Meta Roundup

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

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

Quick Questions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor's Note: I admit I wasn't quite sure how to handle this current issue - I was hoping the problem with the missing comment notifications would have been solved by now, but they're still not getting through on personal journals. (Although you receive them in asylums, and the replies to your comment on somebody else's journal. Support requests have been opened about this.) - That sucks.
On the other hand, I didn't want to wait for perhaps several days longer, and would like to at least provide readers the option of bookmarking the posts for later.
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Misc (mostly 'pro' or 'neutral' towards warnings) - posters warn for potential triggers or use spoiler warnings (highlighting the text)

arionhunter: On Art (describing the defintion and community standards for Art and how it's being changed in the warnings debate: "It exists in a vacuum and can be an asshole if it wants to, and it doesn't care how the Other reacts to it."

darkrose: Sometimes, the obvious isn't.: "There seems to be an assumption that certain things should be warned for, regardless of the specific fandom. The problem is that the obvious triggers may not be."

telesilla: It's too late to worry about slippery slopes; we're already on one.: "... I intend to still label my fic in some way. I know BDSM can trigger people and I don't want reading my fic to be triggery for anyone; I've felt awful when it's happened. - It's the practice of lumping BDSM in with negative things that I object to and will no longer do."

logovo: What does it take away?: "I don't get the lack of empathy in the warning discussion."

rood: On Warnings And Why You Might Consider Using Them:: "I've spend most of my life avoiding [topics triggery for me] and it's not as easy as it sounds. [...] I am thankful for everything that makes my life easier."

bethbethbeth: Confessions of a Former Warning-a-phobe: "I'm absolutely sure that I'm not going to include things that some people want to be warned for, but I've finally come around to the idea that something is better than nothing."

the_shoshanna: my (new) thoughts on warnings: "I want readers to feel as though someone just punched them in the gut. But I don't want them to spend the next four hours throwing up because of it, you know?"

loqia: An Anti-Warner’s Warning: "Anyway, the point is both sides have valid arguments and, when it comes down to it, aren’t asking for anything unreasonable."

Suggestions:

bridgetmkennit: untitled: "To be honest, this entire debate is making me think that there should be a call for the fics that have no warnings because they're not writing the common warnings, to actually list their fics as 'Warnings: None in as far I know' or something to flag that it's safe." // Also wrote an untitled post about the problems with using TV series / movies / books as an example when it comes to warnings.

stele3: Triggers vs. spoilers: an offer and a compromise: "On the subject of people who don't want to warn because of artistic integrity: have you considered using spoiler-warnings?" (includes code to create a highlight-to-read warning)

Tangentially related:

telesilla: A simple question: "Please be careful when assuming that everyone in the world is going to react the way you do, because it can make people who don't react the way you do, or the way you say a certain group reacts, doubt their own recovery."

There are a lot of posts on the issue of warnings on fic (or the lack thereof, and everything related to these points). IJ has less quantity overall, but it's still enough that I decided to split up the newsletter, so people have an easier time reading (or scrolling, depending on the individual).

This entry deals with general meta and IJ, whereas the next entry will have the links on warnings.

Editor's note: Since Dreamwidth opened, there's a lot of content being cross-posted -- well, more than before -- and chances are high that posts are also being read or linked elsewhere, or show up on people's friendslists multiple times. But as there are still many users on IJ who prefer reading / commenting (or getting comments) on InsaneJournal, in my opinion that outweighs the issue of double or triple posts.

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InsaneJournal is going to move to a different hosting provider, in the hopes of reducing costs which might also benefit the users (source). Because of this, the sale of Permanent accounts for $50 each -- initially started to celebrate the disappearence of comment rot -- has been extended, and also offers 6 month Self-Committed account time for $10, and 12 months for $20. For updates about the server move, please follow IJ on Twitter: http://twitter.com/insanejournal .

In ideas, edison suggested modifying the "Newest (Updated/Created) Asylums" list on the main page in a way that would have RP asylums listed separately.

