General Fandom Meta

dearladydisdain - Because fandom does not understand irony. - Fandom can be extremely frustrating at times, and at any given moment it is possible to feel that you are being ganged up on, that somebody is trying to silence you, that your unpopular opinions will get you sent off to the leper colony, or that everyone is too hung up on being nice to ever get real. It is easy and common to experience these feelings. // Guess what? They're usually wrong.

cereta - That thing we call "canon" - I've gotten into a number of discussions over the last couple of years over something I call the "JKR says..." issue, which in essence boils down to a question of what is and is not canon, and whether things that come from a creator or other "official" source but are not in the text itself are canon. It's one of those things I find kind of fascinating about fandom as we currently know it: that so much potential information like this exists, not just in interviews, but DVD commentary and official websites. [Poll]

minervacat - [big bad tags] - when i started using tags on my livejournal, i had a lot of clever little names for my tags, things that i thought were funny or interesting or, well, clever, and i found out fast that they weren't any help to me at all - because not only could other people not use my tags [...] but the fact of the matter was i couldn't use my own tags.

prillalar - On names. - When someone I know changes their username, my perception of them changes a little too, not because of the change itself, but because of the new name. [...] On LJ, if I only know you here, in a way, you are your username. So if that changes, you change too.

hesychasm - a brief contribution to the great fannish conversation - As it is now, fandom is totally consumer-focused. Fandom is totally today-focused, fandom has no sense of history, fandom is all about what entertains us NOW. [...] Fandom takes what looks shiny, goes skipping down the stream with it, and is gone before you're done erecting your sign saying, "I was here." Unless your supply of the shiny is constant, or your occasional shiny thing is brighter than most, you won't be remembered.

bonspiel - Raising the stakes - So I was walking past a Brokeback Mountain poster the other day, and I started to think about the enthusiasm for it coming out, which seems to me more than can be blamed on the reputations of the people involved [...] I think the folks who are interested in the *romance* of it all are the same folks who like slash v.2 (a quick digression: for me, I think of slash v.1 as the classic K/S-esque "I'm not gay, I just love you" type of thing, whereas v.2 is more "hey, I love you, and that must mean I'm gay"). And I believe the key to this type of story's appeal is: peril. Making your couple same-sex (and usually not out as gay/bi at the beginning of the story) raises the stakes, and makes the happy ending (or possibility of one) that much more satisfying.

veejane - Myself! No, I mean my other self. - Literature loves the alternate self, from the Wishverse to silly Jet Li movies to desperately misguided fanfic series that attempt to correlate different fictional projects by the same actor into a single universe. (I have read more of these than is probably wise.) But in all those cases, the differences are noteworthy, and the similarities only off-putting, or at best, controls for the "experimental" differences. Those Doppelganger others really are Other, and exist mostly to reflect back on the main characters, the "real" characters.

nell65 - Meta on "Why I Love the Het" - The lj world is overflowing with 'why I like m/m slash' or 'why women like m/m slash' essays (and the odd, 'why I don't like m/m slash' essay in answer), but het fanciers, like myself, haven't had to produce much meta about why they like what they do.

flemmings - [untitled] - I was thinking the other night, after I went to bed [...] that one reason I don't like feedback on my fanfics is that it /will/ by god affect what I write in future. How can it not? These characters aren't mine. And I don't mean 'no they belong to Naninani-sensei' though of course they do. But in fandom we have an implicit agreement that we will play with Sensei's characters, all of us thieves/fans together.

Fandom-Specific Meta( Cut for potential spoilers in Supernatural and HP )

On Writing/Creating

mgsmurf - Dark Fiction - Much of what I write I'd consider dark fiction. Someone on the seriouswriters community asked a bit ago what exactly people, and markets, thought dark fiction was, particularly in how it differed from horror. So, here's what I think it is.

murron - Do you believe in gender? - As a writer I ask myself, how valid is the concept of gender in authorship? Does it matter, do we deal with it subconsciously/consciously, do we transgress, obey or blur boundaries? // Against that background I’d really like to pose some questions, concerning women writing men. Any of you who are interested in the topic are invited to share their opinion, whether you have written male POV or not.

Miscellany

anaphalis - Alive! And Bunnies. Oh and a Rant. - This is written very affectionately by a very sick Naphy to gently run through my summation of my favourite FFRants fandom rants, in the hopes of saving everyone a whole lot of trouble. No bunnies were harmed while writing this, although there is a good chance your head might go 'splodey if you read it.