So let me tell you my thoughts on creating Fanlore pages for meta.
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| Title: | So let me tell you my thoughts on creating Fanlore pages for meta |
| Creator: | MPH |
| Date(s): | October 10, 2018 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | |
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| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
So let me tell you my thoughts on creating Fanlore pages for meta is a 2018 essay by MPH.
It was written, in part, for the FanloreProject:Meta.
The Essay
Oh. I have so many thoughts on this topic, as it is near and dear to my heart. So let me tell you my thoughts on creating Fanlore pages for meta.
How do I decide to make page for meta?
Is it interesting to me? Well – it is all interesting, but some especially ring my bell. SEE I (and Sharon) have been backed into a corner defending a single position over quality controls. Frankly, I rather resent this. and It's time for HP fandom to put up or shut up and I've stumbled into a minefield and I want to try to stop the rumour mill right now.. SEE Look I don't wanna sound like a Fandom Mom or whatever but what do you think women over 25 or so are supposed to do?.
Does it reinforce things we need citations or examples for? SEE Reminisce With Me.
Does it reveal things in hindsight, is there foreshadowing? SEE Darkovans Invade Boskone!.
Does it turn out to be hypocritical? SEE Thief in Fandom.
Is it in response to someone else’s essay and is part of a conversation? SEE Memories by vass.
Does it make me laugh? SEE Archive of our Own vs. FanLib: Why they are not succeeding.
Is it widely cited or referenced by fans and mainstream sources? SEE I’m done explaining why fanfic is okay.
Did it influence something else, such as TPTB? SEE Concerning Sehlats. SEE An Archive Of One's Own (post by astolat).
Does it have many things that are, or can be, linked to other Fanlore pages? SEE Fandom 1994-2000-ish. SEE Was Fanfic Any Different in the Olden Days?. SEE The three generations of fanfic.
Is it a first of its kind? SEE Pandora's Box... Again. SEE Open Letter by Mary Lou Regarding Explicit Fanworks.
Is it controversial? SEE Women in packs. SEE Open Letter by Winston A. Howlett Regarding His Review of "Alternative: Epilog to Orion".
Sometimes the meta that I find valuable isn’t really the essay itself, but the comments made to it. Many Tumblr meta pages are like this -- the "ask" is short, and the replies are where the discussion where it happens. SEE All this talk about unpopular writers reminds me of how tumblr fandom is really lonely.. SEE AO3 is open source..
Is it in response to fannish controversy? SEE Can't we just buy you an IPod.
Do fans still talk about the meta years after it was written? SEE The Fan Fiction Rant. SEE Characterization Rape: An Examination of Fan Fiction.
And of course, I’ve made pages for things I find offensive or way off-base. I work hard at presenting the essay, and subsequent comments to the essay, in a balanced way, even when I’m gritting my teeth! SEE Alexis Fegan Black is Dead. SEE Fan fic - sí! Public Domain - sí-sí-sí!!!.
One challenge is what to do about original internal links in an online essay. My solution has been to create as many an internal wikilink to things we already have a page for on Fanlore: Example: When the wikilnk is for something where there is no page for on Fanlore, I make a reference link for it and recreate the original link within the essay. This can be troublesome at times, as I have run into formatting problems where the code of the link wrecks up the quotation template. If I cannot jigger it, I add a reference at the bottom of the page with the original link. Linking to video is often a culprit there as those links often have coding in them, such as “=” which mess things up. The no-wiki code helps with most, but not all.
It is extra fun to create pages with alongside someone else. For example, it was a joy to make femslash meta pages when another fan was doing the same thing with me. It was like a little party, and I loved that energy!
Some topics, such as Mary Sue, m/m slash, femslash, concrit, copyright and fair use, rpf are ones that I collect (the older the better) so I can provide evidence of changing views and evolving language. Even if some of these early essays are short and may seem redundant or simplistic to fans today, I feel that it is important to have evidence of where things began and how fans talked about it.
I really, really try to stay away from posting something in its entirety, as that’s not the scope of Fanlore, but sometimes the essay is:
a) so short, there isn’t a good way to summarize. SEE the metafic A Trekkie's Tale.
b) the essay is widely unavailable and I want there to be a record of it. Essays in print zines and on private mailing lists (the latter only with permission). SEE Why Should I Encourage People to Write Darkover Stories? and The Wave Theory of Slash Revisited. A side note: there are essays I HEARTILY WISH I could make pages for but they are on private mailing lists with no means of gaining permission and/or are long gone. Example: “Jane of Australia’s Fandom Flounce,” a thing of beauty but forever will likely remain simply a puff of smoke.
c) if summarizing or excerpting the essay doesn’t come close to doing it justice, that the beauty (or lack thereof) is directly related to the whole. SEE GARBAGE LIKE THAT HAS NO PLACE IN FANDOM.
d) when I’m pretty sure that, while the essay is available now, it will be lost at some point, even with extensive archived links. I should have made one for the original essay Interrogating the text from the wrong perspective as it has since been deleted. We will have to trust the person who cited it, calling it "a paragraph that never ends” that it is complete. Essays on Tumblr are also part of this challenge as they are especially ephemeral. SEE I See A Lot Of Posts Going Around (Suppressing Women's Sexuality). SEE Honestly I don’t even care why ao3 was created.
One thing I find quite frustrating is when meta is given a title that has nothing to do with the topic. While print meta is sometimes guilty of this (SEE About Two Million, Six Hundred and Seventy-Five Thousand, Two Hundred and Fifty Words), meta on fan journals, especially during the early to mid-2000s, are the worst culprits. Fans often gave these essays catchy titles that do nothing to describe the topic. SEE Today’s Pretentious Hair Flip. SEE Keep it secret, keep it safe. I find these very challenging; if they do not have topics that are robust enough for their own categories, they are essentially buried. That is where I try to make sure that in the section at the top “Some Topics Discussed” or if applicable, “Some Topics Discussed in the Essay and Comments,” is complete enough with key terms that will make the page show up in a search. I still think that there has to be a better way. Perhaps I am melding it in my brain with the tagging system on AO3 and wishing we had options like that. So much info is buried, and I wish there was a way to get at it easier. Sometimes when I create a really interesting meta page and send it off into the wild, I am reminded of that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the hotly-pursued relic is ultimately stuck in a crate and carted off to a huge warehouse where it is likely never to be found again.
Another challenge is when the essay itself does not have a title at all. My decision with those it to take the first line of the essay OR a line in it that (to me) is a good description of the topic and use that as the title. I always make a clear note of that in the page with this phrase: “The title used here on Fanlore is not the title of the essay itself, but a line from the essay.” I was not sure how else to title them, and figure that if this was a bad policy, at least that phrase is searchable for retitling later. SEE I searched my name at Fanlore this week..
I struggle with deciding whether an essay is a meta essay or “commentary.” I guess I lean towards calling meta if it was written by “a fan,” but of course, that line is often thin and vague. SEE Fan-Fiction and Moral Conundrums. I would call that an meta essay, but its template as commentary. Sometimes the main essay is the "meta," and sometimes, to me, the meta is the fusion of the essay and comments. “What is meta” is a whole different discussion, though.
Sometimes I make a page for an essay and then come back to it years later and think, “Now, why did I think that was so important?” Sometimes I think about deleting it, but this is only a brief thought. It usually compels me to try to expand upon it, add more context, more wikilinks, and more fan comments. I live ever in hope that someone, at some time, will stumble across these and think, hey, I can add to that. Which reminds me; I really need to get back to -- well, there too many to list.