schmevil

trobadora (via etrangere):

A week ago I made a grumbly flocked post about the lack of interaction on LJ these days - comment levels, lack of meta, lack of sprawling discussions ... and it turned into a very busy post indeed. Seems I'm not alone missing the meta, and metafandom as a way to get the word out to the larger fannish community. In the comments, sholio and I did some brainstorming for what could be done about this situation, and here's what we came up with:

The Meta Month of March

Basically, we want to have a proper meta fest in March. It's very simple:

Beginnng mid-February, we'd ask people to sign up for posting meta – either general meta or fandom-specific meta - during the month of March.

In March, on your designated date you'd post your meta or a link to it in the fest community on LJ and/or on DW, and we’d all descend upon your post to enjoy and discuss. :)

Additional meta you didn't sign up with would of course be very welcome, including follow-ups to previous discussions.

There's a poll. Go click.

Recently I talked about missing Metafandom. I also talked about the slowing down of my flist/dwircle. The ~great slowdown is, I think, partly an actual LJ/DW slowdown (the natural life cycle of a social networking platform coming due), and partly due to my particular network of friends and acquaintances moving on. There are, of course, parts of LJ/DW that are as energetic as ever--I'm just not connected with them. And it's not only me.

My personal plan is to join new communities, put myself out there, and chat with people who are hosting vibrant conversations, and interested in making new friends. I've embraced Twitter, Tumblr and anonmemes, but I'm still attached to this form of social networking, and I want my LJ/DW experience to lively. So I'm going to make that happen.

But in addition to that, I need something, and that is a list of link/meta collecting sites, newsletters, and people. Everything from When Fangirls Attack, to individual Delicious accounts tracking the conversations of particular fandoms. I need it like burning. I'm not looking for a masterlist, so much as various masterlists, from different parts of fandom. Or even just links to particularly good link collectors and newsletters,. MOAR META, MOAR TALK, MOAR MORE, is what I'm saying. One of the most satisfying parts of fandom meta, as opposed to reading reviews or author blogs, is its extremely social character. It's not just the post, it's the comments, the reaction posts, the followups, the quick development of arguments and counter arguments--and it's all for us, by us.

So do me a favour? Link me to whatever you've got, regardless of fandom. Link me to your meta recs, your favourite meta writers, newsletters, blogs, Tumblrs-- WHATEVER. Link me to other people seeking meta, and them to me. Let's get a big exchange going, if we can, my fellow travellers in slow LJ/DW-land, because the main thing is, I want to talk to other fans and I want to create meta, with other fans, and I know that a bunch of you do as well.

I mean, fuck it, let's just build a new network, right?


ETA: Strategies. Share with me your strategies for finding meta (and meeting new people), when so much of the infrastructure (comms, people) we relied on has, well, dispersed or withered away.

Yeah, idek what happened. Feel free to poke me if I'm taking forever with something. In the meantime, the Die Hard Marathon is back!




Every Die Hard movie is about hostages. DH2 puts John inside the crisis with Holly still out of reach. This time the terrorists seize Dulles Airport, complete with travelers, workers and planes circling overhead - they control all of it. As usual, everything's going according to plan, save one thing: John Fucking McClane. Our favourite fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench. You know how this goes, right?

I think having John McClane show up even in the vicinity of a well-planned crime must be every criminal's nightmare in the DH universe. He's got some kind of probability-bending, criminal-foiling superpowers, amirite? It's nuts.

This is easily the weakest of the four DH movies (imho of course). ( Read more... )

Trigger warning for survivors of abuse and bullying!



Currently flocked - unfiltered - because I don't know if this post is useful, or if it's 'finished'. Please to be letting me know what you think, oh great and powerful flist. The flist has pronounced this fit to post, so I'm unlocking it.

I've been wanting to post this for a long time. It's been sitting half finished in my gdocs for months. Some recent RL conversations about bullying gave me the impetus to get it done and posted, but it's very much about bullying in general, and yes, online bullying.



( Read more... )

I've gotten addicted to reading Fandom Secrets. Curse all of you who've linked me to it over the years. (Although hey, maybe I shouldn't be cursing, since I've actually made a few friends through the comm). Recently there was a secret bemoaning the maker's lack of BNFness. Basically, "Been in fandom for years. Still not a BNF. What's the pooooooint?"

Ok, been in fandom for years. Still not a BNF. The point is having fun.

