Raise your hand if you're a freaky slasher too.

I'm assuming everyone has seen this article in The Guardian by now?

Um, actress_krissie? You're mentioned. Along with lots of other folks, in not-so-flattering lights. I think I saw a mention of mijan, though I'm not sure. And we get called freaks. A lot.

Though this line did make me crack a smile, I must admit: There's a group of teenage boys from the website, Mugglenet, who appear to think that they're in a boy band.

But still, it's kind of interesting to see an outside perspective on fandom every now and then, you know?

Edit: You know, the more I think about this, the more annoyed I'm getting over it.

upstart_crow makes some great points about journalistic integrity.

furiosity points out that this is just the sort of thing that might make JKR, Scholastic, or WB come down on slashers.

And many other great points are being made in locked posts, which I can't link to, obviously. :-P

Podcasts!

First, the Special Lumos Edition of slashcast is out, w00t! I'm excited about this one. Not to mention that it consumed much of my free time in the last ten days... And yay, we finally have a transcriber! *snogs kriken*

Second, I had the opportunity to be on a panel about podcasting at Lumos with with robertstandring from Spellcast (link down at the moment) and chaeche from Snapecast, which was great fun. It was wonderful to meet both of them and learn more about the philosophy of their podcasts and what issues they've struggled with as they've put them together. Both of those podcasts are a bit younger than Slashcast and they're both doing really great things.

Snapecast's motto is "All Snape, All the Time", and they mean it! The podcast has a very different style than Slashcast does, and is quite whimsical at times. One of my favorite segments they do is something called "Snarky chapters", where three or four of them discuss a chapter from one of the books that focuses on Snape. I've really learned a lot about canon!Snape from listening, which has been great. Another thing that's interesting about Snapecast is that the folks involved have very different perspectives on Snape. Some consider him a sex symbol and some don't, some ship him and some don't, and so on. It makes for interesting Snape discussion.

I've only had a chance to listen to the most recent episode of Spellcast, but I really liked it. It's a fantastic general-fandom podcast, and fills a completely different niche than Snapecast and Slashcast do. It's not a copy of Mugglecast or Pottercast, by any means -- it focuses on fan creations, in all their forms. In the recent episode, there was an interview with an HP knitter (yay, knitting!) and then a very interesting segment in which three people reviewed a fanfic. What really struck me about it was that they were honest and critical, and they didn't pull any punches. They all had different opinions on the fic, and the conversation was very interesting.

As I was listening, I couldn't help but think about the recent controversy with oulangi and furiosity posting honest reviews of fics on their LJs. I didn't follow it so closely, but it seemed like people really freaked out about that. And here is a podcast doing basically the same thing in a very public place (not on a personal journal) -- and as far as I can tell, nary an eyebrow was raised. So does this mean the people at FA have tougher skins than the people on LJ? I mean, why can they do it there and have it be an accepted and reasonable fandom activity, but people like Oulangi and f can't do it here? (Or maybe people feel the same on FA, but it just isn't as obvious?) Not that I really want to open that can of worms again...

ETA: Uh... Note that I am just posing a question about the difference in the cultures of FA and LJ. That's really all I'm doing.

Anyway, the point of this post was to ask everyone to SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PODCASTS! We don't have the budgets of the big boys, but we do it all for YOU! You can subscribe to each of these on iTunes (go to "Podcast directory" and type the names into the search box), or by following the links on their web pages to various other podcast aggregators.