General Fandom Meta

xtricks - Ratings, fiction and my opinion - I've never been terribly thrilled with the idea of rating and warning for everything you put in a story. I mean, it's not a component of professional novels, though it is slowly creeping into professional publications through music and comics (which each have their own rating system).

sophia_helix - ancient empty streets too dead for dreaming - While we were playing with perfumes, loligo and I were talking about how BPAL has suddenly turned into a sort of fandom -- and how much attention it's attracted as a result. [...] It seems like there must be a fannish way of looking at a subject/hobby, and that the behavior is recognizable enough to draw in other fans no matter what the subject matter.

painless_j - Art and bandwidth stealing issue. Russian studies number - I'm not asking you to approve of the people who post Yukipon's, or Lunulet's, or somebody else's art as if it were nobody's. But I *am* asking you to understand. If you were forbidden to own anything serious, if you were to be imprisoned for starting your own business, any tiny enterprise (be it baking 30 cookies to sell or sewing and selling shirts), you'd also forget what property is. Of course people wanted to live better and so they did those outlawed things. But generally, we forgot. We are starting anew. You have several-century long tradition of the respect of somebody else's and your own property. We do not anymore.

ithiliana - friday..i think - One of the more overblown aspects of the fanfic debate, for me, was how some of the writers came out with the "omg, we *real* writers spend long hours agonizing over creating the incredible wonderfulness of our characters and then they are raped by fanfiction writers." Disregarding the problems of arguing by analogy and the extreme over-emotionalism of the specific analogy (which on a personal level I find so problematic), I am left knowing from about 45 years of reading experiences (and I'll read just about anything once, I read very fast, and read in a lot of popular genres) that in fact many "characters" in published books are fairly stock types


Fandom-Specific Meta

soupytwist - ... in which there are more questions than answers - Way Back In The Day (tm), I promised that I would write at length about the stuff that occurred to me as important on my re-reading of the Harry Potter series. The idea is to kind of consolidate for myself what I think is important before reading the sixth book, and that way I can properly see if I'm right.

oyceter - A personal history of anime and manga (the culture shock side) - College in America meant several things, from the anime and manga perspective. The first time I entered the local comic/anime store in town, heads swivelled. It was about as stereotypically a comic book store as you can be, complete with the store owner with the ponytail and a table of Magic going on. I was the only girl there, and the only Asian, for that matter.

coffee_and_ink - Feminism and manga & anime: A personal history (1/3) - "So what kinds of things did people talk about at this conference?"

"Oh, all kinds of stuff. Definitions of science fiction, race and gender, literary canons, feminism and anime--you know, Japanese animation?"

"Feminism and anime?" His smile says that he expects me to share the joke. "Those aren't two things that often go together."

I don't smile back.


Reading/Writing/Creating

quettaser in fanficrants - It's plausible! - If written well enough, nothing is OOC. Granted, some actions are harder to place in character than others, but given the proper care and time (and good writing), even something like violence and rape can be molded into the fabric of a character.

isiscolo - reading in unfamiliar fandoms - What's interesting to me is that the way fanfiction mentions things that people would know from canon, without explanation, is actually the way I prefer to have facts fed to me in fiction. I don't want expository information on what a ZPM is, I want it introduced casually and then, through later bits of conversation or action, have shown to me exactly what it is. Well, the first part happens in fanfic, but the second never comes through.

nakeisha - POV - we were discussing how we decided, or otherwise, what POV to use for a story, and we both wondered how other people did it. Do you sit down and actually decide what POV you intend using before you start writing? Do you know up front whether it's going to be first person, single third person, alternative third person, etc? Or do you just begin writing and the POV just happens?

gwyn_r - An ing and a prayer - But once in a while, a girl’s gotta get on her soapbox, and my latest religious war, my most recent usage jihad, is against flabby-assed, weak prose that is most often highlighted by an over-reliance on –ing words. [...] Everywhere I look, people are “starting to move” or “beginning to think” or they “were making calls” or some such. No one appears to just do anything anymore. And while in casual conversation that’s natural, in more formal writing and in fiction, it’s weaker than weak.

lemurgrrrl - Rant About Fucking Spelling - All day long I read writing full of errors. It's my job to teach the students how to become aware of the errors and correct them, so it's my job to read these papers patiently. It is my job--it is work. The last thing I want to do--and I mean the LAST thing--is come home to read more writing full of errors. It is not relaxing. It is the opposite of relaxing. Every error is a speedbump preventing me from reading smoothly. I am tired. I want pleasure. Errors prevent me from experiencing pleasure while reading.

actonthat in fanficrants - What is cliche, anyway? - The challenge in fanfiction is to be able to write around cliches that, unfortunately, are logical or unavoidable and to manage to hold a decent amount of your own originality. Write to accomplish something, not to obey people's single-minded opinions. If you begin to write to avoid these "cliches" you'll end up with nothing. Your fic will be like paper, with all originality drained out of it when you try desperately to avoid the unimaginative.

purest_evil - Art, fanart and reproductions of both. - As an aspiring artist I understand that it can be useful to study the works and methods of established artists. I'm sure everyone who has ever done an art class in school (be that way back when you were in primary school, or whatever) has had a print of a famous artist's artwork placed in front of them and been told to reproduce it as acurately as possible. [...] If someone were to turn around and produce a fairly accurate copy of one of fiendling or adamasoda or __hibiscus or < insert fanartist of choice here >'s fanarts then it would (almost certainly) receive many a flame and a 'wtf' reaction from both artist and fandom.


Miscellany

shocolate - This is getting out of control - So, lately, I keep running into anti-Ron or pro-H/Hr feelings and it ruins my flist browsing. So I sat down to make a filter, so that I can only read known Ron-lovers for the next two weeks. But that isn't enough, really, is it? [...] I wondered why this upset me so much, and have created polls, because everyone loves polls, and I just spent a fortune on a permanent account, and no one is going to be my friend anymore, now that I am so far up my own arse as to make this post, so I may as well tempt you one last time, if you have read this far! [Poll]