Fandom Meta

jessicaqueen - Of Alternate Universe Fics and Their Nature We've all wished that something in a book or movie hadn't happened at one time or another, I'm sure. But what really would have happened had that event been avoiding, or had something that was previously missing been encorporated?

joanne_c - I just figured out my own personal philosophy of why I slash when I slash I slash when I can look at the pairing and say, you know, if one of those guys were a woman? There would be *no doubt in my mind* that they were either currently having sex, wanting to have sex, or have had sex in the past.

julesjones - On fanfic, because I need something else to think about for a whileWhen you read the slush, the 90% of crud, it's easy to forget that the 10% does exist; that there are people writing fanfic who are competent, even brilliant, writers; who choose to write fanfic not because they are incapable of "doing better" but because fanfic offers them the opportunity to write stories that they couldn't write in the profic world.

almond_tea - Why (some people) slash? Specifically, I've been chewing on why some readers or viewers slash, what the attraction is, and why it seems we're not content to let it remain purely platonic. That's (generally) what the source gave us, right? And shouldn't that non-sexual relationship be fulfilling in itself?

mawaridi - Fandom, Slash, Sex, Relationships and Friendship There is (to some extent, particularly when you're younger*, I think) that assumption that your partner should be your best friend and that you should want to do everything together, otherwise you're doing something wrong.

Specific Fandom Meta

( Cut for possible Spoilers for the Fandoms: HP, BSG, SGA )

On Reading and Writing

marag - My thoughts on feedback Pro writers get their feedback in the form of sales and letters. We get ours in the form of feedback. And that's how I know if I've succeeded in my mission. If nobody responds, then I worry that I might have failed.

fabu - Writing thoughts - narrative voice A reader is generally at three levels of remove from a character: the author's voice, the narrator's voice, and the character's voice. Often two of these things are conflated (and sometimes all three of them seem to collapse in on themselves, as in "creative nonfiction" and memoirs).

viva_gloria - Fearing and Loathing of OFCs Writing OFCs doesn't bother me. Sometimes there's a stub to work with: you know that X has a mother, a sister, a fiancee back home.

Links, Polls, etc

minisinoo - Factors in continuing to read stories in an 'old' fandom In any case, I think fans of movie-source fandoms tend to drift in and out, depending on the freshness of the last film/coming film, and it raised an interesting question about reading patterns in 'old' fandoms generally. [POLL]

kitzen_kat - Characterisation and Writing I realise that when CBS was writing this, she had been immersed in a writing society that's a bit different from now, back when slavery and redemption fics were often written (complete with Mary Sues in a number of fics). I can understand that fics set in the Law and Order franchises would not provide a great deal of distancing for the writer and the reader. But I wonder what CBS would think of Buffy or Angel or Forever Knight fics, where the magical and fantastic has been brought into a determinedly contemporary setting, creating a cognitive dissonance in the viewer until resolution is found. [POLL]