General Fandom Meta

ataniell93 - What else do you CALL that? (yes, slash again) - If your characters are men in love with other men, they are having gay relationships. If your characters are men who prefer sex with men over any other kind of sex, they are gay. IF your characters are men who don't care what gender their sexual partners are, then they are not gay, they may be bisexual, or queer, or whatever you call it, but that does not make the relationship not gay.

frogspace - Geschichtsschreiber oder wenn Meta auch nur Fanfiction is - Für alle, die dem metafandom-Link zu dem Rant Slash is not gay! Stop saying that! gefolgt sind und sich fragen, was das soll, hier meine eigene Perspektive bezüglich der Methodik, sozusagen als Hintergrund. // Zwei Punkte sollte man nicht aus den Augen verlieren: Der eine lässt sich als "Agenda" zusammenfassen und der andere liegt in der Macht, die Agenda durchzusetzen, indem man "seine" Version der Geschichte für die niederschreibt, die nicht dabei gewesen sind.

ethrosdemon - [untitled] - "Is slash gay?" is one of those debates that sort of flabbergasts me. It's sort of like saying "Is the sky blue?". The actual answer to that is NO because of a complex scientific explanation that's BORING. The truth of the matter keeps skipping away in an infinite horizon of defining terms and parsing reality. The simple answer is: yes, the sky is blue. The simple answer to the slash question is: yes, it's GAY!

janecarnall - I swore I wasn't going to write about this any more... - Slash is women's voices, saying things to other women that do not fall within the fenced-off area of "appropriate" female sexuality. // And all done with a male character's POV. Indeed (thinking of the Bronte children speaking from behind a mask) it's possible that this kind of encouragement to speak openly about our kinks, what we really like to think about sexually, the difference between our fantasies and our real sexual lives - could only happen with the convenient mask that male characters give.

lotesseflower - Meta: attire myself in all parts like to a man - If we accept that slash is not really about gayness in and of itself, I think that we can also perhaps say that it’s not really about men, however paradoxical that may seem. IMHO, it’s about the women writing it, and the men are merely the blank canvas, the nearby screen. At least in one view of this drattedly complex thing we do.

magnetic_pole - Forecast for tomorrow? Not just slashy but a little gay... - It's a little like talking about the weather, isn't it? Checking in with fandom every few days to discover that another discussion of the (debatable) queerness of slash is going on. Everyone seems to have looked at this issue from every possible angle, but it still holds interest as a topic of conversation. Forecast for tomorrow? Not just slashy, but a little gay. Next week? Pure smut, I've heard. A full eight to nine inches. *smile*

thelastgoodname - Help? I have somehow become very confused, and the Language Log isn't helping yet - If slash = gay (and not same sex), and also, if slash = gay (and not non-canon) (and if het = het, which no one seems to be doubting except for the people who think that het = gen), then why is it called slash and not gay?

cofax7 - On Fandom and Ownership - Premise: that fan respect for the legal or equitable interests of either the producers of content or other fans is situational and, generally, self-serving. What it is not, is consistent.

thassalia - Ownership and Borders - One of things I find particularly interesting in Cofax's essay is the consideration of how we navigate ownership amongst each other as opposed to in relation to the original text. How we lay claim, and also have no room to argue. I know, again on a personal level, that while I'd never ask permission to use the origin source material (for so many reasons, not the least of which being that permission is legal, and this is pretty much illegal while tacit compliscence is okay. If you actually ask, someone has to say yes or no), I would feel deeply uncomfortable playing in someone else's fic universe without permission

principessa05 - What is a shipper? - According to some, it seems that preferring a pairing makes you a shipper of that pairing. The purpose of this seems to be to divide the fandom into two groups: Us vs. Them, which is a natural facet of human nature. However, when one then goes on to argue that shippers of THIS ship are all against shippers of THAT ship, this definition of ship becomes rather silly, as there are so many different levels of liking from preferring a ship but liking others to rabidly believing that a ship is the only "good" one out there.

lyma2 - On Shipping. - Shipping is, to a large extent, one of the biggest causes for arguments within a fandom, IMO. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it is one of the most contentious things. No matter what the ship is, there will almost always be people who argue violently for it or violently against it. // But this doesn't mean that shipping is bad. And it doesn't mean that certain ships are bad. But there are... sorts of people who do seem to cause trouble with thier shipping, and I was wondering what it is that annoys people when it comes to shipping issues. What it is that makes shipping the source of so many... well... anoying little bastards.

charlie_and_aj - Canon consistency within fandoms, and perception of canon - I wonder, in fandoms where canon is a fluid and flexible creature, whether writers and readers of fanfiction take a different view of canon. Is there a noticeable lack of criticism of fanfiction that refers to canon inconsistency? Do writers feel less anxious about making their fics canon-tight (however you choose to interpret that)? Do readers feel secure in fandoms where canon is relatively consistent because, mistakes-to-be-flamed apart, they know what they’re getting? Do they feel less irritated by inconsistencies in fanfiction in fandoms where there are already many inconsistencies in canon?

dragonscholar in fanthropology - Mary Sue: The Boogiewoman of Fandom? - So I now speculate that Mary Sue over time has grown into a kind of fandom boogie(wo)man. With the connectivity of the internet, with more people writing (and thus having Mary Sue phases), and more exposure to it, the cultural signifiance of the term "Mary Sue" has grown and been embellished. People despise Mary Sues, encounter bad ones, have their own characters insultingly called Mary Sues, etc. And in time, the term Mary Sue comes to be more and more negative - and produce a more visceral reaction - or at least not loose its power.

jedinic - Question for the day - Do you think online/journal personalities are 'real'? // Or do most of us only present a certain side of our lives?

