A Bit On Meta and Fandom
Aug. 30th, 2014 12:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiki_engI'm looking for meta about reccing - anything you can link me would be awesome; I am trying to get my hands on as much as I can.
I've gone through the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom newsletters on LJ looking for stuff and found a lot. I finished that yesterday and was the most excited person because I had finished all of metafandom, until I realised that, of course, I hadn't, because I still have all of Dreamwidth's ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
metafandom to go through. I am at that point in the research phase where the answer to "Will I ever finish researching?" is "NFI." I think I probably have around a hundred links now, but have zero interest in counting to confirm that currently, but I finished going through metafandom's LJ!
I have lots of meta tabs and stuff I still need to go through, still, but feel this is sort of a good time in the process to ask for more links and talk about how I spent my summer vacation. Or okay, not really that last bit, but I have spent a fairly solid chunk of time in the past couple months reading through and skimming the metafandom newletter on LJ and doing the same with the linked stuff, and have decided to write a little bit about that.
The deleted and purged journals were and are sad to me and there's also a good chunk of locked entries in those links now. There would be fascinating excerpts and I would follow the link to... nothing. (It was awful.) It's been interesting being in a space after the party has died down, basically, and it's interesting skimming past all of this meta that I'm not looking for right now, just seeing bits of the titles and excerpts for the most part. One of the things that was really interesting, doing that, is looking at the issues that have cropped up again years later - there have been and are, recurring discussions: Slash and Gay (What is slash? What is gay? Why is a predominately female group writing mostly male slash?); Fandom: We're Here and We Are Pretty Queer, Actually? (There's a way higher percentage of us that ID as some form of queer/not straight than there's supposed to be in the general population.)
It was interesting, basically, seeing what fandom keeps coming back to, looking about a place that I no longer consider to be the primary fannish forum as I still try to negotiate my relationship with that I consider to have been LJ's replacement, and reflecting on the differences. I think with meta on tumblr that it is still cyclical to some degree - there are still flare-ups of discussion, but a good chunk of it has become embedded in the culture. There's a decent amount of overlap between "social justice tumblr" and fandom on tumblr, and I think that filtering is harder on tumblr and reblogging makes transmitting content much easier, so there's a lot more discussion about racism and sexism and so forth that's moving around tumblr, which I think is good. I think that fandom is maybe doing better on some things because of how tumblr works.
That is sort of a thing, basically, with looking at all of this meta stuff, that I am thinking about all of this meta stuff, and there is sort of a danger of creating meta. I mean, I totally want there to be more meta about reccing - all of the meta about reccing, apparently - and am wondering where the post titled something like A Room of One's Own ...and an internet connection: Feminism and Fandom is and have an increasingly strong desire to write about fanworks and fannish activity.
There also came a point in looking at all of this meta stuff where I clicked on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flambeau's the fannish review and felt a deep personal connection to it. That work is sort of what going through metafandom has been like for me, especially since I have just been skimming a fair chunk of things and doing that is like BNF. Meritocracy flist readership ego club anon hate. Blah blah blah. (flambeau does this much better than I am doing here.) and my brain is a tiny bit meta mush despite my efforts to pace myself, basically.
Fandom's cool, though. Meta's cool, and if you have meta on reccing or know where I should be looking for it, that would be so very cool of you to share.
I've gone through the
metafandom newsletters on LJ looking for stuff and found a lot. I finished that yesterday and was the most excited person because I had finished all of metafandom, until I realised that, of course, I hadn't, because I still have all of Dreamwidth's metafandom to go through. I am at that point in the research phase where the answer to "Will I ever finish researching?" is "NFI." I think I probably have around a hundred links now, but have zero interest in counting to confirm that currently, but I finished going through metafandom's LJ! I have lots of meta tabs and stuff I still need to go through, still, but feel this is sort of a good time in the process to ask for more links and talk about how I spent my summer vacation. Or okay, not really that last bit, but I have spent a fairly solid chunk of time in the past couple months reading through and skimming the metafandom newletter on LJ and doing the same with the linked stuff, and have decided to write a little bit about that.
