Metafandom

Cut due to extreme length


General Fandom Meta

poisontaster - Meta: Doors of Perception (Concrit & Editing) - And so I think in that sense—and for the umpteenth time, maybe only personally—fandom at large is never going to be the kind of place to go for detailed, in-depth, insightful concrit. Now I have developed relationships with people IN fandom that have then later lent themselves to becoming the kind of atmosphere where concrit has been offered, accepted and/or offered in return, but I think I will always need at least that modicum of proof first. That what's being offered is being offered in the spirit it was requested, and that both of us are in a place to exchange ideas and dialogue without ego or acrimony.

megpie - The great fandom meta-gurgles - The days where a fandom was limited by a particular person controlling a particular server, or board, or chat channel or whatever are *long* gone. Heck, on LiveJournal, it's even more of a democracy than before, because if you don't like the way a conversation is going on *your* journal, you can lock it down, or kick people off, or delete their posts. You are your own moderator - innit great? But it doesn't matter which particular bit of the internet you're in, if you don't like the way things are going, you can always do something about it other than sitting in a corner and bitching, or whining about being "excluded".

hotspur18 - Fandom post - Quite often, as far as I can tell, the fic communities don't reflect with any accuracy the depth of emotion that fandoms seem to have [...] I'm assuming that this is because people tend to comment on the writing, rather than the show, and whether people have kept 'in character', whether the plot works, and so on and so forth. I also assume that if the story centres around a character people don't like/aren't interested in, they just don't read it rather than saying 'I hated this' - well, 90% of the time.

everagaby - They're fritzing my com - Without intending to be insulting, the hyeina-like herd mentality of preying on those individuals who are out in the open fields of fandom is something I know we are smarter than, and better than.

mskatej - Happy Anniversary to me! - A year ago today I officially stopped lurking and I created this journal. To celebrate I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the things I love and cherish about LJ and fandom.

treetracer - Hugely Unscientific Poll Ahead! - I've been pondering feedback [Poll]

slodwick - surprisingly, nothing to do with MsScribe - I'm not sure when this happened, because I don't remember feeling this way before, but I realized something today: // Explicitly sexual photomanips make me distinctly uncomfortable.

thelastgoodname - Fandom and responsibility. - Do Big Name Fans have a special responsibility to fandom? // Or, to put it more precisely, what responsibilities to and for fandom are proportional to one's position and stature in fandom?

story645 - she's obviously 16 - If I hear anyone besmirch the good name of teenagers by saying that any fandom trainwreck is a teenager, unless said trainwreck really is a teenager, I'm smacking them.

lobelia321 - rps, how are you so awesome? - Having forsooken the launde of the realle personne slashe and forayed into the realm of the fictional personnel, I just over the last two days wrote my first two rps ficlets in many a month. // My god, what a heady experience! Rps is truly something else. Writing it was vertiginous! It is such a charge! I'm remembering my first love.

penknife - CON.TXT con report: part 3 - Friday 1:00, But Where Have All the Women Gone? (me) // This was a small panel, but we had an interesting discussion about writing about women in m/m slash and what kinds of approaches to writing about canonical romantic interests or disliked female characters people preferred

ausmac - a question on the reading of fanfic - Do you find yourself a harsher judge of things written by those people you know as against total strangers, and do you persist with a story despite initial doubts, or give up fairly quickly on them?

cereta - Not just inspired by recent events, honest - If I live to be 100, I will never understand the attitude that behaviors that would be considered appalling and reprehensible in any arena other than on-line and/or fandom are at worst no big deal and at best acceptable when they happen on-line and/or in fandom. I just won't.

telesilla - What Does Fandom Wank Mean To You? - What role do you think Fandom Wank plays in fandom as a whole? What role do you think Fandom Wank should play in Fandom. If you go to Fandom Wank, what do you look for and what do you do once you're there? Does the length of time you've been on Fandom Wank, if you are a member, color your answers? // Because it has to be asked in a discussion like this: Has Fandom Wank jumped the shark? If you think it has, when do you think it happened and why?



