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marchmetamatterschallenge2024-02-29 08:25 pm
yourlibrarian) wrote in marchmetamatterschallenge2024-02-29 08:25 pm
Entry tags:
March Meta Matters Challenge, Check-in No. 1
Welcome to year 4 of the Meta Matters Challenge! I'm your moderator, yourlibrarian.
These posts will be used for us all to check-in with one another, offer encouragement and answers to questions, and maybe tips we come up with as we copy our work to AO3.
Before we begin, some reminders. Please look over the FAQ as there are some important bits for everyone to follow, namely:
Remember to tag all your posts with the "Meta" and "Nonfiction" tags in the "Additional Tags" section of the posting form if you are posting at AO3 or Squidgeworld.
Remember to add your meta to the March Meta Matters Challenge community on AO3 or Squidgeworld.
Since this is our first check-in, please comment with one or more of the following:
1) Details about you: This could include canons (if any) you've written meta in, years in fandom, things you tend to write about (if you've noticed themes), or whatever else you'd like to share.
2) Details about your meta: How much of your past work are you going to be looking through? Have you already started reviewing fandom accounts? Do you have organizing tips to share as we go sorting through our posts?
3) Goals you have: Maybe you want to back up a certain number of posts to AO3. Maybe you want to compare things you used to write about to things you're writing now. Maybe the challenge is an opportunity for you to start using AO3 as a creator as well as a reader or to try out Squidgworld for the first time. Maybe it's a good prompt to re-read discussions in your posts that you'd forgotten about. We all have hopes of what we can accomplish this month. Feel free to share them!
Also, if you have any questions not already covered in our introductory post or in our FAQ, include them here.
Remember, this account accepts anonymous comments, so if you don't have a Dreamwidth account we still want to hear from you and have you take part. Just sign your messages with your username and we'll all get to know you!
yourlibrarian. These posts will be used for us all to check-in with one another, offer encouragement and answers to questions, and maybe tips we come up with as we copy our work to AO3.
Before we begin, some reminders. Please look over the FAQ as there are some important bits for everyone to follow, namely:
Remember to tag all your posts with the "Meta" and "Nonfiction" tags in the "Additional Tags" section of the posting form if you are posting at AO3 or Squidgeworld.
Remember to add your meta to the March Meta Matters Challenge community on AO3 or Squidgeworld.
Since this is our first check-in, please comment with one or more of the following:
1) Details about you: This could include canons (if any) you've written meta in, years in fandom, things you tend to write about (if you've noticed themes), or whatever else you'd like to share.
2) Details about your meta: How much of your past work are you going to be looking through? Have you already started reviewing fandom accounts? Do you have organizing tips to share as we go sorting through our posts?
3) Goals you have: Maybe you want to back up a certain number of posts to AO3. Maybe you want to compare things you used to write about to things you're writing now. Maybe the challenge is an opportunity for you to start using AO3 as a creator as well as a reader or to try out Squidgworld for the first time. Maybe it's a good prompt to re-read discussions in your posts that you'd forgotten about. We all have hopes of what we can accomplish this month. Feel free to share them!
Also, if you have any questions not already covered in our introductory post or in our FAQ, include them here.
Remember, this account accepts anonymous comments, so if you don't have a Dreamwidth account we still want to hear from you and have you take part. Just sign your messages with your username and we'll all get to know you!
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2) Last year I got caught up through the start of 2020. However I haven't had time to copy over this content to Squidgeworld for some time, and might not this month either. I also have written very little meta since last year's Meta Manifesto entries.
3) My goals involve working on copying works over in the coming months, and also in writing more meta later this year when I have more personal time. I hope that by next year's event I will be only a year or so behind and have been writing more regularly.
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In preparation for this challenge, I have spent the last two weeks collecting various meta about Puella Magi Madoka Magica I've posted to tumblr and archiving it on AO3, which you can find here. It is extremely image heavy and all of the images are still only hosted on tumblr for the moment, but it is much easier to locate and download in this format than scattered individual posts, so I feel it still represents an improvement over the old system, and I can easily update as necessary.
