General

sailormac in fanthropology: Fandom Apostasy On another community that I'm on, the subject came up of fandom apostasy -- people who not only defect from fandom, but denounce it later on, calling those still involved weirdoes and the like.... // How common is this? Has anyone else seen examples of it?

featherxquill: TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FANDOM JOURNEYS Tell me how you started being a fan, the places you moved through, how it's affected you or even changed your life. What you got out of fandom when you started, and what you get out of it now. How it's changed, and why, if you know :)

mikhale: age doesn't matter Everywhere on fandom, you get fangirls that squee, salivate and laugh at their shows or characters. To some extent, you don't even know their real names and you refer to fellow fangirls by their LJ usernames, FF account name, etc.

elance: Fanfiction, zines, and legality Publishing a zine at cost/nearly at cost is in no way making a profit off fanfiction. In fact if anything it usually means a significant loss, as there are things like shipping and table fees at cons to take into account. // Zines have a long history of publication. They're how fanfiction got started, in fact.

rhap_chan: preferred canon If your fandom has two or more sources of canon, which do you prefer, and why? // Another question: do you ignore the canon you dislike?

astridv: [untitled] I'm stumped on what a fundamental level the anti-fic crowd don't get us. // They do not get the basic motivation for writing fanfic. They don't even seem to realize that there's a whole group of people who love to read it, that there's an actual eager audience for it, that fic is - among other things - an act of communication. That it fills a need.

darkrosetiger: Bless me, Father, for I have written fanfiction This made me wonder: for people who believe that fanfiction is always and incontrovertibly wrong, how to you categorize fanfic writers who've "set their sights higher" and gotten published?

executrix: Cabbage Soup; Or, Dude, Where's My Genre I think it's clearly wrong to say "Fanfic is a genre"; it's a means of production, which is something else entirely.

shusu: LJ: on narrative vectors and three instances of re-imaging There's chatter on the ether about fanfiction becoming more visible, and these seem to take it from the other end: using "fanfic" techniques to expand the reach of narrative and art to one's audience.

feklar: Is it fanfic or RP (real person) fic? It's an adventure novel by the WWE fearturing WWE professional wrestlers as secret agents. // My first response was "Oh my god. The WWE is publishing its own fanfic..."

cereta: It's that time again! So: who would you like to see write an episode of your favorite show/arc of your favorite comic/whatever interpretation you have here.

beccaelizabeth: Observation on identification There are six billion people on this planet. That means at least six billion different identities. And they'd probably identify with sixty-six billion different characters if they had the options.

Writing, Reading, Creating, Criticism

ghost_lingering: In lieu of homework: meta on things I possibly know And I've pretty much been thinking: "Someone should just write a guide to writing characters of color. Cause, really, I don't think it's as different or hard as people say, or at least no harder than writing any character."

witchqueen: Some advice for white people in fandom For some reason, you have resolved that now is the time you will write/draw/vid/icon a Character of Color from your favorite TV show, movie, book, or other media property. // You're puzzled about how to do it, and you're scared that there will be consequences, right? Well, I, an actual Fan of Color, am going to give you some advice on how to grab your CoCs, and what to do if the FoCing Cabal* accuses you of abusing your CoCs.

ophidiae: [untitled] A word of advice to those of you considering writing in dialect, particularly dialects of the Southern variety:// Don't.

aubrem: recs? Is it my imagination or have all the recs gone away? [HP]

alixtii: Meta: 3 Types of RPF I Like Very Much, with Recs In my experience, RPF can bring attention to its own inter/textuality in three main ways:

minim_calibre: [Writing] Hitting "repeat" on the theme playlist, is it eally such a bad thing? Why do I fret about how many times I can write about forgiveness and acceptance, of loss and love? Because isn't it a part of writing, to tell and retell the tale, with differing perspectives on a whole we can never quite grasp with our own two, too human hands?

annezo: Write Off I'm fascinated by people who write for an audience. I wonder how they decide who their audience is, how they actually write for an audience. Do they select story ideas for that purpose, include specific things in their stories, leave other things out, write for specific pairings, etc.? // My audience is me, and I already have my attention.

isiscolo: author's notes and 'dvd' commentaries This got me thinking about what I like and don't like, in general, in authorial commentary. [poll]

penknife: In which Penknife indulges in punctuation Dearest fandom, let us talk for a moment about the vocative comma.