metafandom

Friday, June 3, 2011

2011-06-04T04:52:26Z

facetofcathy: Links about representation - I want writers (in the general sense) to expand their character palette. But in the specific, I want writers to do it out of a drive to write that particular character as a character, not as an ambassador from planet X!Identity making a special guest appearance in fic now for the very first time. -
(tags: writing fanfic kink oppression)

bironic: [in kink_bingo] Force Me, Please: On Noncon and Noncon Play in Fanfic - This is an essay about nonconsensual sex (noncon) and noncon roleplay in fanfic, why I love them, why they may work for other people, and how approximately one zillion kinks complement them -
(tags: kink fanfic)

sailorptah: How to write Fic About Issues without it becoming Issuefic - Issuefic at its worst is didactic, boring, and with cookie-cutter characterization thanks to everything being subsumed by the goal of Making A Point, which is handled with about as much subtlety as a whack-a-mole mallet. (I could go on.)But for the most part, I don't think writers set out to lecture. They just set out to write Non Faily Fic about some srs bsns subject or another, and try too hard. -
(tags: fanfic writing)

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

2011-06-02T06:05:13Z

needled_ink_1975: Mind their language! - Please, please don't go grabbing bits of foreign-to-you languages from those "Common Phrases in Language X" websites. You might be able to get away with it if you only use really common words like the translation for 'Okay/all right,' 'Yes,' 'No,' 'Please,' and 'Thank you.' Very often, you won't get away with any more than that. -
(tags: fanfic language)

elf: Cry OC, and let slip the sues of fic - I've been pondering which fandoms lend themselves to OC-heavy fic, maybe only-OC fic. I'm focusing on "normal" media fandoms, rather than things like games or works of art or songs; I'm not addressing fandoms that many fanfic archives wouldn't acknowledge as sources for fic. I want to think about (and therefore, inflict you) the fandoms that *could* have lots of OC fic, but just don't. -
(tags: characters ocs fanfic)

petra: [in kink_bingo] Ramp-up Essay: Writing Dirty Talk - My golden rules for writing dirty talk are "What would this character enjoy saying?" and "What would their partner(s) want to hear?" -
(tags: kink writing)

aris_tgd: [in kink_bingo] Ramp-up Essay: Discipline, and the Line Between Guilt and Shame - if you're writing discipline, if you figure out which side of the guilt/shame divide you're on, it's easier to figure out what kind of emotions need to be present in the scene. And focusing on those emotions can make any kind of writing more immediate, and give your characters something to focus on between counting blows. -
(tags: kink writing)

pinesandmaples: [in kink_bingo] Ramp-up Essay: Opening the door, or how fanfic changes everything - yes, we create awesome kinky pieces as part of this event, but there are larger implications! There is so much power and potential tied up in each piece we create and release into the wild. Who knows what switches it will flip, and what buttons it will push for someone who is searching? -
(tags: kink sexuality fanfic)

Friday, May 27, 2011

2011-05-28T03:40:43Z

snowynight: Asexuality and Femslash - The challenge of asexuality comes from its pervasive invisibility. -
(tags: femslash asexuality)

redhillbones: Wallaces Wobble But Weevils Fall Down : Race, Class, and Bias in Veronica Mars - Veronica Mars is intentionally racist. It highlights the inequalities perpetrated on persons of color in a world where white persons are predominantly in power and rich. It’s not subtle about it. It wants you to see that these inequalities exist. So, the problem isn’t that VM is racist. The problem is that it’s so intentionally racist that it's easy to miss how it's unintentionally racist as well. -
(tags: vm race racism)

anivad: here is my J201 term paper. - SurveyFail, Internet Communities and the Subaltern: Giving Voices to the Powerless -
(tags: sexuality fandom)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

2011-05-26T16:11:56Z

elf: Does "fanfic" mean "other people's characters?" - Is a writeup of a D&D game "fanfic?" Does it have to focus on the canonical characters & settings to be fanfic, or is the fact that it's set in a canonical world enough? The more I poke around fanfic things, the more it seems that "fanfic" often means "someone else's characters." Not someone else's settings; not fic inspired by a canonical source; not retelling someone else's stories. Those are acknowledged as fanfic (and Yuletide gets lots of them), but they get the sideways look, the double-take followed by, "oh yeah ... I guess that can be fanfic too." -
(tags: fanfic gaming)

slagsmacker: Location, Location, Location (or why am I here?) - Posting - Where femslash writers post/why/where femslash writers don't post/why -
(tags: femslash archiving)

sqbr: Political fanart - I googled "political art" to get some ideas, and came across this post of 50 political artworks. And as I scrolled through thinking about what a transformative version of such art might look like I realised: many of them are transformative already. -
(tags: fanart)

snowynight: Where 're the femslash little black dress - My hypothesis about the lack of femslash little black dress is thus: There're just not enough female characters. Even nowadays a show can be without one female major character. -
(tags: femslash characters)

