metafandom

phoebe_zeitgeist

kaigou: three things! just three!: In general, I don't have a problem with a fanfic writer who poaches his/her own work for use in an ofic. You'll see the advice all over the place: you can get away with basing an original work on a derived work, as long as you file off the serial numbers.

All good and well, but how does one know just how much filing is enough?
(tags: fanfic reading prowriting writing)

rahirah: On Writing Children: "So you want to write babyfic, but don't want to get tarred with the dread brush of 'Eeeeew, babyfic!'"

Well, the bad news is, you can't avoid the dread brush no matter how hard you try. The good news is, you can take steps to ensure that if some babyfic hater clicks on your story link by accident, they won't immediately click away. If you play your cards right, you may even get the coveted "I usually hate babyfic, but..." feedback. So let us say that you've given in to the compulsion to make your favorite characters breed. What next?
(tags: writing btvs ats)

princessofgeeks: "social networking doesn't scale": Clive Thompson writes: "...Technically speaking, online social-networking tools ought to be great at fostering these sorts of clusters. ... But when the conversation gets big enough, it shuts down. Not only do audiences feel estranged, the participants also start self-censoring."

...what's the magic number where social network lapses back into old-fashioned broadcasting or column-writing, in your experience?
(tags: discussions blogging networks)

lovelokest

elf: : Closed canon vs open canon - We need a third category: sprawl canon. I've been dabbling in DC comics fandom, mostly the Bat-family, and it is a veritable Shub-Niggurath of canon, with tentacles wrapped around bits of fandoms (which are parts of itself) and strange orifices opening and closing endlessly. -
(tags: canon)

rhoboat: Thoughts on vidding stuff - Where I'm going with all this is that there have been occasions where I've definitely noticed some technical issues from vidders who've been doing this a long time, often a lot longer than I. I think it's easier to forgive newbies, especially when I see improvement over time. But sometimes I feel like I'm dancing around eggshells (mixed metaphor, ha!), because I have no idea how to approach certain people or if I even should approach them. -
(tags: vidding concrit)

inalasahl

mjules: One Reason Why Western [American?] Culture Makes These Conversations So Difficult - Sure, we can all agree that certain people who consistently exhibit -ist behavior are probably, at least on some level, bigoted, especially when the behavior is explicit and unambiguous. However, most -ist behavior isn't -ist because of the way a person thinks or feels; it is problematic because of the way it interacts with larger systems. -
(tags: discussions)

undomielregina: A Theory About Character Bashing - Generally, I think that whether a female character is used to make fans feel bad about the character's actions is at least as important as whether she's presented as a love interest when it comes to the quantity and severity of the character bashing directed at her in slash. -
(tags: characterization gender slash)

phoebe_zeitgeist: On derailing and complexity. Or one tiny corner thereof. - So [personal profile] wistfuljane and I have been demonstrating the phenomenon of two people separated by a common language in her journal for the past twelve hours or so; and I feel more than ordinarily like a space alien. I used words and all, but I'm fairly sure from Jane's reactions that I might as well have been speaking in the language of snakes for all the sense I made to her. Which would not be surprising, because I have only the dimmest notion even now of what she's been trying to tell me. -
(tags: discussions derailment privilege)

fairestcat

gnatkip: Glee art - Inspired by the many thoughtful posts I've seen discussing Glee's portrayal of race, gender, ability, sexuality, and abuse -- and also inspired by Strange Maps, GraphJam, and sensory/motor homunculi -- I had an idea to diagram the representation of Glee's characters. -
(tags: fanart canon statistics race gender)

were_lemur: Fuck It. Deal Me In. - For every character female character who is killed off, turned evil, or just plain not mentioned to make way for the mansex, there's one who is warped out of character so that she's incomplete without a man or gives up her badassitude for babies for no other reason that she's found her one true (male) love. Just because het centers on women doesn't make it automatically feminist, and there is slash with strong female characters in supporting roles. -
(tags: fanfic writing slash)

wistfuljane: Act of Derailing - Here's the thing, derailing* is not whether someone has a relevant/interesting/excellent point to contribute to a conversation or being "on-topic." It's not about intention or space. It's about shifting the discussion away from a central focus, but more importantly, it's about deflecting the focus of attention away from the affected part(ies). -
(tags: oppression discussions)

quinfirefrorefiddle: Talking to annoying people (and maybe just a little bit about them) - I've mentioned before that I worry about internet wank because it doesn't seem to allow for forgiveness. But I also worry about internet wank because it doesn't allow for time to grow. -
(tags: discussions privilege)

fairestcat

poisontaster: I Have Questions! You Have Answers? - Do you always blame the typos on bad editing? [POLL] -
(tags: poll betaing fanfic reading)

elf: So-called self-identified bi women - We don't have clear simple labels for "male who only wants intercourse with females, but gets hot as hell seeing guys in corsets and is happy to kiss them and do a bit of fondling." Don't have labels for "girls who like to kiss girls and cuddle with them and have never had spark & opportunity to find out if they'd like more/other than that." -
(tags: sexuality fandom)