It's been a few years since I came back to fandom. In those years I've done what I've always done: written some fic and meta, fangirled some stuff, ran a few communities for my fellow fans. Still not a BNF, alas - possibly I'm less known now than I was back in the day. But these have been the best years of my fandom life. I helped my community weather a TOSing and a Titter war. I've grown as a writer, producing some stories that I'm truly proud of. I ran my first ever fic exchange. I've reaffirmed my commitment to anti-oppression activism, this time online as well as offline. I've made some realizations about my own privilege and personal fail, and helped others to realizations of their own. I've made some awesome, irreplaceable friends.

In short, I've had some fantastic experiences, some harrowing experiences, and all in all, a lot of rewarding experiences. Still not a BNF, but man am I having a great time.

A good number of my fanfic pet peeves are due to writers trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

There characters for whom domesticity is a better match than for others.

There are stories that make the most of an explicit sex scene, and there are stories that are ground to a tedious halt by sex scenes.

There are fandoms that are absolutely primed for a high school AU, and there are fandoms where it just wouldn't make a lick of sense, no matter how AU you take it.

I know, I know - it's fic, and we can do whatever we like with the source material. That's the point, right? But honest to god, you don't need to tell EVERY STORY EVER with the same damn characters, in the same damn fandom. Sometimes you'll find a better match if you switch gears and write it in... idk, Moby Dick fandom.

You can keep on jamming that square peg into that round hole, or you can hold onto it until you find a naturally square hole.



On a side note, where's my freaking zombiepocalypse Gilmore Girls AU!? Damn it, world.

I've never been in a fandom where 'aliens made them do x' was a big thing. In HP you'd get the odd magical marriage malarky, but it was by no means full blown 'aliens made them do x'. Recently I've been reading ST XI and SGA stories, and this trope apparently went through the fandoms like wildfire, because man, it is everywhere.

So what's it all about?

Near as I can tell, the appeal is some outside force pushing the characters into doing something they otherwise would not do (but sometimes secretly want to), for angst, lolz, and sexytimes. It's not hard to understand why that would be fun for writers and readers alike. You, the writer, get to force the characters to do something OOC through the actions of another character, and the hand of god has legitimate story camouflage. Then you get to mine the situation for character development, fun, and emoporn. Additional thrills are garnered from the wacky customs of the aliens themselves. There's a kind of fantastical exoticism going on here, where alien customs are inexplicable and hilarious, and the aliens themselves are ignorant of Starfleet/Earth customs, and stubbornly cling to their own ways. And not only that, they force outsiders to conform as well!

The more a story leans on 'those wacky natives,' the skeevier it is. I much prefer stories where Starfleet officers are performing a new and unfamiliar ritual, in order to honor allies that they respect. Or if you want to retain the element of coercion, stories where characters act OOC because they've been exposed to mind/body chemistry altering substances (and not by the aliens!). I don't know, the more 'aliens made them do x' stories I read, the more uncomfortable I am with them. There are just so very many of them that revel in things like describing the strange costumes, dwellings, foods, and rituals of aliens. They live in huts, how twee! And describing in even greater detail how put upon our heroes are, victimized by primitive, stubborn, unfeeling (or alternately too emotional) aliens. By and large, the aliens' actions are irrational, often opaque, and the aliens themselves are rarely fully realized characters. I'm not saying that all these stories are bad - far from it - but... some of them are just so goddamn creepy, and it's the ones that don't intend to be creepy, that are the worst of the bunch. Oops, I just happened to use a handful of colonial stereotypes of Darkest Africa to characterize my aliens. But the aliens are ~noble and well-meaning, so it's ok. Seriously?

Anyway, I'm looking for some good meta that examines the trope. Links, anybody?

Oh, and if you've got non-creepy fic recs, I'll take those too. ;)

amberlynne's written a post about feedback that's being linked around. I disagreed.

Her central point is this: readers should comment and they should do so in a way that the writer will be comfortable with. She goes on to say that comments should focus on the story. They shouldn't, for example, be addressed to other readers unless a direct comment is also left. They shouldn't be off topic, and they should as much as possible, be in a form that the writer will appreciate. Save that concrit for when it's been explicitly made welcome.

I think there's a point at which the proliferation of rules for commenting, soft or hard, implicit or explicit, starts to discourage comments.

