Meta Roundup

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

elfwreck: Why fanfic?: "This is hard to explain. It's so obvious to us, that it took a comment from 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?"

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] das_dingsi (in 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."

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."

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

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

persecution wrote a journaling guide about user icons.

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

[German] majikkuinki erklärt, wie man OpenID benutzt.

Journaling

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 antiaol in 07refugees), and stewardess's InsaneJournal: Growing Like The Dickens. Also, LJ mentions the "Strikethrough 2007" in their news post, which aristoboule (in 07refugees) calls the understatement of the year.

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."'

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."

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)

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."

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. :)

IJ / Asylums / Community-building

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."

squeaky announced the purging of old, inactive accounts.

Misc. Fandom Meta

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

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:

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 ..."

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

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:

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?"

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."

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. :)

rebeccama has a poll: What makes you interested in a fictional couple?

Technical stuff, sorta:

ardath_rekha reports a change in IJ accounts in terms of age.

mercurychaos explains how to get comment notifications using OpenID.

nosselinfea reports issues with LJ-sec (could be it's a known bug, but I'm not an expert).

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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. :)

Misc. Fannish Meta

yayforjae: gender and fandom: "[T]he male vs female space and the gender of fandom are two really interesting topics ... I don't have any really coherent thoughts about gender in fandom at the moment, but I wanted to start writing about my experiences. So here's a bit about my first two fandoms ..."

elfwreck: Anti-Fanfic Bingo, Line three: "I look at this line on the card, and I just get hung up on one topic: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. I want to weep."

And an entry that's from December, but I just it found today... gonewithoutjam: I'll Sail this Ship Alone: "So you're new to a fandom, or you're a lurker, and it seems everyone ships Y/Z. But hang on a minute. Are you sure about that?"

bethbethbeth wonders if there'd be interest in a Harry Potter Fic Fest that would let characters who are usually seen as too old or too ugly or in some other way undesirable get a little action for a change.

skuf: Bouncing off idea: fandom-related polls comm/archive

InsaneJournal / Siteschemes and Layouts

skuf: Poll: which IJ sitescheme are you using?

Also, the new sitescheme will soon be available as a template and go into beta-testing stage. There's a call for volunteers at ij_siteschemes (writing FAQs, Stylish, finding styles for different browsers).

sherlock suggested an S2 style contest in ideas. See also this post by pen.

Other

data_warrior has a detailed poll on icon creation, use and crediting.

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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. :)

I hope you made it all safe and sound into 2008. Happy New Year!

InsaneJournal

squeaky posted 2007 Year In Review in announcements. The stats alone are made of awesomecakes.

aristoboule (in asylum_promo) posted a list with Helpful Hints on Promoting Your Asylum.

Miscellaneous Meta

rubytuesday5681 did a poll: How do you keep track of your favorite fanfic, fanart, and porn?

dragovianknight asks how you "keep track of what you wrote during the year, much less exactly WHEN you wrote it?"

arionhunter: It was just a social experiment. Really!: "As part of my prep work, I read (and took) the official Sex Addiction Screening Test. (...) How would fandom score? So I task you, IJ, with letting me know."

helkamaria: The Weasleys' finances, or why their poverty is self-inflicted: "They aren't the only poor family in the series (cf. the Creeveys), but they are treated as some kind of an example of a good family that is cruelly deprived of the money they'd justly deserve. For myself, I think that their poverty is their own fault, a result of poor money management. And here's why."

Fannish Meta

stele3: Why I Believe Writing Slash Is A Healthy Pasttime: "Reimagining straight characters as gay gives us power. It takes the socially-accepted 'norm' and turns it on its ear, puts it in under our control. It affirms us, makes us less alone."

elfwreck: Anti-Fanfic Bingo, Round 2, part 1 (referring to this post and three of the arguments presented therein)

firefly124: Canon compliance musings: "The post I linked above questions whether people stretch the matter of canon compliance because AU is seen as inferior. Honestly, I think it's more a matter of AU not really telling anybody a whole lot." (Harry-Potter-centric)


InsaneJournal

ardath_rekha took a closer look at IJ's age demographics.