sailorptah: I've genderswapped a canon!male just to draw her in a man's suit. Where does that fit in? - I mean, as far as I'm concerned, swapping a character's sex or gender in either direction is awesome, and is all part of the bigger constellation of Sex/Gender/Gender Expression Are Not Fixed, Let Us Celebrate That. And while I can see people objecting to sticky patterns of bias, the one that seems to be universally complained about has absolutely nothing to do with my experience. -
(tags: fanfic genderswitch)

merricatk: Why linkspam is an unsafe place for writers. - The comment told me that my post had been included in linkspam. Cool, I thought, and went over to take a look. // What I found was that [Warning: derailing] had been affixed to the front of my the excerpt to my post. Somehow, by minding my own business, writing in my own LJ, I was derailing the debate they were archiving. -
(tags: fandom modding)

garrideb: Not Shipping Shawn/Juliet Doesn't Make Me A Bad Feminist. - There are standard reasons for not liking canon het pairings, and these reasons are getting labeled as excuses for simply not wanting to write mm/mf due to internalized misogyny and feeling that the woman is 'not good enough' for the leading man. I'm sure this is true for some fen, but it is not my experience and I hate to see valid reasons being dismissed. -
(tags: slash het gender psych)

ithiliana: The stories we tell about...the stories we tell - The early postings in any current manifestation of the imbroglio (more about this later) often start out with fairly clearly drawn lines (which could be called "us vs. them" in many cases), but the more people read, think, and post, the more those lines are blurred, scuffed, messed up, and debated. In the process, there are individuals who can be foolish (as noted in the Fanlore entry!), individuals who fail in various ways, and also individuals who break my heart with their breathtakingly beautiful stories and ideas. -
(tags: fandom discussions)

cidercupcakes: There's nothing better on a snowy Saturday night than curling up with a hot cup of tl;dr. - Here is what confuses me, though -- is "my flist might not be interested" really that huge a stumbling block for, you know, talking about fandom? I mean, I can understand it if, say, your flist is mostly people from your offline life, who might be bemused at best by your desire to talk about how Character X and Character Y from Movie Z are TOTALLY IN LOVE, but when your flist is largely people from fandom...is my flist just inordinately cool, that if I'm yammering about something they don't give a shit about, they'll just scroll past, or just get excited because I'm excited? -
(tags: fandom)

oula

( 10+ links )

lovelokest

copracat: The female characters are written by the - The female characters are written by the same people who write the male characters. Do the writers' limitations and prejudices cease to exist they write male characters? Or do they just not matter? -
(tags: question gender tptb fandom)

austrianschool: Appro Aggro and the Economics of Fandom Exchange - The Americanisation of this debate, if one can call it a debate, which I beg leave to doubt, is that Americans are peculiarly incapable, for perfectly understandable reasons of their peculiar history, of not casting such debates in the mould of Discussions About Race.[5] Gay rights, women's rights, it matters not: they must cut them to the pattern of the long and honourable struggle for civil rights in the face of racial segregation and racialism. Race, in the American sense of that remarkably 'loaded' and surprisingly slippery term -
(tags: culture gender race appropriation)

inalasahl

legionseagle: Juliet (The Dice Were Loaded From The Start) - People put forward the argument that this problem of dire baggage is also true when writing male characters like Draco, say. I would, however, argue that there's a difference. If one sets out to write Draco as a half-way sympathetic character one has to get round various aspects of the little brat's canonical characterisation, certainly. But those aspects are not things JK Rowling put there because she thought they were what women readers were looking for, or which were intended to make Draco sympathetic in the first place, whereas Gwen's being "the heart of the team" is. You're told by TPTB that you're supposed to like her and identify with her and the natural response is, "Who, me? Why?" -
(tags: gender misogyny sexism torchwood writing hp appropriation)

alixtii: Femslash and the Lesbian Experience. Which Is Clearly Not My Experience. - my impression has always been that in more or less exactly the way that m/m slash isn't actually about real-world gay men (in a way that some interlocutors have found problematic, to say the least), femslash isn't about lesbians. -
(tags: slash femslash sexuality glbt)

phoebe_zeitgeist

bodlon: More thoughts about hot man-on-man action - Fandom and the slash community are not a "women's space." That's ridiculous. It may be a space where the population skews heavily female, and where the men involved sometimes struggle to be acknowledged (pet peeve: things which should be inclusive that start with the word "fangirls"), but fandom isn't the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. I can't speak for all the men I know who write slash, but I've certainly never been made to feel unwelcome or like a guest instead of a full participant when I do get involved. -
(tags: appropriation derailment community slash identity)

melusina: I know this much is true - There's a great deal of value in examining fanfic and fandom culture for conscious and unconscious stereotyping, oppression and erasure, but I don't think there's any value in sweeping generalizations that don't recognize the diversity of fandom and fannish experiences (or for that matter, the diversity of real life experiences!). -
(tags: fandom sexism sexuality discussions glbt)