1. I'm just gonna lay it out, the more you tell me what form my comment should take, the less likely am I to comment at all. This is, I think, especially true of people new to fandom, who are already confused by new social rules. Fandom's rules for feedback (some honey with the vinegar, no concrit unless asked for, direct reviews > talking with other readers) are NOT intuitive. "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all," tends to fall by the wayside sometime in middle school/junior high. High school art and writing classes encourage students to share honest feedback. Lit classes train students to believe that discussing a work with each other, and not with the writer, is of real value. The internet itself encourages many-to-many conversations, even when the creators are present and talking up a storm. We've been told for years that it's not all about the artist, and that it's really about the work. So take it as written that there will always be people who just don't get what you're talking about. Take it also as written that your going to get some backs up, when you tell people how they should be commenting. ( Read more... )

[I hesitate to tag this 'meta' because it's more of a rambly rant than anything else... maybe I should create a 'rant' tag? Anyway. I know it's all been said before, but I guess I woke up annoyed. *g*]

I get excited by projects like Models INC and Marvel Divas because I like girly confections like Janes In Love and Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane, just as much as I love a good punch-up. Both of those projects suffered horribly from bad marketing, and a strange lack of spark. They weren't the best vanguards for Marvel's push into 'girl' territory - really, Westernized shoujo stories - but hopefully there are more and better projects coming down the pike, because 'girl comics' is still an area that Western comics publishers have neglected. I think there's room in the market for romance comics, female friendship comics, and adventure and superhero comics with female protagonists. I want all of this stuff, and lots of it.

However, when it comes to superhero comics, what I want are some more Valkyries. I appreciate all sorts of female characters. I like smart girls, crafty girls, hopeless romantics, emotional wrecks, political dynamos, femme fatales, and ass kickers. I love them all - provided they're well written. But when it comes to superheros - to superheroines - I like my girls fierce. Righteous (or self-righteous), powerful and determined - I want me some heroes who are on fire.

I'm tired of heroines who have a tortured relationship to their sexuality, or the endless parade of heroines who are motivated by their having survived a sexual assault. I'm tired of damn near every female villain ~using their sexuality as a weapon~. I'm tired of the Madonna/whore complex, and I'm tired of female sexuality being a space of exploitation and fear. ( Read more... )

I hate the fic labels het, slash, femslash and gen.

Het and slash function as warnings: here there be m/f, f/f, or m/m relationship stuff; enter at your own risk. Or alternately, as beacons: slight femslash, come one, come all. Who cares what the story is actually about? They also have the effect of seeming to change the content of a story. "I don't read femslash." And so you miss out on a 300,000 word swashbuckling adventure, because Anna Maria and Elizabeth Swann happen to share a few kisses. "I don't read gen." And so you miss out on a satisfying story about lifelong friendship that has all the hallmarks of the het, slash and femslash stories you enjoy. The romantic labels het, slash and femslash, trump all other content tags save warnings. The story is het before it is horror; femslash before it is a character study.

Gen, in contrast, is a categorical ghetto for misfit stories - stories that are none of the above. It's a category that's simultaneous too wide, and too narrow, to mean much of anything. There's an unending argument over how we can define gen, and that is because gen has no actual content: it's defined negatively. Gen ISN'T het, slash or femslash. Gen is everything else.

Let me throw in some anecdotal evidence now: most fic is not out and out romance. Shipping is a major component of fic fandom, but it's not everything. A romantic subplot in an adventure story =/= a romance story. The appearance of a romantic relationship in a horror story, does not make it a romance, and it does not make it any less of a horror story. There are an awful lot of first time stories, and fluffy romances, but there are tons and tons of stories that deal with ships, without being romances. So why is it important to label a story het, slash, femslash or gen, in addition to pairing and character tags?

There was a time where slash was a genre unto itself, I think. If you read the really old stuff, slash seemed to indicate not just the presence of a m/m relationship, but that what you are about to read, draws on a certain subset of story types and tropes. Slash and femslash are so much bigger now - they are whatever they want to be. A story about gingerbread dudes falling in love can be slash. A story about girls fighting back the apocalypse, and occasionally having sex, can be femslash. So is there still genre called slash, or a genre called femslash? (Seriously people, is there? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this).

As a reader, I find it much more useful to know what kind of story I'm about to read, than to have two different notifications of the genitals contained therein. Femslash, Buffy/Faith, Summary. But What the hell is the story about? Is the Buffy/Faith relationship central to the story - is it about the relationship? If not, then throw me a bone, in the form of a genre indicator. A hint about what tropes you're drawing on. And for god's sake, I get it, Buffy/Faith does indeed imply hot lesbian action. I don't need the reminder.

I know that some people love these labels to death, for whatever reason, but I think that the changing landscape of fic fandom makes them increasingly meaningless. But that, of course, is just my opinion.