Meta Roundup

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.

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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First things first: InsaneJournal's ads have been reverted back to using Google text ads only. (announcement)

Now, on to the meta ...

[Spoiler] lenija: Y: The Last Man, über Enden. Potentielle Minispoiler ohne Cut. Weil.: "Früher mochte ich keine offenen Enden, weil ich immer wissen wollte, was weiter passiert. Und daß es nicht aufhört."

das_dingsi: Meandering thoughts on the "watch something else" argument: "Inevitably, someone responds with "well, why are you still watching it? can't be that bad, then, huh?!" or "meh, just watch something else / something better". -- And I get where they're coming from, I just think it's not that simple."

yourlibrarian: SPN Writing in S3: "Some months ago I wrote about what I thought were the best written episodes of S1 and S2, and I thought I'd do the same with S3 now that it's ended. Since we have nearly a third fewer episodes this season I'm going to choose the top 2 instead of top 3 – Mystery Spot by Jeremy Carver and Jus in Bello by Sera Gamble."

musesfool: have you come to raise the dead?: "But I was also thinking about season 3 of Supernatural, and a couple of conversations I've had about it recently, specifically, about the structural and pacing issues, and how Kripke really does remind me of a fanfic writer."

In F-List By Stealth, loqia explains how to bulk import someone's entire f-list into GoogleReader, and talks a little about friending/feed lists in general. (Note: I know that it's mirrored from a blog and says that comments are preferred on the original, but as comments on IJ aren't disabled, I'm listing it here.)


On LiveJournal's updated policy quidelines

bethbethbeth posted the guidelines in her journal, the original post on the lj_policy community is here.

elfwreck ponders whether it's worth "switching back" (or what would be needed to reach that point).

In light of LJ's announcement, lilithilien created a poll on journaling preferences and the factors that would possibly influence one's posting habits.

[BtVS, SPN] yourlibrarian: The Emotional Bottom (discusses Dean and Spike in terms of characterization and relationships on the show and top/bottom preferences in fic -- might contain spoilers!)

rubyfruit_pixie: An Anti-Redemptionist's Confession: "Or, How I Learned To Give Up The Ghost And Love Getting Our Heroes To Join The Dark Side."

telesilla: It's 5pm somewhere in the Pegasus Galaxy!: "Discussion in chat this afternoon about booze and SGA characters led me to think about my personal fanon (which is subject to change depending on the requirements of a fic) about the SGA characters and booze ..." (open for other fandoms in the comments)

brimac13 has a poll on shipping, namely if certain shipping preferences have a negative stigma in fandom.

Older posts I didn't want to leave behind:

The recent prompts on metametameta have been job-related (canon jobs, careers in fanfic, and "going pro") and previously elfwreck discussed in-canon parenting (or the lack thereof), for Trek!verse and Harry Potter in particular.

yourlibrarian: Posting habits and fanfic reading (deals with cross-posting content, IJ as a political choice, and journal readership esp. with meta content)

apotheosis: The place of OEL manga: "I thought this might be of interest to us as American mangaka and the fact that no, I don't see that as a contradiction or taboo to refer to myself as one. [...] I still can't help but see a rather hypocritical double-standard."

Journal News:

InsaneJournal has reached 200,000 accounts in just three months. The site was running slow at times, squeaky adresses the issue here. Also, insanity asks people for their ideas on virtual gifts.

rusty_halo made a turorial: How to migrate from LiveJournal to WordPress (and crosspost to InsaneJournal). (Link in the post goes to WordPress, but I'm using this one so people can leave IJ comments.)

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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. :)

First, let me direct you once more to the master list of meta posts at metametameta, which collects all contributions to the Meta Friday event. Also, it's been such a success that it's going to be a weekly feature with prompts; you can read the rules in this post. As the asylum is open for posts all week round, not just on Fridays, there've been more meta entries, such as purplepopple's FanLib: One Year Later, or elfwreck's Slashfic: because women can't recognize their sexuality.* For the rest of this roundup, to avoid double posts I'm going to list the links that haven't been a part of the Meta Friday or haven't been posted to metametameta.

