Ah, a meta meme...

[shadowkat]

Snagged from yourlibrarian who turned a fanfic meme into a meta meme. (I don't write fanfic - well outside of three fanfics...but it's not my thing.)

a) How many works do you have on AO3?

125

b) What's your total AO3 word count?

517700

c) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

30 fandoms have been mentioned in my meta.

d) What are your top 5 metas by kudos?

1. BTVS Critiquing the Gothic Romance Trope - Buffy fandom
2. Who's in Charge Here, Anyhow? (which isn't really a meta - so much as a fic meta) - Buffy fandom
3. Helpless Against the Lies My Parents Told Me - Buffy Fandom
4. Figuring out Buffy S5 Episode Crush
5. Liam and Will walk into a bar and debate the existentialism of Fate (Angel fandom)

e) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

Yes! Although it's not always a good idea. There were two people who insisted on calling a "review" of a Once Upon a Time Episode - "fic" because they were too lazy to see it as non-fiction, and felt generalizing everything as fic was cool. This is called lazy internet syndrom and I've no tolerance for it. I've worked hard to write. If you can't be bothered to write out full words and sentences? Get off the internet and do not sanctimoniously whine about people not using the correct personal pronouns to address you - you half-wit. [See, not always a good idea to engage, when one is sleep deprived and annoyed with people. Although I was admittedly slightly more diplomatic than that.]

f) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've written?

Yes, I write cross-over meta. I will often talk about multiple shows in one meta, along with literature. Craziest or most ambitious not to mention controversial? " From Clarissa to Buffy the Vampire Slayer : Sexual Violence in Fictional Narratives Written For and often (not always) by Women" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel the Series - and the Pitfalls of Television" - which was huge and had footnotes. (Where I basically show people the correct methodology behind footnotes - you hide things in them.)

g) Have you ever received hate on a meta?

Yes. Although not really on Ao3. But I have pissed folks off. One woman was furious at me for quoting Joseph Campbell and she felt misrepresenting various ethnic groups through doing so. She sent me lengthy emails condemning me for it - and informing me that my meta had power and I had a responsibility - and people would take what I was saying as fact. It was when I was posting it on the Buffy boards. Another guy hated some of the things I said about Spuffy in the Pitfalls of Television and called me - a rape apologist. And I got beaten up by fans for deigning to predict that Spike would attack Buffy in another meta - before I or anyone else got spoiled for it.

Some fans put the "antic" in fan.

h) Have you ever had a meta stolen?

Actually yes. LJ for reasons I'll never understand, decided to adopt Tumblr's repost function. Similar to Twitter - except you aren't quoting the text it is reposted as yours. One of the many reasons I left LJ. I found out and smacked the person for copyright infringement. They took it down.

i) Have you ever had a meta translated?

Not that I'm aware of - but it is possible.

j) Have you ever co-written a meta before?

No. Fanfic yes. Meta no. The fanfic experience was bad enough. I don't think I could handle meta. Writing collaborations are kind of head-ache inducing.

k) What's your all time favorite ship?

John Crichton and Aeryn Sun, Doctor River Song and Doctor Who, Spike and Buffy.

l) What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I have a fanfic that fits this, not a meta. Miss Edith's Revenge.

m) What are your writing strengths?

I don't really know. I'd say the ability to write in multiple voices and styles. I can jump from formal writing to conversational. Dialogue, Descriptive, Legalese, Tech, doesn't matter. Also, I can write about anything. I can write poetically, or dull business memos. I'm a good self-editor - I've learned how to become one out of necessity. I proof and edit as I write. Often re-reading my own writing three or four times as I write it - checking for mistakes. This is automatic, I'm not even aware that I'm doing it any longer.

n) What are your writing weaknesses?

Verbose. Often over-write. A tendency for my brain to get ahead of my fingers. I'm dyslexic - so I flip words and letters around, and often will skip over words. Or put in the wrong word. I've noticed that - I'll often write a completely different word than the one in my head. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my writing - and get annoyed with myself when I make dumb mistakes.

o) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

MASH - I wrote a meta on the Black Comedy in the television series MASH for a college course.

p) What's your favorite meta you've written?

I don't know if I have a favorite. Often the ones I like, other people don't which is amusing. I'm picky about how well it is written and am often my own worst critic.

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

You can repost things on LJ now? Huh. I still run a community there and I crosspost but I'm no longer active on it at all. I know that I found their new hashtag enabled linking to be annoying, as sometimes one was quoting something (or being humorous) and suddenly one's post was being linked through it.

How cool about the MASH essay. What kind of class was it for?

[shadowkat]

1. I don't know if they kept it? But it was possible before I left in 2014-2015. People could randomly repost your posts as their own. LJ at least would notify you when they did it. Annoyed everyone with a background in copyright.

2. It was a Folklore/Media Studies course - there were three of us in the course, and we had to pick a humorous pop culture medium to critically analyze in a paper. Then we had to critique each other's essays - which was even harder. One person did Bloom County, one - The Cosby Show, and I did the "black humor" in the television series MASH. I basically spent my off time - recording (I belonged to a non-residential soriority with a VHS set up and the ability to record television shows during the day) and binge watching MASH episodes.

I actually took three media studies style courses in undergrad. Cinema: The Western was another one - where I critically analyzed Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch for a final paper, and Red River and The Searchers for exams. (During the Cinema Studies course - I met Sydney Pollack and we did a Q&A with our class with the director - the class had maybe fifteen-twenty people.) Also Gilbert & Sullivan.

[yourlibrarian]

Yeah, if you join a site that does this then you've implicitly accepted that it will happen to your content, but to make that sort of change on a site which, among other things, had strong privacy options it's a radical change.

I would definitely have enjoyed taking media studies classes. However your comment about the VCR reminds me how much more difficult all this would have been that long ago!

[shadowkat]

Yeah, the MASH paper was a lot of work - 90% of it was recording all the seasons (which were re-runned in the afternoons), checking videos out of the library, and buying tons of VHS tapes. Also making certain they taped, setting them up to tape, and putting up signs so no disturbed the taping or stopped it. Then sitting and watching all the episodes, rewinding, transcribing dialogue, etc.

[Ironically I left the sorority that year - because it excluded someone who I was friendly with, and I found how they handled it - icky. ]

We didn't have the computers we have now - either. I wrote my paper on a computer in the basement of a library, late at night, on green lined paper. Using MS Dos. It was a pain in the neck. And research? Books, microfiche, and VHS tapes. There was no such thing as google or internet. This was 1988. I owned an electric type-writer not a computer. And had to use the computers in the library basement - which required finding a time other people weren't using them, usually late at night or early in the morning. (I wasn't into parties.)

Regarding LJ? Yeah, I had issues with how they changed the rules. Also their rules were in Russian.
It wasn't like Tumblr - where you knew up front that your content would be shared without your knowledge. Also I had worked in content licensing in 1990s and early 00s, and handled content licensing agreements. When I read their contract - which you had to sign in order to obtain access to their content - I used the work-around, that folks provided at the time, to import my journal to DW and delete it from LJ. There are days I miss LJ and the folks on it - not everyone came over. But, I do not regret deleting the journal.

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, I also spent my undergrad years with an electric typewriter, which I felt was a huge improvement on the manual I grew up with as this had reloadable erase tape! In my first job I was still on typewriters but they had costly IBM Selectrics that could even keep several lines of type in memory so that if you had to, you could erase words or a line or so and then have it retype.

By the time I went to grad school my personal computer was outdated and I only had a dot matrix printer for it. Of course we also had a computer lab with laserjet printing by then and we had Internet connectivity so it was a big change.