pride in being able to keep this site running in the black. And between the ads that run on the site and the various paid accounts and rename tokens that all of you continue to purchase, we are able to stay that way. We do not have any debt to pay off nor do we have any investors that we need to keep happy. While we have felt this economic downturn ourselves, we are only affected in that we are unable to keep building a cash reserve, but we are still able to pay the bills every month.
While I'm at it, I'd also like to quote from an earlier post that squeaky made in December: "Our goals for 2009 are to increase site stability and clean up some lingering bugs. Until that is done we are not going to be introducing new features, as we want to have a very stable a secure platform to build upon."

morgandawn asks what communities you are currently archiving, and which one's you'd like to archive for the comments "[e]ither from a fannish historical perspective or a useful perspective".

And speaking of journaling services, vakkotaur wrote down some thoughts on GreatestJournal going belly-up.

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A while ago, I updated fdir_editor with approximately 60 new fandom-related feeds, the list is here.

rubyfruit_pixie asks ficcers, fanartists, and other creative fans about their fannish New Year's Resolution(s).

[The Chronicles of Narnia] babydraco wrote a list of pet peeves in Narnia fanfic.

[Queer as Folk] xie_xie_xie: Rape in QAF fanfiction: "Rape is too important and too serious and too horrible to use as a plot device. It's too agonizing to use to give yourself a fix of emotional porn. Read it if you want, write it if you want, but if you're doing it for some kind of squee, for fun, for a thrill, or because to you it's just another bad!fic plot device like being kidnapped by the Mob or whatever, then in my opinion you suck."

[SGA]
telesilla: What have you done for me lately, Brad Wright?: "We have more access to TPTB than ever. We read Their blogs and, occasionally, They read Ours. And the thing is, if you hang out on line, you need to either learn not to engage people who annoy you, or you need to get thicker skin and not get annoyed."
darkrose: SGA: Putting My Bitch Boots On: "But in a way, I'm glad we got to hear TPTB's real opinion of the people whose love for the show pays their salaries: we're morons, and we don't matter."

.

spacelogic: on whitewashing: "Let's just take a moment to review the damage done by whitewashing, shall we?"

yourlibrarian is not only looking for The Dresden Files fanfic recs (as the post title suggests), but also created a poll to discuss what factors a canon text might have that contribute to also having lots of good fanfic.

In a post titled How Much For That Fan Fiction In The Window?, morgandawn talks about 'binding' fic for offline reading, and also asks "What's your favorite way of assembling your fan fiction to read offline?"

[Queer as Folk] vl_redreign created a fun 'crossover' poll to sort QaF characters into Harry Potter houses.

[macross, final fantasy] In Strong Female Characters Part 1, caithyra takes a detailed look at Sheryl Nome and Ranka Lee in the anime Macross Frontier, and Rydia and Rosa in the Final Fantasy IV video game, to analyze what makes them weak or strong characters. Contains heavy spoilers for both.

cluegirl: Fandom Terminology Quandary -- and a proposal for addressing same.: "Pimps aren't clever, dashing scapegraces, and I think we all know this. So WHY are we so willing to use that word in reference to our chosen passtime?"

justhuman: The Friends we Make: ". . . being part of the fannish community in the blogsphere is different than being a fan in other places."

Mini update:

1. the InsaneJournal Holiday Sale has been extended and now starts on THURSDAY,

2. stele3 reports that another LJ account has been hacked (journal backup options are listed in the post).

Next update will be a roundup issue as usual.

The InsaneJournal Holiday Sale (including the offering of permanent accounts) starts on Friday the 28th this month, running in two phases with different prices. For details, read this post in announcements.

aristoboule reports that the official "True Blood" site on HBO actively encourages fan fiction/fan works in general, and wonders "if there's something out there the precedes this".

[Katekyou Hitman Reborn] branchandroot: Women in KHR, a rant: "I can engage with a series that leaves the women out, but I can’t fully engage when women are so explicitly positioned as inferior." (Spoilers!)

[Harry Potter] beccastareyes: Harry Potter Houses...: "So, I said on Fanficrants that I tended to think of Happy Potter Houses by 'what they want and how they prefer to get it', and was asked for details... so, here goes."

alchemia has an untitled post about naming conventions in genderswap fic and how they (don't) relate to actual transsexual experience. (Uses Harry Potter characters as examples, but the topic itself isn't fandom-specific.)

[Supernatural] There've been lots of episode reviews/reactions for SPN 4x09, and what I found interesting is how many people mentioned it as either bringing the fanservice or having a fanfiction feel. (Heavy spoilers for that episode, of course, as people talk about all kinds of things they liked or disliked, including plot and various relationships.)
the_shoshanna: Wow, it's like they were taking notes on everything that had been pissing people off.
musesfool: Which one of you is Sera Gamble? Because that was totally fanfic on my tv laptop last night.
ann_tara: And last night's episode was practically a word for word fan conversation I've read more than once - so much so that I think they wrote a lot of this episode based on TWoP conversations and what they thought fans wanted to see and what they had to do to get us all to accept Ruby.
(And speaking of Ruby, yourlibrarian's review dedicates several paragraphs to the direction of the character as compared to S3.)

