Charmian

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:48:39 GMT

http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_lounge/922844.html?thread=25782748&style=mine#t25782748

Seriously, like.... This death is on all the celeb blogs, and I kind of doubt there was a huge fandom for this dude. However, doesn't look like there is much interest.

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:37:15 GMT

Eventually unfunnybusiness will be the most active comm on JF.

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:37:41 GMT

http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_lounge/848240.html?view=22575728#t22575728

Okay.... just what relevance does John Updike have to fandom? Is mainstream literature considered a fandom now? Also, why the hell do you need to inform us of something we could have seen by looking at the New York Times?

Oh anonymice

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:45:14 GMT

http://www.journalfen.net/community/wank_report/518.html?thread=3075846#t3075846

You know, before spreading rumors, would it have hurt to TALK to the mods? I have no idea what the mods might have done or not done, personally, if I recall correctly, the purpose of wank_report has NOT been to report anonymously, or to slag off on random fans, but for people who cannot have a JF account (because account creation has been turned off) to report wank without leaving it on the main posts.

If your IP address is being logged, don't post crap you can get in trouble for (whatever it is... I don't even see why the people in question WOULD want those IP addresses, as the comments are mostly just 'I hate so and so soooo much.'

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 06:55:45 GMT

Damn! What's with those mousies on W_R? Why are they bringing their intercine SPN h8 to that comm? Isn't there anonymous board they can do it on that is not you know... set for another purpose?

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:02:57 GMT

I wonder, just how smart are the bots leaving spam on wank_report?

What if instead of banning all comments that have the dreaded erectile dysfunction drug (and all comments mentioning a certain political philosophy), it was required to have all comments CONTAIN a certain word? Such as "wank" maybe. Could the bots figure that one out?

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:50:04 GMT

http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_discuss/57576.html?style=mine

My thoughts on academics trying to survey fandom aside, the last parts of this survey are really incoherent. How can you tell how "creative" someone is by the stories? Does it matter whether a fan's work is popular or not, or whether the creator picks the fan to work on their show/whatever when judging creativity? What the heck is "fair"? What is the author of the survey really asking about?

How our views of creativity change depending on how financially successful a show is? How our thoughts on creativity change based on whether a fanfic writer/whatever is "recognized" by the original creator? What the heck is creativity anyway? Creativity, IMHO, is dependent on the work itself, and how original it is.

As for fairness, I have no idea what that means. Fair to who?

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 04:02:12 GMT

Note, before you click this, watch out, because it contains a LOT of NSFW images. I turned images off, because I just don't want to have to load that many.

http://bradhanon.livejournal.com/789.html?thread=52501#t52501

In general, I just ignored this discussion, because a) am not as interested in visual art, more into fandom in general for the stories, and b) most of the outrage seemed to stem from who the poster was (a male) than from what he was saying. Disliking someone's arguments based on who they are is ad hominem, and IMHO there have been a lot of female persons in fandom who have made all kinds of ridiculous arguments about 'all women believe this or want this' for me to think that it's just men who do this. (Which is not to say that I agree with Bradhanon. I think some good arguments have been made against his ideas, especially those which claim that slash fandom cannot be argued to be representative of 'women,' meaning that it cannot be argued that it is equivalent to the so-called 'Male Gaze.' And anyway, if Bradhanon doesn't really understand what it is, it is mistaken for him to write about it)

And also, WTF? Helloooooo there is INDEED A PAYING MARKET FOR M/M WORKS AIMED AT WOMEN, mostly in ebooks. It is ridiculous for people to behave as if m/m works aimed at women are owned only by fanfic writers, or should always be that way.

Frankly, it comes off as if they made mistakes out of ignorance, and notrafficlights, IMHO, is not speaking for the entire fandom(s) and should stop acting like she is. Also, she does not speak for all fans when she claims that fandom is opposed to capitalism.

