[Archive] Meta Roundup: Fannish Stuff of Interest

May 2010

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Posts Tagged: 'fandoms:+queer+as+folk'

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Issue #128

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General Meta:

[info]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."

[info]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?"

[info]beccastareyes has some short thoughts on Flash Fiction.

Fandom-specific:

[Supernatural] [info]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] [info]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:

[info]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."

[info]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?"

[info]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!")

[info]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."
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Issue #101

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Posts about race and cultural appropriation:

[info]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".

[info]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."

[info]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."

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

[info]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] [info]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] [info]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] [info]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.)

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Issue #98

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[info]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."

[info]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?"

[info]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?"

[info]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. [info]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.
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Issue #97

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General Fannish Meta

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

[info]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."

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

[info]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."

[info]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."

[info]celandineb has a Fandom Friday Poll on Fandom involvement.


Fandom-specific

[QaF] [info]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] [info]yourlibrarian (in [info]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" [info]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

[info]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."

[info]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.)

[info]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] [info]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 [info]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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Issue #96

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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. [info]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, [info]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 [info]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."

[info]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, [info]vakkotaur wrote down some thoughts on GreatestJournal going belly-up.

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

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

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

[Queer as Folk] [info]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]
[info]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."
[info]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."

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Issue #95

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

[info]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?, [info]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] [info]vl_redreign created a fun 'crossover' poll to sort QaF characters into Harry Potter houses.

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Issue #81

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[info]andreth_47: untitled post: "Is that what you mean when you all talk about your "muse"? That person who's doing the writing, because if it's not you, then who the hell is it?"

[Queer as Folk, detailed episode discussion, i.e. spoilers] [info]xie_xie_xie: The great 513 debate: "Nothing I said here may apply to your reasons for loving or hating 513. But I think there ARE reasons why we do either, or even why we're ambivalent about it, and sometimes examining those reasons instead of just reacting emotionally can reveal new perspectives that we'd have otherwise missed."

[info]blktauna: untitled post: "I think I'm missing what the consensus of misogyny is. Is it the dislike of _all_ female characters? Is it dislike solely because they're female? Can you not like them because they are crap characters or do you have to like them just because they're female?"

[info]elfwreck: Bring on the political RPF: "So... anyone know any good RPF/RPS sites for political figures? About pundits? Anything that explores minor character traits, or takes promises to their extremes, or makes a plausible case for how they'd act in weird emergencies?"
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Issue #80

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Meta (with polls)

[info]yourlibrarian: What is RPF anyway? About different strains of Real People Fiction and whether it is actually fanfic. Closes with an RPF opinion poll.

[info]loqia: Porn for the Rest of Us: "People admitting that they "skim sex scenes" in fics is surprisingly common. Hell, I do it too; especially if it's getting in the way of some other type of porn. Identity Porn is one of my favourites, but it's only one of many ..."

[info]carodee: Who you are is how you write: "I can see that my writing has real flaws; I also have strengths that I lean on a lot to cover the flaws. The not so strange thing is that I can see how my writing style is completely shaped by the way I walk through life."

[info]xie_xie_xie: Please close the canon on your way out: "I love taking the whole, closed, completed work and then drawing strands out of it [...] I simply can't imagine feeling that way about a story that's still being written."

[info]celandineb: Writing and reading chaptered fics: "One of the things about fanfic (besides the fact that we're all playing in someone else's sandbox) is that longer stories are frequently posted serially, either as each part is written or after the whole is complete (especially if it's really long). There are pluses and minuses to this, both from the reader's and writer's perspective." Also has a poll on reading/writing preferences.
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Issue #77

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[info]the_willow: More On Nice vs Mean (Fannish): "Do only one set of feelings matter? Or only one set of feelings from one group of people?"

[Harry Potter] [info]iamisaac (in [info]metametameta): Severus/Remus in canon: "3000 words or so of meta about moments in canon where a relationship between Severus and Remus looks like a real possibility."

[Queer-as-Folk-centric, but also general discussion] [info]xie_xie_xie: Wherein I am intolerant in the extreme: "If you ever wanted proof that I do not in fact rule the universe nor even this tiny little molecule of it that is the Queer as Folk fandom, the existence of QAF mpreg is it. [...] I think there's something really, truly scary and strange about serious "real world" mpreg fic."

[Dr. Horrible] [info]andreth_47: Dr. Horrible Meta: The Goggles of Disguise: "I was thinking about that in regard to Dr. Horrible, 'cause supervillains wear costumes too of course, and I suddenly realized that disguises/costumes/illusions are a pervasive theme in Joss's latest work of genius."

