General Fandom Meta

laurashapiro - Things you find while cleaning your hard drive - [text of a conversation from Nov. 2001 found while clearing out her harddrive] She was doing that whole "I like this het pairing but since I like it it can't really be het, it's all dark and angsty so it must be slash." [...]I hate that so much on so many levels I can't even begin to articulate them all. [...] It's heterophobic, homophobic, and stupid.

scribbling_elf - Playing catch-up - I'd rather read about villains who believe that they are in the right, or that maybe their actions aren't morally correct but the ends justify the means (I'd put Magneto here probably). I'm still divided on villains who say that the the definitions of good and evil are constructed or false...I think it's often become a poorly executed cliche. I want more complexity, I want the story that fits the saying "tragedy is the battle of right versus right"

scott_lynch - On Fanfic and the Ownership of Imaginary Experience - So, yes, I'm not going to argue that presentation of fanfic can't be harmful; I just disagree rather emphatically that it is intrinsically harmful by its very nature, even when kept private. The basis of that presumption is an unhealthy (as I see it) visualization of writing as a purely dictatorial exercise; writer lectures and reader dutifully appreciates. There's nothing dutiful about the process. The reader doesn't owe the writer a goddamn thing inside the confines of the reader's own head. [response to Robin Hobb's rant]

rahirah - [untitled] - When we write, we are exercising the ultimate control over Story. When we allow others to read, we're giving up a little bit of that control. Giving up control is an intrinsically scary thing for many of us--naturally we try to retain as much as possible. But there are recompenses, because in giving up that control we get glimpses into how other people see the way we see the world. Of course, sometimes that's pretty scary, too. [response to Robin Hobb's rant]

karentraviss - I don't brake for elitists - I'm a massively arrogant individual but even I draw the line at dictating how people should or should not enjoy my fiction. We would have no shared culture at all if the first myth-tellers had tried to stop people repeating their tales and embellishing them. [response to Robin Hobb's rant]

darkrosetiger - The Evils of Fanfiction: Same Song, Umpteenth Verse - I'm always curious whether authors who hate the idea of fanfiction about their works have issues with other professional writers who used to write fanfiction. Does getting published automatically absolve you, or would Robin Hobb snub Lois McMaster Bujold at a con because LMB used to write fic?

alchemia - So that's my theory, which I won't be surprised if most people think is full of shit. - I entered fandom seeing only fen and wanting to interact with them as such, and am repeatedly befuddled that I can't. It upsets me to see polls about fen worded to exclude those who aren't women or to see women fen flock to watch the men_who_slash community while ranting elsewhere about male privilege and how offensive the existence of the community was.

cereta - Being a slasher - To me, there is a certain extent to which being a slasher is an "are you or aren't you" game. If you are open to same-sex romantic involvement between characters, and if such openness pleases you*, you're a slasher. It doesn't matter if you also see mixed-sex romantic involvement or no romantic involvement at all: if you see it and are open to it and it pleases you in any fandom/pairing, you're a slasher.

elke_tanzer - So it's summer, it must be time for the het vs. slash discussion - It dawned on me a couple days ago that it's tough being "the girl" in a social group of guys, just as it's tough for a fandom to produce a diversity of interesting takes on a woman character if she's the only female on a show. Too much rests on one set of shoulders. The same is true for "the boy" in a social group of gals, btw, or for a character to be the only male on a show. With more fandoms (and crossovers) that have multiple characters who are not "the anything" in the group, the diversity of interpretatons of the characters and of their relationships with each other blossoms into a combinations and permutations flower that is oh, so beautiful and oh, so sweet.

