Meta Links (21/01/13 - 27/01/13)

[metanewsmods]

Notices

Thank you to everyone who submitted links last week. We're always looking for submissions. Please submit links, not just to interesting new meta, but also to newsletters and active meta communities in your fandom, so that we can have even more links next week! Comment here, on the screened post or PM/email.

Thanks also to those who volunteered to look for links and co-mod. We could always use more eyes out for meta. Comment here if you're interested.

If you have any suggestions/questions/concerns, comment to the Questions and Things post, or to the screened post if you'd like to comment anonymously, or PM/email.

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General Fandom

A common problem I see in plays by women playwrights. It's not what you think: Bitter Gertrude -- [female characters] [female agency] [writing]

What makes a first time fic awesome?: jerakeen --[first-time] [fanfic]

Fan Fiction and Anonymous roleyplaing on omegle Zakia Uddin -- [fiction] [fourth wall] [roleplaying] [alternative storytelling]

Deconstruction: why this matters: Ana Mardoll -- [warnings: child abuse] [warnings: violence] [warning: abuse] [liking problematic things] [romance]

Meta questions of the day: high school/boarding school AUs: naraht -- [school] [aus] [fanfic]

A Guide to Retropunk - Part Three, and A Guide to Fantasy!: espanolbot -- [genre] [comics]

I wasn't done, oops: anatsuno -- [podfic] [what is art] [credit]

How YouTube Keeps Dormant Fandoms Alive: the learned fangirl -- [fandom] [internet] [community] [archiving]

Some thoughts on Sues, sparkling or not: hellkitty -- [mary sues]

I'm Thinking About Bad Boys in Romance: Melissa Blue -- [bad boys] [male characters] [romance]

Single-Issue Comics Organization: laceblade -- [manga] [comics] [organisation] [archiving]

I was wondering if anyone had any tips for writing a girls love sex scene.: kinky_carter -- [writing] [tips] [sex] [female characters] [relationship: femslash]

“The Best Stories I Ever Lived”: The Role of Roleplay in Final Fantasy: auronlu -- [roleplaying] [games]

Straightening the Tie: a Post 3.14 Rumination: eumelia -- [representation] [queer] [sexuality] [relationship: slash] [appropriation]

The Girl With The Wish: a multi-mahou-shoujo comparison: sailorptah -- [magic wishes] [fandom: kamikaze kaitou jeanne] [fandom: mahou shoujo madoka magica] [fandom: revolutionary girl utena] [fandom: sailor moon]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Graduated with Honors: jason -- [characters] [ageing] [school]

Sexy Geek Girls and Objectification -- [feminism] [cosplay] [conventions] [objectification]


Specific Fandoms

[fandom: harry potter]
Headcanon: The other Magic Schools: pretend_mulling -- [schools] [nations/cultures]
Headcanon: Azkaban: pretend_mulling -- [prison]
Note: the hp_darkartscommunity rules state that all members and watchers must be over the age of 18 due to the content of material posted to the community: [HP: snape] [character study]
"That Man of Loneliness and Mystery" - Severus Snape: A Character Study: hpdarkarts_mod
"And my soul, Dumbledore?" - Exploring Severus Snape and the Dark Arts: hpdarkarts_mod

[fandom: sherlock bbc]
Exploring Sherlock's Sherlockness: wellingtongoose -- [sherlock: sherlock] [character study] [mental health]
meta requests-open: wellingtongoose

[fandom: teen wolf]
The Actual Faults of Scott McCall: 11ismyfavorite5ever -- [teen wolf: scott] [character study]
Teen Wolf and the Anchor Concept: verstehen1 -- [codependency] [romance] [relationships]

[fandom: tolkien]
On Writing Tolkien's Elves: oshun -- [writing] [characters]
Read a Lawyer’s Amazingly Detailed Analysis of Bilbo’s Contract in The Hobbit: James Daily -- [law]

[fandom: star wars] [predictions]
JJ Abrams to Direct Star Wars : lazypadawan
Thoughts on Star Wars and J.J. Abrams: duncatra
Abrams Helms Episode VII: A Fangirl’s Thoughts: fangirl -- [female characters]
A Trekkie on why J.J. Abrams Is Good for Star Wars: Emily

