Fandom Meta

fairestcat - Joining the debate - Gender and Fandom Reading all the posts in response to rant, got me thinking about the different ways people view the world. Not about men vs. women, but rather about concentrating on the big picture vs. the small picture. . . . So, we have people who fall variously on the big picture to small picture scale talking past each other, and that completely disregards the gender of the respondents, which I have some thoughts on but can't find a way to snazzily segue into, so this'll have to do.

miriam_heddy - Why Feminist Fans Should Go Somewhere Else, Because They're Obviously Not Having Fun Here. Killjoy B In making the feminist fan so powerful that she can kill joy on a massive scale, she's not powerful on a systemic scale, as an individual, paranoid, idiosyncratic feminist reading can be rebutted, silenced, or otherwise attacked by another right-minded individual, who thus feels a moment of strength riding into the Frontier as a Protector of Joy, fighting, not for women's equality everywhere, but for all women's right to feel no pain under Patriarchy.

minisinoo - LJ fandom, the Artificial Beast Fandom, and specifically LJ fandom, is a somewhat artificial beast, or at least, an insular one. I think that's useful for writers who participate in LJ to keep in mind. Whatever reputation we may accrue here (for good or ill), it's not terribly important outside this venue. Even on LJ, with its interlocking fandom pools, a 'big fish' in one fandom can be a virtual unknown in another -- especially if one is fairly fandom monogamous (as I tend to be).

lunacy - ~~ I slash because I dare....? So yeah, my weird feelings when imagining a huge influx of men into slash fandom weren't because I don't want a guy to read my fics or I actually consciously write -for- other girls-- . . . The weirdness is all because of my awareness that as a -group- exceeding some intimate small number, the dynamics of the community would change in an uncomfortable direction for us-- because while it -is- possible to have a unisex space, online or otherwise, that unisex quality in -itself- is a different nature to fandom as it currently exists. It would mean significant change, though the impact is negligible until there's something like a statistical shift.

~*~

inlovewithnight - The female-characters debate: my two cents Okay, so there's something of a debate in the meta-ish circles of fandom right now, asking "Why do you like the female characters you like? Why do dislike others? What does a female character have to have for you to like her?" And as is prone to happen, it got me pondering.

twinkledru - Jules ponders, in between coughing and wheezing fits... Why is femslash the redheaded stepchild of fandom?

twinkledru - More on the whole femslash thing. And I wonder... I don't know. I wonder how much of it isn't that the fandoms we're drawn to just don't happen to have a lot of women in them, and how much of it is that we've been conditioned to view male-dominance of media as the norm, and thus stay away from anything where that's not the case, because that's not normal and thus wigs us a little.

twinkledru - Okay, some further, and (for now) last thoughts. I do not believe it is wrong to like m/m and not f/f. THAT has never been my point. My question is why. Why does fandom prefer m/m over f/f? Because things like this intrigue me and make me want to consider, and because I like intelligent debate. My point is not "you are stupid if you don't like f/f". It is "why is it that f/f is so relatively unpopular and m/m is so relatively popular?"

fox1013 - women (i'm a ten-ticket thrill ride) Okay. So. We've been dancing around this for a while, and it's heated up when the glorious twinkledru made two posts yesterday ... about why people don't like femslash. And I've discussed it at length with the regulars, of course. Which was... enlightening, I suppose. But. Here's my question. What exactly would make an interesting female character?

musesfool - it's not my fault i don't have those toys Okay, so there's been a good bit of discussion in various LJ circles about fandom, feminism, sexism, etc. and that has led to other discussions, namely, the old favorites about female characters, lack of love for; and girlslash, redheaded stepchild of fandom. And it also led me to wondering about various definitions of the term 'slash' and how not having the same definition as the person you're talking to can cause all sorts of problems, and then wondering about how/why the definitions vary. & POLL

anonymous_sibyl - The "F" Words: Fandom, Feminism, and Femininity There's another reason why I often don't respond to female characters who you might otherwise think would appeal to me: Because nobody likes in others what they dislike in themselves. Often that happens with male characters but, being female, identifying sexually as a heterosexual female, it's the female characters with whom I feel kinship most strongly.

Specific Fandom Meta

( Cut for possible Spoilers for the Fandoms: Various, HP, VM, L-Word, comic )

On Reading and Writing

mimesere - holding out for a hero Fictionally speaking: What makes people think that being good is a boring thing? // When did it become cool to be disrespectful? // Why is breaking the law a good thing? // When did personal become the same thing as important? // Is the rebel still a hero when the world they live in isn't a dystopia? // When did logic and reason and thinking things through become bad things? // When did outlaw become synonymous with hero?