002. january 22, 2019

[tozka]

So...this may end up being more than twice a week. There's WAY MORE STUFF out there than I expected to find (I haven't even really dug into Reddit/LJ/personal blogs yet!), and general consensus on my informal poll is that people prefer shorter posts more frequently? :P

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Okay, onto the good stuff!

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New stuff

alis (Mastodon) posted a discussion about social media spaces: "So a lot of Things recently make me interested in knowing how the impact of a social media platform having (or not having) tools like privacy controls and public timelines influences the way users conceptualize "their" profiles."

cesperanza posted Money and Networks: "Vulnerable people NEED THEIR NETWORKS for support, for pleasure, for all sorts of things, but if you're selling to your network (using guilt or whatever, or the fact that people like you, or care about you) then you're literally undercutting something really valuable that you have going for you IMO."

dontperishyet posted fanfic writer greatest hits: "I’m a fanfic writer. You know me from my greatest hits: -“I thought this was only going to be 5K”"

enchantedsleeper (Mastodon) posted some thoughts regarding the Great Reblog Debacle: "A discussion arose in one of my fandom chats where someone (who was primarily a Tumblr user) said that they wouldn't think twice about DMing a random stranger, and didn't consider it personal. Most others in the chat were like, "Wha...? That seems so intrusive!" I think it's an Ask culture thing - many regular Tumblr users don't think twice about sending random Asks (anon or no)."

greywash posted but what does whisperspace mean to YOU?: "In other words: I think a lot of what I miss about tag whisperspace was that it was a clear and intuitive way of signalling a break between the part of a social media post that is media and the part of a social media post that is social."

probablyintraffic posted Coffee shop AUs: "Coffee shop AUs are misunderstood because more than any other AUs they inhere fantasies’ internal contradiction. Fantasies, indeed the very best fantasies, are simultaneously completely believable and fundamentally unrealistic."

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Oldies but goodies

lysanatt posted The Fandom Divide: Nation & Cultural Citizenship: "So I dug out parts of a chapter on fandom (also a paper @ Midwest Popular Culture Association/Midwest American Culture Association Annual Conference, Chicago 2016) that might be of interest to those who want to dig deeper into what the gift cycle means to fandom, and why it works to further fandom cohesion."

namjinary posted 3 Rules of Fandom: "In light of content creators in fandom being attacked,blamed & labelled as fetishists & sexualisers I feel the need to remind the people about the "3 Rules of Fandom" which many of us from multi fandoms already know but new ones-such as #ARMY who are new to fandom culture don't."

ritalara posted Let people like things with whatever intensity their own will demands.: "Let fans enjoy their faves without a legitimacy test."

Comments

[elrhiarhodan]

Thank you. I am particularly fond of fanfic's greatest hits.

[sharpiefan]

The 3 Rules of Fandom... It's such a shame that those have to be stated outright rather than simply being understood as courteous behaviour. OK, there have been wank and shipwars since I don't know when, but even the people engaging in those had some vague understanding of what was expected behaviour. (Probably, anyway.)

I wonder if this is a generational thing (younger fans as opposed to older fans) or a platform thing (a Tumblr fandom problem rather than LJ/DW issues). Or did the rules always need stating and nobody did so before now?

[doranwen]

Well, I know when I first got into fandom, I didn't know them, and I wasn't always the most courteous when it came to ships I thought were bad/evil/morally wrong. Mind you, this was *well* over a decade ago; I've learned a lot since then and I wouldn't dream of behaving like that now! But I think if someone had stated them outright, it would've helped me grow up faster.

Of course, I have mild Asperger's and that had a huge impact on why I didn't know them at first. (I tend towards black/white thinking on the whole and lag behind most in my grasp of nuance - it's gotten way better but when I was a teen? Good grief, I was terrible.) For me I do much much better if any rules are stated clearly, even if it's a codified version of what everyone just sort of "knows", because then I can internalize them and follow them. I'm very slow to pick up on stuff that most people would do by osmosis. And I would guess that with larger numbers of fans on the autism spectrum, there are many who would find that beneficial. I can't speak for neurotypical fans, though.

[sharpiefan]

You have a good point there! I am leaning towards 'the rules always needed stating and nobody did so before now' - I am sure if people had actually got rules of the road to follow, so to speak, that a lot of heartache that has happened over the years would not have occurred. There have been some terrible fights and rows and bitter bitter quarrels (none that I witnessed or took part in, thank goodness) that would have/could have been mitigated if people had outright been able to point to a fandom standard (even a self-policing and otherwise unenforceable one).

I love your icon, BTW!

[doranwen]

Yeah, on my part, all I did (which was bad enough) was leave comments on ff.n stories that I thought the authors had Gotten the Characters Wrong in shipping them ways that would be illegal here in the US if it were done in real life (I think it was mainly incest stuff). Which, it's understandable that teen me would think that - because as some of the disagreements went on the Fanlore wiki page about the Three Rules, those can be problematic in encouraging some abusive relationships - at the same time, it's not for me to go tell people to stop writing it, that's what free speech is all about. I eventually figured that out and quit doing that, and while I still don't read incest generally (I don't read much porn, period, but that's more to do with being ace), I know it's not my business to tell anyone else what not to write or read. One reason I love the AO3 tagging system so much - it makes it really easy to tell what a fic has and how to avoid it if I don't want to read it. And mostly I've found people use it fairly well - I don't think I've run into many fics that were badly mistagged. (The worst mistakes I tend to find are people who are confused about RPF and tag non-RPF fics as RPF for the movie or whatever when their stories are really about the characters, and that, at least, is not going to be a trigger or squick for anybody.)