[fandom: doctor who]
All the Colours of the Rainbow: kerravonsen
Production Designer Michael Pickwoad on the new TARDIS... and more! (Part Two): The Doctor Who Team (BBC) -- [design]
Who meme part three: londonkds -- [doctor who: companion] [characters]
Eyes Front, Soldier: janie_aire -- [male gaze] [subversion]

[fandom: btvs]
"First Date" Thoughts: fantas_magoria -- [characters] [trauma] [morally grey]
"can you explain further the 2 opinions you think should be eliminated from the fandom...": buffypratt -- [characters] [btvs: spike] [btvs: buffy] [shipping] [bashing]
The Symbolism and Biology of The Mayor From Buffy: forcesofgeek -- [btvs: the mayor] [character study]
BtVS and Consent Issues: Episode 6.19 – “Seeing Red”: The Funny Feminist -- [btvs: buffy] [btvs: spike] [warning: rape/non-con] [consent issues]

"Look, You Cobber...": Semantic and Statistical Notes on Bigman Jones's Favorite Epithet: radondoran -- [fandom: asimov] [language] [slang]

For newbie Spirk fans: spirktrekker42 -- [fandom: star trek tos] [fandom: star trek reboot] [star trek: kirk] [star trek: spock] [vulcans] [bonding]

Well you should learn to control your temper": sailorptah -- [fandom: disney] [warning: abuse]

House M.D. Season 9 (A Hypothetical Reexamination and Projection)": petitecuriosity -- [fandom: house] [discussion/review]

Characters and abuse : mobiusklein -- [fandom: supernatural] [warning: abuse] [character]

Comments

[oyceter]

Not sure if this is applicable, but I started a non-western fandom friending meme.

[metanewsmods]

Sorry, we're not linking friending memes. Unless you start analysing non-western fandoms in the comments, in which case let us know!

[calvinahobbes]

Psst, fandomcalendar accepts friending meme announcements.

[oyceter]

Sweet, thank you!

[ar]

Some suggestions!

I think you might want to change the "[abuse-apologist]" tag to something similar-but-not-quite-the-same, because it sounds like a judgment on the meta-writer (and imo not a fair one) rather than a description.

If you could also consider including summaries or quotes for each piece of meta, that would be really helpful. The bracketed subjects really don't help me navigate at all (honestly, they're actually really distracting for me) and don't give me a good idea of what the link is about.

[metanewsmods]

Yes, I was trying to think of something else for that, I definitely wasn't intending to pass judgement on the author. [abuse-apologism]? [abuse-apology]? I wonder if mentioning at all comes out like a judgement, perhaps I should just remove the tag entirely.

I will consider quotes/summaries. The reasons against were mainly a time thing, but now we've got more link-finders we can spend longer compiling them.

Thanks!

[metanewsmods]

The tag/brackets system is more for archive organisation, so I'm loath to remove them entirely, but I could change the formatting, if you can think of something that would be less distracting? Right aligned for example.

[masu_trout]

Ooh, nice link roundup!

I have to say, though, I'm a little weirded-out by the [abuse-apologist] tag. One of those is a discussion of how common fantasy elements are not okay in real life, and the other is discussing whether a work carries a pro or anti-abuse message; neither of those seem particularly abuse-apologist to me. IMO, tagging it just [abuse] or something similar would be a better option.

[metanewsmods]

Okay, thanks, I'll adjust the tags.

[calvinahobbes]

What a lovely collection. Generally I like the lay-out of the post, but I have two suggestions for improving readability:

1) Under "Specific Fandoms", list all fandoms above the links. As it is now, fandoms with just one link are listed after the link itself in hard brackets, but if I'm scanning the list to see if there's a fandom I know, it's hard to catch that in between all the other brackets.

2) If you design all tags as "category: tag", all fandoms, warnings, and topics would automatically group together -- as the tag list for each entry is pretty massive, this would also help people quickly scan for the tag they want.

[metanewsmods]

1) - Okay, thanks, will do.

