Pimping, various

[pensnest]

I'm going to start with a reminder to you: fic_requests. If you are a reader, you can post a request for a story of your choice - and, of course, catch up with past output. There is a lot of jolly good stuff in there. The index is here. If you are a writer, you should find useful inspiration to get you started. Twenty-nine of my own stories have been inspired by prompts in this community, including the first of the Chronicles of Lancyn and Ser Chrisfer.

Next up, popmacros, which are like cat macros only not as overwhelming in number! (Also, I posted my first one yesterday.)

I'm thinking 'thinky_pop' might be a good name for a popslash-based discussion community (assuming it's available). Vague plans include moderated membership and forbidding gossip, but I'm not sure exactly how to phrase the aims and rules of the community. Any suggestions?

Finally, I may as well pimp my show, the first performance of which is on Friday. Anyone who's within spitting distance of Hemel Hempstead and might like to go, information is here. Rehearsals are looking very satisfactory, to my inexperienced eye, and our principals all sing so beautifully!

Comments

[turps33.livejournal.com]

I like thinky_pop as a name.

Why are you thinking of moderated membership? Not that I've got anything against it, just curious why.

[pensnest]

See phaballa's reply! I don't want to run something like still_gay, where all that happens is speculation on the guy's love life - which, I mean, ought to be done in fiction, oughtn't it! I thought maybe moderated membership would help. I'm not quite sure how to go about it, you see...

[phaballa.livejournal.com]

"Forbidding gossip"

*laughs and laughs* Good luck with that :P Does that mean we can't take apart blind items to figure out which boy bander they're calling gay this week?

[pensnest]

Yep. At least, the new community won't be the place for it. I want a meta-ish discussion forum, I think it has a reasonable chance of being interesting, so gossip would be a nuisance.

Not sure how it's going to work out, though. Hmm.

[phaballa.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on what kind of meta you want. Like, do you want actual discussion of the music? The music industry? Or more fic-type discussion ie, characterization, writing, etc? I think if you make the intentions of the community very clear, you should be fine.

[turloughishere.livejournal.com]

(Excuse me for butting in pensnest!)

I'm fairly sure that it's supposed to be discussions about fics. She originally raised the question in this post and it was generally agreed that a kind of popslash meta comm would be a Good Thing.

[phaballa.livejournal.com]

In that case, it sounds like fun :) Talking about the actual, RL events can be... depressing. Sigh.

[ravenbat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pimp for fic_requests. You have no idea how sad I am that the community isn't more active.

[pensnest]

Me too. I think we need more prompts - I keep staring at the ones we have, but nothing comes. More writers, to whom the prompts are fresh, and more requesters.

[vaudevilles.livejournal.com]

So it'd be ok for a non-writer to post prompts? I've got so damn many sitting in my head.

At the moment I've been waiting for the day I win the Lotto and get a series of slave-writers to cater to my every whim.

Oh, and the new comm sounds like a good idea ;o)

[turloughishere.livejournal.com]

I can answer that! Yes it's okey and I've done it myself once. (It was when I asked for hitmen!BSB centered on Kevin and Terri started writing the hitman!Kevin ficlets for me.) I haven't asked again but I know I will when I get that special idea I just have to have a story about :-)

[pensnest]

Oh yes, as turloughishere has already responded, non-writers are definitely welcome to post prompts, as long as you stick to the rules and only do one a week. You never know what will spark a story, or who will be in the mood to write up that prompt.

[turloughishere.livejournal.com]

I think thinky_pop sounds good without being in any way pretentious. As for aims and rules, have you looked at meta comms in other fandoms? Since I'm very monofannish I can't give you any names but I'm sure they're out there somewhere! (I seem to recall stellamira writing something for an SPN meta comm.) (The guidelines for suckered_in has always sounded very reasonable to me.

I think a lightly moderated membership is a good idea to prevent the (unlikely I hope) occurrence of people creating sockpuppet accounts and using them in the comm. I think demanding that an account should be actively used (i.e. updated in the last month or so) might be a good minimal requirement.

[pensnest]

Good idea. I'll have a hunt around for meta stuff and see if there's something helpful - *if* I don't die of helpless rage because my *&£*$%^%$ printer is buggering me about, that is.

[sidra]

"assuming it's available"

Unknown User

There is no user thinky_pop at LiveJournal.com.

"moderated membership"

It may or may not be relevant, but the mods at snape_potter, in order to prevent trolls around the release of book 7, are using the following for moderated membership:

To join the community you

will need to either state your date of birth in your user info, or show a statement wherein you say that you are 18 years old or over
have a journal that has existed for at least a month
have at least 2 people mutually friended
have posted twice in the journal on different days in the last month
don’t have an empty profile

It's kind of draconian, and you can see some of the responses to it at
http://community.livejournal.com/snape_potter/1634029.html
but it might be something to think about.