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

2011-05-19T18:28:26Z

morgandawn: TEWFIBBA (weacatst)* - Three Easy Ways For Increasing Big Bang Accessibility (while eating a cookie at the same time) -
(tags: bigbangs accessibility ebooks)

morgandawn: Thoughts about making the Big Bang more accessible - More fans (not just ones with disabilities) are now using eReaders to read Big Bang fic. They're running into a few problems - not being able to access older fic or art when LJs or websites go down (by older I mean sometimes as little as a few months) and the amount of work it takes to reformat multi-part LJ stories into a format that an eReader can use. -
(tags: bigbangs accessibility ebooks)

helens78: Get your IJ, if you still want it - the number of people who are saying in comments that IJ "isn't your archive" and we "shouldn't expect IJ to archive our journals" are making me see red. I know that a lot of these people are probably kiddos whose primary experience in interactive journaling sites is the constant ephemery of Twitter and Tumblr, but those of us who have been keeping journals one place or another for ten years, and refer back to those entries? Yes, we do expect to be able to come back to our original service and see the archives of our past history, or the past history of our friends. -
(tags: ij archiving deleting)

dragovianknight: Y'all know I love Insane Journal - But I am really, really not happy about the current purge of journals which haven't been active since January 2010. Not happy about the fact that Squeaky, who supposedly understood fandom and welcomed us, doesn't give a damn about wiping out stories and art and history which may not be archived anywhere else, and not happy about the fact that he set the journals to deleted, and THEN sent out emails telling us how to save our journals if we wanted to keep them. -
(tags: IJ deleting)

naraht: Is slash necessary? and further fannish fail from me - I continue to be thinky about the potentially problematic nature of saying "I don't have slash goggles, I only see what's actually in the canon." Does seeing clearly and contextually when it comes to queer representation imply a need for slash goggles, or perhaps simply an understanding of how they can operate to redress a long-standing and systemic representational imbalance? Is not being able to see that way a result of internalized heteronormative assumptions? And how is it that I grok The Celluloid Closet but not Kirk/Spock? -
(tags: slash canon subtext)

lightgetsin: Tumblr - Hi, I’m Light and I’m blind and I read political tumblrs, I read porn tumblrs, I read the fanfic flamingo, I read stupid tumblrs about cats. Please stop deciding I don’t get to like your stuff. -
(tags: tumblr accessibility)

blueraccoon: what started as one thing, and turned into something else. - I cannot overemphasize how important safewords are. If you start fic without them, you're basically saying that no one has a right to say no, and how fucked up is that? Consent is not implied, and no one should be forced into ANYTHING without it. -
(tags: kink fanfic consent)

Saturday, May 14, 2011

2011-05-14T17:17:12Z

This is a catchup post for the links we missed posting. Due to size, it is behind the cut.

cschick: Publication is Publication - In some ways, I can't believe that more than 15 years after the first evidence that the Internet can be eternal, we're still fighting this fight.Publication, whether you publish online or in print, is publication. When you publish, copyright applies. Yet copyright is about more than the rights granted to the author.
[...]
For years, I've played with an evolving design for a new fan fiction archive, and this idea was certainly something that never occurred to me. Once a reader saves a file into their own electronic bookshelf, they forever own a particular copy of that file--whether they've downloaded it to their physical computer or not. The fan fiction community would explode. But it is a legally valid interpretation of how copyright functions in combination with electronic bits. -
(tags: fanfic deleting)

morgandawn: LJ News for Fans - LJ has added a feature where comments containing links to "non-whitelisted domains" will be considered spam, screened, and moved to a seperate section. Most fan websites are not white-listed. This applies both to personal journals as well as communities and all journals/communities have this turned on by default. -
(tags: lj howto)

francescacoppa: [in otw_news] Mixed Messages from YouTube's "Copyright School" - In short, YouTube has eliminated its one-size-fits-all three strike termination policy in favor of a revamped Copyright Education Center and an official Copyright School. Unfortunately, the Copyright School is presented in the form of a very one-sided tutorial cartoon that attempts to summarize a complicated and constantly evolving area of law using a teal squirrel in a pirate hat. -
(tags: copyright vidding fair_use media)

elipie: Meta post is meta, and would love your meta discussion! - As many of you know, I wrote a term paper for my fandom class about user interaction and identity on LiveJournal. I've turned in the rough draft already but a lot of it is based on scholarly essays and my own observations, so I'd really like to hear from other LJ users. -
(tags: icons fandom question lj bnfs language anonymity)

murklins: [in deliciouslymad] Delicious has been bought - Yahoo! has sold Delicious to AVOS, a new company started by the founders of YouTube. -
(tags: delicious)

havocthecat: Meta: Femslash Once a Year? - Why is femslash so special and unique that people are only signing up to write it for one specific challenge of the year? Or is it that queer women are that special and unique that they get one challenge a year dedicated to them? -
(tags: femslash challenges yuletide)

catechism: [in deliciouslymad] archiving links - So, like many other fannish users of del, I am concerned about the loss of the community-driven fic/art recs that we now get from delicious. [...] So I was thinking: Well, I guess we're going to have to archive that. -
(tags: archiving delicious)

ira_gladkova: The OTW Server Poll and Fannish Diversity - But I do think this organization could do a damn sight better; I think that a lot of the obstacles currently in our path are neither inherent nor necessary; that the number of obstacles are finite and their height not insurmountable. I think the OTW can and should do better. -
(tags: otw diversity fandom)