2) Any suggestions for categories? We have 'fandom' and 'warnings', I'm not sure how 'topic' would work? it might end up too broad.

[calvinahobbes]

Maybe 'topic' is so broad that it would fit all? I'm honestly not sure. It's just that as long as the tags aren't sortable or separable in any other way, I'd really love to have it laid out that way, but it might annoy other people or strike them as redundant. Maybe the question is, which way is more time-saving or intuitive for the people actually tagging the posts.

In a similar vein, I would probably tag all the characters "character: example name" rather than under fandom, but I do see the merit of tagging it as you do...

[metanewsmods]

True, it might be. The other thing with tagging, is that we might end up moving over to pinboard, especially if we end up using a script rather than hand-coding, and I'm not sure if the system will change when that happens. We might abandon DW tagging entirely. That said, we'll still want something clear for pinboard.

We could give 'topic' a go then, and if we think of any more categories we can incorporate them.

Yeah, I was worried about characters with the same name, but maybe we could include a show tag as well, like:

character: john smith (x fandom)
character: john smith (y fandom)

[calvinahobbes]

You make a really good point. If you're thinking about dropping DW tags entirely, definitely don't worry too much about it!

I did think that it would be easier for when several characters share a name, but it's not that common, I think, and a parenthesis would fix that. I think it depends on whether people tend to browse tags -- in which case grouping by fandom might lead people to easily find meta of a similar topic they're interested in (think Dewey decimal).

[metanewsmods]

Perhaps we could do multiple categories, like

fandom: harry potter: character: severus snape.

I wonder if that's just too long though. IDK if DW does multiple category tags.

And yeah, I think people tend to browse by fandom rather than character.

[calvinahobbes]

Hmm, I think that's potentially unwieldy? And again, hard to scan visually.

I may just rescind my suggestion :oP But I do stand by my wish for a 'topic' category.

[metanewsmods]

LOL.

Well, we can keep thinking it over, and yes, the topic category will somehow be incorporated by next week.

[calvinahobbes]

Awesome! :D

[sqbr]

This is great! *subscribes*

A "Misc fandoms" heading would be useful, my brain kept interpreting all the links at the bottom as being about Buffy :)

[metanewsmods]

LOL.

I think what we'll do is put the fandom name above each link, even if there's only one, that should help make it more clear.

[dingsi]

Thank you, I was about to make the same comment as sqbr but this would help a lot!

Out of curiosity, is it feasible and/or intended at some point to have an indication of what kind of site the link originates from? I know Dreamwidth has implemented userhead graphics for many oft-used sites, e.g. LJ or Tumblr, and I find having that information practical when skimming, but I suppose it would be more time-consuming for the newsletter editors? Also you mentioned upthread maybe wanting to move to Pinboard and that would make this point moot...?

[metanewsmods]

If we get a coding script, then yes I think that will work for DW. I don't think LJ allows different userheads though, so I guess we'll have to used a tweaked code there.

We could add the site in brackets after the link, something like that. It would be a bit more time consuming, yes, but hopefully with more link finders we'll have more time to spend on the formatting. I'll keep it in mind for the future, thanks.

[busaikko]

Do you have a Delicious account, or a Pinboard?

Andrew Ducker has a system rigged up where his Delicious bookmarks are automatically posted to his DW account (he does this daily; he has a lot of links). He explains how he does this here: http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/2647536.html

It seems to me that, seeing as you're just getting started, it might be easy to set up something like this? Then, once the structure was in place (for bookmarking on Del or PB), the major advantage would be that you could search very easily for all items with a certain tag. (If you want a PB account, I would be happy to buy one for you <3 )

[metanewsmods]

We don't have a Delicious, but we may end up getting a Pinboard. We are hoping to get some sort of script worked out, and yes, it'd make tagging/archiving/bookmarking a lot easier. Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

Thank you for the offer of getting us a Pinboard! I can certainly let you know when we make a decision and you're welcome to donate, but I wouldn't want to put the cost all on one person.

[busaikko]

It was about US10 dollars last I knew, and I love the company, so I would be happy to give them more business :D

[metanewsmods]

Cool, well thank you again and I shall keep you in the loop!