Also: "And if I think any of it is worth it I'll be more than happy to steal it off the various pirate comms I am a part of on LJ and many other forums on the internet. :) Seriously, why would I give any ignorant money grabbing lying capitalist any of my hard-earned cash? Especially when they've still got so much to apologise for?"

Wow. It is interesting that even though all of the people involved in this endeavor, except for bradhanon are women, notrafficlights seems to believe that it is a good idea that any attempts to make money out of m/m for women be sabotaged. So.... does anyone remember that post that was written awhile back about how fanfic makes women poor? XD Well, certainly m/m will never make anyone a red cent if people feel that they should never, ever pay for it. Man, no one had better tell notrafficlights about the BL sector of the manga industry. That shows that even though doujinshi can be had, and online fanworks, people will STILL pay for m/m works.

(So now capitalist=anyone who wishes to make money off of their labor, or anyone who wishes to start a business?)

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 02:25:29 GMT

http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_lounge/832806.html?thread=21876774#t21876774

ALL HAIL SNACKY.

Seriously though, if you go through and count, it's like 1/4 of the posts are about Twilight. This is just a bit much. I would be equally annoyed if 1/4 of the posts were about SGA or SPN or Merlin or even a fandom I actually liked and followed. Sparklefield is a perfectly cromulent place for random Twilight posts, and that's where they should go.

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 06:37:49 GMT

http://www.journalfen.net/community/wank_report/518.html?thread=2860806#t2860806

Geez, what's with everyone in w_r? Who ran over their puppy?

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:25:02 GMT

http://www.journalfen.net/community/wank_report/518.html?thread=2843910#t2843910

Uhhhh. If that is really the original mouse, then why did that person even post to wankreport in the first place? Wank Report is for things that YOU WANT TO BE ON F_W. If you don't think it belongs on f_w, don't post it to wank report! Pretty simple.

http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_lounge/829740.html?style=mine

Also, this is exactly the sort of the thing that sparklefield was invented for! Not to flame, but I mean... I think people should only post really astounding Twilight related events to the lounge. That's just my opinion, though.

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:12:38 GMT

my thoughts on twilight wank:

The Twilight fans are frequently insane, but most of them uninterestingly. How many times can you behave innappropriately and say psycho things before it gets old hat? However, there has been some good wank in there somewhere, and a lot of people seem to enjoy the Twilight wankage. So maybe what is needed is a Cornfield, and people can then post only the most spectacular stuff to the main comms. (Or heck, for the oh-so-ironic Twlight fans, why not an actual Twilight comm?)

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:46:01 GMT

http://wemyss.livejournal.com/149288.html

Eh, while academics=/=literary theorists, also intellectuals=/=academics. However, the whole wide-ranging discussion in fandom has always been hampered by a lack of concrete examples of "the problem."

Thinking back on debates of the past, I recalled an occasion that might be an example of that, which I made a locked post about, after I read an entry by an acafan, which is still locked, but was not locked at the time, and which I quoted from. Unfortunately it is now locked. In any event, from what I can reconstruct, a group of acafans (although, of course, I do not claim that all acafans or fan-academics or academics who are also fans would have agreed with their positions on the issue at hand, or on their conclusions about the discussion itself) were frustrated that people (disclosure: including myself and one of my friends) did not agree with them.

One of them said something to the effect of they just wished that they could get others to agree with their idead without getting them to accept the theories behind them. Which as I said at the time, struck me as a really weird way of thinking, because obviously people would accept or reject the ideas based on the thinking behind them! Quoting myself: "it seems rather arrogant to say your theoretical foundation is so true that people should just be convinced of its conclusions, without being bothered to argue the foundational assumptions. :P "

Unfortunately, as I said, I can't really eh go into greater details as the post is all locked. But it was a real moment, I think, where there was a clash between a group of academic lit theory inclined fans, and a group which did not have such a background.

