Podcasts!

[emmagrant01]

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.

Comments

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

Woo-hoo! Rock on slashcast!

*shares in the podcast love*

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

slashcast/snapecast OTP!!! ;-)

[best-of-five.livejournal.com]

ooo, all of those sound interesting! will dl them tomorrow :)

and excellent question.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Lots of great stuff to listen to! :-D

And yeah. Not that I want to have a big discussion about that again, but I felt like it ought to be pointed out, at least. :-P

[starrysummer.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, it's so much fun listening to people's interviews!

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

The "slasher on the street" bits turned out pretty well, I think!

[yaycoffee.livejournal.com]

Yay! Slashcast!

So does this mean the people at FA have tougher skins than the people on LJ?--I think that maybe it means that the sense of Fandom Hierarchy or whatever has moved more to eljay because it's a tighter-knit community, and some people in the eljay side of fandom put a lot more weight onto what people do/say than they do over at FA. I know that I used to read a lot of fic over there, but I've stopped, since my flist here supplies me with good stuff, and it feels like less work than finding new good stuff over at FA. Maybe FA has gotten big enough where people feel less threatened? I have NO idea... I'm just rambling.

[silentauror.livejournal.com]

I was a bit posed by the question, and this makes sense to me: that FA is an archive, rather than a community-based thing. For me, I joined the fandom as a writer, not so much as a fan. I read fics for about three months, then started writing and posting. I did that for a good four or five months before I finally caved and got myself on LJ, and that changed everything in terms of the way I approached the fandom. Archiving and reviewing on archives was strictly about the stories, for me. But on LJ, I got to know people and it completely changed the way I thought about reviewing stories, because people come before stories in my world view and it wasn't like that when I didn't know the people. It all depends on the venue, it seems. If these sorts of reviews were posted on Skyehawke's forums, say, or directly to the stories themselves, that would have a different feel to it. I don't know if that makes any sense to make a distinction that way, but it makes a slight difference to me in the way I see it, at least.

Sorry if this was convoluted and/or pointless. :)

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

It's not convoluted or pointless. But people =/= stories. Stories =/= people. Just sayin'. :)

[silentauror.livejournal.com]

Well, that's definitely one opinion of it, but it's not the only one. Some people's stories mean a lot to them personally and other people's don't. Some people feel the same way if you criticise their child as you do by criticising their product of their creative process. It varies, and I tend to err on the "humanitarian" side, if you will, because I don't know how they feel about it. ?????

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting, well. My stories mean a lot to me personally. I put a lot of work into them; sometimes it takes me several hours of research to make sure that one paragraph in a novel-length story is not contradicting reality/canon/whatever. I put a lot of work in them because I care about what I'm writing. However, this does not make my stories equate to my entire being. Stories are not people, neither in the dictionary nor in reality, unless one finds herself in Opposite Universe, so the child analogy kind of breaks down, but that's not even the point.

It comes strictly down to why people are in fandom. Some are here to write because they are serious about writing. Some are here for self-indulgent mutual masturbation and making friends through writing boysmut -- because they want to feel like part of a community. Some are here for yet other reasons (art, icons, squeeing, reading, geeking out, meta, t00bing, etc ad nauseam). All of them belong here equally, and one group doesn't get to dictate what people in the other group should behave like. If there were critical reviews being left in author's LJs where the author has no choice but to see them, and the reviewer was trying to pull the "mah opinion, I do wot I want, whateva! whateva!1" card, I'd be the first to say that's not on. I would still think it was pathetic of the author to whine about crit, but I recognise that as my personal opinion (Writing Is Serious Business™) and have no wishes to foist said opinion on any writer who feels that she should not be criticised ever.

In this particular case, if someone is easily wounded by criticism, why, they don't have to see the criticism if they don't purposefully click on over to it. I do not wilfully seek out things that I know will upset/annoy me. It's not logical. o.O;; If a sensitive author chooses to seek out criticism of her own stories, that's masochistic of her and has nothing to do with the critic.

Also, to put things in a bit of context, we're mostly talking about boy-on-boy smut here, not epic tales of high romance. Saying "omg you don't understand mi art!" after someone criticises such a story is a little silly, I think.