fairestcat: *rages* - I'm open and sometimes confrontationally out in both my online and offline life, but in terms of active interaction, slash fandom is my primary lgbt community. And that community is no less real or important than the mainstream queer community, or femslash fandom, or any of the dozens of other ways we have for finding and connecting with each other. This is my lgbt community, and I reject your claims that it is "anti-gay" simply because it doesn't look or sound like yours. -
(tags: fandom slash sexuality glbt)

amireal

The Acrimonious One - Part 1 There aren't enough interesting women to write about - These female characters are often presented in a way that women are expected to identify with, and they are often limited to the role of support of the male lead and they often embody sexist stereotypes. Some examples, so I'm not just generalizing: Rinoa (Final Fantasy 8); Elizabeth (Pirates of the Caribbean); Aeris (Final Fantasy 7); Kate (Lost). All of these characters have some good characteristics, but many women legitimately feel resentful and uncomfortable with the expectations of women that the characters perpetuate. That this resentment is expressed with misogyny against the characters as women is a troubling product of our misogynist culture, but I don't think the solution is to expect all women to embrace these characters as totally awesome. -
(tags: misogyny sexism slash writing)

phoebe_zeitgeist: Inquiring minds want to know. - My reaction to the current round of discussion about writers' responsibilities to those who are or might be harmed by unexamined privilege expressed in the writers' work has been, roughly: -
(tags: fandom discussions poll)

calicokat: I've been trying to figure out if I have - I'm not trying to brag. Rather, I'm saying you can love female characters, write female characters, follow female characters and be passionate about female characters and still write, read, enjoy and adore slash. These things are not mutually exclusive. -
(tags: writing characters gender)

meri_sefket: One Fan's Experience - I thought I'd start share my own history in fandom because maybe my own story can show the myriad ways in which I failed, recognized that fail, moved on, and expanded my fannish experience. -
(tags: fandom gender sexism)

freifraufischer: Femslash and the Lesbian Experience. Or rather my lesbian experience. - The long and the short of it is that in my almost twenty years in fandom I have run across very few slash stories that were written by gay men, or had any relation to LGBT culture as I have experianced it for the last fifteen years. While I am willing to concede that the queer community is not one subculture, but several, there complete absence of any elements of gay male culture that I am familiar with leads me to believe that slash is almost excursively the domain of straight female authors. -
(tags: slash femslash sexuality)

tielan: on snowflakes and snowdrifts - You can make choices for perfectly good, utterly rational, and totally unique reasons, and still be part of a bigger problem. -
(tags: fandom gender sexism)

fairestcat

jerico_cacaw: [365days: Day 23] It's a woman ... - And I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think the being uncomfortable while reading female characters involved in sex relates to me being able to conceptually self-identify with the female body while feeling alien to the responses/behavior as portrayed in the fic/movie/book -
(tags: fanfic gender asexuality)

kookiety: Can't Buy My Love - I do not always like the fictional women.
Political correctness or sense of obligation, bonds of sisterhood, whatever it is - let me fling it out of the window - I do not like all the women in fiction.
(tags: fanfc gender characters characterization)

inmyriadbits: whoops that got long and thinky about women and stories. Plus meme - IMO, there's no good reason not to write female characters, and lots of valid reasons in favor of the practice. If you do look at yourself and see that you don't, I think it's worth your while to try to figure out why. If you look around and see others not writing, try to understand that, too, rather than attacking them for it. -
(tags: writing gender)

bana05: Black Women, Slash, Fandom, and Canon (Long Meta Is Long) - But ultimately, there is a very present insistence that these women "know their place", and the assumption of these specific subsets of slashers is their "place" is not significant to the narrative, let alone with one of the male leads. -
(tags: slash race gender merlin startrek)

brightfame: brightfame: We are the stories we tell ... and read - I do wonder whether certain stories are more palatable to some cultures and subcultures than others, and whether the reasons behind that are benign, neutral, or pernicious. Examination of one's literary tastes, both as an individual and as a part of a community, is never a bad thing. -
(tags: reading gender race)

freifraufischer: Slash and Women and Metafandom Discussions - I rather firmly believe that slash, on a meta not an individual level, is anti-gay. -
(tags: slash sexuality glbt)

meri_sefket: A Very Vague Post About Fandom* - One thing I have noticed that seems different to me in this reiteration of the discussion is how many more people this time are stepping up and saying things like "I read/write/vid/create/meta about slash and gen and femslash and het and poly (or of combos of those genres), speaking up for those of us who read across genres and like each for different (or the same) reasons. -
(tags: fandom gen het slash)

merrykk: Female Space and fandom - I'm not hearing the same words - When it comes to contributing to fandom, this worldview can show up in fairly non-flashy ways. When I write stories that focus on male characters, there is obviously an underlying respect for women, but both as individuals and for the entire gender as belonging to the world. That men alone would be a kind of appropriation, ignoring the default setting on the world. -
(tags: fandom gender)

miera_c: What does heteronormativity mean to you? - A lot of people are slinging the word "heteronormative" around these days, but are we all meaning the same thing when we say it? -
(tags: gender sexuality slash het)