Some observations:
-I am impressed at how much even short posts add up over time. This was much longer than I expected it to be in terms of wordcount.
-Archiving can be tedious, but there came a point where I really got into the groove and felt excited about the process, which was refreshing.
-This was one of the first archiving projects where I did not feel a need to rewrite/correct my old work, which sped up the process immensely. Perhaps that's because most of this writing is fairly recent, or perhaps I've just become more relaxed about letting things be what they are and moving on. Either way, I appreciate it.
-I struggled with how best to organize this, and ended up going with loose conglomerations by themes rather than chronological order of posts or chronologically by canon events.
-Because this is a multi-chapter collation, chapter titles are the main method of organization, so every title must be simultaneously descriptive and succinct. There's always Control + F for searching the whole document if people really want to find something specific.
-I decided not to do image descriptions except in a few key cases, because most of the time, I am already describing the image in detail in the text itself.
-Once again, I cannot stress how much the perfect is truly the enemy of the good--being able to say "good enough" is an important skill and is what made this possible!
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And yes, I was surprised by the same thing after the first few years of this challenge -- for one I wrote much more than I remembered. And for another, as you said, all the pieces add up.
I agree that getting started can be the most tedious part of the process. But especially once on starts to see progress, I think it adds to the motivation to get more done.
I struggled with how best to organize this, and ended up going with loose conglomerations by themes rather than chronological order of posts or chronologically by canon events.
This is really interesting! I am going to be using this for a future check-in question.
And yes, it's an excellent point about not being a perfectionist about it all. Most of the time the things that worry us are things others don't even notice. And ultimately, getting a lot accomplished will be its own reward.
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I will look into Squidge for image hosting; at this point, it feels like One More Damn Account on top of everything, but such is the price of cross-posting. Signing up + orienting is 90% of the hurdle every time!
Length is also interesting because some chapters/posts are very short and image-heavy and others are longer and mostly text-based, so it looks like a lot, but it's actually highly variable depending on the chapter.
I will be the first to admit that thematic ordering is more chaotic and less predictable on the surface, but for my purposes, subject ordering is the best, because it means that people who are interested in that topic can find them all in the same place rather than having to jump across multiple chapters. This is also useful given that the reblog is a major component of tumblr, so posts build up over time in ways that are difficult to mirror on other websites. Trying to post in canon chronology is also challenging because I'm writing about imagery that appears in multiple scenes/episodes.
I did try to group the themes in some order, so that posts that refer to previous posts happen after the post they're referencing, but I actually like the "grab bag"/a la carte approach because I jumped around a lot when I was originally writing these, and it mirrors my typical thought/creative process. It's kind of fun to write short, non-linear stuff because I've written several long (20K+) meta essays with a sustained argument that builds upon itself over time (and thus order is extremely important)--it feels more playful and relaxed. Not everything has to be an epic, and I'm really coming to appreciate that!
I was also really clear in the summary and the author's notes about this, too, so I feel like people have a good idea of what to expect. Also, I think a lot of people prefer short and simple to long and complex, even though I naturally gravitate towards the latter.
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2) About all that I have posted, I have it on tumblr. I'm very anal-retentive about my tagging system, which I know will be a big help, since the search function on the site itself is. Subpar lol.
3) I wouldn't be "archiving" everything because I don't think all of it is worth archiving, to be frank, but I will look through my more involved metas. I haven't set a specific number in mind for this month, but I have thought of specific metas I'd want to preserve -those I remember as being particularly good or incisive. Knowing myself, I probably won't be able to stop myself from adding to/expanding on them ^^U.
And as a secondary goal, I want to finish with some meta prompts I got; they were supposed to be for February, but life got in the way. This event gives me a good excuse to complete them!
