Archive of Our Own -- and The Good Place

1. Well, archiving my meta (or whatever I could locate that appeared to be any good) into Archive of Our Own was an interesting and time consuming experience.

How much was I able to put on it?

Well 121 works of meta/reviews, broken down via the following fandoms:

( fandoms )

I was trying for more. And most are kind of combined or referenced under essays slated towards one fandom. Buffy and the Pitfalls of Television for instance referenced a lot of television fandoms.

I wanted Breaking Bad and BSG and more Farscape, but apparently I didn't write any meta on those. I also wanted the Wire, but alas no meta, just a lot of somewhat coherent and rambling episode reviews. I didn't write meta on television series I binge watched. Same with Game of Thrones and Merlin -- it was mainly episode analysis, which isn't the same thing.

Did have a lot of fandom referential posts.

What hit me about digging through the journal was how many "no subject" posts I had after a certain point. Also how I just combined television and book reviews. Wrote a lot more personal posts and kitchen sink posts. Prior to about 2014, I was writing more meta and essays, but I apparently stopped somewhere around 2014, if not before.

Also, I realized I no longer cared about getting comments or praise, which may explain why I stopped bothering? (shrugs). The readership did change after a bit as did the fandom, also I kind of fell out of fandom after a certain point.

Memory is also strange -- I thought I'd written a lot of meta on Breaking Bad and The Wire. But I can't find it. Also thought I'd written quite a bit on Cyclops -- but no, it's buried and somewhat rambling in the Wed Reading Meme's.

And oh dear, I wrote a shitload of meta on Buffy. And even more astonishing? A boatload of meta/episode reviews of the Dark Horse Buffy Comics. Some very long and involved. I imported the interesting ones, which didn't require much if any editing.
If it involved a lot of format editing or editing in general -- it did not get imported. Most of the ones I imported were negative reviews of the comics.

Another weird bit? I thought I'd know what was good meta and what wasn't based on the number of comments attached? No such luck. I had 82 and 72 comments on very short reviews of Once Upon A Time episodes that had no meat to them. Same with Doctor Who. While in-depth, well done meta, had almost no comments -- in part because it had been imported from elsewhere, or it was just long. I don't know.
I found it very odd what people commented on. I think people tend to comment on things that they can relate to and hit a chord?

The other weird thing about this exercise is right now the meta with the most hits and kudos is...wait for it... Figuring Out Buffy S5 Episode Crush -- this bewilders me to no end. It is not my best work. But it does prove the Buffy fandom is alive and kicking, or evergreen, and apparently still obsessed with Spike and Spuffy.

I guess we all have our favorites, it just doesn't tend to be what is our readerships favorite. Which is why I no longer care that much. Honestly, people react to things in bewildering ways. I also don't worry that much about offending folks delicate sensibilities -- because people get offended by weird things, and they also are somewhat shall we say not very self-aware regarding it? And like to play the victim. I get offended by people all the time, I've chosen not to worry about it. Life is too short to get upset over internet posts, particularly when we have crazy politicians and marketing folks wandering about.

Anyway, kind of relieved it was only 121. I was worried I had more. 68 are unsurprisingly Buffy related. What is astonishing, to me at least, is that there are 21 for Doctor Who. I hadn't considered myself a Doctor Who fan, apparently I was wrong?

2. Very bored by the television shows I chose to watch this weekend.

* Good Place -- I don't know where they are going with this? But the writer's don't have much imagination, do they? ( Read more... )

The others aren't worth commenting on. Honestly the Good Place is the only one I paid much attention to.