magpyr: Half-baked thoughts on the male slash debate - Can't we ditch the m/m debate everybody's so sick of, and talk about the serious lack of femslash in any fandom but The L Word? Why is it so easy for people to see "queer subtext" in a work concerning straight male characters, but not females? Can we look at what is not being written? Gay women, asexuals, genderqueer people,... where the hell are they? -
(tags: femslash sexuality characterization fanfic)

tigresslilly: A Few Questions I Haven't Seen Asked or Answered - Are threesomes considered slash and sometimes m/m or f/f? Does it matter is while the relationship is clearly between three people, there are sometimes scenes between just two of the three characters? Does a mixed gender threesome vs a single gender threesome make a difference? Are there things that are acceptable in a duo that make you cringed when worked into a trio? -
(tags: poly fanfic gender sexuality)

the_jackalope: Rage - Yes, there are shows that don't do females well, but there are so many that do, and so many, many, many awesome female characters out there. -
(tags: fandom gender characters)

acrimonyastraea: Why do women [fill in the blank] - I love reading some meta, and I love analysis along the lines of gender and orientation and feminism... pretty much all the elements of the latest discussions of women writing slash. -
(tags: fandom gender discussions)

oula

melannen: Hi! I am still lacking energy to do anything - If, like me, you recently got weird malware on your system that tried to get you to install anti-virus software, and couldn't figure out where from because you'd only been on trustworthy sites, you probably got it from an ad running on Livejournal. -
(tags: lj malware psa)

51stcenturyfox: Huh. - Uh... you do... realise that in fanfiction you can write female characters better and write them into healthy, hot, sex-positive relationships even if those don't exist in the source material, right? This is not really more farfetched than a story about two canonically straight guys falling in love with each other and running through a field of daisies and fucking all over desks and spaceships and getting m-pregnant? -
(tags: slash het gender sexism fandom)

china_shop: it's not a miracle, but it feels like one - Some differences I've noticed between my writing and vidding processes -
(tags: writing vidding)

lyssie: The more things change.... ALL OF THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE. - Step 7. Explain to your friends list how you like this one movie/show and the woman (possibly plural) in it because it subverts gender types and tropes, and how AWESOME it is, but how sad you are that you can never talk about it (or women) because everyone you know is a boyslasher. And you wouldn't want to dare harsh their squee by talking about vaginas. -
(tags: gender fandom)

le_mru: metafandom - Lubię het, ale kiedy jest to het - z braku słów - subwersywny, nie heteronormatywne pici polo, które nas otacza i które spływa z ekranów kin i telewizorów. Bo chyba też po to jest fandom, żeby tworzyć alternatywę, coś nowego, coś innego. -
(tags: slash het misogyny gender language:polish)

hl: about: warnings - A warning is not a judgement on the people who made the content. It can also be accompanied with a private or public judgement (to say anything else would be disingenuous), but a warning in itself has nothing to do with the author of that content. It's a call made by the one putting up the warning (i.e. it's a call made by a person or a group, and thus, invariably subjective and flawed) done for the benefit of the people who don't, yet, know the content. -
(tags: warnings)

mistresscurvy: On Privilege and Responsibility - There is a huge difference between saying that there are instances of problematic characterizations or plot points or objectification that should be addressed and saying that women aren't allowed to write about gay men's experiences fullstop. The fact that there are examples of fail within a genre doesn't mean that the entirety of the genre is rotten. -
(tags: gender fandom sexuality slash)

acari

such_heights: help, help, I'm being erased! - In the great sprawling land that is the internet, it makes no sense to say "there should be more x!" and mean "there should be less y!". -
(tags: gender sexuality fandom)

vamp_ress: A Man's World - Or, my absolute pet peeve in slash fiction: writing a cast of about ten to fifteen male characters and making them all gay. I'm sorry, I'm a big slash fan, but even I need at least a little reality in the stuff I read to find enjoyment in it. I find these types of stories the most problematic in terms of what miera_c is describing, because they seem to totally erase the female perspective from a story pretending the world truly only consists of gay men. -
(tags: lotr gender sexuality characterization fandom marysue)

autumnus: About female characters and fandom - Check how many people are even bothering to talk about the topic, the key part of it: the erasure of women in fan work. The het/slash is presented as a consequence/instance of a deeper problem, not as the problem itself. However if slash was not mentioned, would this have even made metafandom? -
(tags: fandom sexism characters slash het)

jesse_the_k: [in access_fandom] Making Space for Wheelchairs and Scooters - There are many elements to making your event wheelchair-accessible. -
(tags: accessibility cons)

lightgetsin: So it turns out there are people with disabilities in fandom - You guys, seriously. There are disabled people in fandom. In fandom in particular because internet socializing may be the only kind many people have access to. We are on your friends lists, and we read your comments, and yeah, I'm sure I'm not the only one who can tell when you assume that every person reading you is able-bodied, because that's just what people are, right? -
(tags: disability fandom)