I also think, since it looks like Squidgeworld is more meta-friendly, I'll be posting there, while keeping my ao3 account (both under the username laufire, like my tumblr) for fiction.
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Yes, it's a luck thing about the tagging! And it's a good point about adding to older posts, or creating sequels, as it were. Often looking them over again gives one new ideas.
Yup, we definitely encourage new meta, whether it follows the prompts this month or not!
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I love meta, but I haven't authored many fully-fledged meta essays myself because I'm better with a "jumping-off" point - so I like to contribute to meta-esque conversations, e.g. on Tumblr. On my little personal archive (still a work in progress!) I've archived these pieces of commentary, which are usually at least a few paragraphs, together with a short quote to give context if I was responding to someone else's thoughts.
Since my last archive, I've been posting in the FENCE comics fandom, and at least a couple of those posts have enough substance to be considered meta, so that will be my first stop! I've also posted some meta-ish thoughts on things like vidding and drabbles to Mastodon, and so I'd really like to round those up and archive them (since Mastodon is very ephemeral), but I'm debating where to put them. Maybe Dreamwidth?
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Sure, any second place is a site less likely to have things disappear (and also gives them a second chance to be discovered). Also, I feel fairly confident that the DW owners will not suddenly wipe the site or not give its users a chance to back up/preserve their content. So that makes DW a perfectly good choice. (There's also quite a few folks here interested in meta, even if they don't write much).
One thing you may find as you go through your writing is that you have more to preserve than you thought! I know I haven't been the only one to discover this 🙂
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My main goal is to port 6 specific works to SQW and AO3. That list includes one work that I haven't posted yet, but it's currently at the stage of finishing touches. I'm also thinking about making another "series" to categorize my essays about nature, empire, and colonialism, since that's ended up being another recurring theme. Just need to come up with a good name for it, I suppose.
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Hello!
I typically post my meta on Dreamwidth, and some of the older stuff is on LiveJournal. Some is in notes under fiction I've posted on AO3. I'm not on SquidgeWorld and after reading about AO3's erratic handling of meta I'm not inclined to post it there either. But if anyone wants to copy it to another site, that's fine as long as you leave the credits intact.
One of my goals this year is to do more archiving through sites like the Wayback Machine and Archive.fo so that is where I will probably be copying my meta.
My Meta tag (or the older one on LiveJournal) includes descriptions of genres from another world, meta about some of my other writing worlds, links to other other people's meta often with discussions, meta about fanfic/fandom in general, some musings on how to handle particular topics, identity literature, and a few bits that touch on some particular canon. A lot of it involves me poking holes in other people's arguments, pointing out how suggestions are troublesome, and suggesting other alternatives instead. I also write Reviews.
My >a href="https://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/tag/how+to">How To tag includes a lot of meta, although it's not always tagged as meta.
>>1) Details about you: This could include canons (if any) you've written meta in, years in fandom, things you tend to write about (if you've noticed themes), or whatever else you'd like to share.<<
Canons: I have a lot of original writing and I write meta for most of it. Hardcore meta. I mean I have oopsed a book repeatedly doing that and not all of them were even dictionaries. I have Tolkienesque amounts of notes and other meta. A Conflagration of Dragons and Daughters of the Apocalypse are a couple original series where I've posted substantial amounts of the meta because those settings really benefit from seeing their background materials. Quixotic Ideas is newer and has meta also.
I wrote massive amounts of meta for the Torn World project but that website is no longer visible to the public. :( I did most of the work building three related languages and several ecosystems, and other folks did different ecosystems and scads of other worldbuilding entries, how-to-write guides, etc.
One of the bigger pieces I've posted about someone else's stuff is a guide to The Ursulan Cycle, which is genderbent King Arthur. The Shared Worlds page has links to other background materials.
I've written fanfic in many canons. *chuckle* Some of my earliest hardcore meta is still being passed around the Valdemar fandom, because they're demifiction guidebooks on how to do stuff. If I remember right, there was one on games and one one dyes/disguises. My biggest fanseries is Love Is For Children (The Avengers). That landing page has a bunch of meta in it along with links to the entries.
