005. January 27, 2019

[thisweekmod]

Thank you all for your responses in the twm content poll! There's a lot of good discussion going on in the comments (as always), so please go check them out. If you'd rather PM me your thoughts instead, that's totally fine. You can also post anonymously if you're not comfortable attaching a username to your comment.

I'll leave the poll up through next weekend and then post the results.

For now, the next issue! We have a good mix of general meta, fandom-specific meta, and a con report-- which, although not strictly META, falls under the "fan experiences" part of the guidelines. I've always been interested in reading con reports, mostly because I don't get to go to nearly as many cons as I'd like, and when I DO go, I'm too nervous to really enjoy myself. Con reports offer a view into fen experiences off the internet, which is a nice change.

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chaoticcliche posted Steven Universe and the Era of Hopepunk: "I feel like Steven Universe fits under the Hopepunk umbrella (Can we call it a genre? I feel like it would work better as a genre). Despite it's very punk themes of queerness, racial identity, gender identity, ability, otherness, and rebellion, it presents these things on a plate of sunlight and fluff. An important part of any balanced punk diet if you wanna survive out here, don't get me wrong, but nothing someone can sustain themselves on."

cassini posted Have a Healthy Wank: "honestly, my friends, my fellow soldiers on this front line of the bullshitstorm of existence, if your shipping is about 'goals', your personal hopes and dreams, some reflection of your emotional desires and ethics, if shipping is the way you learn about relationships, that's cool. it's sweet, fine, fuckin dandy. you do what makes you feel happy because everything sucks. but come on, don't make judgements on people who are doing their ships differently."

cuttimecomic posted on the difficulties of building fandoms for original works: "I see ppl bitter that their original characters don't get as much attention or exposure. That's because ppl can't connect to what they don't know. YOU have to create that base. Don't forget fandoms are born from someone else's persistence and dedication to their personal works."

portraitoftheoddity posted “This made me uncomfortable” =/= “this harmed me.”: "I’m gonna make the radical hot take here that discomfort can be good. Not all discomfort is harm."

rhodanum posted of fandoms and complete shitshows: "As someone who's been involved with fandoms for twenty years now, since the pre-LJ era, one of the most baffling and actively enraging developments in recent times has been the sharp rise of content-policing from within fandom itself, rather than something caused by the intervention of an outside entity (as was the case with the fundamentalist Christian group whose caterwauling kicked off Strikethrough)."

slipjig3 posted Arisia 2019 Wrap-Up: Still Too Tired to Come Up with a Witty Subtitle: "Another Arisia has come, and another Arisia has gone, huzzah, forsooth and yea verily. And since my foray into long-form blogging has returned, so have many of my old blogging traditions, including the annual Cleverly Formatted Arisia Wrap-Up post."

sylvaine posted Linking to fanworks, and meta specifically: "I always felt that meta, like any other fanwork, was free to link to (assuming unlocked post), but there's a lot of discussion in [community profile] thisweekmeta that suggests otherwise. And I can see why! Generally speaking, meta brings a lot more discussion and potential wank with it than fictional fanworks."

yvannairie posted Analysing negative feelings at their root must have some value: "So I know hating characters because they come "in the way" of your ship is bad, but I wish that was something we could at least talk about, you know?"

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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.

Comments

[omens]

That discomfort vs harm link was great, thanks!

[satsuma]

“Of fandoms and complete shitshows” makes a fair number of good points but also slides into a sort of ‘kids these days’ tone that undercuts their point.

Like, wank/discourse getting personal or political is not new, and it getting insanely intense is DEFINITELY not new. Maybe it’s gotten worse over the years? And i def agree its gotten more politically coded. But I don’t really think “my ship is better than your ship bc politics” is really substantially different from, say, the HP fandom taking down entire archives during shipwars that ammounted to “my ship is better than your ship because cannon”

(I’ve also got some thoughts about the intentional manipulation of tumblr SJW culture by TERFS and how that relates to antis, but I haven’t quite cohered them into postsble format yet.)

[muccamukk]

Yeah, I thought it was a great breakdown of what's happening now, but didn't really have it's historical context together as much.

[satsuma]

Yeah that's a decent way of putting it, I was just disappointed because they position the post as being about current wank in the context of historic

[meridian_rose]

I'd be very interested in your meta. To me it feels different when it's "your ship is bad because I say that character is a lesbian and you're homophobic if you see her as bi" as opposed to "your ship is bad because I don't like it." It ties in with the broader TERF issues of hating on bisexual and asexual people, there's one right way to be and one right way to ship and it gets exhausting.

[athousandsmiles]

This is an old link, but I thought it might be relevant to this community:

http://the-toast.net/2015/04/01/in-celebration-old-school-livejournal/2/#idc-cover

[thisweekmod]

Thank you! <3