Regarding Charlottelennox, Msscribe, et al.

cordelia_v - Charlotte Lenox as a writer of historical narrative - You're trying to tell a "true story," knowing all the while that this is inherently oxymoronic, and that you have imposed a narrative upon a mass of facts. And you know that someone else might have constructed the narrative differently, or highlighted the actions of different characters. No piece of historical research is perfect, or delivers the only or final answer about what happened at a given point in the past.

ivyblossom - What use Fandom? - Reading all the things I've been reading in the last few days reminded me that for many people, fandom is a tool. It's a means to an end. I know fandom is very attractive to certain sets of people who need something from it.

carlanime - let's talk about socks - I continue to be pro-sock, but in the interest of making it more difficult for the morally lax to claim that "one sockpuppet is exactly like another" (one person has already attempted to argue that covering up your birthdate and whereabouts online is exactly the same as deliberately manipulating people), I'd like to discuss varieties of sockpuppets.

thelastgoodname - On history, mockery, and the use of evidence - But more to the point, what is the value in claiming that even biased and incomplete histories never contain important perspectives on historical events and that they're merely congratulatory (and masturbatory) events? Do the people making this argument understand what it is they're implying?

ethrosdemon - Oh well, c'est fandom. - The way they behaved back then is not a way people can even begin to behave now. Fandom has changed, grown, gotten sort of settled into laws and regulations. The whole era that article chronicles was sort of the Wild West days of fandom where people were transitioning into lj and anything went.

vee_fic - Observation from the margin - Somehow, a large portion of fandom -- maybe a large portion of the whole species -- became convinced that fame is finite, and that one person gaining fame means another person is losing it. Now, I think of fame the way I think of love or yammering: it expands to fill the space made available for it. But people who see fame as a finite resource, like fossil fuels or Oxygen in a sealed room -- well no wonder people attack one another for it. When there's only one candy bar left, and you're all starving, it's the rare human who can force herself to share.

telesilla - [Untitled] - We all want to be liked. And of course it gives us a certain thrill when someone we admire comments in our LJ or friends us or recs us or otherwise shines the light of BNFly approval upon us. Because who hasn't wanted to sit at the cool kids table at least once in their life? // Basically the MsScribe Story is the story of someone who wanted that too much

gowdie - I’d Like To Buy Fandom A Coke - The thing is, for Ms. Scribe it wasn’t about shipping, it was about her own popularity. But because she decided to achieve that goal by vilifying the main hub for a particular ship, the repercussions probably have affected the great shipping wars in ways that may not be immediately tangible. She took a set of relationships that were already full of friction, and threw gasoline on them. Boom.

cesario - More on Sockpuppetgate---feel free to pass on by. - It's not just the fact that this person encouraged all that is worst and weakest in fandom in order to create an environment where she could rise to the top. Or even how pathetic it is to want fannish popularity that much. It's the particular way she chose to go about it: specifically, the attributes she gave her sockpuppets in order to make them offensive and risible, and above all the perfect foil to show off her own best qualities.

esorlehcar - In which Eso is even more rambling, unorganized, and pointless than usual - Sometimes it gets to the point -- and I would bet good money that everyone reading this has felt this way at one point or another, however briefly -- that I wonder why the hell I'm still here. // But in the end, where in the hell else can you find a whole community of people who share your love for silly little shows and silly little characters and, christ, even your kinks?

mawaridi - The other kind of meta-fandom - . I really get no pleasure out of wank or out of people being hurt (and I don't think/hope this post isn't wanky or mean). But...it's fascinating. I don't this story in particular, or any other fandom horror story, but the fact that they exist and keep being invoked. That it is considered important for younger/never fen to be made aware of the great wars of our fannish history.

story645 - take 18 - Fandom seems to have an incredibly long memory, so does it ever forgive? Can we ever escape our past mistakes? Grow up? Or is someone forever caught in the mistakes they made? Yeah MsScribe is a special case cause, well just sheer scale, but in general? Will that stupid thing we said five months ago effect us now? Should everything be locked so my semi-wanky posts can't come back to haunt me? Since everything is recorded in fandom history, are we ever allowed to move past our stupid mistakes?

birdseyeview - tl;dr rambling non-rant - The problem with fandom is it creates these "false friendships", it's something I've seen in all fandoms. People are willing to be your best friend and give you all the *hugs* you want as long as you never speak any uncomfortable truths about them and they won't speak any uncomfortable truths to you (to your face).

musesfool - lying wide awake in the garden - I do think it's important that as many sides as possible come forward and share their versions - that's the only way for those of us not involved to have any real way of putting together a coherent, more truthful version of what happened - I won't say the whole truth - that's pretty much unknowable - but more truthful than what was previously publicly known. And having more truth out in public view can only be a good thing in the long run, in cases like this.

worldserpent - An Instructive and Cautionary Tale - Perhaps I don't understand it because I don't write fic, and am too lazy to play the status game in fandom in other ways, and thus am not really involved in the battle for hierarchy, and thus I can't understand the desire to be part of the 'in crowd.' For me, it's enough to watch the 'in crowd' (assuming they're doing anything worth watching). I don't need to participate, or get personally involved.

