misscam: Why do you ship - and what sort of fandom troubles can that lead to? — "Here's a question for you shippers of various fandom - what's your main attraction to a particular ship? (Non-shippers, your opinions are sought at the end as well.)"

nostalgia_lj: Tyne, Dogger. Northeast 3 or 4. Occasional rain. — "I am even confused by "this is the most likely pairing, so I shall ship it" cos again, what if the one you like most is Never Gonna Happen and the probably canon-ship bores or annoys you in some way? // Hm. I think my immediate knee-jerk response is "no, you just happen to like one that's canon/ish" because I still think we ship on gut instinct and fic-kinks and then try to justify after the fact. But that makes me feel guilty because maybe people really do that. Do they?"

nakeisha: Reading Slash in Fandom Poll Results and more on OTPs (including another poll) — "The results of question one in particular really surprised me, and go to show that my understanding of the term One True Pairing (OTP) appears no longer to be the 'norm', (if one can ever use that term to define anything in fandom), and that the definition of the term has, like so many other fandom terms, evolved. // For me OTP means that the pairing are together and that one doesn't read/write about half of the pairing with another character, unless it's before the OTP get together and by the end of the story they are indeed together. They are the pairing and are not put with other characters."

vaznetti: thinking about crossovers — "Even when a crossover seems mind-numbingly obvious to me, I know that I need to sell it to whoever's reading the story. Or at least, I know I ought to; sometimes I'm too lazy a writer and skimp on that. One thing I don't do, though, is write the full background into the story, which makes them less accessible to someone who only knows one of the fandoms. I know that this is a problem but I can't do it without seeming artificial, and I'd rather write a story which I think is good than a story which I think is accessible."

thecaelum in social_meta: Discussion: Ownership — "Fans sometimes feel a sense of ownership over works created in their fandom, and this can extend to the person who creates them. That this person belongs to the fandom, and by extension to the fans in that fandom. This can be somewhat beneficial in supporting a community atmosphere, and it can also be a negative thing. I've seen it go both ways, and a variety of ways between the two."

yin_again: Modern-day ego-surfing — "My two cents/horrible confession as a reader: I read NC-17 stuff first.Flist, newsletter, recs - whatever. I love porn. I read it first. Then, if there's time, I'll work my way down the list. Of course, there's a subset of my flist that are good friends and writers, and I read whatever they care to write. There's another subset who are writers that I don't know all that well, but I'll give them preference over writers not on my flist. Last in line is the group of writers NOT on my flist, but if I find one I like, I immediately friend them, so they get encompassed by the other categories. // Readers? What do you read? What do you leave feedback for? What do ou want to leave feedback for but don't actually do it? What's your personal standard for leaving feedback?"

slippyslope: It's good TV, but is it canon? — "How do you determine what the author intends, and how much does it matter? What if another reader sees it differently, or doesn't see it at all? What if the author clarifies outside the text? Is that canon, or some kind of quasi-canon? How much weight do you give it? This is where my head starts spinning and I run away right on the heels of the rest of fandom." [spoilers for Stargate: Atlantis]