Ah, the Good Ol' Days

[keelywolfe]

You know, I've noticed a bit of a trend where some people seem to believe that LJ has taken away from mailing lists and discussions and whatnot.

I find that quite interesting, because due to LJ, I am more involved in fandom than I EVER was on a mailing list. On a mailing list, I never participated in discussions, I barely talked to people. I was pretty much a lurker who posted stories every once in a while and that is true of every single one of the 50+ lists I have ever been on. I was a quiet minority member who wrote.

Then I got a LJ.

Suddenly, I can talk with a bunch of people and their ideas of fandom etc. And not just talk with them but sort of MEET them, see more than just the fandom layer. I can join communities for crafty slashers and for discussions and for nothing more than a daily picture of a guy I have the hotsies for. I can read metablog if I want to see any interesting new debates and I can read fandom wank if I want to see what the latest flamewar is.

It's not just a mailing list for TPM or LOTR, it's a community of fans, all doing their fannish things and I am far more interested in participating here than I ever was on a mailing list. I'm not as shy because, hey, it's MY LJ! I can say whatever I want and enjoy whatever fandom I want, and no one will slap me down or complain that I am spamming the list or declare that I am of the dreaded OFF-TOPIC and kill me.

I'm still on mailing lists, and I still do the same thing I always did on 'em. I post fic. If I want a discussion, I take it to LJ.

I'm know not everyone feels this way, but that's the way I am and I am here to stay. ;)

Comments

[sneezer222.livejournal.com]

Crafty slasher communities?

Now that sounds quite interesting.

[keelywolfe.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure! I've been rather enjoying it. It's here:

http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=craftyslashers

I haven't participated too much, but I like to see what other people are doing. :)

[helens78]

Crafty slashers?! Rock!! When I have more time I'll have to check it out more thoroughly.

My stitch n bitch group includes one other slash writer; the rest of them mainly just read. :)

[kirby-crow.livejournal.com]

If this were a rock concert, I'd be holding up a lighter by now. :) Yes, yes, everything you said. I've been on many many fanlists and I've enjoyed them all (well, most of em), but I know what you mean about the hesitancy of tossing a post into an unknown forum where you're not the arbiter of what gets said and what doesn't get said. The community rules for these lists can get pretty detailed, and from the vehement and childish behavior that results when - heaven forbid - you forget to leave the OT warning off the header or post an url to a fic where only whole text cut and pastes of the fic are allowed... well... just hope you have your flame-retardant bloomers on, is all I have to say. :) (Foghorn Leghorn voice;) "Fortunately, I keep a spare pair handy for just such an emergen-SAY!"

For that and reading Keely fic. >;-)

[reginagiraffe]

Amen, sistah! Testify!

I've only had my LJ for about a month but I've been reading peoples' for almost a year and that's the only thing that gave me enough courage to actually meet some of these people in RL and to go to cons. I've gotten to know them a little and know about the non-fannish stuff that they find important. It's been great!

And I definitely have to check out CraftySlashers!

[keelywolfe.livejournal.com]

Craftyslashers is pretty neat. I'm going to show off my 'altered book' as soon as I get a little done. :)

[sahari.livejournal.com]

LJ has really gotten me more involved in fandom, too. What I like is getting to know people through their daily/weekly thoughts, something you can't do through mailing lists. I still read fic on the ML's, but it's LJ that's gotten me more socially connected, given me a feel for who the real people are behind the big (and small) names and given me a way to show myself to others that doesn't feel artificial or invasive. After all, people will only read my LJ if they want to, not because I send it to an ML.

And the nice thing is, you really can't be a lurker on LJ. You write or you don't, and that's about it. :P

S

[keelywolfe.livejournal.com]

I agree. LJ is much more a social thing than ML's are. And I just love it. :)

[elke-tanzer.livejournal.com]

I adore LJ. I love it for all of the reasons other people have said here, but I also love it for its ability to spread information quickly across varied niches of fandom. The recent vids kerfuffle information spread from the LJs of the vidders out across cyberspace very quickly, and rational folks were able to pool our resources to stay calm and informative. That's way cool, and not something that could have been possible as quickly or possibly at all in the days of pre-LJ mailing-list-and-static-websites-and zines-and-cons fandom.

