lunabee34

Catch her playing on lj instead of doing whatever the hell it is she's supposed to be doing.

Since this is an illicit post anyway and I will soon have to get back to re-reading Gilbert and Gubar, I think I will indulge in a little whining.

I have an extraordinary amount of anxiety over Dreamwidth. I have a really tiny flist but most of it has already gotten a DW account, is seeking an invite code, or seems likely to head over there when the site goes open and live. I don't use reading filters. If I have friended a journal, that means I read it. And I want to keep reading it! Crossposting sounds awesome, unless the comments are split in two different places and then flipping back and forth between two different sets of comments on the same post will be annoying for pretty much everybody involved, I'd think.

People are going to change their names! If you guys are changing your names, you've already posted about that but what if someone whose fic I adore but who I don't have friended changes hir name and I never click on that story by deaniscool because I don't realize it's musesfool writing it?

What about communities? Are the people who are getting DW accounts taking their comms with them too? How would that work? If I move, what will I do with sga_talk? Most comms need to be in one place to operate well. We certainly couldn't split up the convo at sga_talk and have that be a productive thing. How is traffic and participation in comms going to be affected by a potential split between the two platforms?

And I hate to be the voice of inertia, I truly truly do (although if you could see my ass, that role would likely seem natural for me to you), but I am comfortable here at lj. I know how everything works and what I can't figure out, hermionesviolin will graciously explain to me. I am not quite a technophobe, but it takes me a while to figure out new interfaces and feel comfortable with them and while all the bells and whistles sound really cool (really truly cool) the thought of having to learn how to do them makes me anxious.

If everyone's going to mass migrate over the course of about a year then while I'm still in a tizzy about moving and figuring things out, I can suck it up, but if this fragments fandom with some staying and some going, I think it's going to make fandom a lot harder for me to navigate and play in.

1. If anybody has a hankering to get me something for Christmas, please go over to sga_talk and leave a comment on leesa_perrie's story. I am the only person to comment and that is unacceptable. I don't want to leave anyone thinking hir experience in the comm was a bad one. Please, please, please go read and comment. For me!

2. executrix, I just got your package and OMG! Best lipgloss ever! And did you make that purse? You did not. It's too fabulous. I wish I could describe to you the manly squeal Josh made when he saw the books you'd included, but I can't hit that many notes above the staff. LOL Thank you so much, sweetie. *loves*

3. Majel Barrett Roddenberry passed away. *cries* The voice of the Enterprise and the inimitable Luwaxana Troi, not to mention Number One and Nurse Chapel, are laid to rest. I can say for certain that her passing will leave a hole in many fannish hearts. Rest in peace, Majel.

4. I'm about to make a TLGN book club post and then after that, it's radio silence for me until the New Year. My parents don't even have internet. *shudders* I might squeeze a quick check in now and again but I probably won't see lj again until 2009. I love y'all. Be good and kind and safe and if you miss me half as much as I'm gonna miss you, *whew*. Lots of missing, folks. [Note the vocative comma *g*] :) <333333333333

I am a little disappointed.

And a little annoyed.

In no small part at myself, but also at fandom at large.

And so I come to you, dear friends who are wiser than me, for advice.

I dropped the ball on the last sga_talk discussion. This whole new assistant professor, teaching five classes, QEP, SACS, why yes you have to finish your Ph.D. right now or we won't give you tenure gig is a little exhausting. And stressing. And I forgot to do a reminder post for this last discussion. And I forgot to drum up participation once I saw that I was, again, the only commenter. And I forgot to assign a new piece to read for the 1st of September.

So, yes. Culpability, I own you.

But here's the thing, y'all. Here's the thing.

I think sga_talk is awesome for a lot of reasons. I love to write. I am a writer. I become a better writer when I talk with other people about writing. And I like having a structured place to do this. I love to read. I am a reader. I have made reading and nattering on about it to other people my life's profession. I love literary analysis of fanfic. I also love reading outside of my comfort zone. I have so little time to hunt for fic now that I pretty much exclusively read the flist or large challenges like Big Bang. I find the good stuff through sga_talk that I would never find otherwise. I also like to meet people and I have met through sga_talk some really cool people with interesting ideas about SGA and writing and fandom. I think sga_talk is poised to be a vital segment of fandom.

And yet, it saddens me that I have to beg and grovel for participation in what other fans say over and over again that they want.

Believe me when I say that I understand there are obstacles to participating in a comm of this nature. RL is in the way; you have no time to read this week; you hate the featured pairing; you vowed never to read amnesia fic again; you're too wrapped up in Big Bang. All valid reasons not to participate.

But a significant portion of fandom says over and over again that it wants constructive criticism. A significant portion of fandom says over and over again that it thinks of fanfic as having the same kind of value and interest as published works and that it wants literary analysis of fannish works. And yet, in a comm with 69 members, I can count on only four other people besides myself and lyrstzha to regularly comment.

So what am I doing wrong? What am I not getting?

And while I am showing my ass, as we say in the South, let me also make this complaint. Why oh why is it that we fans criticize again and again the source material for giving short shrift to women and fanfic for doing the same; why is it that we lament the representation of women and of queer female relationships both in our source texts and in the fannish works we create but when it comes time to read and talk about femslash, everybody disappears? Even in its honeymoon phase when participation in sga_talk was at its highest, the femslash selections received the fewest comments. This makes me angry, particularly since there is an AWESOME and truly unique femslash fic sitting in sga_talk right now that no one but myself has commented on.

I am having a really hard time reconciling what I think I hear fandom say that it wants and needs and what fandom actually ends up doing.

So, help me, y'all. I think sga_talk can be an amazing community, but I don't know how to get it to that point. What can I do (besides, oh, getting my head out of my ass and doing my modly duties like I'm supposed to; *is embarrassed*)? What are your suggestions?

Remember that we will not re-read an author in a given category until we have read each author at least once; for this reason, some of the submissions in the slash category do not appear on this poll. Please visit the Fic Masterlist for futher information on and links to each story. Poll will close on Sunday at 8 central.


[Poll #1191548]

[Poll #1150949]

Please visit the Reading Masterlist for more information about and links to these fics.

Okay, guys! lyrstzha and I finished setting up sga_talk, the new comm dedicated to critical discussion of SGA fanfic. Join! Pimp! The more people we get involved in the conversation, the more fun it'll be. :)