-- and of course, talking about it all, and analyzing it every step of the way because dude we're not stupid --
Arduinna - Slash Fiction Is Like a Banquet ("the hummus essay") (19 Mar 1999)
And all those people who brought store-bought identical hummus glowed with pleasure at their reception -- not surprisingly -- and vowed to keep buying the same thing. Why risk learning to make it yourself, to make something original -- or, god forbid, to make a different dish altogether -- when clearly people are overjoyed at the thought of the standard lemon-garlic hummus? Why even bother making a different kind of hummus?
Super Cat - A (Very) Brief History of Fanfic (2 July 1999)
The Siege of Thebes is a poem written as a "continuation" of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. In it, monk-poet John Lydgate meets up with Chaucer's pilgrims in Canterbury and accompanies them back to London. The Host begs Lydgate to join the story-telling competition, and after only the briefest of pro-forma humble protests, Lydgate complies, recounting The Siege of Thebes: a distressingly serious epic which, at over 4,000 lines, eclipses even Chaucer's longest tale (the Knight's Tale 2,200 lines).
The Brunching Shuttlecocks - The Geek Hierarchy (Jan 2002)
Something Positive - May 3, 2002
ROCKS FALL! EVERYONE DIES!
Jae - The three arcs (30 Nov 2002)
One of the many things she told us that my mind has kept coming back to ever since is that the traditional story arc with increasing tension culminating in conflict and denouement doesn't always work in that simplistic a form. In a longer work, such as a novella or a novel, you're often dealing with three separate arcs: action, the way the characters process the action, and emotion.
Kristina - The Homosocial Nature of Fanfic Communities (4 Mar 2003)
In a way, then, I, the reader, am making love to the author over the naked bodies of the boys in question. It is the other woman’s mind that I’m enchanted with much more than the actual person (or even character) the story depicts.
Rahirah - Apathy (9 Aug 2003)
"You described my hair, you bitch! NEVER DESCRIBE THE FUCKIN' HAIR!"
Philosopher at Large - Dromonds. Not Junks (2004)
—Now, in the film, the ships of Umbar are black — but that's the
only thing the filmmakers got right. They're not dromonds. They're not anything
remotely like dromonds. (There were also, in the book, a host of other ships
that came along, Dunkirk-style, volunteered by the rescued people of the coastal
provinces, but that's irrelevant since the people of the coastal provinces were
left out of the film, too; but they would likely have been cogs and caravels,
fishing ships and small merchanters.) They look, in fact, like Malay pirate
junks — a very different sort of ship, with a very different developmental
history, and radically different set of associations. (More on that last, later.)
They are, as it happens, lug-rigged, which is a wedge-shaped sail that has the
angled advantages of the lateen-rig but allows for some more power due to the
greater surface area of a trapezoid than a triangle, and was invented in the
Far East. (Hence the use of a junk in a scene to immediately establish "this
is China" in a picture.)
Now, what is the difference? You have, in the film, yet another example of
"Asian" type enemies attacking purely "Nordic" type good
guys, which is not unreasonably taken by many viewers as an example of racism
on the part of Tolkien.
Janis Cortese - Eew, He's All Girly: Issues Surrounding Feminized Male Characters (3 Feb 2004)
Let's face it, it's every bit as wrong to paint Jack O'Neill
as an athletic klutz or a wife-abuser as it is to make Daniel Jackson cry at
the drop of a hat and constantly need rescuing -- and yet why do we scream bloody
murder over the latter much more loudly?
"Jack's acting like a drunk abusive asshole
in this fic. Oh, that's wrong."
"Daniel's acting GIRLY! OH MY GOD HOW DISGUSTING!
WHO ARE THESE FOOLS WHO ARE WRITING THIS? MY GOD THEY SHOULD BE TAKEN OUT AND
SHOT THAT'S SO GRO-O-O-O-O-O-O-OSS!"
