March Meta Matters Challenge, Check-in No. 1

[yourlibrarian]

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!

Comments

Hello!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Remember to tag all your posts with the "Nonfiction" tag (in the "Additional Tags" section of the posting form if using AO3 or SquidgeWorld).<<

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!

[yourlibrarian]

Thanks for bringing up additional sites people could be using for the challenge! Yes, I also found when going through my account that there's a lot of meta I wrote which wasn't tagged as such.

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!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Thanks for bringing up additional sites people could be using for the challenge! <<

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.