Updates From the World of Journalism + a Clarification

[bookshop]

Hi, LJ / DW!

I am so very remiss in letting you guys know where I've been and what I've been writing, but I do have a couple of quick updates for you:

AfterElton has asked me to be one of their 5 new "slash experts" for their brand-new column on slash fandom, The Shipping News! I'm so excited, omg! And I have to thank the Daily Dot for letting

Comments

[podklb]

It's not rude! It's a kind of complicated thing to explain.

Okay, let me see...

When she said "I really disagree with the changes to this page Agentstarbucks made" the thing she disagreed with was NOT (as Aja's article claimed) that the fic was now being included or emphasized.

When she said "This is an entry about a *podfic* and the slight changes made make this into an entry about a *fic*" she meant that the change actually took the name of the podfic and said, essentially, "This Never Happened is not a podfic, it is a fic." But This Never Happened is also a podfic, and the podfic by that name was what the page was about. So by making that change, the editor said the entry was about something that it was not about, just because the editor seemed to not feel comfortable with the name of the podfic being used to refer to the podfic (as its own entity) and not to the fic.

When she said "this is also my main objection to removing the (podfic) disambiguation from the page title; people confuse this entry as being about the fic" that's because she initially had named the pages stuff like "This Never Happened (podfic)" so that this issue of the two fanworks uneasily sharing the same name would not come up. But the rules of Fanlore meant that the word (podfic) had to be removed from the entry title, meaning the entry title for the podfic was identical to if it had been an entry for this fic, which is what led to the tension about what the always-shared name of a fic/podfic is allowed to refer to when used on its own, which is what led to the editor making the (well-intentioned, I'm sure) change.

When she said "While podfic and the fic it's based on are, of course, related, they're still *separate* fanworks that should have separate entries on fanlore" she was talking about the fact that it's not okay to take an entry named "This Never Happened" that is about the podfic with that name and change the first sentence to say that "This Never Happened" is a fic (which, though true, has little to do with the fact that the fanwork on this page is This Never Happened the podfic), and she was also expressing her personal opinion that the podfic should be able to have its own page separate from a potential page for the fic, if there is enough info about the podfic and about the fic to merit this. <---The latter is actually closer to my own opinion on the issue than necessarily what she meant-you'd have to ask her exactly what she meant by that, but regardless of what it was, she has already stated multiple times that her issue was not with fic info being added to the entry but rather to the "is podfic allowed to own its own name in a situation like this or will people think it is somehow only an add-on to the fic, which is the only thing that can really owns the name, and if it's the latter, how should we refer to the podfic if not by name and if we can't add the disambiguation "(podfic)" to the end of the name.

I truly don't think you're being rude by not understanding what I'm saying-I'm frustrated myself by how I seem to keep needing to talk in circles around it and somehow can't concisely pinpoint the issue in a way that is accessible to people who haven't been taking part in the conversation the whole way through-and I'm happy to continue to explain if you are still interested and still scratching your head at what on Earth I mean. Maybe if I keep trying I'll finally find a way to get at it! Or maybe you or someone else will be able to rephrase it for me in a way that's simple and direct but still feels accurate...