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betbethbeth: (The Return of )The Best Spin-offs That Were Never Made: "If you were Queen (or King) of the T.V. Programming Universe, what sort of "we'll never see it in our lifetime" spin-offs (of current or long-gone shows) would you like to see on the fall schedule?"

rubyfruit_pixie asks for advice on writing slave fics, for example: What research do I have to do, if any at all? Are there guidelines to writing slavefic that go across the board?

[general & Torchwood] snakeling: Linguistics for fandom 101 (a quick guide to Ye Olde Englishe for fanfic writers, and that Jack Harkness is not American)

[True Blood] bitterfig: True Blood as fan fiction: "The world of the books remains recognizable, the characters have the same names and many of the major events remain intact, but everything has been sexed up to the max and minor characters have been given personalities, histories and stories of their own in no way suggested by the source material."

[general & Star Trek] elfwreck posted a few quick thoughts inspired by converting old Trek fanzines.

prettysock: Thinky Thoughts on Age and Fandom: "There are two important things I think adult fans could do to make fandom as a whole more welcoming to young fans." Also: "So that's the other thing I wanted to say: Fandom is good for young fans."

the_willow: Was Pre-Slash Originally Meant As A Rating?: "So what is pre-slash? I've picked up a meaning through osmosis, but considering how much history of slash I didn't pick up, I feel a need to ask questions."

accioslash: More Comments About...Comments: (on favouriting/reccing something without also commenting) "As an author or artist, does this type of behavior bother you? As a reader/viewer, have you ever done something similar?"

Asylum news: during the recent account sale I purchased a permanent account for meta_roundup and switched the layout to Complete Style, which offers tags on the sidebar. (Soon I'm going to re-organize the tags slightly for better readability.)

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Two posts by yourlibrarian:
Fanfic hostility (notes on an article about fandom where it's "the fact that fans are writing romantic stories about the leads that has [the author] hyperventilating, not the incessant tales of rape, pedophilia, and exploitation")
Tracing usage: "I've mentioned in my personal blog that I think 2009 is the year when fan fiction has become, if not a mainstream pastime, at least a term understood by many in the media and requiring less explanation in the press. What interests me though, is how this term is being re-interpreted by a wider audience to become, less about actual fan fiction, than about what the speaker sees as related issues."

rood: Fandom, Zines & Profit: "I am rather new school when it comes to fandom, but that doesn't mean I don't understand the appeal of zines (even though I don't own a single one). In fact, I wish I had the money to buy them, because zines have some advantages."

elethian: untitled post (on changing attitudes towards short vs. long fics, uses stats from the Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest)

First, the cause for comment rot on the site seems to have been found and fixed by 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: squeaky said he's working on a multiple icon uploader next, and via the comments I found an old resource post by sherlock with a third-party tool you can use in the meantime.

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

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."

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."

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."

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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."

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."

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."

telesilla: it's like rain on your wedding day*: "Apparently it's okay to dismiss/ignore copyright law when it's, oh say, Acme Shark's copyright on everything connected with the SG universe, but if it's comments on an LJ being moved without your permission? OMG UR IN MAH COPYRIGHT VIOLATIN ME!"

bridgetmkennit: Fandom, you're doing it wrong: "You know, I come to fandom to escape real life, just as most people do. But the fact that I, other PoCs, and white allies have to see your skeeve all over the fics they read? [...] These characters that are written about and the PoCs who read about them deserve better."

branchandroot: Id-candy safety: "I’m all in favor of having books that are id-candy, brain-fluff, that demand nothing from your intellect and instead go straight on to punch your emoporn joybuttons. [But] id-candy is a different thing from good writing."

rood: Living Two Lives – A Story of Bilingual Fan-dom: "I suppose all of you who are multifannish know at least to some degree what I am talking about, because essentially, I am talking about being in two fandoms at once. But while most people experience two fandoms as two different things they’re interested in, for me, it is the same thing, in two languages." Has comments in english and german.

