Metafandom

General Fandom Meta

musesfool - they'e the faces of the stranger - And it made me think about crossovers, and how much I like them, and yet sometimes I really don't, because they're double the exposure, double the risk - now it's not just one universe and one set of beloved characters I'm trusting this author to "get right" (for whatever value of "get right" exists for me, which may or may not overlap with anyone else's view of the source), but two sets of beloved characters that could be screwed up.

rahirah - On going AU: A fic peeve. - OK, I like AUs, in the sense of "What if at X point in canon, this had happened instead?" I love it when an author works out a whole plausible alternate history that's still recognizably the Jossverse. But recently I've run across several stories where the author's notes or the first chapter of the story contain some passage or other explaining how the main character never really felt the way they felt in canon. They didn't really love X, or canonical motivation Y never really existed. And this is obviously done in order to shortcut into the scenario the author's aiming for: it's way easier to segue into a romance between A and B if you handwave A's canonical relationship with X into unimportance. [...] They were postulating one particular change, and events fanning out from there. The problem was, instead of having a slightly different event prompt a character to a different emotional reaction, the altered emotional reaction was leading to the different events.

sistermagpie - What kind of supervillain are you? - What are the classic goals of the supervillain? World domination a la Dr. No and Dr. Evil. Eternal life a la Voldemort. I feel woefully ignorant about my supervillains. Love? Would that be one? You can do a lot with a big ego who demands to be adored, destroying cities until the people who reject you regret it? Revenge? It seems like somebody should have done a list somewhere of the ten basic types of villain the way they do the different archetypal heroes or heroines.

fairestcat - Personal Information and Fannish Enjoyment - I was thinking today about how what I know about an artist or creator can effect my enjoyment of their work. I was thinking particularly about how personal knowledge can inform upon and increase the meaning/enjoyment of a piece of work, but also about the opposite, where learning personal information about an artist or creator can turn me against or reduce my appreciation of their work. [POLL]

luciademedici - Public Ranting - 1. Writing chan does not automatically make you a pedophile. 2. Writing non-con does not guarantee the fact that you are trying to glorify a violent act. [...] Stop being so goddamned literal and just think for one minute.

fungus_files - Starvation is the answer - The surest way to keep trolls at bay is to ignore them. Remember that sadist/masochist joke? Put it into practice, I say. // To paraphrase (or, more accurately, to bastardise) Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can be a troll without your participation."

verseblack - Fandom Questions - I've been wondering quite a bit about fandom lately // Specifically, what is it about a particular book/movie/tv show/musical that inspires a "fandom" around it? // I would guess this is the million dollar question for writers--how to stir up such an interest in their work. But I don't think fandom automatically translates into astronomical dollars--"Firefly" and "Labyrinth" both come to mind. By fandom I mean more than just devoted fans who enjoy the story, but devoted fans who seek an interaction with the tale--fanfic/fanart, extreme research, or seriously seeking out others to discuss and analyze the object of fandom. Fandom seeks a high degree of interaction with the text--people looking to "play" the book not just read it.

justacat - [untitled] - So last week I posted Part I of my ... er ... lengthy tract discussion of Why I Love What I Love in Slash, and I promised more! Well, far be it from me to renege on a promise, and besides, I'm happy for any excuse to talk about slash, and Pros, and stories, and to analyze Why I Feel What I Feel.

stoney321 - Alright. Someone has to say this. Might as well be me. - Everything your friend writes isn't wonderful. Everything YOU write isn't wonderful (before the wank begins, please know that I'm including myself in that.) Just because you've written one thing that got "praise" or "acclaim" doesn't mean that EVERYTHING you produce after is as good. Or should be pimped. Or recced. Or listed in a newsletter. There are people, such as myself, that depend on newsletters like the Herald and Jedi_News, for example, to find the good fic. I don't want to read a story filled with spellin erars and bad punctuat-ion.; I count on the EDITORS - did you see that word? They are editors. Which means they have the right to not list junk - that's the JOB DESCRIPTION. I count on them to find the good stuff. People who whine and wage little passive-agressive wars to get their fic/whatever recced are missing the point - and undermining the editors' jobs.

lazy_daze - lazy_daze does meta! MPreg meta! Run for the hills! - So, it’s an almost universally dismissed and mocked genre (with a few staunch supporters here and there, often eyed a bit oddly by others, I imagine :)) and I was always like ‘oh man, yeah, mpreg, so weird, wtf!’ but really, this blanket disdain for it is a bit illogical. So I decided to write out some stuff on my thoughts on mpreg. I’m not writing this as one of said staunch supporters, I’m just...thinking aloud, which is what LJ is for, no?