In ideas, there's a discussion about the possibility of automatic age verification for adult-oriented asylums.

asylum_promo is now moderated, so it should be safe to re-friend.

Also, squeaky bought two new servers to deal with the new influx of users.

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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. :)

thecaelum: Tie-in versus fandom, again?: "So, Lee Goldberg's at it again. Seems our brave and intrepid anti-fanfic writer has stumbled upon The Organization for Transformative Works, and is very displeased."

yonmei: Organisation for Transformative Works (aka "An Archive Of Their Own"): "But one of the things that definitely puts me off getting involved in any way with OTW is the fact that while the OTW crew mirror otw_news to IJ and GJ, they disable comments there, so that no community of fans interested in OTW can form anywhere other than on livejournal. It is a very pro-centralisation tactic, and very much in opposition to what I see as the major strength of fandom..."

elfwreck: HAPPY SOLSTICE! Have some meta to wake up from the longest night!: "There is something legitimate and valid about the cry of, "Hey! You can't DO THAT to my character!" And if we want to win not only a potential legal case, but public opinion, we need to acknowledge that concern, and with more than "Ooh, I'd be so thrilled if someone liked my writing enough to write fic about it; I'd let them do anything to my characters!"

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fleshdress asks in a poll whether there'd be any interest in a "epilogue and beyond specific art/fic exchange" for Harry Potter fandom.

InsaneJournal: new site schemes are in the works. squeaky mentioned it in this entry, and ij_siteschemes has been created, with branchandroot already testing a site scheme called Dramatic. (Asylum membership is moderated atm.)

shadowvalkyrie: Yuletide Countdown: 3 Days - Panic Time!: "Is it just me or does anybody else always get weird when they're almost done writing a story?"

musesfool: with a few red lights and a few old beds: "I've been thinking about porn lately, or, I should say, sex in fiction, and in fanfiction especially, and why it often doesn't work for me."

rebeccama posted a poll: Fandom is...

zulu: Hi fandom I love you.: "... I love it all the time and there are lots of reasons. But today I love fandom for something that has grown with me all my life, and that's simply my love of storytelling."

morgandawn expands on her earlier post about Read Only vs. Read Write culture (fans being members of the latter).

aristoboule wrote a post with notes and comparisons of the "LJ clones" out there.

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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. :)

telesilla created a poll about the idea of a (multifandom) porn battle type comm here on IJ...

... and wrote So Many Mixed Feelings: "So of course, with the most recent update from OTW--Organization of Transformative Works--there is discussion and yes, even wank. (...) I've been posting comments around the fannish journalsphere and I decided that I really wanted to try to get my feelings on this in one place."

And msilverstar linked to an Anti-fanfic Bingo Card created by ithiliana on LJ.

Fan Fiction & the OTW

elfwreck: Some arguments against fanfic: "It's fascinating watching the anti-fanfic crowd; here in my niche in fandom, I tend to forget what a lot of people think about our beloved hobby."

morgandawn: Fandom: Stop Breathing This Instant! (on why Corporate America is still stuck inside the paper bag): "I suspect that many who are objecting to the OTW's work (and fandom as well) aren't looking at fandom as part of a larger global trend of moving away from passive consuming and towards participatory culture."

RPF

Two entries by hector_rashbaum:

RPF Wives and Girlfriends: "I've never really liked the idea of nonfamous wives/girlfriends showing up in fic (...) But a post championing the use of nonfamous wives/girlfriends ... had me examining why I don't like it, because I wanted to jump into the discussion with more than "it's bad because it is."

