Two fandom-related grumbly observations:
1)![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ailis_fictive and I have been nattering about the stories-told-over in different fandoms, and this (somewhat cliched) image popped into mind this morning: so, there are the fandoms where you have a dirt road with ruts in it, and it is much easier to drive in the ruts. There's plenty of room for your tires to wiggle back and forth, and of course no one is saying you have to drive on this road at all; you can go off and merrily play elsewhere on the canon highways, but if you want to suffer the same bumps as almost everyone else, and reach the party at the end where you can commiserate about them, this is where you have to be. And you can stray out of the ruts and try to make your own path, but you're likely to end up stuck in the mud (and, because fandom people are generally nice, to be towed back into the main path again). (This is all a somewhat mixed metaphor having to do with fan, writer and character experience, but whatever.)
There are also fandoms that are more of a broad ocean, where seemingly you could go anywhere, but because this is me and you know about me and Patrick O'Brian, you are in a sailing ship (which is not to say this has anything to do with shipping; it may be more of a gen fandom) and subject to winds and currents, and so therefore those of you who are going more or less the same place tend to set out on much the same route, but some of you get stuck in the doldrums for a while and some of you get caught up in hurricanes, and even if everything goes smoothly the voyage is going to vary quite a lot and you may even stop at a different port in South America on your way (and then we still don't know if you're going into the Pacific or the Indian Ocean subsequently). But it is comforting to have the charts andthe firmament the logbooks of previous sailors. And some of you are only interested in a little day trip off the coast, anyway, or in popping over to France and getting shot at. It's all good.
So that is my indirect metaphor-obsessed observation for the day. Thank you for listening.
2) It was once my pleasure to help moderate a certain tiny Bujold discussion list on Yahoo, a long-ago spinoff from the LordPeter list for people who wanted intelligent and civil conversation with a far lower volume than The Big List (which I did belong to for a while, about 12 years ago, until I got overwhelmed by it in several ways and left). Said tiny list has been in a coma on life support for years now (I vaguely remember some discussion about Paladin of Souls, but not much since then) though somehow no one can pull the plug. And every once in a while somebody new pops up; and this week there was one of those "ooh! Hi!" moments, someone who had Things To Say about CVA and wanted to know the spoiler policy.
Well, we used to have one of those, back in the day, but I really couldn't be arsed to remember it, so I just said, "oh, put CVA SPOILERS in the subject line," and then there was this small flood (okay, more like a dribble, but more than one message a day there seems like a flood) of "this is how we do it on the Big List" messages, because golly, you have to be able to automatically filter the messages out of your inbox by specific methods, and put this many lines of spoiler space, etc.
So I shoved on my moderator hat more firmly and basically said listen, if there's any chance we're going to have actual discussion here I would rather it was about a book than about a spoiler policy, and do you seriously think there are going to be enough messages here that you have to automatically filter them? Geez. So shut up and just put something about spoilers in the subject line, okay? Except I said it slightly more politely, but only slightly. And has there been any discussion of anything since? No. Probably the new person said "oh, the Big List is where the action is" and hightailed it over there.
Just let it die already, OMG. And let its little grave be flooded by a life-giving reservoir and Just Go On.
Aside from that I'm in a pretty good mood, really.
1)
ailis_fictive and I have been nattering about the stories-told-over in different fandoms, and this (somewhat cliched) image popped into mind this morning: so, there are the fandoms where you have a dirt road with ruts in it, and it is much easier to drive in the ruts. There's plenty of room for your tires to wiggle back and forth, and of course no one is saying you have to drive on this road at all; you can go off and merrily play elsewhere on the canon highways, but if you want to suffer the same bumps as almost everyone else, and reach the party at the end where you can commiserate about them, this is where you have to be. And you can stray out of the ruts and try to make your own path, but you're likely to end up stuck in the mud (and, because fandom people are generally nice, to be towed back into the main path again). (This is all a somewhat mixed metaphor having to do with fan, writer and character experience, but whatever.)There are also fandoms that are more of a broad ocean, where seemingly you could go anywhere, but because this is me and you know about me and Patrick O'Brian, you are in a sailing ship (which is not to say this has anything to do with shipping; it may be more of a gen fandom) and subject to winds and currents, and so therefore those of you who are going more or less the same place tend to set out on much the same route, but some of you get stuck in the doldrums for a while and some of you get caught up in hurricanes, and even if everything goes smoothly the voyage is going to vary quite a lot and you may even stop at a different port in South America on your way (and then we still don't know if you're going into the Pacific or the Indian Ocean subsequently). But it is comforting to have the charts and
So that is my indirect metaphor-obsessed observation for the day. Thank you for listening.
2) It was once my pleasure to help moderate a certain tiny Bujold discussion list on Yahoo, a long-ago spinoff from the LordPeter list for people who wanted intelligent and civil conversation with a far lower volume than The Big List (which I did belong to for a while, about 12 years ago, until I got overwhelmed by it in several ways and left). Said tiny list has been in a coma on life support for years now (I vaguely remember some discussion about Paladin of Souls, but not much since then) though somehow no one can pull the plug. And every once in a while somebody new pops up; and this week there was one of those "ooh! Hi!" moments, someone who had Things To Say about CVA and wanted to know the spoiler policy.
Well, we used to have one of those, back in the day, but I really couldn't be arsed to remember it, so I just said, "oh, put CVA SPOILERS in the subject line," and then there was this small flood (okay, more like a dribble, but more than one message a day there seems like a flood) of "this is how we do it on the Big List" messages, because golly, you have to be able to automatically filter the messages out of your inbox by specific methods, and put this many lines of spoiler space, etc.
So I shoved on my moderator hat more firmly and basically said listen, if there's any chance we're going to have actual discussion here I would rather it was about a book than about a spoiler policy, and do you seriously think there are going to be enough messages here that you have to automatically filter them? Geez. So shut up and just put something about spoilers in the subject line, okay? Except I said it slightly more politely, but only slightly. And has there been any discussion of anything since? No. Probably the new person said "oh, the Big List is where the action is" and hightailed it over there.
Just let it die already, OMG. And let its little grave be flooded by a life-giving reservoir and Just Go On.
Aside from that I'm in a pretty good mood, really.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 11:34 pm (UTC)From:I also belong to LordV, and we used to have some nice discussions there, too. More literary than the main Bujold list, which tends to go off into the science and the minutiae. I miss them.
But then I'm the queen of mailing lists (you do not want to know how many I subscribe to...
no subject
Date: 2012-12-01 11:54 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2012-12-02 12:15 am (UTC)From: