tkp: Fandom far afield - When was the last time you participated in fandom on the internet not through a journaling site? I don't really mean posting fanfic to something like fanfiction.net, unless you also post and discuss in the forums there. I mean discussion, meta, the posting of fanfic, the making of graphics, etc, all being share through a medium other than LJ, DW, Insane Journal, JournalFen, etc. This would be a forum, website, mailing list . . . if you did something like a fanzine, not online, I'm interested in that too. -
impertinence: linkin' some links - We've created an exciting thing, here. But we've also created something that is very, very deeply flawed. We see ourselves, and we see the excitement of fannish creation, in almost exclusively white men. And we've stepped around why for a very long time. We love to have rounds of talking about why there aren't more diverse fandoms out there, and once we've proved we really do care about The Issues, we go back to the status quo. -
sci_frey: Mary Sues on Metafandom - a good Mary Sue story – well written, consciously plotted and with an emphasis of the inherently meta nature of the Mary Sue – can exist and can be meaningful and break down walls and make the reader think. I feel that they're vital for the evolution of people as fanfic writers and members of a self-sustaining fandom community. -
slaymesoftly: thinky thoughts on Mary (Gary) Sues - Mary Sues can also be regular canon characters. In fact, I'm not sure I wouldn't say that is more common, if more difficult to spot, than an OC. If they are being used in a Mary Sueish way, then that's what they are. If, in the story in question, the character is being given talents, abilities, knowledge that she (or he) does not have in canon, that could be a Mary Sueish use of that character. -
edenfalling: wherein Liz thinks about Mary Sues - This is not to say that I think original characters cannot be usefully critiqued. It's just that a list of traits and skills utterly misses the point of what makes a Mary Sue. The issue is not the number and type of traits and skills a character possesses. The issue is whether those traits and skills make sense in context and as a whole, and whether they play out in the story with at least minimal realism and attention to consequences. -
deird1: What I Mean By Mary-Sue and Why I Hate Her - The problem is not the OC. It's not that she's a girl. It's not even the purple eyes. The problem is when the story starts warping itself -- when everything, and everyone, and every single piece of anything ever is all bound up in the one character. With no room for anyone else.That's the Mary-Sue. She's problematic. Sometimes, she's downright toxic. And I hate her. -
verasteine: Thoughts: I Have Too Many Male Avatars (and what that says about me) - So why Arthur, why Ianto, why Clayton? What makes them better than Amelia, CJ, Buffy, or my Tammy? Why avatars that represent Arthur, Ianto, Eleven, Jack, James Hathaway, Syed Masood, John Barrowman, Christian Clarke, Merlin Emrys, Bradley James, Colin Morgan, Robbie Lewis, Uther Pendragon? What gives me the excuse to rant about feminism, time and again, but brandish these men as I'm doing it? And is that indictive of a greater whole where fandom defends sexism and homophobia while purporting to distort it in modern culture? Who fucking died and made me god? -
cesy: Metafandom formatting - I understand that the original decision to hardcode format=light on all links was because there were so many unreadable styles on LiveJournal, and it was annoying to have to type it in the address bar every time. However, on Dreamwidth, many more people have the navbar turned on, with its handy link to light style or style=mine, so the need is much less, to the point where the inconvenience to the people who need light format is less than the inconvenience for anybody who needs anything other than light format. -
deepad: Three Blocks in the Vidding Quilt - I actually disagree with the philosophy that the best fan vids must be accessible to anyone with a casual familiarity of the source material; in this, I think that the female gaze is constructed in opposition to the public, universal, essentialising nature of the male gaze. Whereas the latter panders to a lowest common denominator -- ts priapic bounty immediately accessible to anyone who wishes to identify with heterosexual male desire in a world where such identification is assumed to be the default -- the former speaks in code, and rewards intimacy with knowledge. -
seekergeek: The Mary Sue Character Displacement Theory - There is a problem with Mary Sues and it is not just that they are unrealistically larger than life. Many people have rightly pointed out that you can take any canon character, run them through the Mary Sue checklist, and find that they also fulfill a surprising number of the same criteria. No, the problem with Mary Sue is that she is an original fic hero barging into a fanfic world which already has heroes of its own. -
yourlibrarian: Escapist's fanfic issue - I've never heard of The Escapist before, but they have put out a "Fanfiction issue" whose biggest problem seems to be that they assume everyone understands what that is without ever really examining the topic. -
t_eyla: A Very Long Entry About Mary Sues - So how do Mary Sues happen? Because yes, I do think they happen, and I do think that calling a character a Mary Sue is valid criticism--as long as the term is not used in an emotive, you-wrote-a-character-I-disliked-so-I-will-call-them-a-Mary-Sue way. I think Mary Sues happen when a writer is unwilling to look at themselves and their first-, second- and third-hand experiences in their entirety. -
dejla: Fanfic writing manifesto - Write. You will be glad you did. The more you write, the better you get, the thicker the skin you develop.Just -- Write. You know you can. You know you want to. So write. -
scribblemoose: fandom vs inspiration vs output - It's not that fandom is a bad place. It can inspire and support us. But sometimes it does exactly the opposite. Sometimes it stops us writing, slows us down or changes what we write and in doing so takes the spirit out of it. -
shimmerfox: [in fanficrants] Mpreg cliches: YMMV - Unless you are working in a whole different world with completely different rules then it is not unreasonable for a man to not expect to be pregnant. He is not a horrible person for thinking that child birth wouldn't be his problem, and sympathizing for women but not really with them, because he can't imagine it's going happen to him. -
alias_sqbr: Things that are not a property of all fanworks - The following are examples of things that most people (including their creators) would consider fanworks but still often get excluded from statements saying or implying "All fanworks are...". -
cruiscin_lan: A Guide for Fandom Newbies. - So this post, newbies, is for you. Here is all the advice I can think of that might help you navigate your way through fandom, whether you're new to fandom in general or getting into fandoms that are new to you: -
alias_sqbr: Why "it's fanfic if you say it is and it feels like fanfic" bugs me - I realise people don't mean it that way, and I'm not sure how much of this is irrational defensiveness, but whenever anyone says "Well, as long as it feels like fanfic and was made for a fannish community" I don't feel more included but less. -
elvenpiratelady: A post full of thoughts - I never had my fics torn apart by reviewers, and I think I might have given up writing fics if that happened. Young writers are not exactly thick-skinned. But I think now about how easy it was to jump on a new ficcer for writing a romance badly, or getting canon details wrong, and I feel awful when I think that I probably contributed to people giving up fandom. -