General Fandom Meta

matociquala - Oh, the foolhardiness of involving one's self in fandom politics - Okay, I'm pretty much a long-time fanfiction apologist/defender. // But am I marking myself as a complete square if I have to ask: what is Harry Potter/CSI mpreg doing on my Tiptree long list?

coffeeandink - Genderbending and other verbs - The problem is, of course, that one person's genderbending can be another person's gender conservatism. This is something I've run into repeatedly in reading manga and Japanese fiction, where tropes that seemed extremely radical to me on first reading ended up much more troubling and limiting once I saw how often they were used and how they interacted with other rules that defined appropriate or heroic character behavior. And yet--because there's always an "and yet"--do the second thoughts negate the sense of freedom I got from the first read? I still have that broader range of stories to choose from, stories about people and society and, yes, gender.

jonquil - The Tiptree kerfuffle - One of the long-listed entries for the Tiptree award is non-consensual Harry Potter/CSI male pregnancy fanfic. Many of the people on my friendslist have read the piece and gasped in disbelief -- not simply at the concept, the copyright implications, but at the laughable quality of the writing itself.

elisem - There goes the Tiptree Award doing its job again... - ... by which I mean contributing to interesting discussions about gender stuff.

cofax7 - something meaningful yet pithy - So let's talk about completed and high quality fanfiction that would be worth discussing in the light of what the Tiptree wants to accomplish.

shoiryu - eyeing little girls with bad intent. - Okay. This is something elitist and probably kind of bitchy but with every new FST or Fanmix I see posted to any of the "fandom soundtrack" communities, I giggle more and more.

loligo - since we're all talking about it today... - ... can someone *please* explain the attraction of MPREG to me? I don't mean this in a hostile way -- I would honestly love for someone who enjoys this particular subgenre of fic to explain to me what it is about it that interests them. Is it thought-provoking? Is it a sexual kink? Is it perceived as the only "real" way for Our (Male) Heroes to end up with a child?

aubrem - i'm in a confusing place - I often wonder about lurkers - why do they lurk? Don't they feel a compulsion to talk about the fanfic? When I first read fanfic and realized the authors were reachable, I couldn't stop myself from commenting in their LJs and interacting.

cereta - Core/Staple/Pick Your Term Fandoms - So throw 'em at me. What do you see as big/major/significant slash fandoms?

nekokoban - Concessions to girliness? - But the point is, most of the time, I am either bored or irritated by excessive schmoopiness in a lot of stuff. I don't like romantic comedies [...] // And yet, and yet, when the series is not deliberately trying to be romantic -- when it's something that is not marketed as a romance -- I can be, and often am, WIBBLY AS HELL OVER PAIRINGS.

executrix - The Art of Coarse Fanfic - ...spinning off, of course, from Michael Green's "The Art of Coarse Acting," which is no doubt familiar to the Theatricals among you but should be read by everyone--truly one of the funniest books I've ever read. // The first parallel that comes to mind is that a Coarse Acting troupe, like a Coarse Rugby team, never has quite enough players--as is inevitably true of every ficathon ever.

thassalia - Must Sleep!! - Aeryn and Scully, in different ways, are coded as masculine - logical, practical, reacting based on thought and not emotion. Aeryn's the soldier,the protector, sees sex as an activity not an intimacy, has little use for love. Scully's a scientist, a better shot, a clearer head. And while these qualities shift and change and are redefined and expanded, we initially start with characters who are flipping our typical/traditional gender roles on their heads. // So what does this have to do with fic? Well, it's no secret that we all have our own versions of the characters, and for me, there's no faster turn off in fic than to take these fabulous "masculinized" women, and make them weepy little girls, to put them back in those boxes of traditional female roles

sailormac in fanthropology - People Coming Late to Fandom - Does the age that a person comes to fandom affect how they'll experience it? Are younger fans more likely to take odder things in stride? Are older ones less likely to get involved in flame wars?

kyuuketsukirui - Encouragement - Basically, I don't think fandom gives the right sort of encouragement. Fandom is all about cheering you on and patting you on the back, yes, but is it deserved? Rarely. And that? Does no one any favors. Praising someone's fic or art to be nice when it's actually crap is doing them a disservice.

musesfool - to her that ain't nothing, but to me it means everything - Look, I get the whole wanting to be the best thing, wanting to compare and compete and crow because you won while everyone else lost. I was a grades junkie throughout school. I still sometimes feel that sense of competition, especially these days when feedback is so very public, and I can look at other people's stories and see their comment counts, and how piddling mine are in comparison, especially when I think my stories are better (and it's no secret that I often do think that, even when they probably aren't). // But awards for Best Story or whatever are meaningless outside the narrow confines of the group that awarded it.

On Writing/Reading

annezo - Fandom (Parenthetically) - With a few notable exceptions[...] it seems like most "writers" these days are going for "fics" (an abomination), "ficlets" (an even worse abomination), "comment-fic" (whatever), "flash" fic, and "drabbles" (okay, harder than it looks), rather than writing what I (in my infinite wisdom and ownership of the universe) call "real" stories.

alixtii - Meta: Monsters, Morality, and Mimesis - By writing about monsters--indeed by glorifying in their will to power--am I condoning their actions? Am I condoning that is acceptable to infringe on human freedoms in the name of security, in defiance of the one principle which I hold most dear? The answer to that strikes me as unequivocately no; none of these stories come with disclaimers saying "The behavior in this story is morally acceptable." They are fantasy and wish-fulfillment, not how I really want the world to be but how I sometimes like to pretend it is (or could be). But neither do they (nor should they) come with disclaimers saying "The views expressed by this fic are not necessarily those of the author." We should take responsibility for our creations.

elspethdixon - Musing on hurt/comfort - After reading everyone’s opinions on the subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that hurt/comfort isn’t one single kink, but two (or possibly more) intertwined kinks. One can have comfort!kink without onscreen hurt, or hurt!kink without comfort, or one can have both at once; real “Hurt/Comfort.”