Meta Roundup

Note: I have a backlog of links dealing with Survey!Fail and its fallout, but for easier navigation I'm going to put them in a separate entry.


[Stargate SG-1] catness: thoughts on design: " ... By using a device (the Stargate) which allows instant transportation to various planets, the authors do not need to invent the interstellar travel and all the technology associated with it ... So the show is either an 'away mission' or 'medical mystery' ..."

[Disney movies] dragovianknight: Thots. I haz dem.: "...I don't think I've EVER been in Disney's target demographic."

spacelogic: why I love Babylon 5

In Making stats public, yourlibrarian discusses activity on Dreamwidth and compares it to InsaneJournal (and a bit of LJ).

skuf created a poll titled Do you self-identify as a 100% heterosexual woman?: "The outsider assumption about slash fen that annoys me the most is that we're 100% heterosexual women. I polled on this back in my LJ-posting days, but since my f-lists have changed, I thought it'd be interesting to re-poll."

On -isms in Fandom / Acafen discussion

logovo: That word might not mean what we think it means.: "Are people now using that word [acafen] interchangeably with fans who are just into meta?"

telesilla: too many acafans, not enough porns: "Those of us who are either lacking in certain privileges or who just give a damn about our fellow fans who lack privilege don't have the luxury of playing Pretend."

the_willow: And then there are these assholes: "But it's not as if I'm important as a human being or anything and deserve a place where I don't see crap flung in my face for other's squee all the damn time."

morgandawn: The Person On The Other Side - My Thank You To Fandom: "In all of this, we often forget that there is a person on the other side of the debate."

telesilla: "no, this is how it works/you peer inside yourself": "One of the discouraging things that I've seen come out of the latest round of meta about meta and how it harshes squee is a couple of comments I read somewhere about how discussing about Important Issues in fandom is a waste of time because you're not going to change the world doing it."

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

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

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

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

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

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