Kristina - Conduit; or, Sedgwick Revisited (12 July 2004)
Unlike many of the texts Sedgwick studies, however, the conduit is not written out of the text. Often it is from her point of view, so that the obvious object (to be used in a power exchange, an extended flirtation, between the guys) suddenly becomes the central focus point for the reader. That not only allows her to become a subject, to gain agency that she seemingly loses as the go-between, it also allows us the perspective that we as slash writers and readers, of course, hold: we are both voyeurs of the dynamic between the guys as well as often wishful participants who wouldn't mind being part of this.
Gwyn R - The Broccoli Test (21 Sept 2004)
Doyle would have known Bodie wanted him to pick up some broccoli with just a raise of his eyebrow!
Ellen Fremedon - Slash shock, shamelessness, and a rec. (2 Dec 2004)
We have a toolbox for writing this sort of thing really, really well, for making these 3 A.M. fantasies work as story and work as literature without having to draw back from the Id Vortex to do it.
Profshallowness - Meta posts and essays links - for newbies (7 Feb 2005)
When I started reading fanfic, I wanted info about the why of
it, and when I decided I wanted to participate more, I wanted terms explained
and defined; the etiquette, conventions and traditions of this strange new world
explained so that I wouldn't blunder.
I blundered anyway. I still do. It happens.
Flambeau - the fannish review (23 Mar 2005)
rpsrpffpfomgwtfbbq. invasive privacy inappropriate okay not okay
use edgy ethics persona public violation power fantasy children desensitized
dead or alive tabloids reality legal moral. lawsuit. fiction.
dancing meatpuppets. sparkly dancing meatpuppets!
Siderea - Psychodrama, Surrealism, and the Archipelago of Weird, Or, "What Do You Mean 'If'?" (17 Apr 2005)
Culture, in the part of the world in which I've been, and, for all I know, in other parts as well to which I cannot speak, has two rough parts: the Mainland and the Isles.
Carene - Rant in a Run-On Sentence (9 May 2005)
-- and of course, talking about it all, and analyzing it every step of the way because dude we're not stupid --
Fabu - The commodification of female desire and fandom (19 Oct 2005)
Levy: And that's why I think it's funny that people are always saying that our culture is oversexualized, because I think we're totally undersexualized. All we are is overcommercialized. This isn't a moment of explosive sexual hedonism. It's just a moment where sexual performances of one particular kind are overvalued.
Cereta - Fandom and Male Privilege (7 Nov 2005)
True gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.
Resonant - How to Write a Sex Scene (20 Jan 2006)
One of the movies began with a shot of a nipple that filled the entire movie screen. Not the aureole, mind you — just the nipple. The pores were bigger than my head.
Marna and Lea - Writers' Fight Song (Procrastination Rag) (6 July 2006)
Our writer's clubs have spikes in
We back up all our work
We love our semicolons
Our heros are all jerks
Our favourite POV is third person omni-incompetent with serious daddy issues
and we don't give a damn about rhythm or rhyme or meter or comma splices but
we're really good at onomatopoeia!
Scott Lynch - Eleven things I will serve my best never to put in a fantasy novel unless I am trying to undermine them, and in fact could do without entirely from now on, thanks. (2 Aug 2006)
1. Thoughtless fetishization of hereditary aristocracy.
Marna and Lea - I knew you must be edified by the margent ere you had done. (5 Aug 2006)
MRN: And really, if slash has a claim on some feminist ground it's women taking on that whole obsession: ok, so WHAT IF HE DOES TAKE IT? And I'm being quite willfully crude here.
Lawrence Lessig - Read-Only Vs. Read-Write Culture (Authors@Google Series, 3 Oct 2006)
People talk about the culture of the internet; I think we need to recognize that there are in fact two different cultures. The read only culture is this massively efficient technology for enabling people anytime and anywhere to buy and consume culture. [...] These markets involve more control over how people "use" culture. Radically different: read-write internet. This is digital creativity—the read-write culture that digital technologies are building. This is important not because the techniques here are something new, but that the tools have been democratized.
