[unfic] in place of thought, questions

[glossing]

Some random questions that have been sloshing around in my brainpan lately:
1. Does the proliferation of fandom-specific newsletters mean there's less need for fic-communities? (I'm thinking of comms as fic-posting platforms here, rather than niche outlets for 'ship cliques and the like.)

2. If an ensemble has a canon queer character - or a couple

Comments

[caiusmajor]

1. Yes, although as people have said before, newsletters mostly pull from communities. Plus--with communities the poste gets more direct control over how the story is listed and can put in a summary, which is very useful.

And in at least one case recently I got no comments whatsoever on a story until I posted it to comms--and I don't think I got any notably increased traffic after the newsletters picked it up.

2. I don't have much empirical evidence here, but I think for some people, how shall we say--it gets progressively more difficult to believe in a fic the more same-sex couples are involved? The "everyone is gay!" effect. And if canon couples are counting toward the "quota" the canon characters, another gay couple may seem too many.

Also, a same-sex couple makes the sexuality issue present in the text moreso than it would otherwise be. Since you get to see the characters' reactions, you get some indication of how they feel about the matter; which in turn can suggest how likely it is that they, themselves, are potentially queer.

3. I read the post, although not all the comments to it, and this strikes me as an excellent way to completely sidestep the icky gender implications while getting at some of the same things that the periodic "feminization" debate does.