bethbethbeth: Won't someone think of the reccers?: "No, it's not your job to maintain recs pages for reccers, and yes, some of you writers clearly wish your older stories would disappear from memory, and yes, some of my favorite authors have, themselves, disappeared (at least from fandom). However, for those of you who do have a stake in your stories continuing to be read, see what you can do to make it easy for the readers to find you and reccers to update their links."

celandineb's Friday poll was about the etiquette of pimping fic/art, and skuf's poll about tiered recs (i.e. "recs lists where the reccer's favourites are singled out/marked in some way").

slashpine created two polls on recs: part one is about general reading habits (so to speak) and definitions, part two asks more specific questions about what you like to see in recs. (If you're confused about the term "hot rec", that's answered in this comment thread.)

celandineb's Friday Poll is about pairings, and how important they are to you when choosing to consume or create fanworks.

duskpeterson wrote Daily life: Slashers rule OK, which deals with the events called "Amazonfail", and how many of the early posts about it were apparently written by slashers.

rood: How To Archive Your Fics On LJ/IJ/DW/JF: "And that, of course, reminded me of how ill equipped journals are for fic archiving."

slashpine: Meta with recs: There's "slash" & there's *slash*. I want *that* one: "I think the 'tough-guys' atmosphere that Judith Warner discusses illustrates one reason for so much m/m slash. Slash is the opposite of boys mocking each other as 'gay'. [...] But why are we rewriting the *mens* script, not the womens?"

Also by slashpine: Environment & HP. Or really - envt & all of fandom, an entry "on the whole theme of environmental awareness in HP, HP fanfics, and HP fans" (including thoughts on tree!fics).

Dreamwidth-related / Fandom migration:

branchandroot: Demystifying Dreamwidth some more: "Since I've seen a number of odd notions running around lately, I figured I'd post some quick explanations." (Adresses, among other things, the invite codes, the fandom factor, or accusations that DW wants to sink LJ.)

elfwreck: Coming soon on Dreamwidth: Patience.: "Enjoy it while it lasts, folks. It fades. That shiny feeling, that rush of activity and spark of delight, that gleeful manic commenting on random journals, it doesn't last."

skuf posted a question (and got answers) regarding DW's TOS, namely about Content and the rights to remove / adapt / modify ... it.

rood: Meine Kritik an Fanfiktion.de, von Rodo, einer enttäuschten Nutzerin.

the_rck wrote an untitled post about entering new fandoms through fic, without knowing the canon, and the downsides to it.

elfwreck wrote about the Fanlore wiki: "I love fanlore, the idea of it, the way it does work in some areas. I just haven't figured out how to be involved with it."

celandineb's Fandom Friday Poll is asking the question of fic length, i.e. how do you define a drabble, and a fic novel?

[Pro Wrestling] mllesatine: meta: I will try and analyse one of my "quilty pleasures" today.

[Coraline (movie)] yayforjae describes "a strange phenomenon in the Coraline fandom - Portraying Wybie as white".

[Supernatural] yourlibrarian: Missing the Music: Song Use in SPN: "I'm sure everyone has favorite songs in the series. I definitely have my own, but I wanted to think about what we're losing when we don't have music, which goes beyond just having a kick soundtrack. So, just for fun, I decided to do a little meta on what the 10 most significant uses of music have been so far."

Posts about Dreamwidth:

telesilla: Because I'm just a cock-eyed optimist; or why I'm going to be paying for Dreamwidth (also deals with JournalFen and InsaneJournal for comparison/background)

branchandroot, in a post titled In which Dreamwidth is not Microsoft, explains the difference between open beta and site launch.

skuf: April Posting Pact Meta Post the Firste: Dreamwidth's Subscribe/Grant Access To and You (thoughts on Dreamwidth's filtering/friending system and wondering how to handle it)

[Harry Potter] 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] 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)."

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

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?"

betbethbeth has a post on everyday cultural appropriation.
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, 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.

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."

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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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."

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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.