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* yourlibrarian has written more on the subject of "slash as anti-feminist", dissecting the blog post that started it in detail.

roz_morgan: Meta! Meta! Lovely Meta!: "Writers, producers and advertisers like to pidgin hole their demographics. When they get a group they can’t explain for example a large amount of women watching a show about space-ships or monsters they don’t look at it as an indication of having tapped a new market. They seem actually baffled by it."

musesfool: dancing gets her higher than anything else she knows: "But aside from the big huge things that make me click or not click (or click out when they appear), there are smaller, mostly throwaway details, that can cause me to have kneejerk reaction of the bad sort, where I am just completely jarred out of the story and end up clicking out."

IJ, LJ, journaling/archiving in general, Tutorials

brimac13 wonders if people would be interested in an index for friending asylums on IJ. (poll)

schattenstern: untitled post: "I think that IJ is a temporary solution for Fandom at best. [...] Fandom as a whole, and forgive the blantant simplification for a moment, has always wandered from one kind of platform to the next when there was some kind of technological advancement, when the new platform offered more than the old one did."

tabakat: untitled post: "The thing is I feel as though I am being forced to keep a presence [on LJ] because there is nowhere else for me to go to be involved in my other fandoms. With the popularity of journal communities rising the availability of actual website archives and the like for fandoms has gone down."

elance: Decentralize me!: "I don't think I'm alone when I say that the amount of fanfiction which is *solely* posted to LiveJournal communities and not archived anywhere else worries me. I believe strongly that fandom should never be centralized, never be dependent on one site alone to carry it."

Also, maureenlycaon did a post on data backups to store your stories and/or artwork off of your computer, and elke_tanzer wrote a step-by-step tutorial on moving LJ memories into del.icio.us.

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. :)

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."

elfwreck: Collecting info on copyright misuse: "I know there are several teachers on my f'list; I'm hoping some of them (or their associates) will have stories or even documented incidents related to this. [...] For example, a teacher who chose not to use a television, movie, or music clip in the classroom out of fear that his or her actions violated copyright law."

gueneiriol: Ideas for The Con (tm): "So, if you were going to attend a virtual con, what would you like to see happen at it?"

mizbean: Harry/Draco Clichés: "So what is your favorite Harry/Draco cliché, and which is your least favorite?"

musesfool: you think i'm gorgeous, you wanna date me: "I write and read slash, and I have some slash OTPs, and I am a fan of slash, but I am not a slasher, and I often have to preface my contributions to fannish discussions that way, and sometimes it feels weird."

deborak: Why I'm Not a Grammar Nazi: "When it comes to fan fiction, there are those who want to be strict about spelling, punctuation and grammar. As a historian, I cannot get worked up about textual correctness. The rules and spellings that are cherished today will mean nothing a few centuries from now."

loud99: I'm annoyed.: "It's one thing to create a community for the sake of creating it, but to do it out of some sense that the fandom is dying because some things have moved out of LJ is completely and utterly ridiculous. LJ is NOT fandom. Fans make fandom."

dmitchell1985: And we're hypocritically together ever after!: "For a stretch there, everyone seemed to be all over this racism business, but would cry bloody murder if someone ever nudged them to say that something they may have said or written was offensive. Where is the ability to step back and write reflective meta then; when a situation that truly calls for sincere thought has arrived? Where is the moment where the person doesn't simply jump to the defensive and have all of their fangirls swoop in and attack?"

On Warner Brothers' president of production Jeff Robinov's new decree that "We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead":

spacelogic (in feminism): women in entertainment: "When my family picked up the first DVD of Star Trek: Enterprise [...] we played a guessing game. I held the DVD box where nobody could see it, and asked a series of questions: How many women are there on the DVD box? How many people of Asian ancestry? Are those people male or female? How many of African ancestry?"

yourlibrarian: The future of the female hero?: "Other issues are being brought up in the gender in fan studies discussion, namely that men have less reason to transform material that is being created for them whereas women modify it or focus on certain parts to satisfy their own interests. It’s not like that’s an exclusively gendered practice, since any minority group is likely to do so with entertainment targeted at a different/larger audience."

yourlibrarian (in mind_over_meta): Identification and the elephant in the room: A Spike/Xander manifesto: "I was having a discussion with someone about why some ships were heavily written and read and others such as Sparmony were practically non-existent which begged an exploration about why Spander became the fourth most popular ship in the Buffyverse."