The deleted and purged journals were and are sad to me and there's also a good chunk of locked entries in those links now. There would be fascinating excerpts and I would follow the link to... nothing. (It was awful.) It's been interesting being in a space after the party has died down, basically, and it's interesting skimming past all of this meta that I'm not looking for right now, just seeing bits of the titles and excerpts for the most part. One of the things that was really interesting, doing that, is looking at the issues that have cropped up again years later - there have been and are, recurring discussions: Slash and Gay (What is slash? What is gay? Why is a predominately female group writing mostly male slash?); Fandom: We're Here and We Are Pretty Queer, Actually? (There's a way higher percentage of us that ID as some form of queer/not straight than there's supposed to be in the general population.)
...and I found some old ace meta that I suspect a few people on my flist may be interested in. (One link totally demonstrates that cyclical discussions thing.)
[meta-ish] why can't we all just get along? (said the spider to the fly) byduskwings (2006, April 3)
I guess that my very, very long point is that ... I don't see why there is wank over asexuality versus ship, when you can just as easily ignore the other side and go back to the porn. Or ... the not-porn, as the case may be. Of course, you could say the same of ship wars, so I guess that's kind of a moot point.
Being an asexual slasher. bynike_victory (2006, July 1)
I saw this poll through metafandom about sexuality and fandom and whether we're all as straight as people seem to think we are. I thought it was a great idea, except I couldn't actually answer the poll unless I wanted to skew the results. Since I didn't want that, I decided to comment on it, only to find my comment becoming much too long and rather off topic.
[meta-ish] why can't we all just get along? (said the spider to the fly) by
duskwings (2006, April 3)I guess that my very, very long point is that ... I don't see why there is wank over asexuality versus ship, when you can just as easily ignore the other side and go back to the porn. Or ... the not-porn, as the case may be. Of course, you could say the same of ship wars, so I guess that's kind of a moot point.
Being an asexual slasher. by
nike_victory (2006, July 1)I saw this poll through metafandom about sexuality and fandom and whether we're all as straight as people seem to think we are. I thought it was a great idea, except I couldn't actually answer the poll unless I wanted to skew the results. Since I didn't want that, I decided to comment on it, only to find my comment becoming much too long and rather off topic.
It was interesting, basically, seeing what fandom keeps coming back to, looking about a place that I no longer consider to be the primary fannish forum as I still try to negotiate my relationship with that I consider to have been LJ's replacement, and reflecting on the differences. I think with meta on tumblr that it is still cyclical to some degree - there are still flare-ups of discussion, but a good chunk of it has become embedded in the culture. There's a decent amount of overlap between "social justice tumblr" and fandom on tumblr, and I think that filtering is harder on tumblr and reblogging makes transmitting content much easier, so there's a lot more discussion about racism and sexism and so forth that's moving around tumblr, which I think is good. I think that fandom is maybe doing better on some things because of how tumblr works.
That is sort of a thing, basically, with looking at all of this meta stuff, that I am thinking about all of this meta stuff, and there is sort of a danger of creating meta. I mean, I totally want there to be more meta about reccing - all of the meta about reccing, apparently - and am wondering where the post titled something like A Room of One's Own ...and an internet connection: Feminism and Fandom is and have an increasingly strong desire to write about fanworks and fannish activity.
There also came a point in looking at all of this meta stuff where I clicked on
flambeau's the fannish review and felt a deep personal connection to it. That work is sort of what going through metafandom has been like for me, especially since I have just been skimming a fair chunk of things and doing that is like BNF. Meritocracy flist readership ego club anon hate. Blah blah blah. (flambeau does this much better than I am doing here.) and my brain is a tiny bit meta mush despite my efforts to pace myself, basically. Fandom's cool, though. Meta's cool, and if you have meta on reccing or know where I should be looking for it, that would be so very cool of you to share.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-04 03:02 pm (UTC)I'd also love to hear more about what prompted you to start delving into it the meta behind reccing. I've recently decided to reboot my languishing rec blog (for reasons you can read about here: http://redblueskies.dreamwidth.org/12181.html), but I'd love to hear about your thoughts on the matter. It seems like you have a lot more thoughts on tumblr and what it is doing to fandom than I do...