Next time I can afford it, I'm going a-fairying again, either here or on JF. :-)

[keelywolfe.livejournal.com]

That's a very good point too. Information travels much faster and through many fandoms by way of LJ. Wonderful creation, it is. :)

[wivern.livejournal.com]

It's been the exact opposite for me.

I find I am much more of a lurker on lj and was much more involved on lists. Of course I'm still on the lists but I do find that they have declined since a large part of the members, especially the ones who were chatty (and dare I say interesting) have moved to lj - which is why I'm here. But I find it much harder work on lj and there's so much more that I'm not interested in that I have to wade through to get to, the admittedly, interesting and diverse stuff.

Just goes to show what suits one doesn't suit another. Shrug.

[mimine.livejournal.com]

MLs versus lj slashdom has been on my mind for a while...

Good about ML is that they're focused. Yes, I can get a good discussion on the merits of this or that characterisation, or that point of canon on lj but a)quite often the conversation would be taking place in a stranger's lj and I wouldn't want to just jump in and spam it, b) I've found that such discussions are often rare. Nothing is off topic in a lj and even though that's not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes I end up wading through pages and pages of pointless posts looking for one worthwhile discussion, one fic. It can get tiring.

Another pet peeve of mine (and feel free to contradict me) is that lj has affected fic length. There are less and less long fics out there in favour of drabbles and ficlets. Perhaps it's me.

[keelywolfe.livejournal.com]

Nothing is off topic in a lj and even though that's not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes I end up wading through pages and pages of pointless posts looking for one worthwhile discussion, one fic. It can get tiring.

Whereas I read my friends page probably a dozen times a day, and I read every single post because I find them all interesting. Of course, not everyone has time to do that. I'm a stay at home mom so I can take 5 minutes and cruise through my LJ anytime I want. ^_^

Another pet peeve of mine (and feel free to contradict me) is that lj has affected fic length. There are less and less long fics out there in favour of drabbles and ficlets. Perhaps it's me.

Well, I can't speak for other people, but I wrote ficlets before I got a LJ. I just didn't tend to -share- them, because posting a fic that's only a few paragraphs seemed like a waste on a mailing list.

Aside from ficlets, I've also written close to 100,000 words in long series of stories with a co-writer. So I'm managing to keep a format of long and short stories going.

I do agree that there are a lot of drabbles and ficlets on LJ, but I think writers enjoy them as a way to play a little without spending a month of sweat and tears on a story. For example, I write a 'kink' ficlet series for LOTR. I left it at ficlets because I have a difficult time putting those scenreos in a long LOTR story. The idea of them indulging in sub/dom relationships on the journey is actually pretty ridiculous, but I can do it in a ficlet because I don't have to go into all the plot details. I can just concentrate on the 'kink'. Sometimes it's fun to just play. :)

Anyway, I'm rambling. I think a prefernce to ML or LJ is just that, a preference, and I certainly don't think people should ditch mailing lists and head to LJ. A mailing list -is- a lot more centralized and it's easier to stay focused on the fandom, rather that wandering off on tangents like LJ does.

[mimine.livejournal.com]

I was in no way dissing your kink ficlets (which were one of the main reasons I've been reading your journal). I hope it didn't come accross that way, didn't mean to put you in the defensive. It was just a general observation and only after i had hit post did it occurr to me that you could take it to mean that I was suggesting you'd given up on long fics.

Mim (who will be going away now)

[keelywolfe.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear, I didn't think you were, I was just using them as a comparison! I hope I didn't come off as grouchy or defensive, because I wasn't at all, I was just rambling on as I am wont to do. Isn't that the trouble with typing rather than talking, you miss all the little undertones....

I'll be the first person to admit I'm not all that keen on drabbles. In a way, a very short fic is harder to pull off than a long one because a writer has to manage to find something to 'hook' people with in a very short space. So I often read them only from certain writers who've shown they can manage it. A drabble needs to be a firecracker; burns very bright and very quickly. ^_^

Re:

[mimine.livejournal.com]

Isn't that the trouble with typing rather than talking, you miss all the little undertones....

I couldn't possibly agree more. We have to take extra care when talking to each other in lj.

As for drabbles... they're not that bad from talented writers, that's true. It's just I get a feeling that sometimes writers will simply not bother with longer fics as they get tons of feedback for a couple of paragraphs posted on lj.

Might have been good old jealousy at work now that I think of it as I can't write anything shorter than 2000 words or so...