rheasilvia: Odd tropes and themes - I frequently stumble across odd little tropes and themes that throw me out of a story. I don't mean big anti-buttons or turn-offs here – these things will not make me dislike a story as a whole, or permanently harm my suspension of disbelief (unless they occur in larger number, that is). They're just small details that ring false to me, but evidently not to the author, and presumably not to many other readers. -
(tags: poll trope)

elf: What I love about the OTW - The OTW cannot, at this time, effectively support fannish diversity. But I love that they keep trying, and that they acknowledge the gaps even nobody can figure out what to do about them. -
(tags: otw diversity)

dagas_isa: [in fem_thoughts] 8 Hypotheses for why f/f stories are more conservative than other types of fanfic - In short, the people who would read more trope-based f/f and the people who would write it keep missing each other. -
(tags: femslash)

anatsuno: More Del.icio.us talk - Imo, there's no other way to preserve the past aggregation of links+tagging than for fans to opt-in to new Del, and there's no other safe way to keep having a networked, useful aggregation of links+tags for fandom than for fans to also use other services. -
(tags: delicious tags)

elz: Some thoughts on OTW - I see good people doing good work, and not for ego-driven reasons or to reshape fandom in their own images. I don't hear rhetoric internally about how we represent or speak for all of fandom; what I hear people talking about internally is what we can do to make our projects better, more usable, more accessible and more inclusive. What problems are people in different parts of fandom having that we might be able to help with? What sort of feedback are we hearing about our current tools? And so forth. -
(tags: otw ao3 diversity)

helkalantto: OTW, diversity and transparency, and my work - In June 2010, I became part of the International Outreach committee, and my main reason was that I percieved the organisation to be too US-centric. There were small things, such as using sentences like "[w]hile fair use is a key component of our intellectual property system" in news posts. There were also big things, such as the fact that at that time the Board was composed entirely of US-American members. And as I supported the OTW and was enthusiastic about it -- still do and still am -- I wanted to do my bit to change this US-centricism. -
(tags: otw diversity)

naraht: No heterosexual explanation...? - Really, though, I want to argue that a canon same-sex pairing should define the concept of No Heterosexual Explanation... for the exact reason that [personal profile] thefourthvine says it doesn't count. Surely every other case listed here is only approaching to that state. Because if the writers really do believe that the characters are doing it, then bar some really good reason for obscuring that information (like, oh, the fact that you're publishing a book in late nineteenth century Britain), then there's no reason for making the viewers play "hunt the gayness" as if it were some sort of Easter egg. -
(tags: slash canon)

thefourthvine: No Heterosexual Explanation Moments - It is the moment when you try, you genuinely, seriously try to take off your slash goggles and figure out what the writers, producers, directors, and actors thought was happening in a scene, and you can only conclude that, no, they must have thought the same-sex pairing was doing it, too. (It can also be the moment that a non-slasher wanders in, studies the screen for a long moment with narrowed eyes, and then says, "They are so fucking each other.") -
(tags: slash)

kate: Questions about tagging. - I'm wondering, how do you determine what you categories you put things in? What 'ships and characters you list?Because I have a hard time with that on longer stories. As soon as things get beyond the ficlet stage, people develop histories and previous relationships and there are minor characters and their relationships, and there are mentions of things and… how do you know? -
(tags: tags ao3)

epershand: Another kind of "no heterosexual explanation" moments - what are your "being a slasher made me not notice obvious canon queer characters" moments? What are the texts that you only belatedly realized didn't need queering? -
(tags: slash canon)

pitseleh: gee wilikers worldbuilding sounds like fun. - This post is here to tell you that no, actually, you don't have to make your own language in order to get names. You can, but you don't have to. You don't actually have to create anything in order to create names. But you have to create something if you want to make good names, though. -
(tags: writing language worldbuilding)

legionseagle: [in hooked_on_heroines] Mary Sue - testing the boundaries - Within the last twenty-four hours I posted a fic up to AO3, which featured an OFC point of view protagonist who, when the story opens, is in her early 60s. No physical description of her [...] is given apart from a hint that she may be suffering mildly from rheumatism. [...] I'm unimpressed to discover that it's already been tagged "Mary Sue" using an AO3 user generated tag. -
(tags: marysue)

gomichan: [in the_slash_pile] Discussion: technical quality - Technical quality in recced stories: how important is it to you? By technical quality I mean spelling, grammar, punctuation, formatting, word choice, and general error-catching. Do you demand perfection? Do you forgive everything? Do you even notice? -
(tags: reccing slash question)

azurelunatic: I exist, and I exist in many universes. (Yet another rant about queer erasure) - Silence = Death. If fictional people are silenced by their authors, then fuck yeah, we're marching right the fuck in and giving them voices. -
(tags: sexuality fandom)

sarajayechan: [in fandom_discuss] Regarding the whole "muses" deal and other related business - I guess what I'm getting at is...how did muses get such a bad rap, and do they always deserve it? Do people who do the muse thing always deserve to be judged harshly, or only the ones who are blatantly obnoxious or batshit about it? -
(tags: writing fanfic)