smashsc - pondering: Newsletters recs(?) - I love fandom newsletters. I subscribe to a bunch of them and mod a few of them. Fandom newsletters have become the way I get a large percentage of the fic I read, and I know that is true for other people too. I am not out to change newsletters (see above re: love of newsletters) however, maybe what we need is a newsletter for newsletters.

babyofthegroup - [untitled] - Part of the "incest is the new slash" argument hinges on the fact that slash, once taboo, is now commonplace. The folks who were reading slash for the taboo-ness of it, therefore, are forced to move onto something more taboo, and since they were already reading fanfic, centered on incest fic. But what I've been realizing as I've read (and written) Supernatural fic is that the incest taboo isn't really coming around to smack me in the face the way I expected it to. This can mean one of three things: // 1) I am a sick, twisted, perverted individual with no morals and am probably not fit to be seen with any of you // 2) Supernatural is an exception because goddamn, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki are hot // 3) Incest, at least in fiction, is no longer the taboo it once was.

emmagrant01 - Incest: Squick or Kink? - What is it about incest in fan fiction that appeals to people? [POLL]

furiosity - Who will die first - The subject? Friend!slash. Harry/Ron. Sirius/James. Legolas/Aragorn. You know. Best friends become lovers. There is porn. The end.
// A lot of people who are more into antagonistic/problematic ships say such ships are boring and while I see the merit to that argument, I emphatically disagree that the ships are boring. They're only boring if they're written in a way that's boring. At the core of it, I think there's at least some quasi-intellectual snobbery involved in saying "oh, friend!slash is so easy". It is easy in many ways because there is no need to justify mutual like, no need to struggle for a scenario that will bring the pair together despite canon odds that are stacked against them. // But friendship isn't easy.

scribbulus_ink - Universal stories - pauraque raised the question of how/why people who have an OTP can write numerous stories about the same pairing, and while I don't think there's an easy answer for that and that most people would respond with different reasons, I think that perhaps at least part of it involves what type of story we respond to individually and which characters best fit retellings of that story. // Because it's true that there are no new stories to be told, only different ways of telling them, and we all put our unique spin on things whether we're writing original fiction or fanfiction, our OTP for the 437th time or a new pairing in every story. I also think that we all have different types of stories that we prefer - that resonate within us in a deeper sense than others.


Fandom-Specific Meta

cross_stitchery - meta-y stuff, and OMG! a recipe - okay, so there's been a bit of discussion over in SGA fandom about this story by cesperanza which i've been kinda following, and thinking about, so i'm inflicting those thoughts on you. [...] those of you who know me well enough know that i really don't do incest fic in any shape or form - i don't write it, i don't read it and i don't "see" the pairing in the show. however this story didn't bother me. well, not much. because it's an AU where John and Rodney meet, as adults, have great sex and then find out that they might be brothers. and to me, that makes all the difference.

coffeeem - SciFi Channel, meet The Female Geek. - So after hearing from friends who ought to know, "No, really! It's good!" I rented the introductory miniseries of SciFi Channel's Battlestar Galactica. // Here's the opening: The human ambassador (a middle-aged white guy) waits on a space station for the appearance of the Cylon robot ambassador at a meeting to renew the peace treaty between Cylons and humans. He, or someone else with his job, has been doing this for years. And every year, the Cylons never send anybody. They keep the peace, but they never send an ambassador. // This time, the door opens and... Holy Victoria's Secret! Through the door, flanked by two cool menacing robots, comes this blonde bombshell with legs up to her armpits, in a short, tight little...I don't know what it was; you aren't supposed to notice the clothes, you're supposed to notice how not-clothed she could be. // And, apparently, is inclined to be. Because the first thing she says is, "Are you alive?" And to answer her own question, leans over (cleavage, cleavage!) and gives the human ambassador a long, hot kiss. // Then the evil Cylons blow up the space station. // "Whoa!" I could hear fannish viewers saying, their voices vibrating in the ether ever since the first broadcast of this show. "That's not your daddy's Battlestar Galactica!" // No, it's not. If the new generation of fans of science fiction TV are in their twenties, it's your granddaddy's.

unovis_lj - [untitled] - Does Highlander appear dull to the meta crowd? To fans outside the fandom? Possibly. Probably. The smart kids, it seems, are clustered around SGA these days, with a few tentacles still embedded in HP. // We write beautifully, engagingly, but don't talk about our body of work or current trends in our writing, apparently, in ways that would be interesting or even comprehensible to people not deeply involved in the fandom; we don't often engage in criticism, at least not out in the open. We don't have much going in terms of internal recs or rec communities, though God knows, I've tried to publicize what we have.