I guess there are two groups of "acafans" who might clash with non-acafandom. One is the field of acafans who study fandom itself, the other is when academically influenced interpretations and assumptions collide with non-academic ones. Obviously everyone believes their interpretations are correct, really, but with academia, there's often an investment in believing that this is the Version 3.0 and those other ideas are old fashioned, bourgeois, etc.

I suppose to play devil's advocate, it is entirely out of line for a scholar to believe that their thoughts on literature and writing are more valid than a non-scholar who has not been through that training? And if someone denies the foundation of one's profession, is that not galling? So in some senses one can't blame the acafans for their dislike.

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:13:22 GMT

So what is unfunnybusiness actually for? Is it a rant comm or a discussion comm? I wanted to post some links to articles on obscenity trials on fandom_lounge just to get the information out there. It's definitely not wank and not funny, also, and there are no people shouting at each other, just information and a link to a court decision.

all you ever wanted to know about Breaking Dawn but were afraid to ask

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:42:13 GMT

(found on wank_report)

Stephenie Meyer, in her infinite wisdom, has posted a Breaking Dawn FAQ to her website.

"I'm not the kind of person who writes a Hamlet ending. If the fight had happened, it would have ended with 90% of the combatants, Cullen and Volturi alike, destroyed. There was simply no other outcome once the fight got started, given the abilities and numbers of the opposing sides. Because I would never finish Bella's story on such a downer—Everybody dies!—I knew that the real battle would be mental."

Oh noes! There could have been ROCKS FALL, 90% die!

"Well, I couldn't call her Jennifer or Ashley. What do you name the most unique baby in the world? I looked through a lot of baby name websites. Eventually I realized that there was no human name that was going to work for me, so I surrendered to necessity and made up my own. I don't approve of such shenanigans in real life, I don't even believe in getting creative with spellings for real kids! But this was fantasy, and no human name fit, so I did the best I could. "

No human name is speshul enough for the speshul magical baby!

Actually, snark aside, this reveals some interesting things about her writing process. Is that how most writers do it? IMHO she shouldn't have addressed anything about vampire procreation. That just pissed everyone off.

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:59:20 GMT

Ah, the return of Chancery Stone. I wonder if she actually does have some kind of psychological issue? Is she that delusional? Or does she realize on some level that she's hugely uh... having the exact opposite of massive success? As much as one can make fun of self-important authors like Anne Rice or egregiously mediocre ones like Stephenie Meyer, they succeeded at the hard task of getting published and appealing to numerous readers.

This reminds me of that post where people were all wondering Does Sociability Aid in Marketing In (Fanfic) Fandom? And my mental response was 'in what field, all things being equal, does it NOT help?' Seriously, it's called networking, and in both amateur and pro publishing, where attention is a commodity in short supply, the effects are especially potent. That's why in the publishing world... it is kind of important to not be an ass, even if you aren't Ms. Congeniality.

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:06:15 GMT

Awesome, thanks, white_serpent, for creating the deathwatch comm. Not that I don't care about the dead, but normally this is the fifth time I've so and so just died! by the time it hits JF.

Also, BTW, did they ever resolve the HP Lexicon lawsuit?

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:26:34 GMT

Joined the atouchofbadness group.

I've often wondered about what makes popular "bad" fiction so compelling and read, while more well-written works languish in obscurity.

So, what do you think are the fictional elements (or non-fiction? If discussing popular bad non-fiction is allowable) that will save a book from utter badness? Or which elements can be superlative, but are not enough to make a book a page-turner?

I think in general, characterization (in terms of creating memorable characters) is normally the strong point of books famous for their badness. Perhaps it's also what gets books a *fandom* as well. Many fandoms focus on the characters, but it is possible to have very well written characters who don't create fan devotion. But in writing classes, IIRC people focus on having characters who are well-rounded or complex, and who, above all, develop, which I'm not sure is the key to creating a memorable or popular characters. I remember the post in which someone complained that the series had developed the characters and their relationships, and changed them from how they were before. She would have been happy to have them as they had been at the beginning.

