General Fandom Meta

coniraya in escapade_con - Links for the essays - Links for the essays from the "Absence of Color" panel

ellen_fremedon - Back from Escapade. and Escapade Day Two, Part One. - [con report including summaries and roundups of various meta panels]

kassrachel - Escapade 2006, huzzah! (part 1 of 2) - [con report including summaries and roundups of various meta panels] Part 2

tkp - Con crit! Rant! Bitchiness! - I leave concrit for some combination of the following:
1. when I like the fic(s) in question
2. when I like the author in question, not just as an author, but as a person.
3. when someone is explicitly asking for it outside of their story; i.e., it's usually not a line in the A/N that says "concrit would be nice."

bethbethbeth - The Sometime Myth of Extreme Badfic - How is it that these stories have become so elusive? Are they actually less prevalent these days than people make them out to be? Are certain fandoms/pairings more likely to include Extreme Badfic than others (I read a lot of different pairings in many different fandoms, so I‛m not quite sure I buy this possibility)? Or is it just that after all these years in fandom, I‛ve learned to see the warning signs the second I click on a story link and so now I hit the back button before my brain even registers that it had caught a glimpse of one of "those stories?"

oblomskaya - (draft-like) - The thing about Internet discussions etc. – the moment you say something, you are inside. The overall discourse gets you, and even the most sensible things become tainted as part of the general flame war. It's not a real-life forum where in the worst case a quarrel can end up with a fist-fight – which breaks the spell and the structure of an argument; in here it can go on forever.

alittlewhisper - He's got a big cock... - I'm begging you fandom. Get over your cocks. They're not that important. Oh yes, I know, I know, this is a penis-obsessed fanclub. There is great love for the cock in HP fandom, that's true. The amount of slash could boggle the mind. I totally agree. // BUT SLASH IS NOT ALL ABOUT THE COCK.

sueworld2003 - Slave fic's why are they so popular? - Now I know I'm a deeply perverted old cow (well I've got to have some kind of hobby at my age haven't I?) but slave slash has always been a firm favorite of mine. I don't appear to be the only one either with this 'kink' as judging by the amount of writing out there on the net many other folks seem to find this theme as intriguing as myself.

scatteredlogic - You're probably surprised to see me... - During my hiatus, I spent a little time poking around in other fandoms, and I found that while the names and faces of the fanfic writers may change, the behavior patterns remain the same. There are nice people and there are assholes, intelligent conversation and condescending tirades, beautifully written fic and barely coherent stories. In other words, they're no different than the HP fandom. ;) // However, the knowledge that those other fandoms aren't very different prompted me to take a long, hard look at my attitudes and opinions about fandom in general, and I realized that I've been concerned about a lot of crap that just doesn't matter. What was lost (for me, at least) amidst all the hubbub was the fact that fandom is supposed to be fun.

ajhalluk - Slash; A Personal Route - But the point about the remark in context is that it made perfect sense (and was something to which I imagine my reaction would appear both incomprehensible and upsetting to the original commentator) to the women concerned, because they had a shared definition of slash (at the time; for all I know their opinions may have changed subsequently) to which I didn't and never had subscribed. To them slash was something that was consciously imposed by the slash writer onto a surface to which it had no natural or right place, as a willed act of defiance; rather like childishly scribbling a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Because they didn't get this "Yah Boo Sucks" sense out of LoP, then it couldn't be slash.

carlanime - Another thing to give up for Lent: Fandom Idiocy - As the Cult of Nice/Cult of Mean thing gears up for another enjoyable cycle (in length, it’s like the Wars of the Roses, but we didn’t get any nifty badges), I find myself looking forward to it with a sort of affectionate amusement. It strikes me that the people who call themselves members of either cult are, almost always, doing it jokingly; they’re fully aware (well, most of them) that we aren’t really two opposing "sides," or even really two opposing attitudes. The self-declared Cultists are, for the most part, the ones trying not to take fandom too seriously, trying to lighten it up either by pretending to be more harsh or more gentle than we really are; it’s a kind of shared pose, done for amusement.

narahttbbs in fanthropology - Friendship and moving on from a fandom - But what happens to your friendship when you move on from a fandom? When I move on to fandoms new, I want to keep my old friends, I find them just as wonderful and pleasant as I ever did, and I don't want to lose them as friends... but I just can't muster the enthusiasm for the things that we used to talk about and do together. I find a new fandom to explore, new characters to love, and the old one goes out the window. I feel fond of it still, in an odd nostalgic way, but it's not what I'm thinking about all the time. I know that I'm boring my old friends to tears with discussion about my new fandom, but I can't help myself.

nostalgia_lj - <[untitled] - My current working hypothesis is that the way to BNFhood ("throbbing BNFhood"?) is a mix of non-suckitude, prolificness, and having a popular niche. So start writing that NC-17 Sheppard/McKay that you post every day and which isn't shite! I wonder how multi-fannishness factors into that because on one hand it increases exposure in different places (as 'twere) and on the other it decreases the time one has in which to make an impact.

Fandom-Specific Meta( Cut for possible spoilers in SGA )

On Writing/Creating

flurblewig - Writing & Astrological Correlations - After my last post about writing weaknesses, viciouswishes said: I wonder the correlation between writing flaws and astrology. It made me think since we share a birthday and those are my own flaws. // And I said Ooooh! What an interesting thought. I think I feel a poll coming on...

fabu - The moving fingers writes; and, having writ. . . - Sometimes I get so focused on the cerebral part of composing text that I forget about the physical aspects - no matter how perfectly designed a sentence is in the writer's head, the thought must be accompanied by the act of writing or typing that thought, or no one else will ever see it. And it may be different for other writers - I can only speak for myself - but I find that once I've developed certain physical habits in regards to writing, it becomes very difficult to write any other way.