General
thete1 - Race, Genre. More. - Thanks to ladyjax and sageness, you all get to read this wonderful, heartfelt, no-this-is-me-too! essay by Pam Noles about, well, what it's been like to be a Black genre fan.

brown_betty - Hmmm, how to say this politely? - If someone writes a long post demonstrating a systematic bias in a group you belong to, and you aren't part of the problem, then why do you feel the need to make the discussion all about how you aren't part of the problem?

witchwillow - This is a rant - Are you kidding me? Are you serious? Are you out there in fandom not writing people of color because in all the hours you spend watching a show, playing an episode, going over the transcripts, dissecting the meaning of a show and all the other characters - you don't have the voice of the character of color on your show?

coffeeandink - "I Put You There" and Media Fandom - "I Put You There" is the love story of Fan Girl and Rupert Giles. FG starts off as a consumer; she watches TV and she reads magazines. But she is not quite the consumer marketers and the entertainment industry know; the consumer they know is passive, merely an audience, and if female frequently excluded and/or objectified. The consumer--or perhaps I should say "protofan"--here is not an object; she is the subject of the song (the person who sings, the "I") and the subjectivity (the person who sees, the eye) of the vid from the very first image. Even before she becomes more active, FG has an active gaze: she defines the object of desire; the movement of her eyes defines the point of view of the vid.

cofax7 - untitled - I think that fans do respond differently, read things differently, than other fans. That way of reading/seeing--whether you call it slash goggles or not--is what makes us fans. And I've done the whole show-vids-to-nonfans thing, and most of them are boggled and confused. They're not seeing the same vids we are.

neekabe in fanthropology - Masculinity, gender roles, and slash - So then insert those broader definitions of masculinity into North American culture and the slash/yaoi culture. The Manly man is the top, the male that would be the role model for any alternate type of masculinity becomes the 'weepy uke' pretty quickly and fairly consistantly (there are, of course, exceptions and people who write without falling back on these stereotypes and so on, but these stereotypes do exist).

vee_fic - I invented pants - I am reading iamsab talk about how fandom is the internet, and the eyeballs are a-comin', and not only is there nothing to do about that, trying to pretend it's not happening is like begrudging the rain its right to fall. And reaction to that concept has rolled around my corner of the internet, a bit, and I can see quite a few of the eleventy-million sides of the issue.

musesfool - keep it secret, keep it safe - The internet makes Fandom more accessible and more visible every single day, and more and more people are going to discover it through sources new and unknown and not the old way.

st_crispins - Anniversary of the Squee Heard 'Round the World - Tonight, 42 years ago, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. premiered on NBC. // Sadly, I wasn't watching it that night. It took nearly 10 months for me to catch up with it. But once I did, I never let go. // Nevertheless, this is the birthday of, not only our fandom, but in some sense, *all* of media fandom.

almostnever - online socialization, excess of choice, people as commodities - We're getting the point where our social tools are allowing us to choose our friends as efficiently as we can choose a brand of cereal. But the basis for these social tools is shared interests. As they grow more and more sophisticated, we're going to be able to find people who share most of the same interests as us. But would you actually want to spend time with those people?

millefiori - Fannish Dysfunction - I think a personal relationship with one of TPTB is just as likely as a personal relationship with any other stranger I might meet--it depends on personality, common interests, chemistry, whatever weird elusive thing that makes people like one another. Why wouldn't it be?

worldserpent - The So-Called Feral Fandoms - In many net discussions, the word "feral fandom" generally is used in the context of a problem. Just because a group of people do not follow the practices of another group does not mean that they have no rules regulating their behavior.The use of the word "feral," I think, sets up a hierarchy, where the ways of 'civilized fandom' are set apart as superior (or at least normative, or more worthy of attention and study, regardless of the actual demographics involved.

Polls, Questions, Other
caras_galadhon - I'm Not Just Here For The Free Drinks (Why Do We Stay in Fandom?)-- - Tell me about the good things you've experienced in fandom. Anecdotes, examples, links, everything and anything is welcome, as long as it illustrates why you are here.

ladyjax - Call For Submissions - Welcome to Boom Tube : a zine about Race, Culture and Fandom

glockgal - Have you ever received feedback for a fanwork (fic, art, icon, wallpaper, etc) that you've posted on LJ? - the feedback receipt thang

burr86 in feedback - livejournal question and answer - Got a question?