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

[wneleh]

My impression on the podfic article (understanding that I probably started with any mentions of fanfic and then read up and down) was that I'd have been helped by a little context about what Fanlore was and what entries to it signify/what debates tend to be about; then a bit about podfic culture. Instead IIRC you lead with references to controversy, and consequently I read looking for controversy (and, selfishly speaking, I was a bit let down when it came down to arguments over how to edit a wiki page).

I figured you'd probably covered podfic more in depth in a previous article that I missed, and made a note to myself to look and see. Which I haven't done because I'm lazy and have about 13 minutes a day to spend on things fannish. Which I've now used, so off I go!

[bookshop]

I found the arguments over editing the wiki page really fascinating, but in the context of the larger discussion they were actually kind of a small part of what my article was about. So I definitely shortchanged delving into a deeper look at the fanlore side of things, in order to bring my more general, non-fanficcy audience at the Dot a basic understanding of what podfic is and why it was creating controversy in this particular moment.

I actually haven't covered podfic more in-depth, and I think you make a good point, because as an intro to podfic, I may be assuming too much about what my audience knows or wants to know. Which is solely my difficulty as someone who is trying to write simultaneously for a fandom audience with its own concerns and a non-fandom audience that may not know anything about fandom at all. I don't really know what that balance is yet.

[imaginarycircus]

EEEEEEEE!!!! Very cool. I am so pleased for you!!

[podklb]

Paraka's original version of the entry links the fanfic as "based on" in the right sidebar, without identifying it as a fic.

I legitimately do not understand how include is accurate. I am not trying to be difficult, and it's not really a big deal and it's in the past and all, but. It's true that the sidebar did not say "based on the fanfic called" but rather "based on," but it seems self-evident that the thing linked to is a fic, if one knows what podfic means. What else would it be based on?

Since there was no inclusion of the fanfiction in the general text of the entry beforehandRight, but why is the general text of the entry the only thing that's being considered, and not the sidebar

[eleveninches]

Sorry, I'm not trying to be rude, but I've read this comment about 5 times and it literally makes no sense to me. On the Talk page on Fanlore, Paraka does take issue with the changes re: putting the fic and podfic on the same page:

I really disagree with the changes to this page Agentstarbucks made. This is an entry about a *podfic* and the slight changes made, make this into an entry about a *fic*, never mind that the rest of the entry is about the podfic and the podficcer. No offence to Agentstarbucks, whom I'm sure was just trying to clarify, but this is also my main objection to removing the (podfic) disambiguation from the page title; people confuse this entry as being about the fic. 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. --parakaReading the Talk page, that was the only time Paraka commented, and then someone else (MeeDee) came in and was like, Oh, what she's actually upset about is podfics should have their own page. But

[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'

[aphelant]

IDK if this will help at all, but I think a more accurate paraphrase would have been:

"Paraka took issue when another fan on Fanlore edited an entry she had made on a podfic to emphasize the fic instead, only noting that a podfic had also been created."

[paraka]

So, I feel like I handled this whole situation incorrectly from the moment I made that comment on the Talk Page.
The thing is, I'm used to hanging around podficcers and the minute I said, "Hey, someone made these changes" all the podficcers around me got the implications and issues without me needing to say more. And because it was so obvious to us, I assumed it was obvious to everyone else. Clearly it was not.

My intentions were further misinterpreted because the conversation (and subsequent clarifications) didn't all happen in one place (much happened in the private thread to the Gardeners, on the entry on the Fanlore dreamwidth, on podficmeta, etc). You based your article on the Talk Page, where I hadn't fully qualified my issue with what happened, and later in our interview, where IIRC, we didn't so much talk about the details of why I was upset, in this instance and I had assumed you knew my clarified reasons (which I now realize was a bad assumption on my part

[anonymous]

"The sources I used for this article came from three interviews (cited in the article) and the Fanlore talk page and revision history