Fandom-Specific Meta( cut for spoilers in the following fandoms: LoTR, Buffy/Angel, Dr. Who, HP, Firefly, Supernatural )

On Writing/Reading/Reccing

celtic_sky - Music and Writing. - Do you listen to music when you write? Do you not? // I'm slightly more interested in fiction because it tends to have more of a 'style' (for lack of a better word that I can think of), but I'd love to know about essays and such too.

furiosity - [can of worms status="open" - The thing that made me scoff was what King said about plotting -- that a good story unfolds by itself, that plotting will make your story seem artificial and your characters flat. The first thought that ran through my head at that was, "spoken like a true English major". No offence to English majors or anything, but in order to succeed or even excel at plotting, you do not need to push your characters into anything (as King seems to assert you do), not if your plot framework is loose enough to admit change.

eolianbeck - Ten things I know about writing - 1. Having a plan is essential. Departing from it to strike off into a surprise fifty page digression that turns out to be the heart of the story is where real greatness can sometimes happen.

elishavah - WIPs, multi-part fics, and me - I've mentioned before that I hate reading WIPs.1 Some of it is my dislike of being in cliffhangerville; some of it is not wanting to take the chance of getting stuck without an ending; and some of it is that I know how feedback can affect the story going forward, and I don't want to get caught up in that. // The thing that I've discovered recently while delving into fic in an older fandom is that I also hate reading finished multi-part or -chapter fics, where the chapters are on separate pages2 and/or posted on separate dates. Unless I'm blown away by the first part, there being separate parts is enough to make me drop the story dead right there.

entrenous88 - I *would* write and/or read that kind of fic...but...anony meme!! - Is there any fic, really, that you'd secretly love to read or write, but you're a little ashamed or embarassed to talk about it or actually write/read it?

tkp - All Ye Rolling Minstrels - I've found since I've started researching for fic, though, that the research is almost as fun as the writing. Doing the canon research necessary just brings back my love for the shows, and doing other kinds of research makes me feel all smart and know-y. So I figure hey, maybe other people feel the same way. Or not. [Discussion and Poll]

sistermagpie - Essay question - And then I wonder in general--is it really the "first rule of essay-writing" (as I think it was called) to never say "I think" or use the first person? I'm sure when I was in high school learning to write essays that was a rule, but then back then I was also told you wrote an essay by starting with an introductory paragraph where you said what you were going to say, followed by the body of the essay where you said it, followed by the conclusion paragraph where you summed up what you just said. It seems that in life essays become more about communication than format, and those kinds of rules don't really hold true.

cupidsbow - Remix Redux IV: Discussion/Invitation - remixredux is the first time I've taken part in a major multi-fandom remix. I really wasn't sure what to expect, and to be honest I'm still not, as there seems to be this big silence going on. I mean, over 300 people took part, and yet I can't find any conversations about it anywhere! So I thought I'd extend an invitation: if anyone would like to discuss the remix, you're welcome to do so here. Anonymous posting is fine (we don't give away any secrets before the big reveal ;).

reddwarfer - On Pinch Hitting - It's strange to write for a pinch hit. You have less time to think and to write, but you are still driven to give the best fic you can. The goal is that no one is aware of what fic was a pinch hit and which one wasn't. You want to make it so no one is aware that this fic only took eight hours to write and your best buddy, Emo, beta'd it quickly before you sent it off to that rather annoyed mod who was probably more flustered than you.

lurksnomore - thinking about rec'ing - So, rather than qualified praise in the form of a rec, I give none at all. // And you know what? When I think about it, that's kind of sad. Because, on the whole, us fanfic readers are pretty forgiving and tolerant of a lack of perfection (back to the 'look at the canon, for goodness sake' statement). We are also very honest about faults, ours and those we seen in the fanfic we read. And I love to read fanfic. Even imperfect fanfic. I just wish that there was an acceptable way to say, 'I really liked this even though...' because I am happy to not expect perfection

jadelennox - recommendations: why we rec and why we don't - In a conversation on a (fannish, but not fanfic-oriented fannish) mailing list, some of us found ourselves in the position of defending fanfiction from the accusation of being "used teabags". I ended up defending fanfic in terms which, while not technically overblown, really only apply to the cream of the crop. High quality writing, as good as or better than its published sisters, which has the added bonus of providing fascinating new insights into and interpretations of the source material, or some such. Which *is* true of some gems in fandom, seriously. // But not only is that not everything in fandom, but I'm not sure that *should* be everything in fandom.

oyceter - Vid beta-ing - The nifty things about beta-ing include watching a vid take shape from draft to draft, watching the vidder move just a clip or two and have the entire vid's argument crystallize, or adding a few fades to create parallels were there were none before. I'm always amazed by this. Usually I send back comments on the first few drafts that go something like, "I am very confused. Uh... maybe redo entire portion?" and sit back and feel tremendously guilty. But then, it'll come back, and really, not that much will have changed, but the brief adjustments make such a giant difference.