The Fourth Fence, Blurry Boundaries, and...Something Else Alliterative: "We, and by we I mean RPFers (although maybe I should specify sane RPFers ;]), do have a fourth wall. (...) Our fourth wall is more of a fence and our respect issues have some pretty significant differences; but we have a fence and we understand respect."

Vidding

elfwreck: Fannish news - Change in YouTube TOS

morgandawn wrote Vidding Basics (PC Version) (including links to basic tutorials).

Other

kaesa: untitled post: "They're clearly not, you know, the voice of God or the Devil or, like, soulbonds or otherkin or Things from Another World. (...) I know they're just made of brainclay -- but they're there in my head, little cordoned-off bits of mind that say "This is how so-and-so thinks, feels, acts, what hir quirks are, why sie's an asshole to this person but not to that person."

Link removed 2009/01, IJ got deleted [prophet_maid: "I have spent many an hour writing, researching, analyzing, and railing about the media's portrayal of women. Hell, I wrote my thesis on it (in medieval England), and I am sorely disappointed with what the Pirates franchise did to [Elizabeth]."]

aristoboule created feeds for the News communities on DeadJournal, GreatestJournal, and CommieJournal.

morgandawn explains how to move your Journal memories to Del.icio.us (Firefox only).

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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. :)

Note: this is a split issue; posts about journaling and journal migration are in issue 37 a.

babydraco: You have risked the exposure of our world: "You can mention fan fic to people who aren’t fen, but you don’t tell them where to find it. You definitely don’t print it out and give it to them to be read in public to people who aren't part of fandom."

akai_senshi (in slash_rants): Of Slash and Gay- Discussion.: "Is slash helping to reduce heteronormativity in real life? Or does it even matter? (...) Why is there such a struggle between non-homophobic het fen (they just prefer het, but back GLBT IRL) and a lot of slash fen?"

xie_xie_xie: Ugly icon thieves: "Wow, I had no idea that someone had started an icon theft asylum here on InsaneJournal. (...) Icon trading, the harvesting of icons out of other people's journals as well as posting them on communities, has its social contracts."

celandineb: Errors in fest fics: "No matter how many times I've gone over a fic, though, there's almost always a few errors that I spot only after the thing's been posted and it's far too late to fix them. (...) What do other folks do in this regard? Do you read your own fics in fests at all?"

spikewriter: Thoughts on "Rose": "Doctor Who was faced with two problems: they were re-introducing a beloved character and show after a long absence, and at the same time trying to draw in new viewers. There were some moments I found decidedly clunky, but on the whole, "Rose" is a superior example of the species Pilotus Serius."

musesfool: i could do most anything to you (Supernatural, S3): "... I've been thinking about Bela, and why I like her so much, and the arguments other people make about how she doesn't fit in the Winchesters' world is exactly one of the things I like about her ..."

qem_chibati: Where is my hot female scientist zombie? That is the question.: "Many female gamers have irate comments about how the industry as a whole, seems to think the way to appeal and reach out to female gamers is release pink products. Never mind that colloquial experience says that they're purchased more often by guys as a theft deterrent."

And on friend_me, skuf did a friending meme with Fandom Meta as the topic.

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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. :)

Note: general fandom meta will follow in Issue 37 b.

InsaneJournal / Journal Migration / Misc

squeaky extends the holiday sale until Friday. Also, IJ has a new server, with "about 4x the horsepower" as the old one.
By the way, if IJ is down, you can visit squeaky's Twitter account to see what's going on.

seshen reports that LJ iJournal client for Mac OS X also works on IJ.

sherlock has links on backup/ migration tools for journals and communities.

And although it's on LJ, I decided to include this link to florahart's LJ, because she's posting about IJ's stats and the numbers of newly created accounts.