zvi: [in podficmeta] Fighting For Our Right To Party - [...] there's a long discussion about posting a story podfic first, text delayed [...]. It raises a few interesting questions which you might care to discuss. -
(tags: podfic)

cesy: Prompt Memes on the AO3 - So, essentially, prompt memes will allow you to run some sorts of comment-fic challenges on AO3, though not a full traditional kink meme. They have the structure of lots of prompts and then works posted in response to prompts. They have the ability to mark prompts as "semi-anonymous" -
(tags: ao3 kinkmemes anonymity)

brownbetty: Tell me about your problems! - if you are a kink meme author, are there barriers to archiving your fic that could be addressed? -
(tags: archiving kinkmemes)

elf: Filk & the AO3, Part 2: How the AO3 Could Be The Awesomest Filk Archive Ever - There are, AFAIK, no multi-purpose general-all-filk lyric archives on the web. None. Certainly none that could support contests & collections & gift exchanges. I would love love love to see an AO3-based filk archive—but it'd need features that support filk, which are different from what works best for fic. It would need to have: -
(tags: archiving ao3 filk)

elf: Filk & the AO3, Part 1: Not Feeling the Filk-Love - I'm not thinking, "hey! The AO3 should support filk!" I'm thinking, "hey, if the AO3 wants to support filk, it's not set up for it." And if the theory is, "if filkers want to use AO3, great; when there's enough filk, we'll sort out if it needs any specific changes"—that's not gonna work. -
(tags: archiving ao3 filk)

mini_menace: [in the_slash_pile] Original or Fandom? - Which do you prefer?I started out with original fiction (is that rare thing?) and kinda got suck into fandom(s) by reading some really good AU's that got recommended here. -
(tags: fanfic originalfic question)

Monday, April 18, 2011

2011-04-18T21:13:35Z

sarken: Where do you prefer to read fic? - You know how some authors post the header to their story and then, instead of posting the text, include two clearly-marked links, one of which says something like, "Read this story on Dreamwidth," and the other says something like, "Read this story on Archive of Our Own"? I was just wondering what people do when they see that, so I present you with a poll. -
(tags: reading dreamwidth ao3 poll)

Sunday, April 17, 2011

2011-04-18T12:11:52Z

skaredykat: When stories disappear - back again - Given that there is a culture/etiquette of respected pseudonymity in fandom, shouldn't it be extended to publicly viewable activity around a fan's works or presence once that fan is no longer online? That is, let's not make it publicly obvious that we're connecting dots or actively digging up and sharing past traces of their presence? -
(tags: fanfic deleting)

danceswithgary: Very emphatically no - There are so many different reasons for fanworks or journals or blogs to have been deleted and every one is legitimate even if you don't like it because that person owns those items and it's their right to do what they like with them. If the creator has explicitly said they don't mind copies being distributed, that's one thing, but that shouldn't be the default action or assumed to be the case. -
(tags: fanfic deleting)

kikiko_haru: [in riverside_ebook] Deleted Journals. Is the Fic Fair Game? Part 2 - It goes like this... a journal is deleted with all its fic. The author may or may not have expressed their wish as to what to do with fic still out there (ie request that it not be distributed anymore or so on), or maybe you just can't find the LJ-user anymore. But hey! someone over there *points* was industrious enough to save a copy of it to their hard drive and here you come looking for said fic and lo, the journal is gone. What's a fan to do? :O So you plead to the communities looking to see if you can find that industrious person and hope they're wiling to share. But...should one share?? -
(tags: fanfic deleting)

vickyblueeyez: [in fandom_lawyers] Fic from deleted journals, fair game? - Recently an author deleted their fic from LJ and FF.net by deleting their accounts. The author cannot be reached. I've saved said fic as a PDF and don't know if I can distribute it. -
(tags: fanfic deleting)

sophinisba: Profiles on the AO3 - I would really like it if more people would put a little information there, especially links! The three things I would love to see people put in their profiles are-Where else they are on the web (like LJ/IJ/DW)-How to contact them privately-How they feel about uses of their work -
(tags: ao3 podfic)

vickyblueeyez: Deleted fic lost and found - I'd like to create some kind of lost and found fic community. -
(tags: fanfic fandom poll question)

Monday, April 12, 2011

2011-04-12T21:00:53Z

helens78: Vote Ticky! - I am in favor of tickys because tickys are a form of communication. They can help engender community and relationships in a way that can enhance comments rather than replacing them or taking away from them. When someone isn't commenting, it's impossible to know if it's because they're lost for words, aren't on a platform suitable for lengthy comments (how many users read the site from smartphones now?), don't have a lot of spoons, have to conserve typing time... or aren't reading and don't care. -
(tags: dw comments)

forthwritten: fanfiction and my younger self - These stories could express things I didn't know I wanted, didn't know existed. No matter how uncool it might be to admit to reading fanfiction, I can't deny that I'm grateful it's there. -
(tags: fanfic sexuality gender slash)

