004. January 26, 2019

[thisweekmod]

I'm sure you all know this already, but: Always check the comments on a thing! A discussion post is just the starting point-- comments are the continuation and often end up even more interesting than the original post.

And speaking of comments: you are totally welcome to leave any kind of comment here. A response to a link, an idea for a new link, a tip or question about the newsletter-- anything goes.

Onto the issue!

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thisweekmeta collects links of fandom meta and discussions from all over the web, and welcomes submissions from readers. If you know of an excellent fandom discussion post that we've missed, whether new or old, please feel free to leave a comment on this newest issue or email the editor.

The FAQ can be found here, and our editorial guidelines can be found here. Questions, concerns, and feedback are all welcomed.

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Newer Stuff

cfiesler posted How does new canon impact fanfiction production?: "In looking at the relationship between two of the questions - how often respondents write fanfiction and when they are most likely to write fanfiction - we see that people who write fanfiction more often are less impacted by new canon, and people who write less frequently are more likely to be inspired by new canon."

fairestcat posted On Fandom and the "culture of selling": "Does joining someone's Patreon or tipping them on Ko-Fi or purchasing a fanwork from them change that relationship? Probably. But not as much as some old-school fans seem to think."

quiltingsarah (Reddit) posted The olden days of fanfiction-share your memories: "The first sort of fanfic I read was in a magazine that had a story in installments I got at a Doctor Who convention in the early 1980's. it was a Star Trek/Who xo, never did read the end of it because I only found the first 2. So I'd go to cons, pick up the occasional zine."

quinfirefrorefiddle posted Fandom History- A Quick Rundown: "There are certain events, trends, or facts in fandom that were important enough, or in some cases just weird enough, that I'm always kind of surprised when I meet a fan who hasn't heard of them. Totally unfair, of course, I learn about fandom history I've never heard of before all the time."

Rhodanum (Pillowfort) posted THE PREQUEL TRILOGY IN THE 2000s -- A WOMAN-RUN STAR WARS FANDOM: "One thing that gets lost when discussing the history of Star Wars is how heavily female-dominated the fandom for the Prequel Trilogy was, particularly in the 2000s. Fan-site after fan-site, fan-shrine after fan-shrine, the userbases of which were overwhelmingly girls and women."

Steven T. Wright for Ars Technica posted “The Linux of social media”—How LiveJournal pioneered (then lost) blogging: "Growing up on the Web at the dawn of the social media age (circa 2007), it felt like all the connectivity-obsessed sites forming the burgeoning core of the new Internet were haunted by a faded spectre called LiveJournal. As a teen, I never actually knew anyone who had one, but I heard whispers and rumors about drama on the service all the time."

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Flashback - be back soon.

Link taken down! I'll put a new one up later today. In consideration of the link owner, I have also screened comments that a) had the link or a related one, b) a Google-able quote, c) link owner's name.

Comments

[muccamukk]

As far as I know, fanlore's policy for linking to things is "if it's a public post and is of interest to fan history" or something in that line. It certainly doesn't ask for permission, and frankly has a pretty baffling selection of stuff (I've had some odd encounters with the site).

[kore]

Yikes, Martha's experience https://muccamukk.dreamwidth.org/1105034.html?thread=6500234#cmt6500234

[muccamukk]

I'd forgotten about that until I dug it up. That's definitely tipping me more towards the ask the person first side.

Though I really like linking to old stuff, and find it really valuable to have that history there. And some people just aren't going to be reachable to ask any more.

(opens a parenthetical aside, gets distracted by cat, forgets what was going in this space)

[thisweekmod]

Well, if people are iffy about Fanlore's linking policies anyway, it shouldn't be too much harder to ask link owners if I can link them, even if it's 10+ years old. And if they're still active somewhere online, even easier. The only thing I worry about is the people who aren't active, or can't be found. I don't mind NOT linking to their stuff in that case, but it seems a shame to miss out on potentially good discussions/meta, especially if I'm trying to promote older stuff to help tie in the new stuff within the larger fandom world.