[silentauror.livejournal.com]

All I'm saying here is that people have different opinions on the topic. Nothing more, nothing less. Thanks for clarifying your opinion on it. I'm glad you can and do separate your creations from your person. I think you'll go through life a lot happier that way. My entire offline life is music and working with other musicians, and I know for a fact that for many people, the distinction between who they are and what they do is a lot more closely linked. Friends of mine who had been dating for five years recently broke up because the one guy found out that the other had said that he plays (they're both pianists) without any soul to another friend of theirs. I'm not saying I think that's a right or wrong way to feel; just that the feeling exists. I'm not trying to evaluate behaviour here, only that there are people who feel that way. You're perfectly entitled to your opinion that this is a foolish way to approach writing, whether or not the party in question is serious about it. I'm not countering that. I'm just saying that the other opinion exists and should be considered equally valid. I'm not evaluating either one in this comment.

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

I'm just saying that the other opinion exists and should be considered equally valid.
Yep, absolutely. The opinion is valid and something I could at one point in my life identify with. But we're talking past each other, because I'm not debating the validity of that opinion. I have already said that I simply do not agree with such an approach to one's creative output -- it's no skin off my nose if other people live and breathe by it. Really. If anything, I feel sorry for any of them who do try to go and get published, because the amount of rejection and criticism you have to face before you break through is staggering.

What I'm debating the validity of is the argument that "honest critical reviews of fan fiction should not exist because the authors might read them, and some of them might get hurt." The authors are not asked to read these reviews, they are certainly not forced to read them, and these reviews appear in personal journals of the reviewers -- people who do not wish to even come across them simply do not friend that journal, defriend it, or just skip the clearly labelled review posts.

Getting back to the children analogy -- when schoolteachers have meetings to discuss children's progress and behaviour, a mother who would stalk said meetings (to which she is not invited) and barge in whinging every time her child is mentioned in a negative light? Would not be a sensitive little snowflake, she'd be batshit insane and there'd probably be a restraining order in her not-so-distant future.

This (counter-)analogy breaks down spectacularly in fandom since reviewers are not professionals and are just stating their opinions, but the author who insists on seeking out those reviews and then gets hurt if something negative is being said is 100% at fault for her own emo angst. (One thing I don't understand about the furore is that my reviews have been predominantly positive, so far.) I've got no patience for stubborn, childish refusal to take responsibility for one's own actions.

This is when "don't like? don't read" applies 100%, no excuses. I loathe Ron/Draco in principle and I don't read fics labelled 'Ron/Draco'. Someone doesn't like my clearly labelled and disclaimered reviews? Well, duh. That's my point.

[akemi42.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Snapecast plug.

Snapecast/Slashcast really is my new OTP. It is so crazy that we were both inspired to start podcasting because of the same silly's girl's comment. Crazy...

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Yay, Snapecast! :-)

And yeah, seriously? She didn't know what she was starting. ;-)

[ankhet.livejournal.com]

wanted to let you know that if someone searches for "spellcast" in the iTunes directory, two podcasts come up. Although it says the first has the most relevance, it's a pagan-centered 'cast, and it's the second people (here) want. I know, it's something that's obvious on more than two seconds' glance, but it's worth noting (to me, at least). =)

Yay slashcast!

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Oh, wild. I had no idea! Thanks for pointing that out, though.

[charlotteschaos.livejournal.com]

As far as I could tell about the wank, one person said they were a bit daunted about the notion of reviews and then sides were taken and wank happened.

Also, I think perhaps the mercurial and often... Oh, I'll be charitable and say blunt nature of the reviewer has more to do with the nervousness than anything else. As for the Snarry end of it, I've no idea what's going on there. It sounded like the reviews were snarky. I know from experience that a lot of times people don't really know how to take snark. *shrugs* It can certainly be funny, but it can be cutting too.

[luci0logy.livejournal.com]

one person said they were a bit daunted about the notion of reviews

At last, someone who got the point of my post. Can I just say that I love you and I would offer you my first born, but he's about to go to Afghanistan.

[charlotteschaos.livejournal.com]

I just new my mad reading comprehension skillz would come in handy one day :)

Eek, Afghanistan! I wish you both safety and calming thoughts!

[luci0logy.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Much appreciated. :)

[eeyore9990.livejournal.com]

Having a husband and a brother in Iraq and another brother weeks from going to Afghanistan, all I can say is *hugs*. If you need to rant, swing by my lj or im me.

