thisweekmeta | Entries tagged with topic: wank

Hello, happy Sunday, here's some links, and oh btw: we've passed 600 subscribers (+42 since the last issue).

\o/

akamine_chan posted signal boost: on fandom and the "culture of selling": "There's the fact that for a long time, selling of fanworks was a big no-no because we were trying to stay under the radar and not attract the attention of copyright holders. And the fact that for years, fannish endeavors were considered frivolous and valueless."

elle_em posted a discussion about embarrassing fanfic: "So tell me, what's the most embarrassing piece of fanfiction you will COURAGEOUSLY ADMIT to writing?? Come on, BE BRAVE LIKE THE TROOPS."

Elizabeth Minkel for Medium posted “You’re Gonna Love This Franchise:” Fandom, corporate media, and San Diego Comic-Con: "I have only known this corporate behemoth, and for me, the event in its current form is what it is: a specific shape, only growing outwards rather than truly abandoning any one of its components, a sort of massive snowball picking up more and more pop culture as it hurtles down the mountain."

freedom-of-fanfic posted Any idea why the MST virtually disappeared from fandom?: "While some fics that were MST’ed were written for the express purpose of being MST’ed, or submitted for MSTing, many were not, and the practice was incredibly cruel. You can imagine how horrible it would be to find your fic had been plagiarized by another author for the express purpose of making fun of how bad the fic was."

sciatrix posted what's sovereignty worth to me, anyway?: "I think, though, that I'm still uneasy, and I'm fundamentally uneasy because to me what I am hearing echoed from the various Fediverse/p2p/Mastodon schools of How Fandom Should Do Next is that the future of fandom should be decentralized and spread around many small communities, each maintained and monitored by a few moderators. Like a set of fiefdoms, but administered without hereditary rule, with mobile users who can transfer allegiances from one fiefdom to another quickly--at least in theory."

tammaiya for disgracetoscholars posted In the Weeds: Same-Sex Subtext in Mainstream Media (Part One) : "This feature is specifically examining quasi-canon subtextual/implied same-sex relationships in popular East Asian media, particularly in relation to (1) the reasons why creators often leave it to the audience to read between the lines rather than outright confirm, and (2) the signs that imply that kind of authorial intent."

Flashback - January 2001

This piece of meta was written before the prevalence of things like coffee shop AUs, but it's still great because it's not really about SPECIFIC AUs. Instead, really digs down deep into WHAT makes an AU interesting/successful/etc., and why some AU fanfics work better than others.

ratcreature posted How to construct Alternate Universes that work as fanfic: "There are AUs which change very little, say the profession of the main characters, and don't work as fanfic anymore, whereas there are others, which change the species of the same characters (and with it a whole lot of other things among those the profession) and succeed as fanfic, and are perfectly recognizable as such to everybody who knows the source. Why does this happen? Are these rare exceptions, only due to totally exceptional writing? I don't think so."

[Linked with permission from Original Poster.]

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.

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.

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?"

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

thisweekmod

I seem to be averaging about 6-7 links per issue, plus the old school featured link. Hm. I WAS going to separate things out by topic, but if only one or two are on the same thing, it seems a little superfluous. Perhaps if I do a super-sized issue (10+) that would come in handy?

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

New Stuff

alis (Mastodon) posted shipping as activism: "The growth of "shipping-as-activism" is a side-product of the mainstream popularization of liberal communist* rhetoric, discuss."

anneapocalypse posted A Ball of String: dreamwidth, tumblr, twitter, youtube, and a bag of chips.: "I have a lot of thoughts on this that I haven’t had time to hammer out into a post, but reading these posts, and most importantly the discussions in the comments, has been fascinating to me and I am learning a lot of things about dreamwidth culture, which, yes, already exists, and has existed this whole time, which I think is important for those of us just recently coming here to realize."

goldentruth813 posted a discussion about the meaning of BNF (Big Name Fan): "The term BNF really fell out of favor in the drarry squad around the decline of livejournal. I think this was a combination of the social norms of tumblr being different than livejourbal as a platform and a few other reasons which I have theories on but am not sure I really wanna share in depth right now."

More BNF info: Fanlore's Big Name Fan page.

icouldwritebooks posted Fandom exists because people bother to build it: "Then, one day, dumb fangirlish teenage me was making one of those “Purity Litmus Tests” (you know, the ones where the goal was to get a low score to show how “corrupted” you’d been by the thing?) for my geocities site, when I realized that all this fun I’d been having wouldn’t even exist if other fans weren’t out there creating stuff. I realized that when I created stuff, I was a part of that, and it was really cool."

muccamukk posted New Meta Newsletter, Signal Boosting, Linking, Dogpiling, and History: "On the other hand, there is a conflicting need: the need of people who are affected by something to express their opinion and their hurt, or to try to protect their space. I also think that is important part of fandom. And then there's just difference of opinion and people having actual discussions about them like goddamn adults. Which happens! And is also important."

sciatrix posted about whisperspace: the sorrow of my favorite absence: "But I haven't mentioned the thing I use the favorites for that makes me love them best of all: the ability to do the equivalent of smiling, nodding, and projecting thank you for saying that in a rough conversation, especially one where I'm concerned the other person thinks I'm angrier than I actually am."

teawoodski posted about fandom community: "Been thinking a lot lately about differing approaches to fandom engagement; now that my favorite show's back from hiatus and we've all got fresh content to roll around in, it's hard not to notice I have an entirely different use pattern from most of my closest fandom friends"

Flashback - March 22, 2006

Older meta can be a valuable way to see how fandom has changed (or stayed the same) over time. Today's flashback meta:

hesychasm posted in lieu of life: "I've been here long enough to know that my fannishness is cyclical, but that it will always be part of my life. I haven't delved as deep as some, but fandom has definitely gotten its hooks into me."