There are other options, though! I could link to older fan sites, or highlight academic fan stuff instead.

[muccamukk]

That's where I'm really torn. I LOVE the links to the older meta. I find them a lot more interesting than acafandom stuff.

And in some cases the authors are still in fandom and active, in some cases they have left fandom, and in some cases they're actually dead.

[thisweekmod]

I find them more interesting that acafandom as well, which is why I want to link them. :D And I don't necessarily just want to link to only people who are active/available to contact, because it could present as skewed. But I'll figure out a solution! I want people to enjoy the newsletter, not be bothered by it.

totally ot but...

[ithiliana]

I LOVE the links to the older meta. I find them a lot more interesting than acafandom stuff.

Well, speaking as an aca-fan, a lot of us wrote meta on our fannish journals which (in my case at least) turned into the gateway drug for writing scholarship!

[kore]

I'd forgotten about that until I dug it up. That's definitely tipping me more towards the ask the person first side.

Yeah, me too. But IDK, I think it was the combination of the post being that old/mostly a vent/linked to directly on the LJ version that gave me misgivings. I really don't know that much about Fanlore -- I don't tend to use it.

[muccamukk]

Again, me being me, but one of the things I'm linked to from fanlore is me being a raging ASSHOLE about the J2 Haiti fic. Which I looked at and went "... this is not what I want my fandom legacy to be."

But on the other hand, I shouldn't have been an asshole, so it serves me right, and I think recording how that went down is important part of how late era LJ fandom fell down.

I mostly use fanlore for definitions of things, rather than for the history aspect.

[thisweekmod]

Ah, and I totally use it for the historical stuff because I missed a lot of it. Their page on fan's linking policies helped a lot when I was considering the linking policies here, actually.

[kore]

Yeah, like I said, I just don't tend to use Fanlore so I forget it even exists -- it wouldn't occur to me to look anyone up on it!

[sylvaine]

The baffling selection of stuff is down to the part where users are the ones posting and filling out the articles - so it's just "oh, this particular person knew about this one thing and thought it was relevant" rather than "this is generally agreed to be more important than these other things we didn't write about". The other issue is - well. Back when I was briefly out of work I spent a bit of time updating fanlore things, and. It's a huge amount of work that I would definitely not have been able to do while working, and I only wrote maybe two or three articles! And while I was there I noticed maybe three other people MAX being active. So: there's about three people actually doing anything regularly, and a smattering of others stopping in occasionally to drop a link or write half a post. So that's a huge factor in the occasionally weird selection.

[thisweekmod]

Sort of riding on the coat tails on "why is this thing on Fanlore," I found a wiki editor's discussion on why she chooses to add a meta essay to the site or not: https://fanlore.org/wiki/User_talk:Mrs._Potato_Head/2018_Archive#Meta_pages

It's kind of nice to get an editor's perspective on why they do things. I also found her reasons for Fanlore-ing a post very similar to why I want to link a post for the newsletter, haha.

(I wish I could tag people in this comment, lmao, I think it'll interest multiple people. I hope y'all see this!)

[sylvaine]

For added background context, Mrs. Potato Head is pretty much the number one power user on fanlore - every article I've ever written or edited has an edit by her, too, if nothing else for formatting things. So her perspective is probably pretty accurate for the entirety of the site!

[fyreharper]

(Higher-effort than tagging people, but if you want to make sure someone sees a particular comment thread, one option would be to dm them a link to the comment! Or drop it in an off-topic comment on one of their recent entries, if they’re not the sort of person to be driven buggy by that sort of thing)

[minim_calibre]

I may've got very cranky at someone at a convention because of the linking policy. They seemed surprised that anyone would follow the Fanlore link back to the original post about something contentious, despite that having been a thing that has happened and also why I now lock down any fandom rubbernecking I happen to do (which I don't do often).

[muccamukk]

I've got almost everything I posted before 2016 locked down, but that's mostly because of my troll. Plus it was faster than going through and checking every post for personal details I shouldn't have posted.