user in highlander_lj - Historical Linguistics; or, Methos is like PIE. - Now, IANAL (I Am Not A Linguist) but I did spent half of ninth grade carrying around a notebook with a hand-written Proto-Indo-European dictionary in it. And granted this is a lesson in futility since chances are lannamichaels is right and Methos was adopted into some tiny tribe whose language has been completely wiped out of memory, except for him. But I knew I'd be spending all night doing the research anyway (this is what I do for fun on a Friday night, folks), so I thought I might as well write it up to share. // Some Thoughts on the Meaning of Methos's Name.

femmenerd in buffy_love - There goes my hero... (Essay-type Thing) - For a long time, my love of Buffy the character went unnoticed by me. It was transparent—something that I never dwelled on. // And I think that this is because for me, the experience of watching BtVS involved identifying with Buffy as the center of the narrative, and so as a result she became the invisible conduit to my experience. I remember how it somewhat troubled me early on that in spite of the “feminist and proud” label I might as well be wearing on my head, the characters I was most drawn to were Spike and Angel (although I would argue that, in the case of Spike especially, their gender performances are of great interest to feminists). That is until I realized that I was seeing them through Buffy’s eyes.

toysdream - I Wanna Fly Like Superman - The weird thing about Superman is that I love the concept of the character all to bits, and find it endlessly fascinating, but most of the actual stories I've read bore me to tears. Maybe there's only so much you can do with a perfect hero who has pretty much no character flaws and lacks any particularly agonizing conflicts, although I think the writers could stand to try a little harder.


On Writing/Creating

underlucius - *bounce bounce bounce* Discussion - how does writing make you feel? - Does writing give one endorphins? // It sure feels like it. *bounce* [...] So tell me? How does writing make you feel? If it's sad - do you cry when writing it, or when reading it back? Do you get turned on by your own stuff (I do... *blush*) Do you want to chase your own tail with happiness when you write "fin" or "the end"? And after the high - do you - like me - get that horrible black vacuum of despair where you think you'll never be able to put three words in a sentence again?

musesfool - come on and work it on out - While I'm writing, I'm rarely moved by the story I'm telling. I'm grooving on the high of writing, of the words coming together to tell the story as it exists in my head, that platonic ideal story being translated almost perfectly onto the screen/page, when things are going well. That moment of, "Aha! Now I know why he said this three pages ago!" and "Hee! I really love that bit of dialogue!" is what's moving me, not how sad or hot or fucked up something is. I have to have some distance usually for a story to work emotionally for me. [...] // Which, from what I gather from other people, isn't the way a lot of folks work. I've read accounts of people crying during the writing of a story, over something really sad, or having to er, take a moment, during writing a sex scene, but that's very rare for me (it happens, but not often; rarely enough for it to stand out in my memory when it does, actually). For me, the emotional rollercoaster is engaged with the act of writing, not the content.

viciouswishes - My Thoughts on Standards and Writing - Part of being a grown up is being able to deal with constructive criticism. Sure, it's okay to cry privately if someone says, "You switched tense here" and you've never had constructive criticism before. You will eventually get used to it. I'm damn thankful when someone points that out to me. And part of being the writer is that you get to pick and chose which crit changes your story and which doesn't. // If you start ranting about how every piece of crit that isn't rainbows and kittens is mean, I will go as far as saying that you shouldn't be writing or at least not writing beyond your private journal which is being buried or cremated with you. Writing is public for everyone to read and evaluate. Without crit, you won't grow as a writer. Without a beta that says, "Did the invisible hippo in the room close that door?", there's no growth.

karabair - Constructive Criticism and Diabolical Advocacy - For a moment, allow me to be brutally frank: There is no way to help a truly bad writer. Now, let me qualify that: If you think I'm talking about you, I'm not. For one thing, I don't have any of the writers I'm talking about on my friends-list. For another thing, the truly hopeless writers I talk about NEVER think their work is bad. They NEVER think criticism applies to them. They are also most likely to get in a snit when someone points out a missing comma or an obvious spelling error. Here's something else: These writers don't just exist online or in fandom. Nearly every creative writing class I've been involved in has contained at least a few. THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO FOR THESE WRITERS -- not online, not in the classroom. End of story. Don't try. (I REPEAT: IF YOU THINK IT'S YOU, IT ISN'T!)