Also by yourlibrarian: The Weight of the World in WIaWSNB: "What Is and What Should Never Be is likely to be one of the most meta'ed episodes in Supernatural if for no other reason than it'll likely be one of the few where we're so in a character's head. [...] In his commentary to the episode Kripke says that it is SPN's version of Normal Again. Yet in rewatching the Buffy S5 episode, Weight of the World, it strikes me that this is a much closer parallel. I hadn't yet heard someone mention an entirely different motivation for Dean's little head trip – guilt."

telesilla: Some "Adrift" meta: Who Makes the Call and What's In a Name?: "For me--and I suspect for a lot of you out there--the squee is about possibilities rather than proof. Rodney calling John by his first name isn't an invitation issued by TPTB, it's an excuse we can use to gate crash. And I don't know about anyone else, but I've been gate crashing for over 12 years now and I still love these parties."

babydraco: untiltled post: "The only way that fans can successfully form groups powerful enough to take on corporations like Livejournal and Fanlib is to quit trying to please everyone and giving everyone a say." (Note: I can only guess this is about the OTW and comment threads like this one.)

morgandawn is testing Stage6, another vid streaming site.

viridescence: More news about LJ suspending and restoring my account: "I have talked more with LJ Account Payments regarding them suspending my account. This information is relevant to anyone else who disputed their permanent account charge through their bank/credit card."

As usual, you can leave links to meta entries by commenting here or on the screened comments post. :)

InsaneJournal

In 07refugees, keieeeye says there'll be a major code update soon, which should fix several site issues. Apparently, the days of miraculously disappearing comments will soon be over. (And as a personal comment: I love it that squeaky works on the site issues, instead of giving us "extras" and "features" we didn't ask for.)

djin7 compares the IJ user stats before and after the LiveJournal Strikeout/Boldthrough. It's insane (pun was not intended, I swear).

bethbethbeth mentions issues with IJ's friending feature.

Fandom Stuff

yourlibrarian: Ads and You: "And vidders will probably be affected by ads soon as well, since YouTube is now planning to run ads embedded in the video content they host. Given that the advertising push on LJ seems to have led to a greater concern about content, it seems to me that monetizing sites through ads is likely to be the biggest problem to fandom in finding spaces to host their content."

das_dingsi: Dark!fic vs. Dark Themes and My Fictional Landscape: "'Darkfic' (as according to the above definitions) doesn't do it for me, but 'dark themes' certainly do. And I like it here. It's an interesting, sometimes a bit clichéd (I guess), but very satisfying place. I wouldn't want it any other way. Probably I couldn't want it any other way, because (as with most of our preferences) it's not even a concscious act."

Two posts by musesfool:
we got each other and that's a lot: "All fanfic is in some way in conversation with the source text, but AUs tend to force the intertexuality of the conversation, because without some knowledge of the source (and often, the deeper the knowledge the better), the reader can't be aware of the changes and, more importantly, what those changes mean. (Though with the rather large change of making an always male character always female, there are larger issues at play)." - Mostly Supernatural-centric, dealing with X-as-a-girl AUs.

you've got to roll with the punches to get to what's real: "I think making a big public display of it riles people up, and yeah, it's rude, but seriously, people who think fans aren't saving their favorite stories to their hard drives for rereading are naive at best (...) Reposting or redistributing it publicly is a fannish faux pas, but I think it's really hilarious and hypocritical for fanfic writers to be screaming about copyright violations and lack of permissions."

bethbethbeth explains why friending a community's watcher journal is a bad idea.

cluegirl started a Fandom Happiness Is... meme.

Deutschsprachiges Meta

mllesatine: Das UHT Mysterium: "Ich lese jede Menge SPN Fanfic und was mich immer wieder überrascht, ist die Bemerkung, dass die Winchester-Brüder eine sehr körperliche Beziehung haben (im Gegensatz zu dem, was man on-screen sieht). (...) Der körperliche Kontakt zwischen ihnen ist praktisch nicht vorhanden. Und ich werde damit einfach nicht fertig. (...) Es ist nur so *beunruhigend* eine Familie zu sehen, deren Mitglieder sich gegenseitig wie Fremde behandeln."

lenija: Migrationsströme zielsicher. Résistance putzt Brille.: "Wo sind eigentlich all die interessanten Diskussionen und Pläne geblieben bezüglich der Frage, wohin das Fandom nun umziehen will?"