m_butterfly - It's not just the story of one woman's often shady dealings: it's a story about *fandom* - But for some people, even without the IP evidence about Charitygate that finally convinced so many, it will always be true, simply because it's told well. It's given the attention and presentation needed to make it believable. // And, ironically, that's part of why MsScribe was able do do what she did with Gryffindor Tower--the part where she pretty much convinced everyone that the IP evidence presented against her then was entirely false and made up to persecute her. Her story was well-told, better told than theirs

swatkat24 - [untitled] - It also shows *why* you need a place like fandom_wank. I'm not really trying to defend f_w here - f_w doesn't need defending, thankyouverymuch. I'm also not trying to claim that the f_w members (including myself, little that I post) are trying to do anything but mock the stupid for their own evil entertainment purposes, or that some of them are not mean or stupid or crazy. But it helps, having a place like that. It keeps *you* sane. It keeps you *aware*, that things like this happen, and will continue to happen in the future because that's how people are - all we can do is be careful and hope.

mudblood428 - The Curtain Falls on MsScribe (and other randomosities) - Some people are astounded and angry that things that happened years ago have been brought back to reopen old wounds. Well, if wounds don't heal correctly, sometimes you've got to reopen the injury, put things right, and sew it back up in the hopes that the next time things won't just be okay... they'll be better.

sopdetly - Metacommentary: Truthfulness in Fandom - And one theme I'm constantly seeing over and over is the idea that there needs to be a high level of truthfulness in fandom, so people aren't hurt. // But the problem is that no one is defining what that level is, and it's coming across as a self-righteous claim that People Should Never Lie, and that if you admit to lying, you're less of a person. // I'm sorry, but this is bullshit.

wickedcherub - [untitled] - I don't think all those people understood what it was like to be part of the HP fandom in 2003. I'm a fairly logical and grounded person on the Internet, but in 2003 I would have done just about anything to be a BNF.

dementedsiren - You know, at least it makes you really think. - When I think about what I've really gained from fandom, [...] then there's one thing that really stands out for me, personally. // The thing that I've really gained is an assurance that I don't need an audience to feel validated.

cleolinda - [untitled] - You don't have to bow and scrape and beg forgiveness for some vague sin. Just acknowledge that something hurtful happened, even if we're still in the discovery process and aren't entirely sure what's what yet. I think acknowledgement is all that people really want from others who were equally deceived.

aubrem - my pronouncement re community and ethics and responsibility - All of msscribes friends who keep saying they did nothing wrong and in fact are irritated at all this history being raked up - and all the people feeling sorry for them and agreeing they did nothing wrong. // Rubbish.

fan_this - can't sleep = random internet shit - The thing about online fandom is that we aren't governed by the rules of non cyber-space society. There is no cursory physical judgment or stereotyping that occurs off-line until someone bravely posts their pictures, we know people by their intellectual attributes, by their ability to be funny/witty/a good writer/poster of adorable boy pic!spam. Their comments and emails are the only insights to them as a person. // Therefore, I think it's why so many people crave the validation of BNF or friend of BNF or once-saw-them-at-a-con status. You are being judged solely on what you can produce or say

maeglinyedi - <[untitled] - So yeah, it really matters that the other side of this story is now finally revealed, even if the original wanks started 3 years ago. Because these wanks influenced a whole lot more people than just the ones personally involved. It influenced fandom as a whole, especially when the sockpuppets started targeting fandom in general and not just small groups of people in it.

suaine - that and a bladder infection - A lot of people who were involved probably never heard the whole story all laid out like this. In fact, I don't think anyone has seen the story quite this way before. And while some people may doubt the value of this report, it probably gives the poster some sort of carthasis. A lot of other people, who were on the sidelines, or in the stands, do feel a lot better now and that, too, is of some value.

mofic - Fandom Strife, Sunscreen and Credulousness - an outsider's view of the msscribe affair - I read Charlotte's account and feel quite sure I would have known msscribe to be a poseur and the sockpuppets she created to attack her to not be genuine. Of course, that's very easy to say looking back, but I still think I would have.

chase820 - [untitled] - Masturbation was punished in the Old Testament not because of the sex, but because of the waste. Taking the potential for life and spilling it in the dirt. I'd argue that fandom wankage is a much, much more serious offense. The world has too many damn people already. But we don't have nearly enough good fandom. Every fanwank wastes energy that could be spent on something vital--a story or a website or just a thoughtful re-experiencing of the original texts, something that could bring pleasure to at least one person, and possibly many people.

cupidsbow - Online Personas and the Death of the Pseudonym by cupidsbow - After seeing such a detailed biography, the ability to piece together a life from ephemeral traces suddenly seems so much more personal. I don't want to make this all about me me me, when so many people have been deeply affected by this, but I can't help but see how this reflects on the ways in which I interact on the net.