General

cadhla: On negativity in fandom. Recently, I have been seeing an incredible amount of negativity in fandom. And by 'incredible amount', I mean 'horrifying, astonishing, epic, huge, scary amount'. This? Fascinates me.

peasant_: We Kerfuffle Therefore We Fan All over my flist there are people complaining about the amount of complaining in fandom. The cult of nice, the cult of mean, the cult of stomping on fluffy kittens...To which end, I ask - where is all this meanness actually happening?

gwyn_r The broccoli test The best pairings, for me, are ones who never have to explain what they want beyond a mere eyebrow-raise or a twitch of the head....for me that's a huge attraction -- I want that character to tilt his head slightly and the other character to go running off after bad guys. I want oceans of emotion to be conveyed with just a tiny quirk of the mouth. If they're on opposite ends of the produce aisle, I want one to know the other needs broccoli!

cereta: It's Monday killabeez invoked the broccoli test...So, in any fandom: couples who would pass the broccoli test? Please show your work.

schemingreader: More meta--Thoughts on Women Writing Slash I take as my starting point in this essay that fandom provides women with a unique opportunity to explore our sexuality....What I wonder is, why is slash, fiction about men in love with other men, so popular in fandom? Why do we women like to read about gay sex?

ide_cyan: Mary Sue Dialectics I keep saying that the defining characteristic of a Mary Sue is illegitimacy....What attributes the character may have are variable; what causes annoyance is the introduction of a cuckoo into the canon's nest, some bigger, brighter, louder character who steals the limelight from the characters the reader chose to read about, the intrusion that distorts the text.

dragonscholar in fanthropology: Fandom as Naturally Adaptive A fundamental trait of fandom seems to be that it adapts and adsorbs new things quickly, and even enthusiastically.

alison985 in fanthropology: Transgender Issues If we, as fandoms, are exploring so many other issues in so many other ways - why then, are we not dealing with issues of SRS, genderqueers, et cetera?

Specific fandom meta ( cut for possible spoilers in Numb3rs )

Writing, creating, criticism

commodorified: "where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." What do I think fosters good writing better than direct criticism on individual stories? And what am I going to do about it? ...Post a long and involved piece of meta on what I know (or think I know) about beta-ing/editing, in the hopes that it will be helpful.

shealynn88: Poll and meta on Rating Fanfic So, I was wondering the other day how, exactly, people decide how to rate their fic. [Poll]

nakeisha: Death Story Warnings I've been discussing death stories and warnings with a couple of people recently, and realised that different people have different views as to whose death should be warned for.[Poll]