Kathryn Andersen - The Ten Commandments of Fanfiction (16 Nov 2006)
In the beginning, the story was without form, and void, and blankness was upon the face of the paper. And God said, "Let us create Authors in Our own image, that there may be sub-creations." And it was so, and God saw that it was good.
Synecdochic - The Ten Minutes AU and how I construct one; why plot is not a scary thing (13 Feb 2007)
Ivorygates says screw all the dithering about character/plot/etc. Her theory is that a story has three parts: clock, engine, and line. The engine is what drives the story forward, the clock is, you know, the deadline, and the line is what carries the reader through -- the focus around which everything follows. The clock and the engine drive the story; the line is what gives it somewhere to go. If you've got those, the plot will just *happen*.
Princessofgeeks - "Writing Bodies in Space" by Francesca Coppa, part 1 (21 Mar 2007)
Coppa: "[I]n literary terms, fan fiction's repetition is strange; in theatre, stories are retold all the time... it's fine to tell the same story again, but differently." Her example is Hamlet — how Shakespeare's version retold earlier stories, how each production from Shakespeare's day on gave us different actors saying the lines a bit differently. How today the play can be moved to different time periods and cultures and how that teases out different meanings.
xkcd - Online Communities (Spring 2007)
here be anthropomorphic dragons
Synecdochic - the endless slogging middle, or, how to stay enthused with writing longer stories (11 Apr 2007)
Syne: And I'm kind of running out of stuff to
mention, so I'll open the question up to the discussion group. *g* Writers of
long fiction: how do you keep yourself motivated and on-track while you're slogging
around in the Endless Middle Of The Story?
Ivorygates (in comments): Um... I think about sex a lot. No,
*really.* In almost all of my (very, very, very long) stories, you see, the
characters are going to have Sex. Either somewhere in the last quarter of the
story, or right after the story is *over* (I'm good to them that way *g*.) So
if anybody is ever going to get Transcendentally Laid, the story has to get
Done.
Astolat - An Archive Of One's Own (17 May 2007)
We're still left with this problem: we are sitting quietly by
the fireside, creating piles and piles of content around us, and other people
are going to look at that and see an opportunity. And they are going to end
up creating the front doors that new fanfic writers walk through, unless we
stand up and build our OWN front door.
We need a central archive of our own, something like animemusicvideos.org.
Something that would NOT hide from google or any public mention, and would clearly
state our case for the legality of our hobby up front, while not trying to make
a profit off other people's IP and instead only making it easier for us to celebrate
it, together, and create a welcoming space for new fans that has a sense of
our history and our community behind it.
Rahirah - Monday (29 May 2007)
While it's true that this can lead to a reader being unduly harsh on Fic #742 because they're so irritated by what went on in Fics #1-741, I would not call belonging to a literary tradition a bad thing overall. Having tropes, and more importantly being aware of those tropes, means you can play with them.
Rahirah - Why I give a shit (31 May 2007)
Maybe that's true. Maybe you don't know or like or respect anyone who's ever written or read Wincest or Weasleycest, or Harry/Snape or Spike/Dawn, or Giles/Any Scooby or Simon/River, or Boone/Shannon, or Connor/Angel, or S1-2 Buffy/Angel, or S2 Buffy/Spike. Or read Romeo and Juliet or Lolita or Flowers In The Attic or Oedipus Rex. You've never read or enjoyed a bodice-ripper where the heroine is ravished against her will by the sexy and domineering Earl of Studly but turns out to secretly like it. Or thought that the Doublemint Twins are kinda hot. Maybe you have absolutely no sexual fantasies relating to rape or incest or underage sex at all, ever.
Cesperanza - Porn, incest, underage, slash--oh, my! (1 June 2007)
Vis a vis slash, the argument has been made that to slash a traditional male TV lead (white, male, 30-something, saves the world for/from black people) is to make that male lead more likable to us: if he's gay, he's now occupying more complex and problematic social position (like me); if he experiences desire for men, well, hey, I can relate to that. Otherwise, your television would be full of--well, you know, cops and military guys who probably don't even vote progressively. It's a depressing thought.
xkcd - Rule 34
It's Rule 34 of the internet: If you can imagine it, there is porn of it.
