General Fandom Meta

ataniell93 - I really want to know... - Why do people think anonymous memes are fun? underlucius made an excellent point when she pointed out that there is just nothing good that comes out of them. They're just the LJ version of the Burn Book. Even if someone posts to one that they really like yournamehere, there's going to be at least five comments underneath ripping on her, her fic, her meta, her personal life.

commodorified - Another day, another round of fannish whack-a-mole - So I said awhile back that I might write something about passive-aggressive behaviour. // Specifically, passive-aggressive behaviour in the context of recent discussions about "niceness" in fandom, because, you know, inevitably it comes up in these discussions. // First of all, some things that passive-aggressive behaviour is not: // Passive-aggressive behaviour is not, in fact, nice. Nor is it polite, or kind, or any other good thing.

nzraya - Queerness in America - Anyway, what interests me isn't so much the issue of straight people doing queer theory/queer criticism (a rather pedantic question in my opinion) but the phenomenon of straight people writing queer porn and adopting quasi-queer personae to match. I know, I know, this has been discussed to death in jennyo's LJ and elsewhere, but the noise-to-signal ratio has been pretty high, plus the nature of the question has changed a bit in light of the (often very interesting, and far from over) discussions surrounding Brokeback Mountain and the way it has mainstreamed, not gay culture, but slash culture (straight actors having gay sex for the benefit of largely straight [and female] audiences).

zenstate - but. . . but. . . I really didn't want to know that (complete with constipated facial expression) - I realize that that not everyone shares my preference not to be spoiled but my past experience in other fandoms has been that unaired episodes/scripts/screencaps are universally considered spoilers and never discussed without non-spoilery tags unless you want to invite hair pulling and flames. After it has aired in its "home" country, there doesn't seem to be as much of a concensus about how long something should remain behind tags-- hours, days, years-- and the response is much more variable. But now I'm beginning to wonder if even the pre-airing/pre-release standards have relaxed. Is there such a thing as a universally-defined spoiler anymore? Has fandom become a place that, to participate, you have to accept spoilers?

fiercelydreamed - Bad idea all around. And I'm too irate to cut-tag. - So, against habit and all forms of better judgment, I read a genderswitch story (and in a fandom I'm not even in, jeez): flippant male protagonist temporarily becomes female, is chagrined, copes with hormones, everyone hits on him, blah blah blah. And even ignoring the fact that characterization and structure were a) predictable and b) crappy, the whole premise annoyed the fuck out of me. And drawing just from the very small pool of genderswitch fiction I've read (both of the fan- and manga variety), I managed to pin down why. // Okay, and I'm not exactly breaking new theoretical ground here, but: damn, girls, is this the best we can do to ourselves?

coffeejunkii - toten hosen and WIPs - i actually like WIPs better than finished, novel-length stories that are posted all at once. // why? // because i'm done reading way too quickly [if i can find the time to read them]. i sit down for a few hours, read, and am done with that verse. // i much prefer to follow a story and the characters along for weeks or months, reading a chapter at a time. this not only gives me more exposure to the verse, but also allows me to reflect on chapters individually.

yourlibrarian in fanthropology - Tiers of access - Came across an interesting article about how media products are becoming increasingly complex and, maybe "franchised" is a good term for it. It makes me wonder how this will affect issues of canon, which so much fan discussion seems to revolve around? Will options like these just make it increasingly clear who is a fan versus a casual (or even regular) viewer?

Fandom-Specific Meta ( cut for possible spoilers in the following: Brokeback Mountain, Dr. Who )

On Writing/Creating

permetaform - WARGGGG and a note on crack - commodorified explains why breaking the rules of style is a bit like committing buggery. , which I think is much of the awesome and so very true. // And also, I'd realized, much like the rules I was using for writing crack.

minisinoo - The Most Difficult Thing . . . Writing 'Sinew' - When writing, among the most difficult things for me to get smooth are the simple 'connective' sections -- 'sinew,' as I think of it. The "Then he went there and did that ..." sections.

isiscolo - after the end - So now I'm involved in two closed-canon fandoms (Wilby Wonderful and Due South) that end with the characters I want to see together being together, but at the beginning of a relationship, details unspecified. And of course this is a great way for any story-teller to end a story, because the reader (viewer) who cares about those characters will imagine his or her own "post-endings" and possible tales. [...] What's interesting to me is that I like to end my own stories on this same sort of open-ended note; I like there to be a resolution suggested, but not necessarily realized, because that will make readers continue to think about the story after they get to the last words - it will inspire them to spin their own continuations in their own heads.

n_o_c_t_u_r_n_e - On language - my official obsession as of now. - It's fascinating that language is not built on words alone, on meanings alone, that language is something - warm and personal and subjective, even language in its purest sense is already something almost living. It's fascinating that empyrean has such a different feel to it than azure, and it's fascinating that it's all a little different for everyone. // And that makes me curious. For if language is something dynamic, something subjective and personal, how can a writer truly communicate with his or her readers? How can a writer say what he or she wants to say, if so much of it all depends on interpretation? And on the other hand - does it matter? Does one write to communicate, or to create? Or both?