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bethbethbeth - Anonymous Authors: to Respond or not to Respond? - It's interesting to see the ways author-response-to-feedback cultures differ amongst the various Secret Santa fic/art communities. yuletide has, as part of its FAQ, a very strong suggestion that authors not respond to comments until their names are revealed (which makes perfect sense, since they'd be responding to comments by email, which would sort of give the game away), but most of the other SeSa's live on LiveJournal, which means that if an author chooses to, s/he can give thanks to people who comment almost immediately, albeit anonymously.

in_between - writerly question - Do you think your audience would react differently if you posted under another LJ name? Not just in a SeSa challenge, but in a way nobody would guess it was yours? // Do you think more, less, or different people would read your fics? //Do you think you'd get less reviews? More? Better or worse?

ataniell93 - Responses to my Cult of Mean post - Second of all, there were a number of people who expressed the opinion that they lived in free countries and hence had the right to say whatever they wished in their own journals, no matter how inflammatory it was. Well, you're right. You do have the right to be as rude, nasty, mean and cruel as you like in your own private space. Nobody's saying you don't have the right to say whatever you want in your own journal. [...]// But it is, in my opinion, the duty of those who want a civil society to question and censure incivility when they witness it. Civility, like freedom, is protected by constant vigilance, most importantly of one's own behaviour.

stoney321 - Good Morning! And I'm going to get a few things off my chest - I spent the good part of yesterday surfing fics I've earmarked, old comms I used to actively follow, and I've come to the following conclusion: there is a lot of craptastic characterization out there. More than good. And I'm pissed, and not gonna take anymore. (Oooh! I sound so tough!) I'm kinda joking. ONLY NOT.

fairestcat - Anonymous Reccing - I was thinking last night how there's a certain nervous thrill to reccing stories from secret ficathons like yuletide and sga_santa before the author reveal. // As a reccer I know that there are a myriad of conscious and subconscious factors that can influence how I read and whether or not I rec a story, and quite a few of them are tied to knowledge of the author.

eliade - I am aliiiiiiive. - Why aren't there more rape stories SGA? Not to make light of a serious real-life issue. When it's handled poorly in a story I feel distaste. But I don't think there's anything wrong with stories about rape. They can follow very moral templates--crime and punishment, a white-knight rescue and healing love, someone's triumph over degredation. When pain and suffering is fictively resolved with comfort and vengeance, it's cathartic. // I turn to rape as a story vehicle that can carry some of the most intense and desperate emotions, giving them a tangible, external cause. The most awful feelings I've had are associated with depression, so when I read about a character's misery and how they come back from it, I identify strongly.

angua9 - A Persistent Flattening and Polarizing Impulse - Two and a half years ago, I posted a short essay called A Stubborn Romanticizing and Eroticizing Impulse, which I still think more worth reading than pretty much anything I've ever posted. [...] // Today I want to write about a different impulse, one I see as similarly strong and widespread, but one for which I feel a good deal less sympathy and complicity than I do for the impulse to romanticize and eroticize. I'm talking about the impulse to transform the subtle and complex into the simple and moralistic, to take creations drawn in continuous shades of gray and view them in black and white, to flatten the three-dimensional and polarize your response (to a character, a subplot, a theme, a pairing) into either unconditional love or unrelenting condemnation.

starrysummer - cross-fandom character preferences (or why i like the - So, what about other people? Who appeals to you and why? Is it consistent - the same type of character - across fandoms, or does the environment of canon have a larger impact? // As an aside, I'm inclined to think (on the weak evidence of my own preferences) that shipping is more consistent cross-fandom than character love, but maybe that's because I have very, very consistent shipping rules (those being: the higher the stakes and the more fucked up, the more I like it).

cjmarlowe - audience participation - What I would love is for people to define the following three words, say how long you've known about them/used them and how you discovered them, state why you use the word the way you do ("Because it's right." is not really a helpful answer. :) After all, everyone knows that my answers are the correct ones. Because it's the only definition you know, however, is quite acceptable.) and list any other uses for the word that you know of and why you don't use it that way. And if there are any other words that have come from or been absorbed by fandom that have such fractured meanings that you think it would be interesting to explore as well, please add them. // drabble // fanon // OTP

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