LiveJournal: more hacking attacks occured, apparently targeting high-traffic communities/journals and/or the people who moderate them. maureenlycaon wrote a summary with helpful links.

caithyra ponders redeemed villains, and uses examples from Final Fantasy VII and W.I.T.C.H. (Spoilers!), however the arguments and conclusions are not fandom-specific.

branchandroot wrote about villains in Katekyou Hitman Reborn, categorising them as either the Interesting or the Disgusting villain type. (Again, spoilers!)

brownbetty has thoughts on strong women and feminist (or unfeminist) aspects in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, comparing Sarah and Cameron.

I want to use this opportunity to thank the people who sent in links, and say that sending emails or suggesting your own posts is indeed fine. See also #3 in the FAQ.

[Doctor Who] versaphile ponders Journey's End might-have-beens, in regards to the Doctor's regeneration and what it might have meant for the series.

[Prince of Tennis] branchandroot: Problematic: "The thing about shounen sports is that it is, by dramatic necessity, limited to one season unless downright heroic measures are taken to alter the venue and cast. One season tends to exhaust the dramatic tension."

[Supernatural] bridgetmkennit: Because I feel I am right on this and I really don't want to be: "Would Castiel have been as popular if he'd been played by a woman (as one meta questioned) or by a person of color? [...] Will I see the same amount of attention on Uriel that I've seen on Castiel?"

[The Matrix Trilogy] jazzymegster wrote a post on Neo as a canon Sue (or Stu).

brownbetty has quick thoughts on fandom timelines and "fandoms-that-ate-fandom", and whether there are ways to measure them objectively.

[Harry Potter] cluegirl: A wee little fandom 'argh': "I know that people don't like to feel obligated to warnings on their fics, and I know people's character perceptions are highly subjective, but if I was Empress of the Internet, fan writers would have to warn for Chump!Harry."

[Supernatural] brownbetty started a list of instances of racialized violence in SPN.

rood: Meta (Again?): "Most of my personal archive (about 75%, I'd guess) consists of abandoned WIPs. [...] I also tried to find new fics to read via rec-lists, and more often than not I ended up following a dead link. Websites vanish or aren't updated, and that makes me feel as if fandom is like Venice with its dead-ends and canals and narrow streets. Just without the signs that make Venice less of a maze."

musesfool: i know the words that you long to hear: "No one ever got more X-type fic by demanding people stop writing Y. Telling someone their way of engaging with fandom is wrong and that it's somehow oppressing you when you don't ever have to see it or participate in it is completely anathema to what fandom is."

For people who also have LJs: there's a new FanHistory bot intended to scrape LJ userinfos, apparently it uses member lists of fannish communities to do so. It's opt-out, meaning you have to change your journal settings if you want the bot to leave your journal alone. morgandawn provides "How to" info/links, elfwreck muses on the possible outcome of the endeavour.

branchandroot: We’re here, we’re academic, get over it: "I will make this simple in hopes that it gets through this time: For academics, writing articles about things is how we fan."

twistedchick: untitled post: "I have yet to hear of anyone who reads or writes science fiction being told they're not smart enough to understand the discussion of their own work -- but it has happened to me, and to several other people I know, more than once, with the stories we wrote in media fandom."

Eta: whoops, after posting and refreshing the friendslist I saw this:

elfwreck (in metametameta): Acafen vs Squeefen, round 235: "The last few rounds of metafandom have focused on the aca-fen vs anti-aca perspectives on enjoying fic. And it's moving along in predictable patterns. (Not because they're inane or boring patterns--I find them fascinating every time--but because they've been done before, and there's only so many directions this can go.)"

lilithilien: New US shows; or How To Drop A Few Stone Crossing the Pond: "... this is about the fact that Americans are not allowed to see fat. Don't believe me? Take Annie Cartwright from Life On Mars."

rood: Why Heroes is disappointing.: "One of the reasons I liked Heroes so much more than any other superhero story was that it was about normal people with normal lives who happen to have superpowers."

brownbetty: Dick Grayson in a fake moustache and glasses: "There is a story I will read every time I see it, no matter how many times I see it: Our Hero is undercover, and surrounded by badguys, but someone there, either someone else undercover or someone in trouble, begins to suspect Our Hero is not actually the villain they pretend to be."

branchandroot explains how to make a reference note on the Fanlore wiki.

