#meta-discussion

[jaythetacokat]

Posted this on bluesky earlier but thought i'd put it here too.

Something I don't like much about modern fandom culture, and specifically the theory-crafting sphere is how it doesn't treat stories like they're full, cohesive narratives that already exist in the creator's head, and that we're just in the dark. Instead it treats them like purposeful puzzles in need of solving.

So people make these out-there, sensational theories that get clicks and get viewer retention, but absolutely make no damn sense when you actually think about them for a while. If a theory being true overcomplicates the story and adds needless detail, its probably not a good theory.

I largely blame all of this on Scott and the writing for Five Nights at Freddy's, because that was made to purposefully contradict theories and keep the idea that nobody can solve the lore, to create an illusion that he had a full story and that nobody could understand his genius. And the fact that this has impacted basically every theory-crafting sphere out there that aren't connected to fnaf kinda fucking sucks, and it ESPECIALLY sucks how people seem to be angry when their theories turned out to be wrong when the theories in question probably sucked.

[kyliafanfiction-archive]

Passive Shipping V. Active Shipping

There are two kinds of shipping, in my mind, broadly speaking. I’m going to use ships from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Buffyverse fandoms as illustrative examples of what I mean in my own context (as they are the fandoms I’m most into), but this is applicable across fandoms. Active Shipping is the traditional form of shipping - you root for it onscreen, you cry if it doesn’t happen, you rage when it sinks, you write metas for it, you do gifsets, you write fics for it, you seek out and read fics, and metas and gifsets for it. That’s active shipping. For me, some of my Active Ships are my OTPs - Xander/Cordelia (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Wesley/Lilah and Wesley/Faith (Angel the Series), Skye and Ward (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). I seek out fics with these pairings. I write these pairings. I will consume almost any fic with these pairings. Or at least cut a lot of slack to the fic and give them a good go. It’s certainly ALWAYS enough to get me interested in a fic. And I write these ones, and plan to write more. By contrast, Passive Shipping is more of a you root for it on the show, and you get annoyed when it doesn’t happen. If it sinks, you’re unhappy, but not pissed. You don’t seek fics out for it, and if its in a fic you write, its a side pairing. You don’t write about this ship. Who knows why you passive ship some things and active ship others. In AoS, my main passive Ship is FitzSimmons - I really want it to happen onscreen, but I’ve never felt any real desire to write FitzSimmons, or read FitzSimmons fics, or dive into the FitzSimmons fandom much. In the Buffyverse, I have Cordelia/Angel, and Tara/Willow - I rooted for them, wanted them to be happy, liked then when they did well... got unhappy when things went bad, but I don’t seek them out. I’ll read fics that have a passive ship of mine as the main pairing - either because they’re using a fav pairing or character of mine as a secondary, or the summar/premise seems really interesting or I know I like the author. But I don’t seek them. This is a bit of a ramble, but just some thoughts of mine on shipping.

[kyliafanfiction-archive]

Re: Iron Coin Chronicles - Skipping Past Canon Scenes

As anyone who has spent any time reading Iron Coin Chronicles (and to as lesser extent, some of my other stories, such as Dead Man Walking), will know, I do not always rewrite scenes as they happen in the show. Sometimes, I do - though usually getting into characters' heads in ways that TV shows just can't do, and often with small changes here and there. But at the same time, even when a scene might be particularly different, I'm not going to write it when, largely, the end result is actually the same (such as the fight to get the Amulet, or the attack on the nest in 1x14). even if the specifics may or may not be different, its just not practical to rewrite it. When I include wholesale scene importation, its either because the changes are critical to the larger story I'm building (such as the scene where Buffy meets Wesley for the first time) and I want to demonstrate those, or when it lets me get into a characters' head into the context of the world of the story - such as the scene at the chem test, which hapened almost identically as to the show (with the addition of Cordelia and the removal of any sort of 'Xander eye-twitch') and without any meaningful end-result changes. When something is different from the canon because of the changes I've made (this character in, this character out, this that or the other thing didn't happen, etc), but I don't talk about it in the chapters, its because either the difference is nearly irrelevant and I don't go into any thought of it now. Or it is because I summarize what actually happened later. Or because I am deliberately leaving things up to you, the reader, to intepret. Things are impossible to leave without some interpretation, even in a sort of meta-level as fanfiction.

[stefna]

This seems an appropriate place to start.  Why we need social science, excerpted from Raewyn Connell's new book Confronting Equality.