Thanks! :D I believe it was a quote from a Young Wizards book - I've been using it for years.

[doranwen]

Also, I'm pretty sure a fandom I came late to (Rookie Blue, see my icon) was torn apart *partly* due to some ship wars and general nastiness (old Tumblr posts mentioned some hateful anon stuff going on), and while it only finished airing about 4 years ago, I can't hardly find any fans at all.

The Three Rules are, imho, basically the fannish version of the Golden Rule. Which is still pretty good as a yardstick for general behavior, I think. The trouble is reminding people of it… Teens and adults are no better than children when it comes to actions at times, particularly when no one's looking us in the face as we do them. The relative anonymity of online means people often act first and think later (if they ever do), because they don't have to face the consequences in person.

[sharpiefan]

Ugh, I'm sorry that happened to you. I'm pretty much monofannish and I'm really lucky that it's a niche fandom with really lovely people in it (Age of Sail, particularly Sharpe, Hornblower and the film Master & Commander and the books it was based on).

People can be really really nasty when they have this pseudonymous veil that lets them think 'oh they're not really people like me' - or that removes the connection that we have with people we actually talk to and interact with in person.

[doranwen]

Yeah, I'm trying to get a Rookie Blue comm going for whoever is here on DW that is still into it - I'm desperate to find other fans in hopes of finding someone who I can bounce characterization and plot ideas off of. (The other downside of my Asperger's is not always having a good grasp of characterization - and not trusting what I do have, lol. I have to ask someone every so often, "would they do this? is this a plausible thing?" Hence having 11k of a WIP and being absolutely stuck on it - despite having a fairly lengthy outline - until I can find someone willing and able to do that - it's frustrating!)

I … do not think I understand this monofannish thing. ;) I've been doing fanfic exchanges since Yuletide 2010, and while I still have challenges finding enough fandoms to offer in exchanges sometimes, I nearly always can find enough to request. So many wonderful fandoms, so many fantastic characters… :D (But I'm glad you're happy with your one!)

I'm glad you have such a great fandom to be in! That sounds wonderful. :)

Yeah. :( I wish everyone would realize that behind every nick is a real human being, with fears and hopes and wants and wounds just like them. There needs to be more compassion for everyone (including those who make mistakes - because that is also very human).

[franzeska]

There are certainly a lot more people who just stumble over fandom without having any particularly strong social ties to it now. (So they don't pick up the social mores at the same rate in the same way.)

But, honestly, the reblogs on that post make it clear what's actually going on:

About 90% of them say something like: "You hear that, assholes pretending you have the moral high ground? You don't!"

The other 10% say: "This is a great post, but obviously you can't have meant to defend [my NOTP]."

[muccamukk]

I find the mastodon convos hard to follow. Guess it'll take some getting used to.

[silveradept]

It's a bit odd that they're displayed collapsed by default instead of expanded. Is that an option that could be toggled on the link to the conversations?

[tozka]

There is an option to un-hide the whole thread, but I think it's a logged-in feature. If you have a Mastodon account, you can click on the "open in web" link (at the bottom of the toot, to the right on the line where the date is), which will open it in your Mastodon dashboard. Then, there's an eyeball toggle on the top right of the toot which will un-hide everything at once.

[silveradept]

Ah, I see. That's certainly one way to get people to rant to sign up for a service. Thank you for the information.

[22degreehalo]

As a rec of possible interest to you: the people of TheFandomentals.com over do general fandom articles and do do a lot of reviews of fannish interest - I saw their GOT critical posts from their old tumblr linked in one of the old metafandoms. And right now on their front page they have an article about a book which seems to be something of a queer Harry Potter affectionate parody?

[thisweekmod]

Thanks so much! I'll check their site out. :D

[terresdebrume]

Oh my, the Mastodon conversation is super interesting, and I do think the features present or not in a website have a huge influence on what people expect and how thy conceptualize it--actually, I'd be interested on reading/learning more about that (might try and set up some kind of form someday just to see what kind of data we can collect on that (this is a VERY vague project though))

But also, let's be honest, the though od DW posts becoming rebloggable the way tumblr offers it makes my skin CRAWL xD I like having some kind of control over my content and knowing I can kick people out if they become impossible to talk with. In fact, the reblogging feature is probably THE main reason I haven't managed to get into pillowfort at all so far. I like the culture here, and how things are much chill-er than on sites that allow instant sharing of content (ie tumblr and twitter). I guess it's a ymmv kind of situation, and also unlikely to happen on dw in the near future though, so yeah xD

[manna]

I wasn't sure from your comment if it was simply the whole culture of reblogging that was turning you off the site, but on Pillowfort you can at least choose whether you want to make your own posts rebloggable or not.

[muccamukk]

That is such a great icon.

[terresdebrume]

Thanks for the tip :)
I actually knew about that already, and honestly the fact that I don't use this is mostly due to my own issues and all x)
But the tl;Dr is: if there's a reblog option, I'll use it, which means both less control and a much more passive attitude towards the network (which I didn't mention above). I like that being on dw pushes me to produce content, even if it isn't danish content as often as I would like x)