[luci0logy.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'll bear that in mind.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

But it seemed like the POV of that one person was representative of a more general feeling of unease with people reviewing other folks' fic, even though it takes place on someone's private LJ. In the FA case, they're doing it on their podcast, so it's entirely public (even moreso when you consider that you can't just click away) -- and they have a lot more listeners than Slashcast does. On top of that, I've read some of f's reviews and I've listened to the Spellcast review discussion, and I honestly didn't think they were that different in tone.

Again, I'm just curious if there is some sort of cultural difference on LJ that precludes us from having ANY open discussions about fics. It certainly seems that way at the moment.

[charlotteschaos.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll have to give you the point on the reviews as I haven't read f's nor have I listened to Spellcast, but then again, it's hard to say what gets covered in f_w or not or even who the silent majority is, or if it even is a majority. Even f seemed to be dubious on that idea. And I'll say that I really don't know what the basis FA has for pulling fics to talk about is. For all I know, they ask permission of the author.

I think it's also important to note that LiveJournal, by primary function, a journaling service and FA is an archive. While I might post a fic today, tomorrow I might post my thoughts and feelings about toast. Or Lumos. Or reviews on fics. It's entirely possible that a few people were concerned about being reviewed on FA, but because their feelings on the matter weren't posted to FA, maybe no one in charge of it noticed. Or perhaps they did, but understood that some people might feel that way about reviews and didn't make a big deal of it.

Again, I'm just curious if there is some sort of cultural difference on LJ that precludes us from having ANY open discussions about fics. It certainly seems that way at the moment.

That's pretty extreme, don't you think? I think that there are just always going to be people who don't want to be criticized, or feel criticized. It really doesn't take more than a handful of people who probably should've stepped away from the computer to create wank, but it sucks to feel misunderstood on both sides of any issue.

Wank is just that, wank. I don't know if I'd take it as the gospel of public opinion. *shrugs*

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

It's definitely true that there's a difference between a large archive like FA and the LJ community. Of course, people on FA have their own accounts, identities, and home pages, and they all talk quite a lot on the discussion boards. No one really has their own little bit of turf where discussions happen, but it's entirely possible that someone has started a thread about the reviewing. But I guess it's interesting to me that there is a whole set of fan who participate in fandom entirely through FA, and that their experince of fandom is probably markedly different from that of those of us who participate through LJ. From a sociological perspective, I find that interesting.

That's pretty extreme, don't you think?

Well... no, actually. Just from posting this question (and not even naming the names of the people who felt uncomfortable with the reviewing thing), I've gotten a handful of emails and comments (that were subsequently deleted by the poster) accusing me of beating up on said person and telling me I'm mean and insensitive for bringing the issue up at all. (Like literally, "I always thought you were nice, but now I'm not so sure.") So basically, I'm getting bitched at just for asking a question about comparing the two situations -- on my own journal. It really makes me want to say, "Hello? Pot, kettle?" I'm all for people expressing their own opinions on their own journals. But that means I get to do it too. There are clearly people out there who think I ought to just say nothing and go on pretending I don't have an opinion on the issue.

That is what makes me feel like it's pretty much impossible to have an open discussion about this topic right now. Unless I want to wind up on FW.

[charlotteschaos.livejournal.com]

Without really having much experience with FA boards, it's hard to say. Again, I think that there are other components to this situation that make it more combustive than it needed to have been.

It's entirely possible that people at FA posted in their personal areas and the reviewers didn't go over there to argue the point... in the poster's journal. That will make it less wanky, yeah?

Personally, I don't know too many people that are terribly thrilled with the idea of people saying bad things about their work-- be they artists, writers or programmers. I have a hard time believing that anyone's particularly surprised that it would make some people uncomfortable.

And you know? Fandom's for fun. It's about fun. Getting negative reviews? Not so fun. Sure, it happens to all of us. Some people wibble about bad reviews in their LJ's, too. That doesn't get wanked each time it happens, either.

Tensions are running high. I'm sorry someone was nasty to you. Maybe since they deleted it they thought better of it? But maybe right now the topic is too sensitive to have a conversation about, but give it another week and JK will release another family tree that will have everyone up in arms. Or Tom Felton will come out as gay. Or... I don't know... more ancient history will be dug up and everyone will be distracted and things will go back to... well, whatever normalcy fandom passes for.