Refresher course: [info]branchandroot explains how to use OpenID when you don't have an IJ account.

[allgemeine Diskussion, plus Eindrücke über Generation Kill] [info]mllesatine: Heut mach ich mir kein Abendbrot, heut mach ich mir Gedanken!: "Jedenfalls geht mir in letzter Zeit so einiges zum Thema Slash, Feminismus und meinen Fandoms im Kopf rum. Warum sind zum Beispiel die Fandoms, die ich am meisten liebe, nur von Männern bevölkert?"
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Issue #76 b - General Meta

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I decided to split the issue, not just because the list of meta links is unusually long (sorry), but also so that the people who are either thoroughly up-to-date on the whole FanHistory.com/partly_bouncy debate, or just fed up with it, can just skip part a (which appears below this one).

[Queer as Folk] Two posts by [info]xie_xie_xie:
The Dreaded B/J FF Syndrome: "I don't believe it's possible to understand any of the characters, pairings, or storylines in isolation. I think that nearly all of the arcs are interwoven, and issues in one pairing -- say, Drew and Emmett -- are reflected in and reflect issues in another -- say, Brian and Justin."
and A Writerly Reflection on Post-Series Fic: "I watch 513 now and every bit of what happens after in my own fic feels foreshadowed and certain to me. It permeates my viewing of the series finale. [...] Do other writers feel this way, if you write post-series fic?"

[The X-Files] [info]musesfool: mulder, it's me: "And while in some ways the entire show was about how we all lack agency, that larger forces are always working against us, one of the things I always loved about Scully was that she was her own woman - she evaluated the evidence and came to her own conclusions."

[info]versaphile: Fandom FTW: "No matter how good you are, there is always someone who does it better, or can write snappier dialogue or more amazing plots or vivid descriptions. And whatever they're amazing at, there's something they're not amazing at that someone else is better at. It can't be a competition."

[info]the_willow: My Fandom: "... when at the end my constructive thoughts and analysis result in utter frustration because nothing changes in the source and I feel personally hurt by the exclusion of people of colour, or the inclusion of stereotypes and just plain foolishness - I walk away."

[info]elfwreck (in [info]metametameta): OTW discussions: "... I don't think any kind of agreement will be reached if only the pro-OTW posts are allowing unlimited discussions. And that's disappointing--because I don't want those who want privacy, or who fear legal reprisals, to be entirely sidelined."

[info]telesilla: Sit down, suck it up and STFU: "Since it's apparently perfectly all right to tell other people how they should and should not participate in fandom, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon."

[info]xie_xie_xie: On opinions: "What it really is, is this: I'm an editor and all day long, I get articles sent to me by amateur writers -- experts in their fields, but not professional writers. And I can usually tell which were written by women, and which by men, because only the women qualify every fucking thing they say with "I feel," "it seems," "I believe," and "in my view."

[info]brownbetty: Cheater's guide to Conlang in fiction: "Okay, so, you want your work of fiction to have a language in it that isn't an Earth language. Unfortunately, all the languages you speak are Earth-languages! (Except if you speak Klingon or Quenya, I'll grant.) How to get around this?"

[info]elfwreck (in [info]metametameta: Back to Basics: Slash Thoughts (a list of slash-related questions to spark conversation)

[info]andreth_47: A Tongue-in-Cheek Plea to Slash Writers: "I'm here to beg, oh writers of smut, you people who bring me porn and whom I adore, that you stop and think really, really hard before writing any of the following things into your hot manlovin' sex scenes. Because they make Ianto cry."
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Issue #64

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Meta

[info]boomshadow: Mary Sues and Gary Stus in Various Continuities: "[T[his short guide should help you identify a Mary Sue or Gary Stu character in your favorite fictional universe ..."

[QaF] [info]xie_xie_xie: Hungry!Justin: "But when I use it in a story, Justin's appetite is really a metaphor rather than simply a characterization point. And I think it was in the series, too [...] food, hunger, eating and not eating, preparing food, and offering food are all very strong themes for Brian, Justin, and Brian/Justin not just in Season One but in all five seasons."

[info]metametameta's Thursday prompts are about IP Law. JK Rowling's HP Lexicon suit has been the topic du jour, with [info]slashpine commenting on an AP article and doing a link roundup.