Isiscolo - Isis's guide to recording awesome podfic (30 July 2007)
The downside of the recent explosion of podfic is that there is an awful lot of poorly-done podfic out there now. I was going to rant about it, but actually, I don't want to make readers feel bad about it - I want them to improve their recordings! I've been recording audiofic for over a year, now; here are my tips, tricks, and suggestions.
Bellatrys - Broken Wings (6 Oct 2007)
I made the hip-joint a little less Barbie-like, and I left out the troubling semi-random, not-really-possible bits of fallen brick walls that hadn't disintegrated, but it's pretty close. I also left out the special X-Men Butt Glow™ in the original, because I just couldn't make it work properly tonight and I got frustrated.
Kass - Modern Midrash (12 Nov 2007)
Midrash is/are exegetical stories, written to explore textual loopholes or bring silent voices to life. Historically, midrash arises out of Torah. But it seems to me that what we do as fans is a variation on that same theme—the same kind of practice, only with a different sort of beloved text at its heart. Fans bring a midrashic sensibility to every sourcetext with which we fall in love, be it Harry Potter or the collected public appearances of Fall Out Boy.
Cupidsbow - Valuing the Work in Fanwork (15 Dec 2007)
In my experience, that's where a lot of the confusion comes from with non-fans -- they see all this effort, all the work that goes into fanwork, and they are so immersed in the invisible reality of capitalist thinking, that they honestly can't conceptualise that people might genuinely not give a shit about selling that work for money.
Cesperanza - Why I Support The OTW, by Speranza, aged mumble-mumble (9 Jan 2008)
I want us to own the goddamned servers.
Catherine Driscoll - This is Not a Blog (Feminist Media Studies, 8:2 (2008))
L J challenges a lot of assumptions about blogging, and its users have different needs. They typically value communication and identity development over publishing and reaching mass audiences. The culture is a vast array of intimate groups, many of whom want that intimacy preserved. LiveJournal is not a lowbrow version of blogging; it is a practice with different values and needs, focused far more on social solidarity, cultural work and support than the typical blog. (Boyd, 2005)
Francesca Coppa - Women, Star Trek, and the early development of fannish vidding (Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 1, (2008))
In these two guises—Nurse Chapel and the Enterprise computer—the displaced character of Number One serves as the model for two archetypical fan positions: the woman who embodies visible desire, and the disembodied but all-controlling voice. The former is often presented as a negative fan stereotype: the groupie, the stalker, the shrieking Beatlemaniac, the "Mary Sue" who dreams herself into the story, the girl with the embarrassing public crush on a movie star. The latter, I would argue, is the voice of the vidder: the woman behind the camera, slide projector, VCR, or computer, the technological woman who controls the machine. The disembodied voice is also the voice of the slash writer (who writes about bodies not her own) or the omniscient and controlling fan artist who takes control of the protagonists' images and bends them to her will. But most fan works seek to unite the analytical mind and the desiring body in order to create a total female subjectivity.
Catherine Tosenberger - "The epic love story of Sam and Dean": Supernatural, queer readings, and the romance of incestuous fan fiction (Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 1, (2008))
The celebration of the semicriminal life of tortured outcasts roaming the earth is nothing new; it hearkens back to Romanticism (note 11). Romanticism, and its sister, the Gothic, provide several other important tropes for both show and fan fiction, including the formal study of the folklore Sam and Dean track, a fascination with the otherworldly, and, most importantly, persistent discourses of both queerness and sympathetic sibling incest. It is no surprise that the series's most overtly Gothic episode, 2.11 "Playthings," also contains the most overt and extensive representation of Sam and Dean as queer, incestuous siblings; this episode will be discussed in greater detail below.
Rydra Wong - How to Write a Novel Bigger than Your Head (23 Dec 2008)
For me, a novel is less like something that you can carry around
in your head, and more like something that you live inside and wander around
in for a while, like Jonah in the belly of the whale.