But I don't think it's something that couldn't happen on LJ, I just think that... perhaps... if someone wants to write reviews, perhaps they should just do it with the understanding that not everyone's going to be a fan of it. Sort of like the authors are expected to do, yeah?

[emila-wan.livejournal.com]

More power to the people who like podcasts. I don't process auditory information very well, so unless the podcasts ever have transcripts, I won't know what's in them. It's frustrating.

[pennswoods.livejournal.com]

They're coming on our end - We promise!

[emila-wan.livejournal.com]

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!

[kriken.livejournal.com]

slashcast has transcripts for the big sections (meta chat and interview) as of this episode - and I'm going back through the older eps as we speak, so make sure to check back later! Wouldn't want you to feel left out ;)

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

We have transcripts of the major segments now! :-)

[kriken.livejournal.com]

::snogs back::

Gotta give back to fandom somehow :D

[djinnj.livejournal.com]

*bounces in from the DS*

As an aside, I'm the knitter in the SpellCast episode. Come visit us over at weasleysweaters. We're friendly, and people make the neatest stuff (in all sorts of crafts, not just knitting). And it wouldn't do not to mention hp_knitting, too.

Wheee! I had been wondering if anyone actually listens to podcasts....

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Awesome! It was a great interview, and I really enjoyed hearing about how you approach knitting as a fandom activity. :-D

I think I'm a member of both those comms, actually.

[xnymphadorax.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. I really enjoyed slashcast and would have never known about it, if it weren't for your post. Not to mention snapecast, which was hilarious! I haven't listened to spellcast yet, but I'm looking foward to it!

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Yay! :-)

[awmperry.livejournal.com]

Speaking as the one who was, I suspect, most critical in that review on Spellcast (and, of course, not speaking on behalf of Spellcast - just as myself), I think the problem is that a lot of writers have someone managed to mangle themselves into the perverse opinion that a review has to be either rabid praise or pure, vitriolic bile; many authors can't see any middle ground.

Personally, I don't think my remarks were that critical; I enjoyed the fic and said so, but I don't think anyone could seriously argue that it was literary gold, or up to the standards of, say, Viridian (of Nightmares Of Futures Past). I remember that my fellow hosts seemed mildly incredulous while recording it - "Wow, you really slated it" and "We'll have to cut that" and the like - and I still can't see why.

We need to bring honesty and objectivity back into the fandom - blind sycophancy, fawning over any fic as genius will end up with the HP fandom saturated with fics of... well, FF.net quality.

I'm planning to start doing just that (time permitting, so... well, rarely) on my LJ, with a view to reviewing fics fairly and objectively, and pointing out why they need fixing, which (in my view) is what a good review should do. I try to leave for others the kind of reviews that I would expect (although I invariably end up with either confused reviews with optional spelling or the now-traditional raves) because after all - what better way to improve one's writing than by hearing what needs to be improved? And how supremely arrogant does one have to be to assume that there is nothing to fix?

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Personally, I don't think my remarks were that critical; I enjoyed the fic and said so, but I don't think anyone could seriously argue that it was literary gold

That was really what struck me about that part of the discussion. I think you said something like, "It's an okay fic, but nothing special." And that was the moment where I thought, wow -- could anyone post something like that on their LJ and not get harrassed for doing so?

So kudos to y'all for not editing it out, because I think it's important for people to be allowed to voice their opinions about fanfiction. It does seem that any negative words about a fic are construed as a flame these days, and that's too bad. Every attempt I've seen by people to create a place where open discussion of fic was encouraged ultimately failed, because people were too afraid of actually saying anything negative.

Has there been any ruffling of feathers over at FA about that review? How did people react to it? How did the author react?

[awmperry.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard of any reactions to it, actually, apart from this thread. I'm told there have been rumblings, but I don't know what effect - if any - that'll have.

[hathorx.livejournal.com]

Hey, this is Sidney from Spellcast. So far, no one has commented at FA only on this LJ. Our policy is to email authors to warn them in advance that we'd like to review their fanfic, but not many answer back since a lot of authors aren't active anymore in the fandom. Anyways, the fanfiction review in episode 4 was a lot more, I guess 'brutally honest' than the previous ones, which can be a good thing, however, our intention is not to upset authors or the listeners. For future shows, it'll be best to pick out fics which everyone enjoys and if not, then give constructive criticism about. Afer all, the whole point of the fanfiction review is to make the listeners want to read the fanfic and not the opposite :)