Panels Redux (the Quiet Voices are Louder on Paper Remix)

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

I for one was fascinated by the depth and breadth of ideas on display at g/t, and would like to hear more. This is the first time I'm trying something like this, so we'll see if it works.

I'm going to repost some (as many as I can remember) of the prompt questions as top level comments to this post. Anyone who wants to contribute, please reply to the appropriate comment. If you have a question of your own, please follow the format I've used and add a top level comment of your own. I'll then add it to the master list.

Rules: fairly standard, in so far as respect and tolerance for diversity of opinion. With one addition: we are a community so we should be just that tiny bit gentler/more careful to be sure we remain the stunning bunch of intelligent, thoughtful women we are. <3 <3 <3

Comments

1. Kiwis in Fandom

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

From Mab: do Kiwis 'punch above their weight' in fandom?

From Elaine: is there interest in an archive for Kiwi writers/Kiwi fandoms?

2. Twitter and the Death of the Fourth Wall

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

Originally from Lyn. Any thoughts on openness/transparency/the good old days of subversion and undergroundness etc.

3. Dominant Writing Styles over the Decades

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

From Lyn: "Wow, sometimes I get mental whiplash when I read Pros or Trek or Sentinel or Highlander, and it's not just the plots/tropes. There's another topic though - Where Did All The Hurt/Comfort Go? Cause, at least in some fandoms I'm in, you don't get the classic h/c stories like you did in older fandoms."

4. Springboard to Original Fic?

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

From NishaTalitha: "Can we talk about how slash is becoming increasingly mainstream and how fic writers are now building a fan base as published authors starting from a fandom base and how this can possibly change the writer/fanbase interaction?"

5. Feedback and Beta

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

Originally from China: Does it change how we write? What kinds are most meaningful? Most helpful? Have negative flow-on effects?

6. Putting the TOOL into TPTB

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

From Lyn: "Russell T Davies, Eric Kripke, Everyone at Stargate... Who pisses you off most?"

I add: And why? Feel free to criticise any other boneheaded moves by bigwigs in this thread. The politeness filter is turned down slightly on this one (though remember to be nicer to your fellow fen -- TPTB get the big bucks and do the screwing up so focus on them).

Re: 6. Putting the TOOL into TPTB

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure the All Time Biggest Asshole Award still goes to Chris Carter. I watched and cried and held my breath for seven years in the X-Files, and what did I get? Nothing. Two new agents, a mythology that made no sense whatsoever, character assassination of *my* agents, no emotional pay-off to the biggest UST of all time, a baby they conceived without apparently having sex that was then adopted by the Kents...

Screw you, CC!

Re: 6. Putting the TOOL into TPTB

[mab-browne.livejournal.com]

To which I cry, 'and so say all of us!' X-Files is my only truly ex-fandom, and it's for all those reasons that you so cogently elucidate. *g*

Re: 6. Putting the TOOL into TPTB

[sinden.livejournal.com]

Could be that I'm just getting a lot more cynical about things, especially when the producers/creators start being interactive with the fandom. It's almost expected, really.

7. The Good Kind of Entitlement

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

A question I forgot to ask: Do creators owe us *anything*? If we watch a show loyally for five/seven/ten years, are we entitled to expect a happy ending/a more respectful send-off than exploding tumours/our ship to end in a big fat gay wedding? ;-p

Re: 7. The Good Kind of Entitlement

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

As above. Mulder was entitled to the vindication of his life's crusade, or at the very least the fact he was crushed mercilessly should have been a dramatic resolution for *us* and the moral of the story -- Winston loved Big Brother... -- as opposed to lost in the shuffle between Duchovny leaving and the Terminator taking over. A show should resolve its actual plot!!! Maybe not how we would want, but as the circumstances demand.

8. Cliches to Bury

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

Are there cliches/tropes/plot devices that are so overused/dated/repetitive you'd really like to see the back of them now? Discuss.