Plot is also another way that a book can keep people reading, despite its obvious flaws. That's how serial cliffhangers work, really. You've got to keep the reader wondering what will happen next. Coherency and avoiding howlers is not that important.

Elements that people DON'T care so much about tend to be prose, and intellectual themes.

(Maybe I should cross-post this to the comm?)

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:55:44 GMT

There is not enough LOLOLOLOL in the world for the Twilight ending.

However, while I totally don't think that Meyer really reads Tanith Lee, the part about Nessi aging up super fast totally reminded me of the Scarabae in Tanith Lee's Blood Opera series. Which I need to reread sometime, because my Inner Goth is attached to it. However, in Lee's case, this is actually HORRIFYING and CREEPY, especially because Rachaela's two daughters also hook up (incestuously to boot). Actually, I want someone else to read these books so I can boggle with them over the Fucked Upness of it all. Actually, more than the vampirism, the rampant incest and reincarnation is the creepier part. Hmm. Actually, is that kind of Lee's way of saying "god, you know, everyone has written about vampires, even me, so actually this is going to be more about vampires as secret immortal repetitive incestuous aristocrats who are possibly a plague from the Bible and also vaguely Jewish themes of exile etc, rather than 'ooooh they drink blood!'"

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:11:00 GMT

http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=1228353&mode=results

http://community.livejournal.com/ljunited/7292.html?style=mine

Huh, seems that a few people are... dissatisfied with the elected LJ board member. But as someone said elsewhere, it's not as if this is out of character. I wonder what her motivations for not speaking are. NDA or just lack of interest with dealing with the users?

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:42:34 GMT

http://jacquez.livejournal.com/616333.html?style=mine

The parts about Tritorella/Logosphile/etc seem to illustrate that it's not.... really a good idea to go for the full on SHUN THE SKINSACK EVERYONE effect if you don't have your facts straight. It is kind of well, rather libelous to say that someone made death threats when they didn't.

Also, uh, if you're rather vague over whether someone did something egregious and admit that you weren't really paying attention at the time, why even bother bringing it up?

[It's kind of unclear whether Tritorella/Logosphile was even a puppeteer, given that other people don't seem to believe she is, even those who aren't her friends. If so, the charges against her are "flamemonger," and "told OP not to contact her under pain of charges of harassment."

So it's possible that Tritorella is as evil as she is said to be, but there sure doesn't seem to be any concrete evidence. )

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:16:04 GMT

http://ithiliana.livejournal.com/919805.html?style=mine

"Apparently in the wake of Rebecca Tushnet's (reportedly) awesome interview on NPR, there are fans concerned that someone is outing fandom which, in their minds, apparently has been a big secret until the Awful Girlz of OTW ™ got together and decided to Speak For All Fandom! And btw those awful girlz should identify who they are in both online and offline forums because well they just should because they are speaking for all fandom."

I realize that some people don't agree with the issues some people have with Rebecca Tushnet's interview, but is it too much to ask that they not all be lumped together? It's pretty OBVIOUS that Ethrosdemon does not agree with Michela's opinions regarding fandom outing of individual fans, so to conflate the two is just dirty pool. :P (Michela isn't even discussing Ethrosdemon's arguments anyway.) Ethrosdemon also knows and respects some of the people involved in OTW, so it is completely unfair to characterize her as someone who believes the members of OTW are bad people. I'm not saying this because I agree with every single one of Ethrosdemon's opinions, but I think she deserves better than this. This is WHY some people are saying that OTW doesn't have respect for those who criticize it! (Is it fair to judge the OTW by what Ithiliana said? I think it is. She's a member who is speaking out in support of it. If higher ups in the OTW repudiate what she has said, I'll change my mind. In general, I think it is fair to judge an organization by what members do in relation to it. If the organization didn't agree, they would talk to the members. The people who criticize OTW, however, are doing so as individuals, not as members of an organization. )

People have explained the difference between, to them, an organization and individual fans speaking. Now, people may not agree with that difference, but it's bad faith not to link to what people have said and instead simply lump together all parties. The main argument that Ethrosdemon and those who agree with her is actually NOT that copyright holders don't know about fandom, it's that they don't agree with an organization that publicly asserts that fanworks are not copyright infringement, and also, that they do not like that OTW has become the public face of fandom, especially when OTW is taking up positions that they do not support, and see the advocacy of which as potentially harmful to fandom.

