Fandom Meta:

halegirl in fanthropology: History of the X-Files fan fiction community — "So I went surfing through this fandom, creating questions based on the answers I was finding... and it was interesting. It seems that on one level, you can probably really understand a fandom by traversing communities like ATXC and following the discussion, just like, to a certain degree, you can probably really understand certain aspects of fandom by following the events that are chronicled in fanficrants, assuming that discussions are probably indicative of larger trends ... on the other hand, it seems that doing it that way seems really, well, meh, static."

restriction: meta: the fandom cliche; poll — "yesterday i decided that i'm interested to see what clichés are prevalent in peoples fandoms."

fabu: Fanfiction Canon (no the *other* one) — "Usually when we talk about "the canon" in the fandom world, we're referring to the facts of the source text.  But lately, several posts have got me thinking about the literary criticism meaning of "canon" (the essential reading which is assumed to form the backbone of a particular body of literature)."

cjmarlowe: posting trends — "The trend these days seems to lean heavily towards posting stories directly into livejournal rather than posting them on a personal site and linking them (which was the norm not so very long ago, it seems to me). Some communities even stipulate that stories must be posted in LJ entries directly to the community, not linked to another LJ. I was wondering how people feel about this. Do you prefer reading stories that are posted directly to livejournal? Is it a matter of convenience, or something else? Do you ever not read stories solely because they're linked to an outside site?"

ataniell93: Genres and Warnings and Labels, Oh My!!! — "On my flist today, there is someone who is very upset because she read a story labelled ‘gen’ that had alien rape in it. That got me to thinking about the issue of what labels, warnings and genres mean. Traditionally, we use the term ‘het’ to describe stories about heterosexual relationships, ‘slash’ to describe stories about homosexual relationships, and ‘gen’ to describe stories that do not have sexual/romantic relationships in them."

xochiquetzl: On the polls... — "Let me start this post by saying that I have approximately zero interest in whose definition of gen was correct and whose was incorrect. What was interesting to me, as an archivist, was that I heard a definition of gen that I'd never heard before."

rubberneck: Now leaving Het, population: all those boring squares — "The point I'm seeking to make is that these stories/ideas/experiences are not transgressive of heterosexuality. If they are trangressive at all, it's of the structures and strictures that some people/institutions/traditions have perennially sought to impose on the expression of heterosexuality."


Specific Fandom Meta:

colorfulshadows: *thoughtful* [HP] — "Maybe I'm having a false memory or it's that whole fond blindness that you get when you look back at something long past. But, you know, I don't recall any of my previous fandoms being as obsessed with THIS IS THE BEST OF THE BEST or THESE ARE THE BEST AUTHORS IN [insert pairing here] as Harry Potter."

overnighter: Spamming My FList [OC and VMars] — "The end of the television season is fast approaching, and we have two varied and different responses to it from two of my favorite television shows."


On Writing/Vidding/Reccing, etc:

cupidsbow: Things I Now Know About Omniscient Viewpoint — "Some of you may have noticed that I've been playing around with different types of omniscient viewpoint in most of my Afflection stories. My experiments have met with mixed success, but I've learned a lot from them. If you're interested, clicky clicky and find out the lowdown on Cathy's Tips on Using and Not-using Omniscient Viewpoints."

lobelia321:turning a tig into a post herewith and catching the sue — "By 'Sue', I don't mean Mary Sue, I mean Sue. The Sue (in my own arcane understanding of these matters authorial) is the character who is really you or me: the writer. For me, there is always one. Once I made the mistake of tormenting myself with a long, long fic and misidentifying my Sue. I thought I was Karl but, as both my betas pointed out with some surprise, no, I was Dom. I never posted that fic; I had written myself into a mire."


Other:

jadelennox: queer het outside of fandom — " I'm getting the impression that some people, seeing the term "queer het" for the first time, think it's a notion coined by fandom to give some kind of all-the-cool-kids-do-it slashy cred to opposite sex pairings. Heck, for all I know, the term did spontaneously arise in fandom at the same time it was arising amongst queer theorists. But for the interested, I'm going to provide a short bibliography of queer heterosexuality in theory."

elynross:Taking my brain for a walk. — "Mind you, I don't know that I think that more people are unhappier than they used to be; I think I'm just exposed to more of it, in a wider range. One of the joys of LJ, for me, is also one of the drawbacks: where I can get the kind of widespread information about many fandoms and what occurs therein that I used to joke I wanted stringers to collect for me, I also get a much wider range of crankiness and discontent, and a greater... not variety, because it really doesn't seem to vary that much, but a much vaster knowledge of very odd to positively incomprehensible to me opinions about things."

permetaform: quick rambly thoughts — "Where is the line for discussion? Where is the line that separates critique from comment? Or even communication from threat? Welcome to LJ, where even our fundamental basis for communication is challenged. And not that this isn't a lovely thing, but...sometimes there isn't the energy for it."

mofic: Complete this sentence: Livejournal is like... — "I think lj is less of a front yard and more of a cruise ship. Everyone gets a state room. Everyone can lock his or her door. Everyone can let some people into the stateroom. But the stateroom is small and cramped and boring and you spend most of your time other places. You have your own table at dinner, but you're in public. You might have a lawn chair at the pool, but you're with other people. Some people will want to stick with their own friends and not hear from others. Some will spend time talking to lots of folks and listening to lots of folks. But the general expectation is that you talk to other people and that other people can talk to you. The expectation is that you can just step up and introduce yourself and someone *will* talk to you. And if you find some people obnoxious or rude or even just not to your liking you avoid them. But you recognize that most of the people aren't there just for the food, or the activities or the ports of call. They're there to meet people."