Time in fandom: I have decades in fandom, and more before that when I was a fan but had not yet discovered fandom as a community.
Things I tend to write about: I have a bunch of recurring themes that I address both in meta and fiction/poetry. These include but are not limited to adoption (including found-family and interspecies), boundaries and consent, ethics, family of choice and diverse family shapes, fish out of water, how to make the world a better place, identity, implications of special abilities, languages-linguistics-xenolinguistics, sex/gender dynamics (especially alien/fantasy iterations), sociodynamics, spirituality, trauma and recovery.
>> 2) Details about your meta: How much of your past work are you going to be looking through? Have you already started reviewing fandom accounts? Have you archived a lot of it already in past challenges? <<
I still suck at tagging meta as meta.
I have already gone through and archived my Meta and Review tagged material. I am working my way through How To.
>> 3) Goals you have: Maybe you want to back up a certain number of posts. Maybe you want to update older meta. Maybe you're looking forward to writing new meta. We all have hopes of what we can accomplish this month. Feel free to share them! <<
What I really want to do, if I can squeak in the time for it, is finish another piece of meta about Wednesday, this time featuring Thing.
Finally, my next Poetry Fishbowl will be on Tuesday, March 5 with a theme of "Brands, Products, and Services We Wish Existed." If you want to drop by and leave me meta-related prompts, I can write characters talking about meta; I've done a few pieces of that in the past.
Here is my boost post on my blog for March Meta Matters Challenge.
Re: Hello!
I like that you brought up the How To issue as it seems to me I rarely come across tutorial type posts than I used to. I sometimes see them in relation to, say, a new social media platform, or how to use a plugin (all of which is very useful!) But the sorts of things related to fanwork creation or canon things are a lot less common.
I imagine a meta about Thing would find a lot of readers! I only just finished watching Wednesday last month.
Thanks much for signal boosting!
Re: Hello!
Archive.fo seems to have changed to Archive.ph in the last few days, but still works.
>>Yes, I also found when going through my account that there's a lot of meta I wrote which wasn't tagged as such.<<
Basically unless I'm writing something like a character study, it just doesn't occur to me to tag as meta.
>> I like that you brought up the How To issue as it seems to me I rarely come across tutorial type posts than I used to.<<
Yeah, and people rarely write fan manifestos or ship manifestos anymore. That's sad because those are such great ways to pull new folks into a fandom. But two of my biggest pieces from Snowflake this year were how-tos.
>> I sometimes see them in relation to, say, a new social media platform, or how to use a plugin (all of which is very useful!) But the sorts of things related to fanwork creation or canon things are a lot less common.<<
I do some "how do use Dreamwidth" stuff too.
Anyhow, I've finished going through the How To posts and tagging relevant ones as meta. Progress.
>>I imagine a meta about Thing would find a lot of readers! I only just finished watching Wednesday last month.<<
Yay! He's such a fun character.
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Great to hear that more is on the way! Hopefully we'll help you focus on those this month.
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I'm looking to archive anything with substance, which is obviously a very subjective, wishy-washy standard. I'm going back through my tumblr, unpublished docs on my laptop, and my dw. I'm still figuring out how to organize and collate it. I'm very, very new at this, and I'm learning as I go.
I'll be interested to see if any repeating themes show up as I go through old writing. I'm also hoping to get into the habit of writing new meta, as well.
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You're embarking on the hardest part, which is the finding and selection. It would be perfectly normal to spend a good part of the month just doing that.
Hopefully we'll spur you to create a little more!
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Anyway, my main fandom these days is Yu-Gi-Oh, and a lot of my more recent meta revolves around that. A lot of that meta is short Tumblr posts, but there might be a few longer ones in there to back up once I go digging through my blog to find them.
That said, I do have a brand new ship manifesto meta piece I just uploaded to Ao3, so that's a good start!
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