elizah_jane: Everybody's Free (To Be Fannish) - I had occasion recently to link someone to the sunscreen thing and it got me thinking. I'm sure that there are approximately half a billion of these for fandom, but whatever. Here's mine! -
(tags: fandom parody meta)

carolyn_claire: Okay, now I'm getting annoyed. - Pointing out "negative trends" and then calling any refutation of those supposed trends by the participants "excuses" and refusing to listen isn't a productive way to add value to any discussion and reveals your biases. -
(tags: slash het fandom gender)

musesfool: it's all how you use it - It never fails to amaze me that we place female characters in such an awful catch-22. They can't be perfect, but they can't be flawed! They can't be seen as vulnerable, but they can't be too strong! If they're assertive and confident and good at what they do, they're Mary Sues at least and arrogant bitches at worst, but if they're soft-spoken and meek, they're either doormats or have some secret scheming agenda and only APPEAR to be sweet. -
(tags: gender fandom)

lovelokest

gabrielleabelle: My Fandom is All Genres - It doesn't have to be slash to be subversive or transgressive. Het writers are subverting up the wazoo. -
(tags: het gender fanfic fandom writing)

miera_c: The list of excuses for debunking - OK I want to compile a list of the excuses we hear so often when the subject of female characters & their presence comes up. I figure, if the list of the most commonly used ones is out there with each excuse debunked, it will help them lose their power. -
(tags: gender fandom)

elf: Ethics of commenting - Is it proper to comment (squeefully) on the fic of people you know don't like you? How about people who you suspect don't like you and might rather just forget you exist? -
(tags: behavior comments community)

havocthecat: Misogyny is wrong. Who knew? - Just. For crying out loud, people. I'm a woman. Misogyny and people who exhibit inadvertent male privilege is a pretty unavoidable part of my life experience. Is it such a shocker that I might get fed up with it in my hobby and want to talk about how much it sucks? -
(tags: fandom misogyny)

sixish: [in asexual_fandom] Possibly Ace Characters - What characters have you always wanted to see written as asexual, regardless of how canon portrays them? -
(tags: asexuality characters)

copracat: an exercise - And I thought to myself how does that work? Can I bring myself to see the fail in something I love, that I would defend with unreasonable passion, that it would hurt me to admit failed? SGA doesn't count, you see, because it was already hurting me. I wasn't risking anything to criticise it. -
(tags: fandom criticism xena appropriation)

cimorene: on feminism & queerness, women and slash, m/m vs female characters - The net result is that if I prefer queerable major characters with other major characters of the same gender in basically mainstream media fandoms, I am mostly engaged by m/m slash. If I prefer female-centric genre stories, I have very few options in current tv and movies, even if I'm willing to go for ones which don't have very active fandoms. If I prefer female-centric media and queerable stories about major characters (which I do), I'm mostly shit out of luck. I can have one at a time, but not both, without wading into the much less easy and engaging waters of small fandoms, inactive fandoms, long-dead fandoms. -
(tags: slash femslash gender sexuality)

jane_elliot: [in epic_rants] My issues with het... - There are a lot of folks out there who refuse to read het. I am not one of them. However, based on the last few het stories I've read (or tried to read) over the last day or to, I'm starting to see why 'het' is gradually becoming a dirty word. -
(tags: het sexism)

paradox_dragon: Queer women, the slash debate, and the question of internalized oppression - So the dynamics of privilege do not make it impossible that queer women can harm queer men through our storytelling. Or that any activity in which queer women participate gets an automatic homophobia-free stamp of approval. Internalized homophobia is so insidious because it is often used by the privileged group to justify its oppressive behavior -
(tags: slash gender sexuality oppression)

mothwing: You can't write in a vacuum - Most writers seem to be writing primarily for entertainment, to explore themselves, and most readers seem to read only for entertainment and escapism purposes, too. This is fine. I do that. I just don't agree with escaping at the cost of other people -
(tags: slash gender sexuality)

laughingrat: Too tired for meta? Surely you jest. - it sort of parallels some shit I said about slash back in the day (back in the day three months ago) about how women* may just be using slash** as a way of exploring sexual relationships*** between partners with equal social status, or at least between partners who have to deal with incredibly little demeaning sexist bullshit, which leaves the writer and reader free to explore, you know, actual love, or power dynamics, or class, or race, or Hawt Smexins, without having the all-pervasive smelly dead-skunk spectre of Patriarchy all up in the mix -
(tags: slash sexism gender)

inalasahl

sprat: Stupid on the internet - this kind of thing is why I don't a hundred percent buy the recent wave of objections from gay guys about how slash is appropriative; I'd be a lot more willing to consider their arguments -- some of which actually seem pretty valid, to be honest -- if they didn't all seem to come hand in hand with misogynist bullshit like this. -
(tags: fandom gender sexuality sexism)

elfinblaze: On female characters in fanfic - before I discovered fandom I only wrote female characters, and while I can thank fandom for teaching me how to write decent male characters, I think it's time to stop writing all these stories featuring men and focus on the female characters I love. Because there are so many, and I don't write about them nearly enough. -
(tags: fanfic gender)