Saturday, April 9, 2011

2011-04-10T13:37:54Z

melannen: Love & Marriage - One thing I love in a good SF story is ways of doing love, marriage, and romance that don't buy in to our society's idea of love+romance+sex+monogamy all on one single person as the only way to do it.I have a small collection of worlds that have come up with better ways, and I have a great deal of fun trying to fit the 'shipping debates from various fandoms into these other ways of looking at love. -
(tags: poly fanfic)

synecdochic: LiveJournal's DDoS and Russian Politics - So, people who grumble about "the Russians" taking over LJ should remember that in Russia, LiveJournal isn't just the top blogging platform, it's the blogging platform. It is Russia's free press. It is the tool being used to fight corruption and advance the cause of democracy. And, more practically to LJ users, the Russian-speaking sector of LJ is the reason LJ is still there at all. -
(tags: lj ddos russia)

caras_galadhon: Things You Should Know When LJ Goes Down-- - Right, so. It looks like the DDoS has subsided for the moment, which means I have a chance to provide a quick post listing ways to keep yourself informed whenever LJ hiccups/goes down/experiences a blackout. -
(tags: lj)

killabeez: If you love us, you'll archive your fic. - If all this LJ trouble has brought one thing in to sharp relief, it's that what worries me about losing access to LJ is the fic. -
(tags: archiving lj)

the_shoshanna: sex, and slash sex scenes - At Muskrat Jamboree, I went to a panel on sexuality and slash fandom, and also to one on anal sex (which I went to mostly because I thought it would be hilarious, and it was, but it was also really interesting). And it seems that something I said may have gotten reported around, so I thought I'd repeat and expand on it a bit. -
(tags: slash sexuality)

lim: lim: Query: on reccing art - I really want your opinions/ideas on this: how to go about reccing art not on deviantArt -
(tags: fanart reccing)

Saturday, April 2, 2011

2011-04-03T14:49:09Z

kotohime: [in sailormoonfans] So, I've been wondering... what makes fanart "good"? - So I'm wondering... can a piece of fanart be "good"; simply because of its concept more than how well it was drawn?
What kind of criteria do you have for "judging" fanart?
(tags: fanart question)

vampirenaomi: [in ffr_discussion] FF.Net and the quality of writing - Every now and then someone makes a remark about how there's nothing but shit at the Pit. Someone always jumps in to defend the site, and one of the usual arguments is that the level of quality is very fandom-specific. Some fandoms have nothing but crap posted at FF.Net, but for some other fandoms the site can be a gold mine. -
(tags: fanfic archiving)

silentcs: [in podfic_tips] reading emoticons, textspeak, punctuation - I was going over a few stories when I realized that I didn't know how to handle some of the texting language and conventions out loud. -
(tags: podfic question)

echan: Real People are Hard - I'm currently working on a vid about a real person. A real, live, not fictional, pays taxes and has a wife and kids, person. This is weirding me out in a number of ways, but basically, he's real. Suddenly I wish I had had any interest in Real Person F(ic/andom) before now so I would be well read on the meta and would probably have answers to my queries. -
(tags: rpf vidding)

cschick: It was an oddly fannish history type of day ... - What responsibility do I have to those stories? Many discussions which affected all fandoms, and in some ways shaped future fandoms, took place on the chaos lists. How much terminology originated on Fictalk? How much discussion about what fan fiction archives should be and should become took place on the archivists list? Maybe less than I remember, maybe more. -
(tags: history)

Monday, March 20, 2011

2011-03-22T08:22:27Z

princessofgeeks: categories and definitions again oh my - Is it better to discard the category of "femslash" in favor of an umbrella term, or is it better to preserve the category of "femslash" so that its profile within and without fandom is raised? [...]
Is it more accurate nowadays to say that gen means "no romance" or that it means "no porn"?
(tags: gen slash femslash)

vito_excalibur: genderswap fic - And a number of us know women without vaginas. (And men without cocks, and so on.) So it occurred to me: why assume a genderswapped character would have all those things? What would a genderswap fic be like in which the former dude comes blinking out of the plot device physically the same in every way, but now a pre-op (or non-op, or whatever) trans woman? -
(tags: trope genderswitch)

yourlibrarian: Fannish origins - So to sum up, creative fannishness tends to spring from long-form, high-visibility projects with at least one attractive male lead and no popular roadblocks to a developing relationship among the leads. Around LJ/DW it also profits from a dark underside, even if that potential is never quite exploited in the show. This is no doubt why, while I quite enjoy Castle and Community, I don't feel any particular need to get involved with their fandoms. And while I find myself more intrigued by the potential in WC, it has yet to turn out an episode that grabs me by the neck and makes me see that the writers themselves know what they have on their hands. -
(tags: fandom)

faithwood: Babbling about fandom. - I think everyone, more than once, read a popular story and ended up loathing it, or they've read an unpopular story and found it brilliant, or a popular story they loved just like everyone else, or an unpopular story they hated just like everyone else. The first two scenarios anger or confuse us and the latter two make us feel validated. Neither scenario means we're right. -
(tags: reviewing feedback comments)

hollow_echos: How do You Define Success in the Fandom? - The fact that fandom involvement often changes for individuals makes it kind of tricky to consider how far an individual has come in the fandom. If only there were benchmarks, road signs, to let an individual gauge how they are progressing in their growth in the fandom. -
(tags: fandom bnfs reviewing)

princessofgeeks: two things make a post - Compared to ten years ago, are people more multi-fannish all at the same time than they used to be? Or is this my imagination? -
(tags: fandom question)

penknife: Remix thoughts - For people who are currently panicking about their Remix assignments, some thoughts on what to do when you look at your remixee's stories and flail in distress: -
(tags: writing remixing)

