[Archive] Meta Roundup: Fannish Stuff of Interest

May 2010

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Posts Tagged: 'racefail+09'

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Issue #107

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First, the cause for comment rot on the site seems to have been found and fixed by [info]squeaky. You can take a look at the bit of code that gave us all so much trouble in the news post.
However, the issue as such might still persist a few days because when the code sets some comments to disappear they aren't gone immediately, they are still in the memory cache for a while. So we might have a few remaining instances from back when the code was still there but after those are gone it should finally be over for good. (source)
To celebrate all this, there's a week-long Permanent Account sale (50$ each).

Changes have been made to the message/notification center - items in your inbox can now be marked as read and deleted, and the maximum number of subscriptions ("notices") has been increased.

Tangentially related: [info]squeaky said he's working on a multiple icon uploader next, and via the comments I found an old resource post by [info]sherlock with a third-party tool you can use in the meantime.

~

With the issues and discussion surrounding exporting LJ comments to Dreamwidth, [info]stewardess wrote a post on content syndication/aggregation and LiveJournal, titled Exporting comments from LJ to DW: is there a money?

[info]bridgetmkennit: counters and me (and maybe you): "Every time I see a meta post about comments, whether lack thereof or not, I just want to create a meta post about how people should learn to love counters."

[info]the_rck posted "a list of thoughts inspired by reading (mostly bad) fics" -- "A few of the items in here are mini rants about genuinely offensive stuff regarding race and transsexuality. The rest mainly complain about sillier stuff."

[info]rubyfruit_pixie: WTF?: "And not only do people think that it isn't complete bullshit to say that one writes yaoi only because het is icky or that girls are icky, people actually state this as a point of pride."

~

[info]brownbetty: re: Thirteenth Child, and a million other things: "But you have, actually, a higher responsibility than being a writer, and that is your responsibility as a human being."

[info]magpyr: Growing pains: "You see, I used to be ignorant and happy. I read books, watched films, and listened to songs, never once pausing to think about their attitude toward race and gender."

[info]telesilla: No, we aren't the freakin' Thought Police: "Because honestly, I am so sick of people yelling "censorship!" as if professional writers somehow had an inalienable right to show their asses and not get called on it."
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Issue #102

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[Harry Potter] [info]magpyr: Some scattered thoughts on languages in HP: "I'm in the middle of re-reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Here's some language-related things I've been thinking about ..."

[Watchmen movie] [info]stele3: "No" means "no" means "I will stab you in the fucking face.": "Thank you, Mr. Hayter, but NO, I do not want to have your movie 'bend [me] over the pool table,' and I will not be going back to see it, 'just like Sally' (classic trope of a woman falling in love with her rapist, hi there)."

[info]brownbetty: Let's talk about books!: "Today's topic: Oh My God, I Can See Your Id!"

[info]spacelogic: reading historical fandom battles: we need more [x]!: "The thing I found myself thinking most about, though, was that the thing dealt with some people getting very upset over the prevalence of [het/slash/saffic] vs. other types of fic in a particular fandom, and I bethought myself of my past experience going between fandoms, and wondered: why didn't they just find a different fandom to supplement?"

[info]betbethbeth has a post on everyday cultural appropriation.
[info]stewardess wrote about Reckless Eyeballing in the 21st Century: "While RaceFail09 has many similarities to imbroglios about race and racism in the past, I believe its events have gained a unique momentum because they are not focused on one instance of racial prejudice, but spring from something enormous: challenging white authority. I didn't grasp this until I compared RaceFail09 to Jim Crow era reckless eyeballing ..." (Has lots of links and a timeline, too.)

Also, [info]bridgetmkennit is looking for submissions (and/or suggestions) for the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, e.g. character spotlights, fic focusing on Asian/Pacific Islander characters, and the like.

As for the recent username purge, all asylums should have been reinstated - they actually weren't supposed to get deleted and future purges won't affect them.

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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 #100

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


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

[Dollhouse, but also fandom in general] [info]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] [info]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, [info]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 [info]07refugees (started by [info]stewardess).

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

[info]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."

[info]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."

[info]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."
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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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