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Fandom Meta

angua9 - Of Trolls and Trolling Is it just me, or does it suddenly seem like the Age of Trolls in this fandom? And I don't mean just any kind of troll, but the "parody" sockpuppet troll, wherein someone poses as a member of a group they don't like with the apparent purpose of making them look bad.

sparkly_stuff - Musings On Why I'm Glad I Grew Up Without Internet Today's teens and pre-teens barely know a world without internet, and it's easy for today's imaginative fifth-grader to get online and post their first fanfiction for the world to see. Unfortunately, the internet, much like the real adult world, is a harsh place where you quickly learn that unlike Mom and Dad, not everyone is going to love your writing and tell you that it's fabulous. In fact, it can be pretty quick to judge and criticize.

alixtii - Meta: Rambling about Detectives I think this [reading of JKR] is brilliant, personally, because I do think that there is something about an Agatha Christie novel which challenges the sort of assumptions those of who are theoretically sophisticated routinely make. I think it comes out of the ethos which informs the detective novel, which is really positivistic at its core: it's the assumption that all questions can be solved by science, i.e. is the process of observation and deduction. If we all just knew how to look, the way that a Sherlock Holmes does, everything would be instantly transparent instead of seeing through a glass darkly.

thelastgoodname - On Interpretation Part I: Translation, Transcription, and Retelling Retelling a story already told — the same story — I find an amazing act of hubris. Retelling a story already told — as a different story — I think an epic task of creativity. The recreator has to be supremely confident that they can do the original justice. If the original is at all an inspiring work — and why would one bother to recreate something that wasn't already inspiring? — then the retelling has even further to go to be appreciated than a purely original work would have.

coffeeandink - Breaking stories In world-building genres, the throwaway detail is not a metaphor but an argument about the nature of the world; about society, politics, perception, individuals, and history. It is an argument that the individual is not ahistorical; that ideology is shaped by history and society; that people cannot be examined separate from their surroundings. You could claim this is the argument of all fiction, but mainstream fiction tends to focus on personal history as labile whereas sf/f/historicals foreground the impact of social and cultural history. // This is why, I think, so many of us find such powerful potential in these genres for the exploration of naturalized sociopolitical concepts like "gender," "sex," and "race"--even when this potential is squandered more often than it's realized.

violet_quill - Fandom Ownership "It's MY fandom/character/pairing/whatever. I was here first! [Or, I'm here MORE!]" Anyone else ever get this feeling? I always feel bad when I do, because I know it's petty, but I think it's something that's pretty common. In HP, I know that there are some older fans that have been around for ages - hell, sometimes I feel like I'm in the minority because I started reading fanfic before OoTP came out, and there are definitely many who have been around longer than me - and sometimes it gives you a sense of... I don't know, entitlement. Like, who are all of these silly new people coming in and mucking up my fandom?

morgandawn in vidding - Toronto Star Discusses Fan Vids (With Focus On Slash) The Brokeback effect Feb. 18, 2006. 01:00 AM [LINK aand article]

Specific Fandom Meta

mosca - You don't believe all this crap, do you? Someone asks the very valid question, "Why is Jayne/River so popular, when there's relatively little canon support for it?" and the responses are 50% defensive and 50% "Beats me, too." There were a lot of comments on that thread, and nobody even got close to getting to the bottom of that question. The Jayne/River fans weren't interested in interrogating their choices, and the non-fans were mostly interested in rolling their eyes. // I admit to rolling my eyes at Jayne/River more than is probably fair, but I'm also interested in finding a real answer to the above question.

naughtyvix in rayne_shippers - Shipping our Ship, Oneing our OTP I don't know what I'm trying to get at, I guess I just mean, that we like to say ship and let ship and we try hard to allow each other to do just that but part of me feels that because we are shipping something that isn't understandable to a lot, we get branded as goopy idiot fangirls. Now of course I know we aren't the only ship that has these problems and I'm sure even within our ship we have prejudices against others whether concious or not, but I mean does anyone else notice that?

harriet_spy - One aspect of Sheppard's appeal Coming after "Runner," "Duet" really foregrounds for me one of the aspects of John I like best: the way he relates to women, and Teyla in particular. John is one of those rare men who is truly, honestly comfortable when dealing with a woman as an equal or a superior.