ithiliana: First Post on Fethisizing (expect MOAR) - I KNOW about the ways straight porn fetishizes along the axes of race and gender, and I suddenly wondered if gay porn (for men) does the same thing: the answer seems to be yes, yes, it does. -
(tags: slash sexuality gender appropriation)

zvi: [in podficmeta] Is it real or is it Memorex? - I'm curious what everyone thinks about podfic's status as a fanactivity. Do you think about it as an independent work of art itself, or is it a way of offering additional accessibility for fanfiction? -
(tags: podfic accessibility fanac)

lomedet: [in podficmeta] podfic feedback: how (when, why) do you do it? - Have you come up with a successful strategy for leaving feedback that doesn't feel unduly labor-intensive? Have you given up on direct feedback in favor of recs? If you do go back and leave podfic feedback, does it feel strange to do so at a remove from your immediate response? -
(tags: question podfic feedback)

the_shoshanna: A handy guide to media fan convention art shows - just as fans shared fanfic and art in the zines that were and are displayed, shared, bought, and sold in convention dealers' rooms, one of the places that fans shared, admired, and bought and sold fan art was in convention art shows. And although much fan art, like much fanfic and other fannish stuff, has moved onto the Internet, con art shows continue, offering you the chance to see and share and drool on -- and even buy and sell -- "hard-copy" fannish artistic creations -
(tags: fanart cons)

bookshop: 1. Subtext. 2. Fandom misogyny. 3. coverfail. - More queer expression in our media. More women in our fandom. More cultural/racial/ethnic diversity in our literature. We need more. And, at least within fan-generated spaces, we can do more. -
(tags: fandom sexuality gender race)

stultiloquentia: Peeve du jour - help me brainstorm books, shows, movies or fanworks containing an incompetent, laughable, malicious, egotistical or just plain ineffectual psychologist, therapist or social worker.

What books shows, movies or fanworks have notably good portrayalsâ”by which I mean nuanced and sympathetic, not necessarily right all the timeâ”of same?
(tags: characterization)

zvi: What is this, I don't even - I don't doubt that bookshop is accurately reporting her experience, but that's not the slash fandom, not the Dreamwidth circle or LJ flist, that makes up my experience of fandom. Just sayin'. -
(tags: slash fandom sexism)

tielan: on female characters "not being good enough" for main male characters - So here's my question: Why is it that the primary female character(s) in any canon are never good enough for the main male character?The female character is permitted, allowed, acceptable, so long as she doesn't fall for the main male character (whom fans have generally shipped with the secondary - read, geeky - male character). -
(tags: gender shipping fandom)

jesse_the_k: [in podficmeta] Should readers get permission to make podfic? - Current metadata don't state whether the podfic's reader has the writer's permission. Would the absence, permission or refusal of writer's OK change how you'd choose or read podfics? -
(tags: podfic permissions recording)

colorblue: There are a hundred things (okay, three) - The level of fuckedupness, both in the premise of this story and in the way you and others are framing this debate, is so enraging to me. -
(tags: appropriation history au race)

kalpurna: and then they get married!!! - Romance has certain goals! It has a ton of baggage that is unexamined! Slash examines itself quite a lot more, and is generally more diverse in output and liberal in politics, not being dependent on a publishing industry, but this stuff is way down deep at the middle of both genres. -
(tags: slash romance genre race sexuality gender)

oula

ithiliana: The Male Gaze (relating to but not exactly connected to the Slash Authorship Imbroglio) - That's why we need concepts like kyriarchy, and intersectionality: one cannot claim only to exist on the "less privileged" identity axis. -
(tags: sexuality gender)

artistbettyanne: [in yourthoughtson] A Scandal in 221B Baker Street - However, I can also see the appeal of not sexualizing everything. There is a certain degree of association that's getting out of hand. Marriage = Sex. Love = Sex. Infatuation = Sex. Life-long enemies = Sex. Best friends = Sex. Look at each other for more than three seconds on screen = Sex. // Really, people? That's the best you can do? -
(tags: sh sexuality shipping)

ms_katonic: Mercifully... - Slash Fandom: are any of you actually straight? [POLL] -
(tags: slash poll sexuality)

doctorv: My write-fu is superior. LEARN YA SOMETHIN' - Co-writing can be an incredibly fulfilling experience and can result in a product much greater than one single brain could have created. // That said, it can also, as with most aspects of writing, be a horrible crime against nature and reason. -
(tags: writing pov)

miera_c: Thoughts on slash - I've reached a point where I feel that women writing about male characters, even nominally straight male characters in a homosexual relationship, is a way we are participating in our own erasure. -
(tags: genre het slash gender)

eumelia: This Is Never Going To End, Is It? - Yes, there is nothing but the text and within it there is subtext and outside it there is metatext - we do not live in a vacuum, everything we read and write has a political bend some more explicit than others. -
(tags: slash sexuality fandom)

