Fandom Meta

lolaraincoat - blame the sudafed A whole lot of Due South fanfic, to the extent that I've read it (basically those three writers plus a bunch from Beth's recs list at her website) seems to have one plot device that I've seen in other fandoms, but that is more obvious here: the true love of Fraser and Ray K. going horribly wrong because No One Must Ever Know, often including Fraser and Ray themselves. I started to think of Fraser and Ray K., in fanfic, as stand-ins for the readers and writers of fanfic. We, too, have this Deep Dark Secret Love, sort of sexual and sort of not, that the world will never understand, and sometimes we meet someone who seems like they ... just might ... maybe ... be someone like us, but we don't know for sure, and we have to be so careful in revealing ourselves to each other, because No One Must Ever Know.

bethbethbeth - The Cruel Anti-Tentacles of the Anti-Squee Ten years ago, I kept a list of the shows I was watching on a regular basis, and that list was crowded. I was watching twenty hours of t.v. every week. Yet now, with 75% of the older shows available on DVD and at least a dozen t.v. channels with regular series programming plus movies (I'm ignoring books here), I'm probably not watching more than one or two hours of series t.v. a week

regan_v - Mono What? The lovely bethbethbeth, who has deep knowledge of and a long list of friends in every fandom in the Western World, has got an interesting post today on her lj about her increasing tendency to mono-fannishness. She doesn't want to be a one fandom girl, she explains. But it seems to be happening. // A couple of other hp people on her flist chimed in to agree, confessing that they, too, were becoming mono-fannish. // The fandom in question, of course, being HP. //This is a problem? The term "mono-fannish" seems to imply that it is. I mean, it sounds like some sort of disease. And that it's spreading . . . // I will freely confess that I enjoy being mono-fannish.

kyuuketsukirui - Pondering what is "real" But the thing that really bothered me was this: If RL afforded them an outlet for their creative energies and a chance for self-exploration, they wouldn't be actively participating in online fandom in the first place. // Why does "real" life have to be separate from online? What makes it less real? I do have an outlet for my creative energies in real life, it's called the web.

elanor_isolda - Random musings on fandom For me, the most important aspect of fandom is community, and for that we need a mixture of people. For the fic side of fandom to work, we need both writers and readers, and while they often overlap, those who have never written a word but actively read, comment and rec are equally important in keeping the fandom community together.

minisinoo - Noticeboard, Newsletter, Nothing? A noticeboard takes significantly less work. It also can allow for some misuse because there's less moderation, and it results in a lot of individual posts, which could awash FLists. (There would be SOME moderation, but not editorial, per se.) A newsletter may be neater, but requires a committee of volunteers and a little coordination to avoid unnecessary overlap (ala metafandom). It's closed posting, so there's less of a chance of misuse by someone who leaps first and looks after. (E.g., doesn't pay attention to parameters or rules.) But noticeboards can prevent the accidental oversight of something (and/or prevent the feeling that so-and-so is being ignored/it's a clique). [comicverse specific poll]

On Reading and Writing

zortified - Fanfic Novels! I'm pondering a community for encouraging fanfic writers to write long stories - novel length.

allison985 in fanthropology - Getting What You Need Out of Writing Fanfic aka Why Do People Write? So I guess my question is: how do you maintain ownership of a story while getting totally honest feedback?

dragonscholar in fanthropology - [on editing] I don't really do fanfic. I do writing-enhaincing tools, I do original work. I occasionally fanfic. But what I really do in fanfiction is a support role - my tools or I edit. So I wanted to ask the editors, the beta-readers, what do you get out of editing and beta reading?

commodorified in fanthropology - I guess it's my turn to buy a round I am in fact interested in and a fan of feedback, criticism, and editing. // That being out of the way, I have some notions about why this notion of concrit is so contentious and difficult a topic, and why it so often goes wrong, and I propose to lay them out for consideration, in no particular order, as they occur to me.

Links, Polls, etc

cluegirl - Thoughts Contingent on the Merits of Mary Sue Literary Mary Sue poll