"forbidding gossip"

do you mean "speculation about RL"? You mentioned in your original post that you might want to talk about "the influence of RL happenings and where they leave us". How do you stop a thread that starts "I read X and it totally destroyed my WIP" from devolving into people going off on whether or not X is "true". On the other hand, a discussion about not knowing if something is true influencing how you write a story would probably be pretty interesting :)

[turloughishere.livejournal.com]

This isn't directed at you, sid, but I need to put down my disagreement with one part of those rules somewhere.

I'm strongly against excluding people under 18 from the comm. There are plenty of people over 18 that are incredibly immature and I've known many mature and thoughtful 17-year-olds. Setting arbitrary dates like that just leads to bad feelings in my opinion. And popslash really isn't big enough that we can afford to alienate someone who could turn out to be an incredible asset to the fandom just because they're on the wrong side of 18. *points at duoshinigami*

[sidra]

That's because snape_potter has nc-17 fics posted, and in fact, the *actual* rule is that you have to either have a birthday in your profile that is over 18, *or* you have to have a statement that says you are of legal age *in your location*. But I agree, and for a meta group I can't see any reason at all for having an age limit.

The discussion below that post shows some problems with the other requirements as well. People who never post in their own journals, but have been around for ages and post elsewhere, people with f-locked journals (which turns out not to be an issue). Etc.

I more just posted that to show that mods who are concerned about trolls have come up with some ideas, not all of which are actually good :)

[turloughishere.livejournal.com]

But you don't have to be of age to read written porn in Sweden and as far as I understand not in the US either. Looking at visual porn yes, reading the written variety not so much.

And popslash writers almost never use ratings anyway so it would be even more silly to try and enforce some arbitrary age thing in a popslash meta community. (Can you tell that I have Strong Views about ratings and age cutoffs :-)

[sidra]

I looked it up, and the snarry comm is allowing

any variation of "I am legally old enough to read or view adult content."

Which is generic enough, I guess.

Personally, I think the whole thing is stupid, but it seems we are all afraid of legal ramifications here in the US. And after "the great strikethrough of 2007" people are spooked.

I tried to read the TOS once when I was going to moderate a comm, and got really confused as to what actually had to be done to comply with the whole thing. I eventually decided that nothing actually had to be done at all, but it's difficult to tell. After all, what exactly does "Harm minors in any way" mean? You're also not allowed to post anything "obscene". And that's a word that's bound to cause dissension.

sorry, Pen, for hijacking your journal *grin*

[pensnest]

No, no, you go ahead! (I go out for an evening of rehearsal, and come back to find that conversation has broken out - it's good!)

I can see the point of an age limit when you know in advance that the comm is to be about 'restricted' material, especially in the light of recent silliness events. I don't think we'll worry about it for the pop meta, though, since discussion of porny stuff is not likely to delve into actual filth. Um. Not too often, anyway!

Actually, it might be interesting to discuss why the popslash community doesn't, as a whole, bother to give ratings on fic.

[pensnest]

I think the point about having an active journal is a good one (although... as it happens, my daughter would be excluded by the above rules, and I know she isn't actually a sock). But it's a good place to start.

On the 'speculation about RL' front, the distinction I'd make is that we should discuss something that is relevant to writing, or to our behaviour as pop fans. I'm not quite sure how I'll want to handle a discussion that sub-threads into something else; I don't want to stop people being entertained, but I don't want it to turn into thoughtless trivia, either.

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

yay meta! I think thinky-pop is an excellent name, so long as it is made clear all over that it's for pop*fic* not pop-pop.

[pensnest]

Good. I'll get onto it, though since my show is opening on Friday, it probably won't be until next week that anything happens. :-)

[msktrnanny.livejournal.com]

What in the sam hill is a macro?

[pensnest]

In practise, it seems to be a picture with a silly caption. There's an entire sub-culture for cat macros, and the 'rules' and language seem to apply elsewhere, too - and certain phrases are so much part of the 'macro' culture that there are riffs on them. A cat in the air was, once upon a time, captioned 'Invisible Bike', and now there are 'invisible' things of all kinds.

Usually funny, occasionally thought-provoking.

[rikes]

Thank you for that popmacros link. Funniest community ever! I hope people keep posting.

As for fic_requests, I feel guilty about requesting because I never write, but maybe I'll try it again now. Not that anyone likes/writes JuC these days, except for me and my non-writing friends. :)

[pensnest]

I've suddenly got the macro bug (to go with the evil flu-type bug) and will certainly be posting moar!

Oh, go ahead and post a JuC request or two. I've written two JuC stories now, you never know, I might be inspired to have another go! (It's usually the prompt that kicks me into writing something.)