9. Cliches that should Walk the Earth until the Apocalypse

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

Au contraire, there will *never* be enough of these...

10. Moar Het up in Heah

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

We're all a bunch of slashers at heart/for the most part. Did you ever have a het OTP? Did you write fic for them? Was there a fandom? Was it similar to slash fandom, or totally different?

Re: 10. Moar Het up in Heah

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

I had two. Mulder and Scully (X-Files) and Lois and Clark (L & C). I can actually confess that I kept my love for M and S pure, while reading hawt pron about Mulder/Krycek. *sigh* There were a billion fics though, even if the UST brigade were locked in eternal battle with the noromos. L & C also had mailing lists, and boy were they syrupy. I never wrote anything, or really interacted with anyone.

Oh! And my first ship ever, Robin Hood and Maid Marian (Robin of Sherwood, but also dates back to my original love of the books). I did write fic for that, but thank god it's in exercise books in my garage, not on the net. ;-p

Re: 10. Moar Het up in Heah

[kiwisue.livejournal.com]

Aeryn/John (although that was post slash discovery). Ivanova/Sinclair. Buffy/Spike (season 2 especially). Avon/Servalan. Catwoman/Batman. Pecos Bill/Calamity Jane (comics, a long, long time ago). Shvaughan Erin/Element Lad.

No fic written except in my head. There's an obvious theme here, though *g*. I love kick-ass women!

Pros just grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go. I can't say that about any other fandom.

11. Which came first, the fandom or the...

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

Are there shows where you read the fic before/without actually watching? Was the show a let down at that point? Why was the fic so much better?

Re: 11. Which came first, the fandom or the...

[maudlinrose.livejournal.com]

... I think the only tv shows I have watched before reading any fic are NCIS and CSI. I'm just incredibly bad at focusing through an entire episode of something without getting hideously embarrassed, let alone an entire season or series. And I tend not to read fic set in the worlds of the shows I regularly watch (so I don't read much NCIS fic, for instance, despite it being the only show EVER that I have managed to follow several seasons of on TV).

IDK. Dialogue on TV is more natural than dialogue in fic, and often the TV shows have a different sense of humour. But fic is written for a smaller audience, and I think that shows.

Slash fandom is its own genre and has its own rules and tropes, and those rules and tropes are in some ways wider than those shown in canon (so we get kink memes and curtain!fic and kid!fic and a million AUs and h/c et cetera) and in others much narrower (there's not a lot of slapstick, for instance, and even in ensemble-based shows there doesn't tend to be a lot of truly ensemble fic). And, I guess, I'm a lot more comfortable with the Rules of Slash than I am with the Rules of Television.

Re: 11. Which came first, the fandom or the...

[ariadne83]

I need to know who people are and what they look like before I can read the fic. I tried to get into Generation Kill fandom before I saw the series but I couldn't connect with the characters and ended up skimming through instead of reading it properly.

12. Women on TV

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

I know ten years ago I'd have said I slashed, at least in part, because women on TV were lame (with the exception of my beloveds Dana Scully and Lois Lane). Has the situation improved? How so? Why not? Who are the all time awesomest women on TV?

Re: 12. Women on TV

[sinden.livejournal.com]

I think there's still a long way to go when it comes to the majority of mainstream US tv especially.

All the women on Criminal Minds are awesome and they actually write the relationships between them well.

13. Everything I know in life I learned from...

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

Does [Topic] Fail help? It can be painful, it can be awkward, but have you learned anything useful/changed your mind about anything/had your eyes opened on any topic?

Re: 13. Everything I know in life I learned from...

[sinden.livejournal.com]

Yes, but you have to be willing to look into yourself to be able to learn from them.

You need to be able to park your cultural learnings at the door and understand the context. That was something I definitely learned when I was in the US when Barak Obama notimated Sonia Sotomayor to the supreme court. The cultural difference about what kind of bigotted racist comments were "allowed" from public figures are not something that would be accepted here.