InsaneJournal

No doubt prompted by the recent outage, [info]skuf worried about the future financing of IJ (context) and later linked to [info]synecdochic's LiveJournal post on the topic, where [info]squeaky weighed in via OpenID.

Several polls:

[info]squeaky asks for your opinion on the move to a different hosting provider here.

[info]aristoboule asked if, and why, you have paid or permanent accounts (on IJ and elsewhere).

Follow-up to this post: a poll on people's preferences for off-site IJ refuge communities, here.

(Also: Happy birthday, [info]squeaky! Have a great day!)
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Issue #48

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Eta Jan. 22nd: removed one of the posts because the entry is now friendslocked.

[info]elfwreck: Why fanfic?: "This is hard to explain. It's so obvious to us, that it took a comment from [info]bohemianeditor for me to even notice that the question existed, separate from "why do you think it's legal" and "isn't it sleazy to use someone's creation without their permission" and the whacked "what makes you think you're better than the original author?"

[info]branchandroot: Boys get to keep their power; big surprise: "The thing I particularly notice, though, is the gender division. The story the girls are told is that power brings pain and the answer is to get rid of it or, failing that, die. The story the boys are told is that power brings lack of control and the answer is to understand you are not actually that different from those around you." (Anime/Manga)

[German] [info]das_dingsi (in [info]deutschesfandom): Die Suche nach den eigenen Vorlieben: "Was mir aber diesmal wieder extrem aufgefallen war: ich bin außerstande, meine Vorlieben in griffige Worte zu packen, und schon gar nicht in Genres zu denken."

[info]xie_xie_xie: Why I don't "miss" Queer as Folk: "I never saw it on the air; I got it all as one, completed work. [...] And in addition to having this tiny little comprehension gap when people say they "miss" the show, I also feel slightly protective of the show -- like, don't say anything to make it be less because no more episodes are being made."

[info]rebeccama posted three meta essays as part of the Queer As Folk Emmet Celebration Weekend (not the exact title, but unfortunately I lost the link to the initial post): The Relationship between Emmett and Drew, Emmett: The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, and Going beyond stereotypes to become partners. (Possible spoilers for all seasons, as it deals with the growth and change of characters.)

Lists, Polls, and Tutorials

[info]brimac13 posted the second part of the Multifandom Fanfiction Poll ("How to choose a fic, cont'd").

[info]persecution wrote a journaling guide about user icons.

[info]envinyatar15 posted a list of Harry-Potter-centric IJ asylums.

[German] [info]majikkuinki erklärt, wie man OpenID benutzt.

Journaling

[info]nosselinfea checked out Scribbld.net's invite code system.

There's some discussion about LJ's and IJ's user stats: LiveJournal is dying. Literally. (by [info]antiaol in [info]07refugees), and [info]stewardess's InsaneJournal: Growing Like The Dickens. Also, LJ mentions the "Strikethrough 2007" in their news post, which [info]aristoboule (in [info]07refugees) calls the understatement of the year.
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Issue #47

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[info]watersword: why I Joined the OTW, part II: 'A lot of the comments directed at OTW over the last few weeks and months has been over the language in the mission statement (...) which states that media fandom is a "predominantly female community."'

[info]lilithilien: Fanfic, the WGA, and the OTW: A Good Thing: "But I will never forget that moment, driving down a snow-blown country road, when the muse first struck me and I knew that I had a story worth telling...and the words to tell it. And you know, it's all due to fandom."

[info]xie_xie_xie: What's love got to do with it? Everything.: "The New Fangirl agrees that the open ending, while she perhaps wishes it had been slightly different, left us a legacy of imagination that a tidy, bow-wrapped ending could never have inspired. (...) And so the New Fangirl recants her bitter snarky past, and embraces the not-blind but also not-bitter Season Five love." (Queer As Folk)

[info]mirabile_dictu: PEDTM: day fourteen: Captain Obvious: "I'm re-watching Friday's SGA, but it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I think I expect too much from the show and that's why I'm so often disappointed in it. (...) I especially wish the show would genuinely engage the alien."

[info]brimac13 has a poll on what you take into account when choosing a fic to read.

Yahoo and AOL are currently blocking email from IJ's servers. No messages will be lost, though.

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As usual, you can leave links to meta entries by commenting here or on the screened comments entry. General questions can be asked on the FAQ post. :)
[info]das_dingsi
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[info]das_dingsi
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Issue #46

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IJ / Asylums / Community-building

[info]greenwitch: Asylum Usage and Habits (poll and discussion) - "[A]sylums here have... not really taken off, and it seems like even asylum creation has dropped (or maybe just outnumbered by the RPGs that seem to be taking over.) So what's the reason? (...) Let's try and figure out what's going, and how we can work on improving the community here."

