Fandom Meta

fictualities - 2007-03-16: fictualities: Ghosts of fandoms past - "Total fannish passion is a fantastic high - but no one can live like that. At least I can't. . . . So is that good or bad? I don't know. I sometimes wonder whether we see both things and people truly ONLY through the eyes of love -- whether the passionate engagement that in our more sensible moments we dismiss as unreasonable is the only thing that lets us escape the cage of selfhood and value other people as they should be valued."

penknife - 2007-03-15: penknife: WNG vs. WS - "I think a lot of the discussion of WNGWJLEO equates two statements -- "we're not gay" and "we're straight" -- and for me, they're not the same thing at all."

kyuuketsukirui - 2007-03-15: kyuuketsukirui: Lurking - "I don't think lurkers are creepy or weird. . . . But the smaller a fandom is or the rarer your kink/interest/pairing, the more everyone has to make an effort or it's just going to wither and die, or not even get off the ground to begin with."

almostnever - 2007-03-13: almostnever: what gets you right here - "Rodney, in all his geeky overconfidence, doesn't overly compel me in most fic because, while I have a bit of a competency kink, it's not the main thing that pulls me in. People tend to write John as stoic and dude-ish, also not a big draw for me. . . . So that made me consider the characteristics that do tend to suck me in and make me care about a character."

ladyofastolat - 2007-03-13: ladyofastolat: Fandom, the two-headed god -"There are a lot of positives in being involved in a community of people who all love the same thing that you do. If there weren't, no-one would do it. But what I have been thinking about today is the negative side of this. Can involvement in fandom actually detract from your enjoyment of the source material?"

Specific Fandom Meta

( Cut for possible Spoilers for the Fandom: House )

On Reading and Writing

hesychasm - 2007-03-16: hesychasm: if I'm writing, I'm meta-ing about writing - "Self-insertion in fanfic is such a no-no. The goal for most of us is to keep the characters IN CHARACTER, whatever that means, and it's both the best intellectual game ever and the most nerve-wracking one. . . . But you know, sometimes what makes me cleave strongly to a character is the fact that we share particular characteristics."

malnpudl - 2007-03-13: malnpudl: Our friend, the foreskin - "When I entered due South fandom, I found myself for the first time reading about a character (Benton Fraser) who is almost universally assumed to be uncircumcised. It was quickly apparent, in reading dS fic, that some of the people writing it didn't have personal experience with uncut guys . . . Since there are a few things that make me wince or say 'ew' when I run across them in fic, I thought I'd share my own anecdotal information about uncut penises."

Links, Polls, etc

perfica - 2007-03-15: Genre/Pairing Meta - "I freely admit that I love WNGWJLEO stories for a whole variety of reasons and I'm glad people have been talking about the differences between the first and second generations of this genre. I also admit that I have a hard time reading and enjoying stories where one or both of the pairing are in a relationship with someone else. What I'm trying to discover – is there a correlation between having an OTP and preferring to read WNGWJLEO stories?"

kennahijja - 2007-03-15: kennahijja: Feedback Writing Whinge - "First off, this is not a rant about what I think feedback should be like. Instead, it's hyper-personal whinging about what I wish *my* feedback writing habits would be like, finished off by a poll that's playing with extremes, but about which I'm very curious."

bluebrocade - 2007-03-16: bluebrocade: POLL - please help us with our fan convention panel. - "We (myself and my two co-moderators) are trying to gather some informal statistics on whether or not most fangirls (or fanboys!) are open in "real life" (RL) about reading/writing slash (i.e. are you in the slash closet?). We are co-moderating a panel at a very small fangirl gathering and this information will help us in our discussion."

crantz - 2007-03-14: crantz: Please forgive the poor canadian for any screw ups here - Poll #946492 POLITICAL LEANINGS OF FICTIONAL BEINGS"