General

iscaris: Real vs Reel Is your opinion of a character influenced by the real-life behavior of the actor who plays him/her? Or previous shows you've seen them in?

thelana: Randomness, heroes, journey and tv shows. I think my problem is that I like heroes. I like missions. I like journeys. I like convictions. I like ideals.

monimala: I have exhausted entirely too much brain power too early in the day. Is heterosexual women writing/reading and breathing male/male slash, at the root, homophobic?

sadiekate: I'm Oficially A Writer Now I was a dork for a long time. Then, I was a nerd - still am, actually. It took me until my senior year of college to figure out that I was also a geek.

alixtii: Meta: Putnam Makes Me Think about Fandom But aesthetic relativism is endemic, IMHO, and especially so in fandom. In and of itself I have no problem with this fact: I myself am inclined to believe that our aesthetic standards are prescribed by our own interpretative communities and that this is good and liberating. But when everyone agrees the possibility for a healthy dialectic is diminished, and I've seen people make normative aesthetic claims "You should [or shouldn't] do X" and be ridiculed for even daring to make a normative claim, for treating aesthetic values and facts. "Who are you to tell us that we should [or shouldn't] do X?" the person is asked,ignoring that it is every free person's right--nay, obligation!--to make normative claims.

ladysorka: ...this post diverges somewhere in the middle I know that life is loss, life is pain, life is hard, and life is about moving on and moving past. "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." I know all of this. But, you know what? I don't want to read about it, I don't want to watch it, and I don't even particularly enjoy listening to it. Fiction is, for me, escapism.

yin_again: On Angst One of my flisters (ladysorka) mentioned in her LJ that a "tissue warning" or "angst warning" was most likely to turn her off from reading a story....I don't consider "Freedom" to be an angsty story. Yes, it is a sad story, but I didn't cry when I read it because it was sad. I cried because it was touching....My interpretation of angst runs more toward stories that are sad/devistating/painful - lots of character death and torture and Very Bad Things happening to the characters.

furiosity: Guilty as fandom? goldie polls and asks your thoughts on LJ deletion. I filled out the poll and read a few of the comments and just mulled over things I've heard in regard to LJ deletions -- and something just occurred to me. Are there so many people for whom fandom participation is a guilty secret?

mimoletnoe: on fic translation and HP fandom; fanrus case Now, something about translation and how it goes.Imagine that I want to translate, say, the shoebox_project. It has, what, 27? 28 installments? Do I contact the project as soon as this brilliant idea has crossed my mind? No way! I first make sure that nobody else is translating it, then I make sure that I can, in fact, dedicate time and effort to translating it, so the actual translation can be on hiatus for months. I can eventually change my mind and not translate the project altogether. When I do find time and start translating it, even then it is not yet the time to contact the authors. Ideally, for the long fic one has to have 4-5 installments ready and for short fic - the whole fic translated - before contacting the author.

floy: Fandom/translation issues Let's define the terms, shall we. If I wrote a fic and say, mimoletnoe found it, liked it, copied it and posted on her site signing it with her name, how would you call it? Yeah, stealing would be the right term. In this case I have every right to yell at her, and go all over fandom sites screaming that this person is a thief. Now, if she posted my work without crediting me? Is this stealing? Do I have the right to accuse the person in theft? The plot starts getting thicker - if she posted my fic, with full credits and everything, including my home page, but did not ask me at the first place - if this stealing? And finally, if she translated my fic, posted it with full credits, etc but never asked me the permission to translate my work - is this stealing? According to many fandom people, yes, it is.

Fandom-specific ( Cut for possible spoilers in the following fandoms: BSG, HP, Supernatural, Prison Break, SGA )

Creating and criticism

petronelle: To audience is not to beta: Two Texts to Compare blythely asked what was meant by the word "audience" and I thought it might be better to show than to tell.

lamardeuse: Wot I likes. I do not consider fanfiction to be a substitute or the poor cousin of pro writing.

peasant_: Ponderings on AUism It is probable that my set of fics have now become so interrelated in my own mind that I do now make assumptions about what my readers will know and understand when they come to one. Hell, even I have started calling them the Peasantverse, and I used to hate that description.

rahirah: Peasant makes me think again, damn her! peasant_ asked a question which at some point plagues most series writers: at what point does a series become impenetrable to new readers, especially a fan fiction series which may have diverged significantly from canon?

Polls and links

gmth: Are we all geeks here? [Poll]

goldie: the dreaded strikethrough [Poll on lj deletion]

lostgirlslair: Writing Poll! The Fiance and I were talking about our writing and the differences between his writing and mine. Curiosity bit and it's been a long time since I did a writing poll, so this one was born.

ds_weekly: new newsletter for due South fandom. FAQ is here.