Plan for this. Give it permission to be bigger
than you are. Take a flashlight, and food supplies.
Deepa D. - I Didn't Dream of Dragons (13 Jan 2009)
When I was around thirteen years old, I tried to write a fantasy
novel. It was going to be an epic adventure with a cross-dressing princess on
the run, a snarky hero, and dragons. I got stuck when I had to figure out what
they would do after they left the city. Logically, there would be a tavern.
But there were no taverns in India.
Mary Dell - New Criticism vs. Postmodernism with a Side of Privilege (28 Jan 2009)
New Critics treat a work of literature as if it were self contained. They do not consider the reader's response, author's intention, or historical and cultural contexts. New Critics preform a close reading of the text, and believe the structure and meaning of the text should not be examined seperately. [...] In the postmodern way of reading, the meaning of the text varies depending on who is reading it, the context in which it is presented, and everything in the culture that has created the reader's experience. There is arguably no such thing as a primary text.
Amal Nahurriyeh - In Which Amal Puts Her Philosophy Teacher Hat On (20 Feb 2009)
In philosophy, particularly that strain of liberalism that comes down to us from Kant (and which is most alive today in the work of the intellectual children of Jurgen Habermas and John Rawls), the two terms do not mean the same thing; in fact, they refer to completely different spheres of life. To sketch roughly, morality has to do with the right, whereas ethics has to do with the good.
Wychwood - i was speeding on the subway through the stations of the cross (7 Mar 2009)
[Racefail '09 round-up of must-reads]
Diane E. Levin - Child's play as transformative work (Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 2 (2009))
Theorists talk about transformational thinking, from static to dynamic thinking. That when kids play with playdough, they're learning how to transform from a snake, to a ball, to a pancake, and they see the transformation and they learn how to do it. Now, kids who are hooked on media at age four poke the play-dough and say, "What does it do?"
Fifty Two Acts - Feminist Cookies and Feminist Cookies - the second batch (29 Apr 2009)
And yet, some people still do want credit for these basic things: “but I am not a rapist!”, “I don’t hit women!”, “I read books by female authors!”. So to that end I made a batch of extra special tasty feminist cookies. All cookie images are usable under a creative commons non-commercial share-alike licence, so feel free to distribute as needed.
Goldjadeocean - Actually, I'm just lazy and blogging the short version instead (17 May 2009)
Also, one of these days I'm going to write up a big damn meta post on why the culture around Mary Sue shaming has huge misogynist overtones all over it, and why I love and read MS stories. Because when I was a 13-year-old getting indoctrinated into fanfic, it seemed to me that the takeaway lesson wasn't "write nuanced characters that make sense in their environment". It was, "don't write about women being awesome."
Rahirah - In defense of vanilla (14 June 2009)
Vanilla isn't an act, it's an attitude.
Olivia Circe - Admitting Impediments: Post-WisCon Posts, Part I, or, That Post I Never Made About RaceFail '09 (31 May 2009)
tablesaw describes RaceFail as "a decentralized internal conflict . . . a hypertext, wherein everything refers to something or multiple things, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly." It can, tablesaw points out, be incredibly difficult to read Internet Conflicts if you are not used to that kind of active text.
Kristina Busse - Genderswap and Feminism (Writercon, Aug 2009)
So why do I nevertheless want to redeem genderswap? I mean, more often than not it is transphobic and has a clear tendency to be both misogynist and homophobic. And yet, I think it may offer a particular playing field in which cis women can explore gender and identity issues.
Maggie Stiefvater - The Giant Butt-Kicking How to Write a Novel Post (11 Aug 2009)
What gets a novel written is writing it.
For further reading, check out:
The Fanfic Symposium
Metafandom on Dreamwidth
Metafandom on Livejournal
Metafandom's del.icio.us bookmarks
Transformative Works and Cultures
Fanlore (Beta)
Updated August 15, 2009
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