fizzyblogic: in which i talk a lot (often in parentheses) - What I need from stories in order for my heart not to feel battered, what I get from slash fandom, are stories about people who like people with the same gender and/or genitals as them, and they get to be happy and they get to be something other than who they are banging (or not banging, someone please tell me where the asexuality!fic is). -
(tags: sexuality slash prowriting fanfic femslash)

fairestcat

wistfuljane: Anger - I'm at the point where I have all this anger and nowhere for it to go so a post about anger as it relates to racism -
(tags: racism discussions)

duskpeterson: The m/m fiction versus gay fiction battle - So I'm a bit uncomfortable with this drawing of battle lines between genres and between genders and between sexual orientations, as though all of us belonged on one side or the other. -
(tags: slash sexuality gender)

stoneself: closing for now on slash fail - harm to msm occurs in m/m.

the question is what to do after that.
(tags: slash appropriation sexuality)

oconel: [in camelot_fleet] The first rule of slash... - I do want to challenge something: if we do want to watch same sex couples on TV [...], why are we so intent to "keep the slash secret"? -
(tags: slash fandom media tptb merlin)

cleolinda: what is this I don't even - But the thing about fandom is, it can get to be an echo chamber--social communities comprised, by definition, only of people who like something. They reinforce each other's enthusiasm, they egg each other on, they try to top each other. There may be no one there to say, "You know, I really don't think that writing fan letters in your own blood is the done thing around here." -
(tags: fandom fourth-wall etiquette)

oula

trobadora: Captain Jack Harkness is not gay - Repeat after me: Captain Jack Harkness is not straight, Captain Jack Harkness is not gay. 1 Sexuality isn't a simple binary. And your current relationship does not your sexual identity define. In the immortal words of the Doctor, STOP IT. -
(tags: sexuality torchwood)

qwertyuiop: I'm in your fandom queering up your het... - I am a lesbian and writing and reading and shipping het does not change that fact, and it also makes the het side of fandom extremely uncomfortable, unsafe, and painful quite a bit of times particularly when het writing/reading/shipping people get on the defensive. -
(tags: het sexuality)

edenfalling: you know, not all slash is actually about sex - Anyway, for me, slash has nothing to do with exploring my own sexuality, or acting out my sexuality through male proxies, or playing around in drag, or whatever new analogies people are coming up with. It has very little to do with sex, honestly. (The same goes for het and femslash and poly and whatever else people get up to by way of sexual/romantic relationships.) I am interested in character as displayed through relationships, and relationships an an influence on characters and actions; it is all about being human in community with other humans. -
(tags: slash fanfic fandom sexuality)

ssquirrel_fic: Meta - But, and this is a big but, it is only fiction. And I'm not saying that as if it will excuse me from my duty to accurately portray LBGTQ issues, because it doesn't. I'm saying it is "only" fiction with a nod to the fact that it is created. By somebody who probably doesn't have the same world view as you do. -
(tags: slash appropriation sexuality writing)

jimhines: In Defense of CriticismIt doesn’t matter if we’re talking about racism in Transformers, research failure in Criminal Minds, plot shortcomings in Avatar … pretty much all of these discussions eventually produce comments along the lines of:
Why are you wasting your time and energy on this? Relax and enjoy it for the mindless entertainment it is.
(tags: criticism)

shweta_narayan: in 1815; that is, ten or twenty years before any one had learned to read Sanskrit - It's not just the ubiquity of narratives from a privileged perspective, in my mind, it's this sense within said narratives that other perspectives are not only unheard, they are nonexistent. -
(tags: prowriting race religion privilege)

spiderstars: The Road Thus Far, The Queer Experience, Writing The Other - What type of fiction, exactly, we are talking about is somewhat vague. Some people are referring solely to original fiction, others to both slash fanfiction and original fiction. Both categories are inadequate and unclear to me. It seems to be there are multiple divisions of literature involving different elements which could be problematic. -
(tags: slash prowriting sexuality gender appropriation)

linaelyn: There's this thing going on in slash fandom - Maybe we could throw away all this business with stuffing folks into boxes and just say, "Hey, let's write some fun stuff!" and then each story could be judged on the merits of its content and style... and not on the gender or orientation of the person holding the pen, typing on the keyboard, or simply spinning a yarn around the metaphorical campfire of fandom. -
(tags: fandom slash sexuality gender)

wistfuljane: I dreamed that linkspam labeled one of my posts as derailing and showing white privilege - We often talk about how a work created in a white dominant culture will reflect the racial bias and dynamics of that culture and it led me thinking to the relationship between the source materials and fandom in terms of perpetuating those racial bias and dynamics -
(tags: fanfic race privilege merlin startrek manga)

marina: So, the good news is that according to t - Also I have spent most of today seething over various things that have been on my mind lately.[...]Sherlock Holmes and how that movie brilliantly, imo, created a certain universe where all the issues of Victorian England were present but elegantly handled and how I'm afraid that fandom will not realize where the bodies are buried and will traipse all over the skeletons. -
(tags: holmes fandom oppression history)