If you've got a fannish entry you'd like to see included, be it yours or posts of other fandomers, just leave a comment with the link. You can also use the suggestion post with screened comments if you're more comfortable with that.

reijamira: Instructions On How To Upload Mood Themes: "First of, as far as I know, uploading mood themes is only possible for user with permanent or payed accounts. There are actually two ways how to upload your mood theme! You can use the Mood Theme Editor or the Admin Console. Personally, I like the Admin Console more, because it's much faster and it's not half as difficult to use as it sounds."

ilysah: Tags Might Not Be Your Friend: "As a fandom, are we exposing our hobby to mainstream public by tagging our posts? (...) I suspect, though, the owner of this site is using some type of software, trawling the net and gathering up data based on Tags."

lordhellebore: Fanfic =/= Inferior writing: "So, that doesn't mean, as I said, that I expect everyone to like fanfic, or even really get why we do it. But the "OMG you could do so much BETTER!" and "You're just afraid/incapable of doing something of your own!" comments are ridiculous and condescending and show that those people have no clue and no interest in learning about the WHY."

otempora01 (in writers_cafe): let's talk harry potter: "I mean, sure, every book in the world is always compared to at least one other book, but does it bother anyone else that you can't even say the word witch/wizard in relation to your own novel without someone mentioning Harry Potter? I'm not speaking out against Harry Potter as I'm a fan, but I was just wondering."

babydraco: OOh! Have I won the insane Welshman?: "Don't the Malfoys and their friends strike you as the sort of people who would normally be bothered by the presence of a Person of Color in their midst? I guess skin color doesn’t matter as much when the issue is more who has magic and who doesn’t. The wizarding world considers wizard as their race."

its_art: Minor Characters: Are They Original or Canon?: "So I have to ask all of my HP fen... When does a canon character ceased being canon and start being original?"

Two 07refugees posts:

calime: On fandom migration, safe spaces and keeping in touch with your flist: "I'd love a place that would make it easy for readers to follow them - a kind of all-in-one project that could host content, but also could serve just as an linking hub with a profile page, an address book etc. So, for me the [squidge.org] project sounds very appealing."

emilie_burns asks: "Is it, or is it not, more or less mandatory on IJ to flock explicit material?"

And last but not least, j_crew_guy informs us that Dan Didio, Senior Vice-President and Executive Editor of DC Comics, has no idea what the word "fan-fiction" means, but likes to use it anyway.

Additional note for the people who are members of the fandomdirectory, but don't have it on their friendslist because of the many new entries each update: I'd like to know if fandom asylums that only cross-post from LJ should be included in some way.

Coming soon: general fandom poll. Stay tuned.

LiveJournal / 6A

kieeeeye (on 07refugees) linked to an online article from German newspaper "Der Spiegel" about the LJ Strikethrough. Link to a translation included.

bemysty (untitled): "What IS happening, however, is that independent bloggers (...) take note of this affair (...) And while the fanfic community is nearly universally disregarded as freakish, the issues themselves are being discussed from a different angle - it's not about fandom for those people because they don't belong it; they see the business and customer relations side of things."

babydraco: throwing rocks and stuff. skip if you're on my LJ: "YOU'RE normal, YOU'RE not a pervert who draws pictures of naked seventeen year old boys. -- What happens when they change the rules? And they will, because they already have more than once. Here is a list of things Livejournal has done to their customers in the four years that I've been on here."

p_zeitgeist: But, why are y'all assuming that getting rid of fic would be good for an IPO?: "I keep seeing the this line of reasoning around LJ today: Six Apart is known, or suspected, to be getting ready to do an initial public offering. (...) But I have to wonder, because it seems to me that a damned good argument can be made that getting rid of fandom would be ghastly for that projected IPO."

emilie_burns: 6A is sailing the failboat in the sea of stupid.: "However, 6A has determined that while fictional porn is harmful, illegal, and dangerous, and should be removed from their servers, there is nothing wrong with communities which advocate dangerous eating disorders and assist other users in 'tips' for self-starvation and purging."

ketchupblood (untitled): "Frankly, I'm kind of upset at how incredibly immature the fandom is being. I saw a post where they were trying to max out LJ's bandwidth or something by flooding pictures onto LJ servers. That completely reminded me of something I did in fifth grade with my fifth grade class, where we tried to cost the cafeteria some money by boycotting school lunch."