LiveJournal

diachrony: stuff from the livejournal policy update thread (quotes and summaries).

elfwreck: Discussion between 6A and APT, about the flagging feature (mostly satire).

yonmei: Copyright and plagiarism and derivative use: "Certainly, while (for example) Paramount could step in and say "Wait, we own the copyright of Star Trek and we are claiming this work is unfairly derivative of Trek" a third person who doesn't own the copyright of Trek cannot step in and say "Hey, this story is illegal, that means I can steal it."

mythicdove: please to be helping dove for she hath questions on life mystery: "Have any of you ever developed a crush on a fandom character, or an actor, sports figure, musician, ect and you can't figure out WHY?"

das_dingsi: InsaneJournal: A Beginner's Guide

First, I apologize if this entry is a bit incoherent. Things are happening rather quickly, and at times I can just stare at the screen and wonder "What's next?!" and when the next thing does happen, it's usually even worse or weirder than I imagined. I mean, a few months ago I was simply writing fannish or GLBT stuff on LJ and the worst issues I had to deal with were antifeminist trolls or (zomg!) defriending. Then I started writing about 6A's attempts to sneak in ads and the data-mining, then followed Strikethrough/Boldthrough, and now we're discussing censorship and spying on political opponents. Part of my brain still goes "... whut? What happened?!"

But I digress.

Thanks to all the people who voted in the recent poll and left comments -- you made valid points and it's true that, although this asylum focuses on fandom on InsaneJournal, we might still be affected by events on LiveJournal.

One of those effects is the recent upswing in account and asylum creations -- 2200 new accounts since Dec 3rd.

GreatestJournal had an influx of new users, too, but couldn't handle the server load and directed users here instead -- see this post in announcements, and due to this development 07refugees is now open for discussion of GJ as well.

Oh, and this is kinda tangential, but interesting in the "was it just really bad timing?" way: LostJournal will implement content flagging in its next code update.

Anyways, judging by the poll outcome, the great majority of our members would like news about LJ to be included in meta_roundup. However, there's also a demand to either just include really important stuff, or use a condensed format (and as gamera pointed out, if the poll had consisted of ticky boxes, many folks would probably have chosen both). So, I'm going to keep that in mind!

And while we're at it...

wyldraven quotes relevant articles about Facebook's Beacon feature, which "tracks all users in these external sites, including logged-off and former Facebook members and even non-Facebook members, and sends data back to Facebook". LiveJournal is one of the participating companies.

elfwreck: LJ bans some interests by removing their searchability

nosselinfea quotes Mark Kraft, former LJ staff member, and thinks about the implications: "SUP couldn't give a toss about the whiny little emo girls. They're not interested in your date of birth or your credit card number or your email address to sell on to porn sites and mp3 sites. It's the political dissenters that SUP are interested in, and you can bet your bottom rouble that it won't be adware that's the biggest concern."

heiko did a series of posts with some more information -- e.g. here, here and here. "This is not a conspiracy theory. The implications for Russian users in particular are very real."

So. Some of you might remember that the roundups featured way more LJ-related posts in the early days of this community ("early days" meaning, for instance, September). People were starting afresh, but many were still attached to LJ, or using their IJs for cross-posting only. It's understandable -- quite a lot of us have been on LJ for years, or the majority of our friendslists didn't make the move, so it can be difficult.

But up until the SUP deal, the amount of LJ-related posting activity went down. I got the feeling that people were busy making themselves at home on IJ, thus not thinking as much about LJ than before, and more and more often, I saw posts where users either couldn't bring themselves to care, or were downright fed up with the topic. They seem to have moved on. As an example, I'd like to point you to this post by tigresslilly, which imho explains the feelings behind this very well.

And so I'd like to know whether you, the meta_roundup readers, think posts about LJ should still be included in the future, and if so, in what form.

Poll #665 LJ Topics Poll
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Should the roundups continue to include LJ/6A-related posts?