Both of these positions, I think, deserve more than just simple mockery, even if you are foolish and disagree with them, and the people who have put them forth do not deserve to be characterized as holding positions they have never publicly supported. Furthermore, supporting outing is NOT the same as having reservations with people not revealing their identities when taking up public spokesperson roles.

Is it sockpuppetry?

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 02:34:23 GMT

Is it sockpuppetry if you have two separate identities in a social group and the linkage is secret? Assume that no trolling is being done, and neither identity is in itself a lie or a serious misrepresentation. Having two identities on the internet isn't a problem, but I think it starts being a problem when the two identities hang around the same spaces and the same groups.

The situation gets further complicated when we are dealing with privacy issues, when one identity is a person's legal identity, and the other identity is the "fan identity." I don't support outing fans who are not doing anything destructive or trollish; however, I think people do need to realize that there are potential social problems in this approach.

Essentially, stable identity is important in a community because of reputation. People IMHO generally feel that they should have the opportunity to judge people by their prior public acts in the community. That is why it is considered a negative thing to create an LJ account to get friended by people without explaining who you are in the group and revealing your other LJ account. People won't be offended, perhaps, by another main LJ account which doesn't interact in the general social group where the sock/secondary account is getting friends. I think the degree to which people are bothered by this depends on the degree to which the two accounts interact in the community. If one account never makes comments, never makes posts, people will feel less offended than if both accounts participate with gusto, because that increases the possibility that people will form ties with the sock. I wonder how one would deal with someone wanting to befriend the sock when the potential friend doesn't like the RL identity.

It strikes me as bad form, also, to comment on someone's post using two accounts without informing them of this fact. Not saying this has been done recently, but it's a situation which could potentially occur as a result of people participating in fandom simultaneously under their RL and fan identities.

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:27:57 GMT

http://ethrosdemon.livejournal.com/423655.html?style=mine

It's good to see someone talking about concerns about the OTW who is within Western media fandom, and focusing on core issues, rather than the side ones. As much as some OTW supporters say that the archive is the center, that doesn't really matter because no one objects to the idea of an archive, it's the legal issues people question.

I personally don't experience her issue with the OTW that people will see it as representing her, because I'm an anime fan and fair use doesn't exist in Japan, and also I don't write fanfiction, and go whole months without reading any. But I can understand that issue, that people will believe that all fanfic fans share the ideology of the OTW. I don't know if anything can be done about it. This will hold especially true if the OTW ever does anything controversial to the general public or creative groups outside fandom.

She also goes into the legal aspects. Personally, I think her viewpoint is more... realistic? than that of a lot of people who feel that fanfic is already fair use in the US. (A legal article recently concluded that it is probably not "fair dealing" in Canada, and someone on my flist, a legal student, is in the process of writing an article about how it is probably not "fair dealing" in Australia either. IANAL but I suspect the same applies to Britain. No one has even mentioned France and Germany, or the rest of the EU. )

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:44:59 GMT

http://www.journalfen.net/users/white_serpent/38852.html?style=mine

LOL.

I hate it when people post to fandom comms asking for help either on their homework, or for help with their research. I don't believe it's inappropriate, and feel that it's a kind of spam. It sets a bad precedent.

I think it can be okay to for people to ask questions, but just as any old sort of fan, not as a 'I'm looking for viewpoints on blah blah blah, give them to me.' Just start a discussion, then ask people afterwards if they give permission to be cited, if that is an issue.