[info]squeaky announced the purging of old, inactive accounts.

Misc. Fandom Meta

[info]julia_linnea: "Genderswitch" and "Genderplay": What do you think they mean?"

[info]branchandroot: Distribution of labor: "Writing isn’t just having a neat idea, it’s getting a story to coalesce around the idea, complete with transitions and motivations and all the parts that aren’t neat ideas but rather the bones of narrative (...) Given that, I find it a bit surprising that both professional and amateur writers will carry on in equal measure about writing being stolen and ideas being stolen."

Quuer As Folk:

[info]xie_xie_xie: Why they fuck: "I've been thinking about the issue of sex in Brian and Justin fan fiction lately quite a bit ... Of fics that don't just suck totally, there are three broad categories into which I'd put their use of sex scenes ..."

[info]rebeccama: Michael and Ben: "Ben's and Michael's relationship has some real difference from Brian's and Justin's, but that does not make either of the relationships inferior."

Organization of Transformative Works

[info]alchemia: Why I'm not behind the OTW...: "While OTW claims to be inclusive of all, the emphasis has been on the female fanficcers and female vidders, and I wonder where that leaves fandoms that are not predominantly female, and fans that are men, transmen, queergendered, etc., or that enjoy fandom through other avenues, such as fanfilms, re-enactments, cosplay, etc."

Posts for the "Why I Joined The OTW" Week:

[info]bethbethbeth's entry: "Helping to make things better fannishly - even helping to make a single story better - felt great (...) how could I not want to help?"

[info]mirabile_dictu's entry: "I want those opportunities available to everyone possible: to girls of thirteen and women in their eighties, and I don't want them to have to pay for it except with time and energy and love. The world needs safe places for freaks, and fandom can -- no, fandom should! -- be one."

[info]watersword's entry: "OTW's message of pride -- pride in fannishness, pride in the female space that fandom is, pride in the skill it takes us to be fans (meta is hard, y'all, and fiction is harder, I can't even begin to imagine how hard vidding is) -- is one that resonates deeply with me."

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As usual, you can leave links to meta entries by commenting here or on the screened comments entry. General questions can be asked on the FAQ post. :)
[info]das_dingsi
[info]meta_roundup
[info]das_dingsi
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Issue #24 b

[info]das_dingsi
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This issue has been split; 24 a has the Dumbledore / HP / JK Rowling meta.


[info]blktauna: untitled post: "Sorry, but if you can't participate in Yuletide, for whatever reason. Then you can't. [...] It's not "exclusionary" its just the rules done to suit the organisers."

[info]brownbetty: Some thoughts on writing outside my experience: "Recently, and not so recently, I've come across a couple of stories, or had them pointed out to me, within greater fandom, where the history or culture of marginalized groups was employed to make a story more exotic or interesting, with the result the story was offensive. So I'm trying to think of how one can avoid this."

[info]xie_xie_xie: REPOST: A QAF Fanfic Writer's Guide to HIV/AIDS: "But having lived through the emergence of the HIV epidemic, seen many friends get sick and die of AIDS, and knowing a somewhat unnaturally huge amount about HIV testing and treatment, the many fics that make very basic errors in dealing with HIV kind of grate on my nerves more than anything other than Brian calling Justin "baby." So I thought I'd write up this little guide, for those who might want it and find it useful."

As usual, you can leave links to meta entries by commenting here or on the screened comments entry. General questions can be asked on the FAQ post. :)

[info]das_dingsi
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[info]das_dingsi
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Issue #18

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General Fannish Meta

[info]lenija: ExcorcismMetaPuzzle (1) - recipient positions: "There are at least two levels on which you can like or dislike a character. [...] I suspect that people who have one OTP and one favourite character in a fandom tend to read that fandom mainly on Level One, especially when they fight over who is to be seen as the "best character" and which ship is most "true"."

[info]yourlibrarian: Ship stats reviewed: "I was curious about where the SPN fandom, which seems active and growing, stood in comparison. And it kicked up something interesting. In most of the Buffyverse pairings there was clearly a preferred order for the characters to be listed in. Yet for SPN, whose biggest pairing are its main characters, there is a virtually equal number of Sam/Dean (493) Dean/Sam (492) and Wincest (491) listings on LJ."