For what it's worth, I'm one of those users who feel they have moved on eventually... but I'm fine with whatever the majority votes for. :)

I decided to split up issues again, because, um, the friendslists kinda exploded after the announcement that LJ was sold to SUP. I had bookmarked some 15 posts, and then I thought it would be best not to dump a truckload of links on people, but instead pick a few that bundle the news and analysis and linked articles in some way -- with some overlap, but hopefully not annoyingly so. (Next issue, if everything goes as planned, will be a poll, followed by a regular Fandom links roundup.)

~

stewardess has a general roundup of internet articles/blog posts on the matter.

nosselinfea has some info on SUP, mostly via the archive on no_lj_ads.

elfwreck wrote a translation of the LJ news post...

... and telesilla takes a look at the announcement for the LJ Advisory Board.

If you think I missed something important, leave a comment here, 'kay?

General Fannish Meta

spacelogic: '"obviously Chinese" is not the same!': "So I've been thinking about Babylon 5, and how humans generally can be divided into three groups in that universe: Anglophones (mostly American,) Russians, and... Japanese."

Journaling / IJ

greenwitch: DAMMIT: "Okay, frustration point here -- I've noticed several times now that when people create a community for a fandom, they're forgetting one major thing -- ENTERING SAID FANDOM'S NAME INTO THE COMMUNITY INTEREST LIST."

the_willow: When I compare Scribblit to iJay...: "Part of me thinks it may be because Scribblit isn't open yet to making your own communities on the spur of the moment, that I'm left feeling a little loose."

Tutorial: das_dingsi: How to Restore Lost Icons / Verlorene Icons wiederherstellen

LiveJournal

dragovianknight: To all the people saying "LJ, did you learn nothing from Strikethrough?": "Of course they learned. They learned that 99.9% of their users will pitch a fit, and then stay."

stewardess explains in Flagging Tool Fall-out why setting your LiveJournal to "Adult Concepts / Explicit Adult Content" is a bad idea.

diachrony: livejournal adult-content flagging highlights: "Users will NOT be notified if an individual entry of theirs is marked "explicit" by LJ Abuse. (...) The new "Adult" warning pages might get the entire LJ site blocked in some workplaces (and libraries) for being NSFW, as they use keywords that cause sites to be restricted."

Also, the_willow reports that feeds from LJ are not accessible anymore. (Explained further in this comment in 07refugees.)

On LiveJournal's new Voluntary Adult Setting / Flagging Tools

elfwreck wrote a post with links and quotes -- Answers about the new policy (including info on how to change the settings).

According to msilverstar (in 07refugees), RSS feeds are unaffected. Eta one day later: no, apparently not. See this comment.

justhuman: LJ stuff: "My initial impression is that despite some inconveniences, it's a good thing (...) [B]oth of these work a lot like the security settings on LJ with the exception of no custom filters."

stewardess: This Post Contains Explicit Adult Ranting: "While the cynical Voluntary Adult Setting will do nothing to protect the delicate constitutions of America's youth, it will benefit Six Apart in the form of new accounts. (...) It also finally forces members to fill out the birthdate field—might not be valid, but it's still pretty to advertisers." (Note: post contains a link to WfI, users reported their site uses spyware.)

firefly124: Pondering the latest nonsense: "Now, as to stuff others might think ought to be flagged? This would be where I get pissy. I imagine the "gay marriage" tag would bring up a few such posts, for just one example, and now that can be flagged by anyone who wants to, and I wouldn't even know about it."

And last but not least, celandineb has a poll on the issue.

Other LJ-related News:

dragovianknight reports that the maximum number of tags are reduced to 1000.

rubyfruit_pixie: Retconning and Fanfiction: "Is there some rule governing fanfiction that says you can't retcon your fic?"

werewindle: PP rant: "You know one thing I really hate about fandom is people that feel the need to piss on someone else's fantasy. (...) Fiction is not the real world!"

Also, the lupin_snape meta month is drawing to a close. Some of the essays are closely tied to fics or the pairing (e.g. character studies), others are about general fannish things (e.g. the beta-reading process). The link goes to the asylum tag for November 2007 Meta Month.

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. :)