InsaneJournal / Fandom Migration

[scorienne: settling in: "I really probably ought to try to post something in the communities I've joined, because it's possible that everyone's expecting someone else to do it (the same way that I am)."] Journal has apparently been deleted by its user.

entrenous88: fannish squee and glee, part the first: "For all that keeping up with the situation and taking action is very, very important, something I'm not seeing as much right now -- and dude, this is highly important stuff -- is fannish squee and glee. To me, that's part of the fight to keep fandom alive and strong, keeping vital the reason we all started out in various fandoms to begin with -- our love for various canons, our excitement for fannish products, and our interaction with both of those resources as well as with other fans."

anniemoon asks whether we'd be interested in a fandom-oriented friending community.

ceruleagos has a poll about InsaneJournal usage.

das_dingsi: Asylums and Tags / Kategorien in Communities (tutorial on the usage of tags on InsaneJournal and how to change the tag permission level for asylums directly at the admin console)

brown_betty links to a tool that migrates not just journals, but communities.

chrome327 links to source codes / layout help for the Flexible Squares and Smooth Sailing S2 styles. Eta Aug. 15th: These layouts are NOT licensed under the GPL, which means it's illegal to use them on a site other than LiveJournal. (source)

quiltyred (on 07refugees) reminds us of the navigation strip feature.

liz_marcs found a Fake LJ-User Tag Generator to get rid of all those not-working journal links in posts.


General Fandom Meta

jadeblood: Would You Want To Be Shipped That Way?: "I have a question for people that write fan fiction, make art, or just generally ship real life celebrities together: would you want someone to see you and a friend together and begin pairing you up?"

mahoganyhandle: something that leaves me confuzzled...: "I've read a few slave fics recently and I noticed a theme that rather baffles me. In a slave fic, people seem to think that the slave would be bound so much that they'd want to serve. (...) I don't, however, see the point in making the slave so helpless and dependent on his master that he can't even take care of himself, let alone anyone else."

baffledking: Babbling about Authorial Intent: "At some point the phrase 'authorial intent' has become dirty to me. I am firmly, firmly of the opinion that the minute a text (text in this usage meaning source material) becomes available to me in it's finished form then the author's opinions are no more valid than the average internet Joe's."

yourlibrarian: How do you like your stories?: "[T]he profic/fanfic differences to me generally come out in favor of fanfic. And this is mostly because fanfic can do what profic does but the reverse is not true. One thing, for example, that I can't ever imagine seeing in a tie-in novel is a truly dark story."

purplefeen: It's rant time: Sex is not a dirty word - or a dirty act!!: "Hon, if you're going to make Willow (or any other character) ashamed, you're giving in to the small-minded toadies of the world who once told women that they were whores if they made a sound during sex."


As usual, you can leave comments with interesting links or use the screened entry mentioned in the FAQ. Older meta entries are fair game, as long as they're on InsaneJournal and from 2007.

InsaneJournal

stewardess: ALERT: Use Caution When Naming An RSS Feed. (Further information in the comments. Also, see grimmhill's post.)

qem_chibati: RSS Feeders (talking about Firefox livebookmarks, Google Reader, including flocked posts and more -- post is a constant work in progress)

only_gremo describes a problem with uploading user pics when using Firefox, and how to solve it.

yourlibrarian asks about possible (virtual) gifts for InsaneJournal users, and sylumgator wonders if a Holiday Wish List site would be a good idea.