Sunday, March 6, 2011

2011-03-06T19:33:54Z

morganoconner: When an author lacks an ounce of respect for her readers - If you've written a fic, and the potential is there for something to be construed as dub-con - even if you as the author don't agree - there needs to be a warning in clear view for your readers to see.
(tags: warnings)

podcath: [in podficmeta] From Hating Music in Podfic to Loving it: A Convert's Journey - I've been meaning to make a post on music in podfic for a while, mostly because I'm a very recent convert. When I first started listening to podfic in SGA, none of them featured music, and that's what I'd gotten used to. Moving into SPN, I started to hear a lot more music (first, actually, in the EVPs, which saw themselves more as podcasts mixing music with speech and different stories) and there were various reasons I started strongly disliking the use of music.
(tags: podfic music)

alamo_girl80: A look at Fandom Pairings - Okay, since most of my LJ posts of late have been something around the "To Slash or Not to Slash" arena [...] - I'm going to toss this observation and a few meta questions out into the ether.
(tags: slash h50)

yourlibrarian: Whither the Squick - In short, I think the fans' perception of a celebrity needing protection from his/her fans' imagination seems a projection of fans' own deep discomfort in seeing their desires out in the open for public consumption. The desire for connection exists in every fic. It also forms the basis of the fan communities in which the stories are produced and where those connections often do find realization in the form of connection to fellow fans. This may be more easily deniable in the case of FP fic where such connections to the characters are clearly impossible and can be considered entirely harmless and in no way a sign of unrealistic expectations. -
(tags: rpf fanfic spn)

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

2011-03-01T21:17:45Z

cimorene: GWG or Girlfriends-What-Girlfriends - a term I could potentially get a lot of use out of - My kneejerk reaction is "Of course!". We need a term for this, because this is a really common story type, on a par with PWP or UST. I'd love to see a world where this was a universal tag at AO3 and something that almost everyone in fandom tagged their bookmarks with on Delicious -
(tags: labels terminology trope)

paraka: An Open Letter to bjwewelled - From the comments you've left, I gather that we're interpreting your words in ways you didn't intend us to and it probably seems like we're reacting rather harshly. Some of that is us, we're bringing in a history of past interactions with people who have said similar things, but part of that is definitely how you've put things and how you're reacting. I'm hoping to help clarify why we're reacting so strongly and also to answer some of the questions you've had -
(tags: podfic)

frigg: All these words that we speak casually - Seeing others being routinely cruel with no repercussions will create a mood where cruelty is trivialised and pardoned. We can reverse that, from both outside and in. We can do good - even if they seem like small, tiny inconsistent things. We can call out bullies, people being insulting and lies for what they are. We can create safe pockets in unsafe places. We can warn off others we know would get hurt by something. We can console friends who have been hurt. We can choose not to turn a blind eye when somebody is being hurt or shamed. We can share and spread respect and openness even in wanky discussions. We can set rules for ourselves, and sometimes for others too. This is us, this is our community too, these are our places. We have a voice. -
(tags: bullying fandom anonymity merlin)

solarcat: Safe Sex (in MY porn!?) - what is YOUR take on the topic of safe-sex practices in porn? (Fic porn, filmed porn, whatever.) Does it turn you on/off? What about a distinct LACK of safe-sex practices in your porn? Do you sit there thinking, No condom?? >:( or UNF. I WILL BE IN MY BUNK!? -
(tags: fanfic sex safersex)

rosemaryandrue: Using Our Grown Up Voices ('ware bullying) - Yeah, fandom isn't high school. Sometimes it isn't even elementary school. So, what to do with all this, with the responsibility of being an adult and the wisdom we can learn from school? I'm not sure. I wanted to ask people to speak up, but I know the awful scars it leaves and how painful and hard it can feel to have any extra demands made of you when you've already been hurt. -
(tags: bullying)

zephre: Brain Flotsam - I offer this post as a safe space for people to discuss the problem of bullying in our online fan communities, the difficulty of painting all anonymous communities with the same brush, the emotions generated not only by the direct bullying but by the reactions of fans and fandom spaces to it, the differences between bullying and constructive criticism, and concrete actions that can help us move forward to stop bullying and reclaim our fandom spaces as safe and healthy communities. -
(tags: anonymity fandom bullying merlin)

venivincere: That damned mean meme is an arse, why anon love memes are different, and how to truly strike back - So to anyone who's been devastated by this group of idiots, please, please remember: opinions have to be voiced to have any meaning. Anons don't have a voice. Therefore, logically, anons can't have opinions. Don't waste a single moment more giving credence to an arse. Do what you want in this fandom, do it with abandon, share the love, the squee, the awesome art and stories. -
(tags: anonymity fandom merlin)

kaneko: Writing tricks. Also tofu. - [...] I've been thinking about some of the tricks and cheats I use a lot -- some borrowed, some figured out through trial and error. So a few of my writing tricks. I'd love to know some of yours too! -
(tags: writing)