For the people who are also on LiveJournal and have been friended by random russian journals out of the blue, there are serial-adder bots friending users and one theory is they might be after personal information in friends-locked posts. Nympholept on LJ has a detailed post on the matter. Discussion on 07refugees is here. (I know this might be old news to some of you, but there's always the possibility that other people haven't seen the posts before, so I thought I'd mention.)

cluegirl: Fandom Things I Miss: "Raising a toast to those things I remember with persistent, undimmed fondness from times when fandom seemed very different to me."

the_obscure: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him.: "The melodramatic, almost operatic crescendo and sudden, swift demise of a fictional person we have loved does not give us an emotional high, it makes us callous on the ten-billionth time it's done, overdone, chewed, spat out, and paraded once more in the guise of originality."

yourlibrarian: The Wheel of Television Fortune: "There's something rather depressing about seeing a show which had a strong, even stellar, first season turn into a mess. There's something incredibly rewarding about seeing a show that stumbled pick itself up again. There's something even more depressing about seeing a show that botched its second season learning all the wrong messages from that fiasco." (Spoilers; talks mainly about "Heroes" and "Supernatural", also mentions "Veronica Mars" and "Chuck")

Zwei Einträge von frogspace: 1. Über den Start des Fanlore Wikis und der Frage nach Objektivität/Bewertung sowie den Vorteilen der User ID, 2. Wenn sich draußen die Blätter verfärben: "Apropos Form, ich bin derzeit dabei, meine alten Metalinks aus einem nur zu diesem Zweck bestehenden Zweitjournal in einen Delicious-Account zu übertragen. [...] Delicious wird von Google erfasst. Wenn ich diese ganzen Wayback-Links jetzt in einem Account sammle und öffentlich mache, dann verändert das den Grad der Öffentlichkeit und ich weiß nicht, wie ich damit umgehen soll."

LiveJournal: greenwitch posted in 07refugees that "what appears to be Russian hackers have been taking down journals and communities over on LJ" and asks if anyone has further information on the number of affected journals and/or LJ's actions against the attacks.

InsaneJournal: A security update to the 2.0 version of Firefox (2.0.0.17) is causing problems with the Rich Text Editor. squeaky suggests using the mobile update page on IJ or change browser versions, until there's a better solution.

[Brokeback Mountain] yourlibrarian: Things that made me go "Hmm" today (1. details on Annie Proulx's disapproval of the fanfic that was sent to her, 2. Torchwood fandom; on LJers' reviews being quoted without permission in a for-profit book [see also next link]: "I had to wonder if part of the upset over both cases had to do with the format change rather than the copying issue itself."

branchandroot: Ruminations on copyright and blogs: "So, in the wake of The Telos Affair, I’ve been thinking about the astonishing tangle that is copyright law and the even more astonishing tangle that is copyright law applied to online documents." (gives information on whether it's possible to copyright one's personal blog)

stele3: Everything I know about Clay Aiken I learned from F_W.: "So, in case anyone hasn't heard yet, Clay Aiken is gay. [...] I do think, however, that his fanbase reaction is an earmarker for how America stands at the moment vis-a-vis the queer community and people coming out."

Two posts by xie_xie_xie:

Preserving fandom history and heritage: "Of course it's your site and your work and you can do with it what you want, but it's also a part of our history and legacy, and people have a strong stake in it. It is, whether you meant it that way or not, our heritage. Think hard before you take that away."

The Big Chill: How LiveJournal's culture of invisibility threatens fandom: "By going along with the sort of hybrid requirement/cultural norm that all "adult" content needs to be locked away from anyone but your "friends list," you both increase the invisibility of fandom in general and remove fandom works -- fic, vids, icons, graphics, meta -- from public view, particularly that of new fans and those seeking information on the fandom."

Poll: only_gremo: I learn, because I am a fan - The impact of fan identities on learning (has discussion in english and german)

Mini-Meta:

ms_treesap ponders "[t]he shipping plotline of 'Two characters get together because one is really awesome and deserves the romantic and/or sexual attentions of the other'".

spacelogic did some number-crunching for GLAAD's new "Where We Are On TV" report (ethnic minorities, GLBT characters)

Meta tied to Episode Reactions (contain spoilers!)

[Bones] justhuman: This week's Bones: "Dear Bones Writers, Either find your balls [or] give them up completely. You went the "dark" route. You came out of it looking mighty dim, but you went there. Now you want to be all sweetness and light again?"

[Supernatural] yourlibrarian: Review of SPN 4.01: "Perhaps because of the diminished expectations set up by S3, this opener seemed both richer in content and an interesting set-up for things to come."

duskpeterson: To slash and yaoi folk: How has Hurricane Ike affected you?: "I'm working on a story for my Hurricanes Gustav and Ike Report at True Tales about how Hurricane Ike has affected the slash and yaoi communities. Anyone here want to contribute their anecdotes, for the record?"

[Final Fantasy games] lassarina: [meta] I think too much: "So, my biggest fundamental assumption about FF6 is that the Magi-Tek infusion affects not just body but also personality, because it's forcing your genetic structure to alter to accept this new ability."

frogspace gibt kurz ihre (positiven) Impressionen zur ersten Ausgabe des Journals Transformative Works and Cultures (des OTW) wieder.

InsaneJournal

squeaky announced a Permanently Insane Account Sale, starting on the 15th and lasting one week. Prices have been lowered back to $40 for a permanent account and $120 for the Insane Userpics option.