General
sailormac - Fans Propose *Real* Theories About The "Ewww, Het!" Phenomenon - This poster talks about the "Uncanny Valley," a theory of robotics in which people will accept a robot that either looks entirely mechanical (C3PO) or one that looks entirely human (Blade Runner's Replicants), but when there's a robot that looks *just off* of being human (the lovebot from Serenity), it freaks people out. This can also be applied to entertainment -- note that a lot of people described the animation style of "Polar Express" as creepy. When applied to het fic, according to this theory, the het sex is *just enough* off real people's experiences to make the reader uncomfortable.

erykah101 - Untitled - Is it possible that slash writers are making men into better "women", rather than making women into better women in their stories?

caras_galadhon - Public Hair: (Un)Acceptable Contact and Celebrity-- - Ok, so there's some discussion going around about acceptable contact with one's living, breathing fannish object (and by that I mean actors/creators/etc. of favoured texts), and I started to answer a friend's post about it (not linked because it's locked, sorry), but I realized that where her post was primarily about the acceptableness of showing fan creative works to fan objects, my answer was starting to go wide and touch on some things that didn't really have a lot to do with her original discussion.

marythefan - are you *kidding* me with this? - Because I'm sorry, but anti-RPS people could not possibly find my fantasy about Justin Timberlake and Lance Bass fumbling around together in the back of the tour bus creepier than I find people who object to RPS because ZOMG they must PROTECT the VIRTUE of Celebrity X, as if it's their place to be the keeper of Celebrity X's virtue, or something.

twinkledru - Bitch, are you for real? (oh, he's started on the Blue Man Group) - I started out kind of uncomfortable with RPF. That changed, but it wasn't, as I recall, due to any particular essay or argument; it was something I grew comfortable with on my own. Things like this, you're not going to convince anyone by telling them that it's stupid for them to think like they do, just like I am not going to convince my girlfriend that Who is teh awesome by simply telling her she's dumb not to find it more than mildly entertaining, and just like straight girls are not going to convince me to see BBM by telling me that I'm a bad gay for not wanting to do.

cereta - When the fan is a teacher and the teacher is a fan. Well, not really. I just like the symmetry. - We talk a good game about the death of the author, but man, it's really hard to stick to your interpretive guns when the creator is saying you're wrong. Which is one of the reasons why my instinct is to say that while interacting with creators can be interesting, I pretty much want them as far away from fan creations as possible.

witchqueen - Re: why I don't want to send fanac to the creators - You know, my actual problem with giving TPTB our stuff is that 90% of them won't know how to read it.

Fandom-Specific ( Cut for possible spoilers in Smallville, Buffy, Angel, Star Wars, House, BSG, Firefly and Harry Potter fandoms. )

On Creating and Criticism
topaz_eyes - random musings on editing already-posted stories - As perfectionist as I am, I can't justify constant editing of older stories, at least for myself. The thing is that a story will never be perfect, no matter how much you work on it. Months, years later you're going to revisit it and think "I should've used this word" or "I should've tightened this sentence."

matociquala - Untitled - Some tropes speak specifically to some people. They're a kink, in other words; there's something about them that works really well for certain readers. (Or they can be an anti-kink, like the dread awe with which I approach Rennaisance biographical novels. I mean, I keep reading the freaking things. And I keep whining about them. It's a bloody sickness, it is.)

liviapenn - A discussion about PWPs - Rape stories aren't PWPs, are they, but not all stories with dubious consent are rape stories, right? So yeah, PWPs can have issues of consent in them, but I wouldn't call any serious, realistic rape story a PWP.

Polls, Questions, Other
kyuuketsukirui - Pairing poll - What does the pairing info in a header mean to you?

rotpunkt - Why do you write/read slash? - know there are already lots of studies who tell us why we write and read slash, but if I understood one thing about slash-fans, it is that you can´t generalize and put them all together in one big pot.. Every woman has her own personal reasons, likings and dislikings, and I´m interested in the variety and multitude of motivations. Therefore I want to know YOUR motivation to write/read slash rather than reading one more study on slash which explains the motivation of "the women."

yhlee - No ulterior motives, none at all... - What would you say Buffy's influence on sf/f has been?

gmth - Other people's pet peeves - So let's say you're cruising through your friends list, and you run across yet another post where someone is discussing his/her fan fiction pet peeves.

eirena - Questions for fic writers (for my paper) - About a month ago, I posted a request for fic writers who were willing to be surveyed for an academic paper on fandom as participatory culture. Well, anyone who is still interested, this post is the questions I'd love for you to answer in as much depth as you feel able or willing :)