Monday, Febuary 21, 2011

2011-02-22T10:18:21Z

silver_spotted: [in writingthewall] What makes RPF specifically fannish? - Where's the line between RPF and original fiction? When novels and movies about real people are entirely mainstream, what makes RPF specifically fannish? -
(tags: question rpf)

Thursday/Friday, February 18-19, 2011

2011-02-19T13:33:12Z

tablesaw: Dear Dead Authors: You Can Take Your Affective Fallacy and Shove It Up Your Intentionality - when I think of "The Death of the Author," I'm thinking of an outlook that is designed to fundamentally empower readers over authors. So when it comes to, as Yuki_Onna calls it, fuckmuppetry, why is this pulled out as a defense of authors? -
(tags: prowriting criticism)

executrix: Meta: The Adventures of a Slut, I Just Can't Shut - Apart from having a physical type that I find attractive, and sharing the great fannish love for snark and those who control its means of production, I was going to say that one thing that links most of the characters I like the best is that I usually write about people who I can believe enjoy casual sex. -
(tags: fanfic sex)

arasigyrn: How Things Change - I know the hero's story - it's been part of the stories I've told and been told since I was a child. They fight: they face set-back: they triumph. It's a pattern and once you see it, you can't unsee it. Tell me the sidekick's story! Tell me the nemesis' story! Tell me a story I haven't heard. -
(tags: fanfic writing characters)

facetofcathy: TV I have watched - What I find much more interesting than looking for any sort of "Two nations divided by a common language" politics in fandom is the way various source texts present place and character voice when a lot of those places and people aren't from either the US or the UK. There are, after all, many more than two nations with their own versions of English and my response to both Lost Girl and Haven has a lot to do with things that are familiar to me, sometimes when they shouldn't be. -
(tags: language canada lostgirl haven)

sailorptah: Narrative anti-kinks? - I think I've put a finger on one of my narrative anti-kinks. For lack of a shorter name, let's call it Drama And/Or Angst In Which None Of The Characters Are Likable. -
(tags: characters kink)

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

2011-02-17T08:42:27Z

bjewelled: Daily Meta: Audioficcing from a Writerly Perspective - I think a writer should have the ability to have a say in how their words are translated into audible form. I don't think that we should be shut out of the process completely, as some advocate. I think that if writer desires to be a producer, then a writer should be allowed to develop a style of their own. That's my opinion as a writer. -
(tags: podfic accessibility fanfic permissions)

Saturday, February 12, 2011

2011-02-13T00:53:23Z

seriousfic: Three faces of bitch - To be a HBIC, you must be A. In charge. B. A bitch. C. Head. Which is really the same thing as in charge, so clearly this term was coined by someone who hated editors. So we must separate HBIC from two other, equally important categories of bitch. -
(tags: characters terminology)

prozacpark: Reading Against Intent: Women in fiction, authorial intent, and negative reinvention. - In the absence of the female POV, we're constantly forced to rearrange bits of the narrative in our heads for them to give them motivation that the narrative didn't care to explore. And I think how we do that, in large part, indicates how we feel about female characters in general. -
(tags: gender tptb authorial-intent feminism roswell farscape bsg sg1 tvd)

frigg: What to do in fandom when one cannot write - Then, what can one do in fandom when they can't type? As a non-author, that's me fairly all the time, so here's a list I made for a friend once along with recs of what I've been doing for some of them these days. Writing is very, very much not the end-all of fandom activity. -
(tags: reccing reviewing watching lurking fanworks)

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

2011-02-10T04:23:12Z

sevilemar: kognitive Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft, Sherlock and Me - Das bedeutet für mich konkret: Wenn ich eine Geschichte lese (besonders auf englisch), verbinde ich die Gegenstände nicht so sehr mit den Dingen an sich oder meinen Erfahrungen mit den Dingen an sich, sondern eher mit meinen Erfahrungen mit dem sprachlichen Zeichen. -
(tags: german linguistics multilingual)

waldorph: thoughts. - The thing is, AUs aren’t copy/pastes of movie transcripts. -
(tags: writing au fanfic)

Monday, Febuary 7, 2011

2011-02-07T20:58:11Z

mithrigil: Factors Which May Increase or Decrease The Amount of People Who Read Your Fic - For shits and giggles and oh god what the hell am I doing theoretical algebra and statistics for at one in the morning - Let X equal the amount of people who see the fic advertised, as determined by A (the number of people on your friendslist) + B (the amount of people in any livejournal communities you crosspost the advertisement to) + C (audience outside livejournal as determined by stalking your ljtoys, AO3 and FFN hitcounts) -
(tags: fanfic writing comments mathematics)