Fandom-Specific Meta

minim_calibre - [Comics] General thoughts on DC directions. Spoiler free and short - I'm kind of feeling sheepish about my excitement, though I'd be the first to admit that I'm not entirely non-critical and without fear. While I like most of the writers who've been heavily involved in the lead-up to this new Crisis, I'm concerned about the potential for an idea echo chamber, where they get so excited about something that there's no-one there to spotcheck and make certain that the Emperor is, in fact, actually clad in something other than sky. [DC Comics]

pfeifferpack - In which I question Joss' creds as a feminist - Okay, I do accept that Joss is very pro woman and well meant, but his insistance that his Buffy/AngelVerse was all about "girl power" got me thinking. Just what kind of images did ME present in their effort to illustrate this girl power? [Buffy/Angel]

Writing/Reading/Creating

copperbadge - [untitled] - That having been said, certainly fanfic can equal and even surpass canon in some ways. Literarily, it is quite possible to write something as good as or even better than the original canon; it's possible to explore deeper themes and have a better writing style than the canon author. The problem is that no matter how sublime your novelistic themes or how graceful your prose, you are still, at the end of the day, using someone else's characters and universe.

babyofthegroup - a tentative foot in the meta pool - what is AU? At what point do you leave the universe you're in and travel to one where Things Are Different? Sam's saying something about authorial intent, and I'm saying something to the effect of: fuck authorial intent -- are you using the same facts in the same setup? Can this be seen plausibly from another perspective without changing those facts? Does your fiction contradict canon in any way without an explanation (i.e. prejudice on the part of the narrator of the original work, etc.)? If you answered "yes" to the first two questions and "no" to the third, I think it's probably not AU. [response to part of copperbadge's post]

elke_tanzer - Elke's reasoning behind the mod post in bsg2003fics - [A recent post of an NC-17 manip at bsg2003fics triggered rather a lot of discussion and ultimately a clarification of the community rules from the mod] This manip has triggered all sorts of discussion, including whether or not any photograph of a live-action character can be anything but a representation of the actor... including whether such images are "art"... including whether such images are "disrespectful"... including whether such images are always by definition the equivalent of RPS or RPF or both or neither simply because the source of some part of the image was a photograph of the actor who plays the character...

resonant8 - On Writing: Character Building - Characters are different from people in the same way that plots are different from real life. See, in real life, lots of things happen for lots of reasons, and some things happen for no reason at all. In a plot, though, most things happen, basically, because the character wants something and the world (on behalf of the author) wants to prevent her from getting it, right? Well, in the same way, real people do things for lots of reasons, and they do some things for no reason at all. But characters, now -- characters are motivated either by one overriding desire that is in continual conflict with reality, or by two overriding desires that are in continual conflict with each other.

troyswann - *boggle* It's a boy; and QUESTIONS about UGLY - So, I'm wondering, I'm asking: If you are one of those people who seek the painful story, the angsty one, the H/C, what happens in your head and body when you read them? What are you looking for? And is what you are looking for the same as or surprisingly different from what you actually get? What does this story feed, or expose? And what of beautiful pain? Should pain be beautiful in art?

troyswann - Ugly thoughts - It seems that in any case, there must be something "transcendent" or "meaningful" about the pain in stories. That characters must "develop" or at the very least, the pain must be a vehicle for something else (friendship, loyalty, perseverence, coping or not coping and so on) rather than an end in itself. I find it endlessly fascinating how pain becomes a vehicle and how difficult it is for us as people, readers, writers etc. to engage with it on its own terms. Maybe this is because pain doesn't ever exist on its own terms. Maybe it's because the idea that it does is too hard to face.

truepenny - litcrit, specfic, and the intersection thereof - Now, if you dig down, you can find layers in sf&f that respond to traditional literary treatment [...] But you have to dig and search and in general behave like archaeologists instead of literary critics. Only not like archaeologists in the obvious way--those are called textual critics and they have plenty of academic oomph, thank you very much--but archaeologists of story. Not even so much of the story's content as of its pattern-making. And that's (a.) hard, and (b.) something academically trained readers haven't been trained for. It's much easier to say there's nothing outside the box than it is to try to come to grips with the fact that the stuff outside the box is outside the box because the rules inside the box don't work on it.

soundingsea - why fanfic? - I considered writing last year's NaNo project as original fiction, but it turned out to be about Spike and Dawn. Could I change the names? Interesting question. Their circumstances, their attitudes, the personalities that make them who they are - those things drive this story. Spike's vampirism, Dawn's constructed reality - those are key (no pun intended). Could I rewrite it with the serial numbers filed off? Maybe, but in this case I think it would detract from the story I'm trying to tell. It could still be a good story; it would just be a different story.


Miscellany

halegirl - Fan Fiction: The Game - [Rules and board for the one, the only, Fan Fiction: The Game!]