Honest Discussion

[brigdh]

Back in the day, I was on the Prospect-L maillist. Now either, like me, you come from slash fandoms and have your own wonderful or terrible memories associated with those words, or you've never heard of it.

Prospect-L was designed for the in-depth discussion and critique of fanfiction. It wasn't always particularly nice discussion, which is why it earned the nickname of "the mean list", but it was incredibly interesting. I adored analyzing stories and trends within fandom, chatting about writing and reading, about pet peeves and kinks and characterization problems and why things worked when they did and why they didn't when they didn't. It managed to combine a lot of my very favorite things about fandom: that sense of a thoughtful, intelligent community in love with the same topics.

Prospect-L is still around for anyone interested, but unfortunately I'm no longer in The Sentinel fandom, so the discussions don't apply to me the way they once did. There's not really anything to replace it in my current fandoms. Sure, you'll get feedback when you post a fic, and if you're lucky you might even manage to spark a discussion or two about canon interpretation. If you've got a good beta, you might get some wonderful, enlightening conversations from him or her about your fic. But there's not quite the same kind of sustained, detailed talking about either specific fics or general tendencies that I like, and there's certainly no central location where you can go if you want to talk about this type of thing.

So I thought I'd make one. How's that saying go? "If there's something in fandom you want to see, stop complaining and do it yourself". Help me out by answering a few questions, so I can get an idea of what other people would like.

[Poll #608985]

Comments

pert suggestion

[wildelamassu.livejournal.com]

ficcated actually just came back from the dead, and from what I understand, it's to be the same type of thing. Perhaps the more Minekura-oriented segment of manga fandom could work with the more CLAMP-oriented section (I know there's plenty of fandom crossover, and there are some incredibly intelligent people on the watch list over there), and create one big happy discussion comm?

I think including more fandoms broadens perspectives, though I think having categories within that broadness (e.g. YnM-specific Discussion) is also a good idea.

Re: pert suggestion

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a great link, thank you! I hadn't known this existed, but I'm joining the community.

What I was thinking of was a little different, though. I'd also like for people to be able to say things like "Brigdh's latest fic didn't work for me" rather than just talking about general trends. General tends are good too, of course, but sometimes digging in deep to one specific story can be just as much fun, and create just as much conversation.

[wildelamassu.livejournal.com]

...in that case I'd change my answer to putting everything under lock, given the Cutting Board comm's FWank fiasco when they did the same thing in the Stargate fandom. In that case, it might be better to limit the pieces considered to specific fandoms (and have politeness/concrit rules made of IRON).

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thinking it's going to be pretty much impossible to avoid all wank; I'll just try to minimize it as much as I can.

The rules will be very important. I'm planning on stealing a bunch of ideas from Prospect-L and similiar lists, but the most important one is an idea that should be much more common throughout fandom than it is: say whatever you want about the story and the writing, but no comments allowed on the author as a person.