Sunday, February 6, 2011

2011-02-07T19:27:27Z

ithiliana: Sai Gaddam and Ogi Ogas: A Billion Wicked Thoughts - However, given the ways in which Ogas and Gaddam tried to portray themselves as academic researchers in their foray into fandom, and the fact that they've gotten blurbs from (mostly) male academics, and the marketing language about how this work will affect sex researchers and therapists (omfg), I think it's important to emphasize that the work is neither academic nor undergone any type of peer review. -
(tags: fandom research gender sexism)

rodo: Wake Up, Yestergeek: The Times They Are A-Changing - Geek culture has always been derivative because culture has always been derivative. Your heroes remixed just as much as the fans do now. Geek culture has also always changed. Your daughter, if she is a geek, will have a geek culture of her own that you will not understand because it is not yours, anymore than my father understood mine, since his geekiness was limited to Karl May, Raumpatrouille Orion, Perry Rhodan and Franco-Belgian comics by René Goscinny. The times they are a-changing. Suck it up. -
(tags: geek-culture)

Saturday, February 5, 2011

2011-02-06T06:31:56Z

seperis: well, yeah, if by geek culture you mean men - The days when geek culture belonged to the urban middle class male is over; we all own it now. Don't look like that; we're not saying you have to leave. See, we like to share. That's kind of the entire point. -
(tags: geek-culture)

thingswithwings: how to defend against accusations of hating queers - [...] the way these creators are all huge fucking cowards who aren't brave enough to write a queer character into their children's book, their tv show, their novel; huge fucking cowards who blame the episode running long or the whims of the story itself [...] for the fact that queerness is reduced to subtextual or extratextual appearances; -
(tags: media sexuality subtext canon sga bsg hp lost)

sparkindarkness: Ok a rant about LGBTQ representation – and why hints don’t cut it - No, it’s not enough. Your hot men who have what may be a lingering look or touched each other a little longer than you thought was strictly necessary or y’know are just “so gay together” do NOT count as GBLTQ representation. -
(tags: slash fandom subtext media)

Monday, January 31, 2011

2011-02-01T15:53:52Z

sophiap: Ficcish question - When considering what is or isn't canon when reading or writing a fic, what do people think of the various 'extras' that are available for a number of series these days? -
(tags: canon)

Saturday, January 29, 2011

2011-01-30T15:52:22Z

zvi: [in podficmeta] Submitted Discussion Non-native speakers - How do you feel about non-native speakers recording a podfic? -
(tags: podfic question)

airgiodslv: Real Sex 101. - It is incredibly insulting to say that gay men who don't have anal sex don't have "real" sex, or that lesbians are all virgins because they haven't been penetrated vaginally by a penis. It's putting the expectations of one culture on another subculture. It's saying that the way someone else defines themselves doesn't count. -
(tags: writing sexuality)

zokiblue: A response to 'PC bullshit is getting out of hand' - I know we'll probably get into an argument about how some words have progressed down the insult treadmill so far that they're not worth censoring anymore, like stupid, idiot, moron, or crazy. I really wish people would use alternatives to words with that history, but I know it's unrealistic for me to expect that from everybody, but I work to excise them from my own vocabulary. -
(tags: language fandom)

teleens_journal: Words Have Meanings: First, Do No Harm - Seriously, who does it hurt to make the effort not to use words that others have found offensive? -
(tags: language fandom)

lettered: Fandom Experience - What I'd like to know now is what your fandom experience is, and also how your fandom works. Would you consider it based on comms, memes, fests, a couple bnfs? Where does it happen? -
(tags: fandom community)

fizzylizard: The Importance Of Being Toph - Toph wasn't helpless. Her limitations existed, and were addressed, and were realistic as far as a show with flying bison can be, but they didn't define her. -
(tags: disability)

sailortaph: Anachronistic references in historical/AU settings - When writing in a setting that is very much Not Our Own, how do you deal with words and phrases that are specifically tied to to our world and its history? -
(tags: writing fanfic)

laceblade: untitled - How do people write epic fanfic? -
(tags: writing question fandom)

Sunday, January 9, 2011

2011-01-11T17:58:27Z

facetofcathy: I started thinking while reading the other day. - So what if slash sex is all about the penis because it's one way of writing female sexuality that isn't all about the vagina. And does it need to be said that, for a lot of women, vaginal penetration might feel wonderful and delightful and be intensely meaningful, but will never, ever ever be the star of the show for them physically because it cannot make them orgasm? Is the anus barely mentioned in some of these sex scenes out of squeamishness or ignorance or received fannish culture? Or is it because the writer and readers want to read about sex where the clitoris, which is the biologically analogous body part in cis women to the penis in cis men, gets to get out there, drive the action and really get some focused, visible, physical attention. -
(tags: slash sexuality)

swan_tower: Writing Fight Scenes: Who? - There are a lot of details packed into the question of who, and those details can have a strong effect on how the fight goes. So let's take a moment to unpack them. -
(tags: writing)

sage: cane rage - I just read an H50 fic where Kono took Danny's cane away from him and I am so unbelievably pissed off. You NEVER take a disabled person's cane away. I don't care if they have a permanent disability or a short-term injury -- it's the same exact thing as taking away someone's wheelchair if they use a wheelchair to get around. It's tantamount to unlawful imprisonment, since you are preventing that person from moving where they want to go, defending themself from harm, or escaping danger, and you are potentially putting their life at risk. -
(tags: h5o, disability)

lionessvalenti: Review Replies - Do you reply to your reviews? Why or why not? -
(tags: reviewing)