Fandom / Fanworks

jaybee65: Meta: Looking on the bright side of recent fannish upheavals: "It's possible that this is one of those watershed moments for fandom, although I think it's impossible to tell right now what direction things will move in. (...) [The] assumption is that it's better if fandom congregates at a single, agreed-upon-by-consensus space. But is it, really? I'm not so sure."

millstone1005 (on fanficrants): ratings: "It really annoys me when people rate all of their stories R (Mature) for "safety", regardless of the actual content of the fic."

ketchupblood thinks about three types of painful fic.

ingrid [on the so-called 'miscegenation debate']: (untitled): "It's okay to say you've never heard it. It's pseudo-clinical and rather old. But when someone (or a few dozen someones) informs you that this word represents a Very Not Nice School of Thought and in all honesty, has nothing to do with what you are trying to put across for a stupid fic contest, that, in fact, you used the wrong word entirely you really ought to listen to them."

spacelogic: fannish stuff: "I'm starting to wonder if there is or has been any good sci-fi TV show that actually had a gender-balanced or female-majority cast. Anyone know?"

babydraco: Meta post #1: HP/Other: Occlumency/Identifying with Characters: "I think lots of fen identify with Snape. Come on...he was a socially awkward child who masks this with sarcasm as an adult. He's an academic, as many fen are, but even the ones who aren't still like reading, and researching and arguing over obscure stuff. He's not conventionally attractive (okay, he's sort of ugly) and many fen identify with that, but even those who don't, have to contend constantly with the *stereotype* that they are ugly or out of shape. Before anyone's even seen them."

Sometimes the same people write several meta entries. It happens.

yourlibrarian:

Insiders and outsiders: who's who?: "There's been a lot of talk in the Gender Aca-Fan discussion going on at fandebate about the lines between producers and fans but less on those in between, which at one point a participant suggests may be academics. (...) I'm applying these points primarily to the Buffyverse since that's what I currently know about, but I suspect that there's truth there for a number of fandoms."

From great characters come great fandoms: "I have on occasion been able to continue watching a show for the sake of a character alone, or a pair of characters. And I have watched many shows in which I enjoyed the show but had no real desire to go further than just viewing. But if it’s a good show and it’s got a great character, that to me is the equation for fannish interest."

Reviewing the Past: "To me [American Gothic]’s not that old, but it aired a year or so before BtVS came on the air. (...) At the time it was felt that references to pop culture would take viewers out of the show because it reminded them of real life. Instead he argued, this actually makes the characters seem more real because they live in the same world we do. He noted that BtVS was a major show that served to make this change on TV."


zulu:

You know what I like? Being productive.: "I think I want to learn, but I also want to sit back and say, 'You know what? It's crack, and it makes me happy. I HAVE MADE IT FOR THE LULZ.'"

Writing, you know, that stuff.: "It's really hard to write a medical plot interspersed with the usual shippy stuff I write (...) the problem is making it real-ish and still interesting for the shippers."


LiveJournal

das_dingsi: LJers are freaked out. Brad is unimpressed.: "You probably read that ValleyWag story by now (...) that LJ founder Brad Fitzpatrick is going to leave LiveJournal. And he probably is. (...) Of course, he's been asked on his opinion about the on-going kerfluffles."

liz_marcs: Here Are My Thots...Let Me Show You Them: "While the latest LJ kerfluffle is going in full-swing, let me make clear my stance here, especially since there seems to me to be a certain amount of misinterpreting what I'm saying. Personally, I think the artists in question who got perma-banned from LJ were, to put it kindly, stupid. (...) My perception that the artists in question acted stupidly, however, is nothing compared to what I currently think about LJ/6A."

ranalore: okay, seriously, y'all are not helping: "Posts with explanations for the possible logic of 6A/LJ's actions are good and useful. Posts about how to back up your memories, flists, posts, comments, and how to cross-post to multiple journal services are good and useful. You know what I don't think are good and useful? Posts berating other fans for choosing to leave LJ or choosing to stay."

emilie_burns makes a good point about community management: "If the only maintainer is suspended, that's bad news for a comm's survival, so I'm just taking care of that."


Other

blasphemy_blue started a Multifandom Friending Meme.

bubble_blunder: A Question For Those Who Read My journal: "I mean thoughts, opinions, viewpoints and the like about things like censorship, sex offenders, vigilante groups (...), fandom, parenting (...) So, my question to those reading is this: If I were to make a series of Editorial style posts about these types of issues would you read and discuss them, or would you be more likely to say, 'TL;DR' and move on by?"



As usual, you can leave comments with meta links here or on the screened post. Older posts qualify -- basically, all meta from 2007 posted on InsaneJournal is fair game.