Hi, I'm fairestcat and I'll be your new Friday updater here at metafandom

General Fandom Meta

parthenia14 - [no subject] - In addition to all the other motivations I might have for reading slash fanfiction or yer actual gay literature, it's also attractive precisely because it's a foreign land, a different mind. I'm never going to climb Everest or sail through pack ice or cruise New York bathhouses. But it's interesting to read about.

faramir_boromir - Wondering about how you read sidekick pairings - And then it occurred to me--is the moment when a sidekick takes control (becomes a top?) a critical moment, a turning point that is what sidekick fic readers are waiting for? Is that the payoff, the moment the story arc may build to?

nostalgia_lj - fic awards etc - Something that's only just now occurred to me is whether fanfic awards thingies should exclude published writers. It's just that I've never seen any do that, and... that's a bit surprising, in a way [...] And I'm not even necessarily *advocating* a change on this one but... why is it Not An Issue?

thelastgoodname on fanthropology - On really, really popular people, fans, and canon - is fandom as a subset of society also inclined to the same fannish tendencies as society? Are people fans of Cassandra Claire not as a subset of HP or LotR fandom but in a parallel way that they are fans of other source materials? This appears to be true of fans of Melissa Good, and it also seems true of fans of Cassandra Claire: these are not simply Big Name Fans, they are Big Name Sources of their own (akin to Peter Jackson, possibly), with fans themselves who are differently connected to the original source material.

teenygozer - The push for "stand-alone" episodes in today's genre TV - It's a fairly recent attitude among TPTB of genre shows, this wanting each episode to be able to stand on its own, for stripping purposes and ease of entry for new viewers.

butterfly - Buffy/Angel -- On the Subject of Closed Canon (and Love) - Closing canon does an odd thing for me -- if I like something enough, I end up not having any real complaints. I'll complain and get pissy when a show is running, but if it's over, then even the things that would have bothered me are only part of the larger canvas.

alchemia - Darling... - When i see questions/commens/rants about 'what gay people...', i wonder how other people see us queers, and what comes to mind is some voyeur nature photographer trying to capture footage for an upcoming special PBS Nature Documentary, comlete with whispered voice overs

Fandom-Specific Meta

coffee_and_ink - [Manga] Matsushita, Yoko: Descendants of Darkness 5 - I came to Descendants of Darkness by way of the anime, and the more of the manga I read, the more amazed I am at what the anime production team were able to pull out of it. Yoko Matsushita has beautiful but mostly visually indistinguishable characters and the worst page layout I have ever seen, and could not plot her characters out of a paper bag if she'd set them up with a blowtorch and several sets of pinking shears on the first page.

evadne_ - [no subject] - Dove Got a Raw Deal: Aggression, Violence, and Traditional Gender Roles in the Kesels' Hawk and Dove [...] The depictions of the male and female protagonists of Hawk and Dove, along with events that were taking place in the DC Universe at the time, lay down hard and fast rules about what constitutes "correct behavior" for men and women, and is more than willing to eliminate any character that doesn't fit the mold.

sprat - Queerness and the Rays - if you're a same sex couple, declaring your union is an act of defiance--and every time you choose each other, you commit that act again. It's a life that requires a certain kind of toughness, a willingness to say a quiet fuck you with everything you do, because that's what it takes to keep what you've got. And this is what I like about my favourite Ray/Ray stories: they feel like that. [Due South]

ataniell93 - Why is there no Mudblood Mafia? - The Purebloods are so afraid of Muggleborns turning on them, but where are the Muggleborn activists? [Harry Potter]


Reading/Writing/Creating

lotesseflower - fan/author otp - There's much talk about fanfiction being a revival of the old oral traditions of storytelling, where the tale doesn't belong to anyone but it told again and again and again, a thousand variations played on a melody so old that no one can remember who first sang it. [...] But my question would be whether one method would be better, ethically or artistically, than the other. Which best serves the artist, and which best serves the art?

no_remorse - [no subject] - You know once upon a time the author and the reader were seperate entities that didn't interact with each other. There is a lot of literary theory that spins itself around exactly that: Author wants to say something, writes a book and the reader reads what he likes to read in that book. The end.

matociquala - You know where it ends usually depends on where you start. - On an extension of the topic of reader response, I was very impressed by John Kessel's essay on Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game ("Creating the Innocent Killer"), links to which are currently flying around the internet like pachinko balls.

musesfool - you'll always find him in the kitchen at parties - last week, sistermagpie had an interesting post on recurring images in one's writing. They're not images so much as locations for me, I have three favorite settings that seem to pop up regardless, and they're often where the most important emotional scenes take place

Miscellany

oyceter - Rules for Romance Novel Heroines - I mock because I love. Well, actually, I only partially mock because I love. The other part mocks because I want to love, but I am angry and constantly irked about gender role stereotypes in romance novels and even more irritated that many romances that step out of said stereotypes end up being lambasted as "unromantic."