This Week in Meta

Hello all, and welcome to the first issue of This Week in Meta! Depending on how much we find each week, this will be at LEAST a twice-weekly pan-fandom newsletter centered around fandom meta and discussions.

We collect links from all over the web, and welcome submissions from readers. If you know of an excellent fandom meta discussion post that we've missed, whether new or "old," please feel free to leave a comment here or email the editor. Our FAQ can be found here.

Also, if you know of a good DW journal/Twitter/Tumblr/etc. user who posts regular meta, please drop a comment below.

Okay, onto the good stuff!

New stuff

aroundab00t posted a discussion about ages in fandom: "Ok, yall, I'm gonna salt on main for a sec. Sometimes I see people in fandom talking abt how Weird it is for Fandom Olds to be active members of the fannish community, & people older than their teens second guessing their places in what should be a welcoming & open space..."

eugial posted a discussion about 18+ warnings: "I've seen some of these children who think fandom is activism straight up say shit like "this is the internet no one is going to respect your 18+ only warning" and I just gotta say that's not my fucking problem. Not even a little bit. I'm not your damn parents."

freetofic posted a Google Doc asking for people to post their experiences: "if you deal w/marginalization b/c of your race &/or ethnicity, & you have the desire/energy to share some thoughts on it, please consider responding to this Google form."

kanon (Mastodon) posted Types of Ships (non-exhaustive list): "4. [Character A, who seems to be best-suited to address B's Flaws and Insecurities]/[Character B, who seems to be best-suited to address A's Flaws and Insecurities], or: Ship Stoichiometry"

Kari-izumi (Pillowfort) posted Anti discourse: "Are they in the bubble or are we? I mean every side has assholes, but most discourse blogs started calling bullshit out once they or their friends became targets and almost none of the ones I follow off Tumblr engage in that shit in spaces where they can just be fans. Do they think we're making shit up about being harassed offline or assholes who fake suicides or use a kids cartoon to push discussion about pedophilic ships with seven year olds?"

midgetnazgul posted this on Twitter: "the fandom version of Marie Kondo's philosophy should be "if it doesn't spark joy, shut the fuck up"

naraht posted On transitions and dialogue and things: "I've been reading a lot of literary fiction recently and noticing how much ease it demonstrates with transitions, and with telescoping from the particular to the general and back again. Fanfiction and popular fiction are very dialogue-heavy and tend to have scenes like scenes in films, where you get a straightforward narrative describing exactly what happens while (say) two characters are in a room together."

novembermond posted how to find comms on dw & and how to get people to find your comm: "so let's say you have just seen the movie "Venom" and now want to find posts about it. On tumblr you'd type in the tag and you would find all the posts tagged Venom. That was your "community" on tumblr. On dw you can follow comms, but it is not the same as tracking a tag on tumblr. People's posts don't show in any tag automatically (tags on dw are only for your own organisation). Rather you need to specifically create comms and have people post their stuff in them."

Oldies but goodies

attackfish posted over at Pillowfort: "It’s really a shame that the imperative “examine why you like something” has come to be such a part of the toolbox of people who want to make you stop liking the thing (with the implication that if you think about the thing, you will not only stop liking the thing but come to the realization that it really is wrong and terrible!!!), because examining why you like something and figuring out why you like it is a great way to get more out of the thing."

Jessica Conditt for Engadget posted Nerdy, written erotica doesn't need Tumblr to survive: "When Verizon was in the process of buying Yahoo and Tumblr, many people in fandom communities saw the writing on the wall, largely because they'd endured this process before. Fanfiction and fanart has found a home at a handful of sites over the years, from LiveJournal and FanFiction.net to DeviantArt and Tumblr -- but it seems that every time it settles in at a particular site, the terms of service get updated and the community is purged."

melannen posted You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone: "Because the other thing is: the adult content warning on all the entries does not make a distinction between "this entry is marked adult" and "this journal is marked adult". When you click through to the second warning page, it does give a reason if you entered a reason, but that's it, and that doesn't show on reading pages. And most people who have their entire journal set to adult are doing it "just in case", and 90% of their entries are not, in fact, adult. This can lead to a weird impression."

tozka (me!) posted fandom meta discussions on mastodon, covering old people in fandom, DW communities, Tumblr people moving to DW, Tumblr etiquette vs DW etiquette.