Fandom Meta

ruric - Venting and a question Now the question - asked with genuine interest and not pointing fingers at anyone here. When did fandom become so petty and mean spirited or have I just been living in an insulated little Eden?

thelastgoodname - Some questions on fandom development and authorial recognition Is Stargate: Atlantis the first large-scale fandom that has predominantly flourished on livejournal?

thelastgoodname - On Flaming Meta (or is that just a really heated discussion?) When it comes to meta, is it possible to flame? // Or, is meta the sort of semi-intellectual work where, in theory, any contradictions are to be made on the basis of the text rather than on the basis of the author?

zortified - Meta-Fannish Meta Discussion About Meta (Meta) Every single fandom I've ever been in, or read meta for, has the "quality versus popular" discussion. ... But I don't care. Because the discussion has been made a thousand times already. Nothing has changed about fandom, nothing has erased the dichotomy between popular and quality.

penknife - On popularity and the Claw The question of why some stories and authors are popular seems to be going around again, which seems like a good time for me to talk about what you can do to make it more likely that your stories will be popular, and also about the Claw.


emrinalexander - When Doesn't Box of Porn to Strange Man = Really Really Stupid? Never has Aunt Lavinia's Rule of Thumb applied more: If you wouldn't want it done/said to you, your mother, your father, your kid, or your best friend? Then Don't. .. AUNT LAVINIA'S SECOND RULE OF MEDIA FANDOM: Actors act.

madra_liath - Here's a prime piece of fandom batshittery How the fuck could anyone think that going up to a complete stranger and giving hir a box of porn was appropriate? No, seriously – enquiring minds want to know.

trislindsay - I'm Mad As Hell And I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore What is going on in fandom, people? NO ONE has the right to ask personal questions of actors, no one has the right to feel them up or embarrass them with inappropriate gifts. They are not prostitutes! They are actors, who are professional people who work hard at THEIR CRAFT. They do a JOB, just like you and me.

Fanfic Meta

monanotlisa - Before-bed thought # 34The oft-maligned High School Alternate Universes are comparable to the deepest and darkest hurt/comfort fiction in the sense that they serve to strip away all the defences an adult character has built up through her or his life, only that they don't go forth but back in time. Arguably, a lot of what shapes -- or will shape -- the personality of a character is lost in transition, but the potential, the raw emotion, and, probably most importantly, the ability to connect on the very level that thrills us? Yeah.

animimares in hp_girlslash - Why do femslash? I’ve been thinking (I tend to do that) and the thoughts turned into questions that I couldn’t answer fully myself. You have to help me here, because the following is simply musings – not even close to a conclusion. Help me! ... I do it because it suits me; I’m looking for stories that can make me think - yes, that’s girls – yes, that’s them – yes, that’s me – or simply YES. But why do you? What are you looking for?

__marcelo - Fandom == Software for your Imagination There's a lot of people using Windows/reading comics (relatively), and they are often a pissed-off lot (everything reboots too often, local issues induce terrible crossover problems, your favorite bits get overwritten by rogue stuff going on somewhere else in the system, etc), so fixing up things or filling up gaps can be very emotionally rewarding, and the byzantine complications under the hood appeal to certain kind of people (us). // I want a more modular system, by which I mean, one in which every fucking character's life and storyline won't be wiped out because Word, I mean, Batman, has a psychotic episode. A big universe is like a well-hedged bet: it lets you tell stories/run applications that serve many users and functions at the same time. [COMICS]

On Reading and Writing

thelastgoodname - On Reading and Writing (but not Arithmetic) Are your standards for reading and writing fanfiction different?

alixtii - Yes, Even More Meta: For Love of the Game So I want to discuss the specific way that I tend to approach a fic and the way that it interacts with my desire (without going TMI). Partially this is because we can't have any idea of how much of our experience is generalizable--and thus cannot construct a theory out of it--if we don't gaze at our own navels sometimes and share our experience. executrix focused on the reader who reads fanfic for the sex scenes, and has a lot of good stuff. Let me put forth myself as a somewhat, but not completely, different sort of reader.

emeraldpen - Question Regarding Chapter Length In reading WiP's or Multi-Chaptered Fic, is there a rule of thumb regarding length?

On Terminology

penknife - Basically goldfish, with references to canon iguanas. I am increasingly tempted to just say I'm giving up on slash/gen/het labels entirely, because sometimes I think people have such different definitions of what they mean that labelling stories "goldfish" and "iguana" and "aardvark" would be equally useful for conveying information.

executrix - Huh! What is It Good For? (Absolutely Nothing...) But I think the ultimate functional test is not "Does this story appear in canon?" (because if it does, what's the point, unless the writer can add something really interesting) but "Does this story provide me with the pleasures I get from canon by sharing the elements about canon I enjoy?" or "Does this story remove displeasures that I have with canon and therefore offer me enjoyment?"

dkwilliams in slash_workshop - You're Invited to a Terminology Rant Every now and then, I get the urge to rant about something WRONG I keep reading about in a fandom's fiction. Usually I manage to keep it in until it the urge passes, but then I thought that maybe letting it all out was better than repressing it. It might also help people out there who are committing these errors without realizing it. So I'm going to mention a couple of my fanfic peeves regarding terminology that's country and/or profession specific, and I invite others to join in.

aspacer - Slash FanFic Rants 3-18-06 I, in general, can get an accurate read on where people's knowledgebase and comfort level is with gay people based on their language. People who use the term homosexual generally have sources that are, for lack of a better word, backwards, and either explicitly or indirectly homophobic.