General

fabularasa: Because Isis made me think. I confess to not really having any compelling fannish interests at the moment. I'm not much reading anything fannish at all, so if there's something you REALLY want me to see, you'd better hit me over the head with something and say "READ THIS!" So what the hell am I doing on LJ? Well, after years of sneering at "cats and refrigerator contents" posts, turns out that's what I'm here for, after all.

sprat: Dear Fandom, You have your wanky days, it's true. You have your cliques and your capriciousness and your moments of all-out batshit crazy. But when it comes right down to it, I love you for those things as much as I love your moments of brilliance or beauty.

lotesseflower: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Writing Rambly Meta Fanfic watches itself watching, the way that theater does (the way that women do?). And some things just can't be translated, even though you can make a movie of a play.

ithiliana: irony, it's right next to bronzey and goldy! I just want to note the extent to which awards are always controversial and not just in fandom. And if all the critics of the award were on the committee for Tiptree in the next year, and spent a HUGE bloody amount of time on the job, and did their best--well, they'd get yelled at by some people, praised by others, and that's the way the cookie crumbles.

des_butterfly in fanficrants: All Fans in all Fandoms, Please remember that web publishing is still publishing even if you aren't getting paid for it. When you take something you wrote and put it up on a public website, you are assuming, nay hoping that it will be viewed by other people. That's what the internet is good for: getting stuff seen by thousands upon thousands of different people in a short period of time with very little cost to yourself.

angisageek: How "real" is too real? I came into fanfiction writing RPS back when it was still considered "gross" by fandom at-large...."How can it be an invasion of privacy if you're just making it up for fanfiction?" and "It's much less likely to get you in trouble with The Powers That Be than media fic!"...And I think that worked then — back before MySpace and Facebook, back when you got information from the official website, or poorly put together fansites, or articles in magazines, or books written years after the fact — when you have absolutely no interaction outside of the Real Person to the fan type interaction, then all that stands up. But when you add in new technology, new ways of getting information about people, I think it gets a little sticky.

sailorptah in erin_fans: May 21 comic: pairing meta Do other people find themselves gravitating towards pairing types? Does it reflect at all on personality? What would Freud say?

dragonlady7: pondering fictional relationships It came to me, as I was lying in bed under all my blankets being an idle sloven (why, yes, I have been useless today, why do you ask?), that the relationships my characters have in fiction are very different than the relationships I have in real life.

roachspit: Is is just me, or is this sleazy? It can't just be me, can it? The following excerpt of a fan letter from a well-known comic book artist...A few more close-ups when the heroine is hit in the face might work from time to time as well as similar close-ups of her reacting to other attacks. Also, is there any possibility that the model could occasionally work barelegged rather than in the shimmery tights? ...Thanks, George. We've spent so much time trying to get DC to treat us like people instead of like women, and YOU ARE NOT HELPING.

Reading, writing, vidding, criticism

tigertrapped: Exploration vs resolution But just recently I've been wondering about the reaction of readers to ambiguity, especially ambiguous endings in long stories/series. And it's made me wonder if closure isn't a prerequisite of fanfiction for a lot of people.

wistful_fever: Vidding Thoughts Vidders should really have a regular kickback and relax day where they make a vid for pure self-gratification or for a group of friends. They should take time to break all those self imposed rules and get back to the *love* of it, say screw the artistry and just ENJOY it.

ajhalluk: What's the difference between "Fluff" and "Romance"? I'd recently finished Radway's Reading The Romance and it struck me that while people who don't read much of either may be inclined to assume that fluff=romance and vice versa that this isn't in fact true: following the narrative structure Radway outlined as the backbone of "successful" romance may - depending on touch and tone - produce something which is fluffy but which is not fluff.

kyuuketsukirui: Rereading It seems like a lot of people in fandom, the overwhelming majority, are really into rereading stuff. Not just fic, but books, too, and rewatching movies and TV shows. For myself, when I'm looking for something to read, it literally does not occur to me to reread something if I can't find something new. I'll just not read. I've always been that way, too.