(I spent about four months on tumblr, then left when I realised I was forgetting how to create because it was such a good tool for procrastination, inactivity and consumption. I might be tempted to go back eventually - but I'd have to figure out a better way to filter out the absolutely massive amount of white noise that obscures the small fraction of posts I'm actually interested in reading.)
Anyway - all that aside, I probably should end by saying, I've just discovered your blog and I'll most definitely be coming back in future!
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-05 02:29 am (UTC)I started looking for meta about reccing because I'm really enthusiastic about reccing. Recs brought me into journaling fandom and to all different kinds of fandoms and fanworks and things. I love what they do and I think they're awesome. I've also spent a lot of time drafting rec posts, so I'm interested in the mechanics of them and am aware of how much work they are and am really interested in the idea of recs as fanworks.
I wrote a piece of meta about reccing around a year and a half ago and it got linked to on the fanlore page for recs a bit after that, and it's one of two meta posts that are linked on that page right now and the other one is over a decade older, and, basically I felt like there should be more links, so I went looking for more links and started pulling together a list. My plan is to post that and highlight the ones that I think are noteworthy or interesting or whatever somehow, but I haven't decided how I'm going to do that yet and haven't noted those ones down in any real way yet; I've got a lot of reading ahead of me. (So, no links to share yet; sorry.)
For filtering on tumblr there's x-kit, which allows you to block posts with certain words from your dash; I installed that during the World Cup this year and was a much happier person after that. I'm on a tumblr break right now and am enjoying that, because it is really easily a time suck, but I have to go back because that's where so much of fandom happens now and I know that I have missed so many things that I would have cared about. I'm planning on trying to change the way that I use tumblr so that it works for me, which will basically consist of following fewer blogs and making my peace with not knowing all the things.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-05 01:12 pm (UTC)I'm fascinated by the idea of recs being fanworks - it makes so much sense now that you have said it, but I never would have thought it before. I'm what I would call and unreflective reccer - that is, I rec stuff that I like in a manner that I hope will make other people like it, but I don't actually think much about the mechanics behind what I'm doing.
(I'm also not much of a reccer - I feel like I need to be going at it for years more before I can say that!)
I'm definitely going to hunt down your meta and read it after reading this - you've got me highly intrigued, and I'd love to find out more.
As for the tumblr problem - something like x-kit would probably work for me. But, I suppose I'm at a point where I've actually made my peace with not knowing all the things, and I'm terrified that once I jump back in, my desire to KNOW ALL THE THINGS will attack me and take me down. (I'll be drowning in happiness, but I'll still be drowning...)
I'm now going to duck off and answer your other comment on my blog. Thanks for answering there as well - as I'm about to say over there, a lot of the places you pointed me to are brilliant, and you've given me a lot to think about. :)
Thanks again!
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-06 02:08 pm (UTC)I think that there is a lot of work that fans do, and that includes technical and organisational and social stuff, and that the line between fan work and fanwork may be, basically, "But is it art?" which is subjective. I think that there are definitely recs out there that are art but tend to think of my own as more craft, but oftentimes we are using the same tools. I think a good RL analogy is maybe pottery or journalism - because there is a range of skill and some reccers have a more utilitarian style and some are definitely artists; there's variation.
I've been thinking of myself as a reccer for a long time because the answer to what have I created the most of in fandom has been recs since pretty early on. I don't really feel like it's a thing where you need to get years under your belt, though, yeah, I think it's like any kind of writing in that the more you practice it the better you'll get.
(...and I'm just going to drop links to the stuff I mentioned upstream here:
Rec article on Fanlore
Meta on Reccing by
x-kit)