sherrold: That was the year that was: Fannish** 2009 - [listing of major events in fandom in 2009] -
(tags: fandom)

xie_xie_xie: Switch hitters: Lesbians write gay male erotica, and gay men write lesbian erotica - I don't remember the stories at all. All that I do remember is this: Not one of the gay male-authored stories about lesbian sex did a damn thing for me, and I found at least a few of the lesbian-authored gay male sex stories hot as hell. -
(tags: prowriting gender sexuality)

brown_betty: Secret Savant - One of the fic genres I love and find fascinating is the one where it turns out that this one guy who everyone thought was an easy-going goofball is actually SOOPER SMART. -
(tags: fanfic trope)

jamie: hmm - It's not about the tv shows or the movies. It's about the people, the human condition. It's about being a thoughtful considerate person to the other people I know and the many many I don't. -
(tags: slash gender sexuality appropriation history)

black_trillium: slashingFiction is appropriation. Appropriation is not the end of the world.
Now, this is true for people who write, and people who read. Because whilst an author can claim some degree of ownership over a text, and whilst, for the purposes of the current debate it seems that the intent/ context/ identity of the author is important, a text does not, once it has been written, exist AS IS for all time.
(tags: slash appropriation gender sexuality)

eumelia: "Little Boxes on the Hillside" - I'm bothered the lumping of identities in this debate. Gay men assume their experiences are being hijacked for straight women's sexual satisfaction, while ignoring the voices of their gay sisters, who's sexuality is seen as less valid because the cock is absent, temporary or simply not the focus. -
(tags: slash sexuality appropriation gender)

deepad: The Cost of Engaging - The toll taken on those who choose to engage is not equitable. And it is not just. And while virtue might be its own reward, I find that I cannot just sit back and feel grateful for the people who engage, who step in to wrestle with problems that affect me, who fight for change that will benefit me.//What I feel is sad about the effect it has on them, and angry that it has to hurt them so much, and resentful that the distribution of trauma is so uneven. -
(tags: racefail09 discussions)

zvi: [in podficmeta] Tell me something good -- Audible headers - What sorts of headings do you want the reader to read aloud in podfic? -
(tags: question podfic)

inalasahl

( Thirty-one links under the cut. )

lovelokest

naraht: History without oppression? - But zvi's critique does also leave me with serious philosophical questions about the extent to which it's even possible to write a happy, oppression-free historical AU. To start with I don't believe you can justify it by means of alternate history. If you attempted to alter history that much you'd end up with something that looked completely unlike Regency England, and I don't think that's the goal. -
(tags: appropriation race history)

zvi: You don't have to go looking for this stuff, it just traipses across your reading page, you guys - A different way to write historical fanfic is to write it up like a live action costuming event, where people wear the right clothes and stand in the right cities, and make some vague noises about being a lord or a slave or whatever, but speak in a turn of the millenium dialect and evince turn of the millenium attitudes, and are really completely inaccurate, except for historical allusions one uses to serve as window dressing or needs to drive the plot. And the problem with writing such a story up the second way is that one's twenty first century attitudes gloss right over historical realities without necessarily examining the set up for internal consistency and plot-unrelated offensiveness. -
(tags: race appropriation history)

rivkat: Climbing the walls - Let me unpack that a little. As to Kripke (here, "Kripke" will stand for "the forces that get SPN to TV in the form it has"): No, I don't think he has an obligation not to speak about/back to fandom. It's not Fight Club and it's not his Fight Club anyway. Yes, I do think he executed his portrayal of fangirls very badly, in line with SPN's general problems with women, sexuality, and women's sexuality. And we can totally call him on it! I've seen lots of fans debate issues of power, appropriation, othering, and so on in our own works; just because SPN's creative forces are unlikely to listen to criticism in this vein is no reason to exempt SPN. -
(tags: 4thwall spn fourth-wall)

handyhunter: i just like this icon. hundred is scruffy and pouty! - No story is perfect, but I wonder if they can be imperfect in ways that does not result from not having chromatic main characters (and cultures). If movies are going to fudge around with comics canon (which is confusing and sometimes non-sensical anyway), why not change the race of the main character (instead of the villain or victim)? -
(tags: comics race casting)

telesilla: Write ONLY what you know and an unpopular fannish opinion. - This latest round of gay men having fits about women daring to write about gay sex? Feels a lot more like "hey! Keep out of our fort! Didn't you see the big NO GIRLS ALLOWED!!!! " than anything else. -
(tags: slash sexuality gender)

melannen: Science, y'all.So, over 9 polls, in a variety of slash subfandoms from the late-teens yaoi set to the mid-thirties meta fans set, dates ranging over 7 years. Only one poll had less than 50% queer participants, and that was the earliest one, and even it was at 37%. The median percent of queer participants was 59.7%, and the mean was 61.5%.

SO when people say things like "slash fans are appropriating queer experience", what THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER hear is either "you aren't queer enough, your queer identity isn't real" or "male voices are the only ones qualified to speak for the queer community."
(tags: identity sexuality slash statistics glbt)

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