[info]rebeccama: QAF: The more things change the more they stay the same: "I have changed my mind about a number of things both since I started watching QAF, since I joined the fandom, and since the show ended. [...] However some of my opinions, views, and interests have remained the same from either 101 or at least early in the show. [...] Does anyone else have a list of things that have stayed consistent?"

[info]babydraco: untitled post: "As someone who writes erotica with older teens frequently, but has only ever once written a story that involved what I thought chan was- I don't like people just lumping all of that together. It makes you as bad as the anti Potter porn people, because you're taking away the "Sorry, but I don't write chan" defense - don't call it chan when it isn't."

Other

[info]elfwreck: Strikethrough links: it's not about law: "Links to prove that LJ's new interpretations of their polices aren't based on avoiding liability; they're based on management's content preferences."

Perhaps relevant to fandom: The Karen Fletcher Case. Miss Fletcher published original fiction online which was pretty graphic and dealt with the sexual abuse of minors, torture, and murder. She is believed to be "the first person in Western Pennsylvania charged with exclusively text based obscenity" (emphasis mine).

[info]das_dingsi
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[info]das_dingsi
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Issue #13

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[info]stewardess: Behind the Buzzwords: Why Track Only 5% of LJ Users?: "The change, effective around September 27, 2007: Six Apart will track usage within personal journals and communities. Navigation patterns will be examined, as well as browser type, operating system, browser window size, and other things useful to advertisers. [...] Makes me wonder if 6A picked 5% because that's nearly everyone still using Livejournal."

[info]its_art: Fox is Enfocing Copyright: "Fox is going on a rampage and yanking Buffy and Angel fanvids off of YouTube."

[info]stellar_dust: *runs with the big kids now*: "YouTube took down my Boston Legal fantrailer "as a result of a third-party notification by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation claiming that this material is infringing." [...] And this is nothing new at all, but it blows me away that media corporations go out of their way to alienate their fans, and don't see the contradiction there."

[info]xie_xie_xie (in [info]qaf_coffeeclub): I want you safe....: "When I write Brian and Justin having unprotected sex, it's always [...] in the context of them having made the decision to do this, become monogamous, gotten tested, waited, etc. [...] But when you just read these stories by themselves, that's not always absolutely clear. [...] I wonder about the effect of this body of fiction on people just casually reading in our fandom, or on new writers, or on younger fans in general, who might not remember the dawn of AIDS and just why this is so important."

[info]das_dingsi
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[info]das_dingsi
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Issue #11

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[info]gueneiriol wants to host a virtual convention. Help would be greatly appreciated.

[info]celandineb has a Friday Fandom Poll with a few diverse, not fandom-specific, questions.

[info]the_willow:

On Anglinization & Westernization Of Texts: "There are things that are lost by such mis- translations. And yes they are small things. But they are small things that add to the richness of the world building."

Random Harry Potter Thoughts. "The House System, to me (in my real life and as I perceive reflected in the HP books), seems a good focus for school spirit and for a boarding school second family/house spirit and togetherness. But it's not, and I can't believe I'm meant to think it's a sets up of a kind of blind mass prejudice; an organized otherness."

[info]xie_xie_xie:

Please explain: RPGs: "And one of the things that makes no sense to me, holds no appeal, seems like an incomprehensible idea, is role playing games for TV shows. (...) So tell me, what is it that you like about playing them or reading them?"

Fannish thoughts before a marathon: "I simply feel that looking at the show itself is what is important and useful in analyzing the story, especially for me as someone writing in the world of the show. I also don't think it matters very much -- or at all -- what exactly was intended by the multiple creators of the show (writers, actors, etc.) as far as interpretation goes ..."


LiveJournal/6A

On [info]07refugees: Barak resigns as CEO of Six Apart. [info]elfwreck offers a translation of parts of 6A's press release. [info]ms_katonic informs us about the fandom_lounge thread on JournalFen dealing with the subject.

[info]nosselinfea has some additional info on LJ's forthcoming Flag As Adult Content option.

Other:

[info]morgandawn: Blogging: I "See" You!": About various search engine tools to find someone's entries, including journal posts.

I'd like to add that some of those search engines store public posts in their entirety, including images. Usually they use the built-in feed url for one's journal, so it can be helpful to change your feed settings to "title" or "summary". Simply go to http://www.insanejournal.com/admin/console , type in set synlevel title or set synlevel summary and hit "execute".