~~mmm, fluffy-bunny day.

i'm always late. always, always and forever and always. if i'm not late, and if i said something coherent, and if i remembered to go to sleep before 6am, and if i don't put my foot in my mouth, and if i start liking being the center of attention-- well, i've officially been taken over by the spirit of my undead evil twin which was never born. or something.

anyway.
Happy Valentine's Day, fandom~! ahahahah.

see what i meant about being late?
i was trying to make presents, but it took me too long. my fic is only half-done, and well, only half the pics are scanned, but i figured i'll just post what i have and to hell with it, the rest can go up tomorrow and none of you will hate me. right? right?

made all of you a valentine's card, ( here. )

~~
anyway. hackthis wrote a valentine's day ficlet-a-fandom, and this was probably the happiest point in my whole day, barring the time i saw the little miniature harry, eheheh (he was so cute! the glasses! the cuteness! the weeness! i was all, awwwww, draco's future hunny. i am so disturbed. so, so so very disturbed.) anyway.
    i made a valentine's day fanart for it, instead of reviewing immediately, since i had mucho loff. because i do. love her writing. yes. indeed. yes. that particular piece was particularly high in slurpy goodness.
    anyway, ( here. this is me proclaiming far and wide that i adore zahra's fics like you wouldn't believe. also, i'm a total dork. )

also. the world is now irrevocably changed. i deeply enjoyed draco/ginny -smut-. yes. draco/ginny. yes. *boggles*
    written (by cassie claire) is so good you don't even notice it's het, eheheheh. ok, it's late and i just wanted to post the links, and i'm not being all that coherent or even amusing, but bear with me. i'll be back with the other pics and a fic sometime within the next couple of days, and oh yeah, i'll actually -review- and gather my thoughts (tomorrow, just as soon as i'm functioning again).

g'nite and fluffy sharp-toothed h/d loff-bunnies to all.
    EDIT - and yum, novembersnow's fic is the only other h/d fic on my friends list all day. although, really, it's probably worth about 5 or 10 medium fics and like, 30-35 plebefics. also, it will cook your dinner for you (with snowballs). honestly.

~~intelli-wanking a-go-go....

it occurred to me, when ethrosdemon asked me to define my terms re: meta (which i have been using rather to ill effect recently) that the line on meta and fic discussion and what's what has become pretty fuzzy. no one really seems know -what- meta is as much as they know whether they "approve" or not. there is your textbook, m-w.com definition, as follows:

Main Entry: meta-
Variant(s): or met-
Function: prefix
Etymology: New Latin & Medieval Latin, from Latin or Greek; Latin, from Greek, among, with, after, from meta among, with, after; akin to Old English mid, mith with, Old High German mit

3 [metaphysics] : more comprehensive : transcending <metapsychology> -- used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one <metamathematics>

...but this doesn't touch upon "meta" as in... the movement in and of itself, meta as a type of thought (particularly written-- ie, fiction) that doesn't need to be tied with study of a particular subject.
    okay, so the closest expandable word would be "transcending". my most "controversial" use of meta (recently) was meant to imply that something can be inherently transcending itself within itself (thus becoming self-referential), in text anyway (and thus, be metafiction, or fiction which is commenting upon itself-- something that i both feel drawn to and am repelled by). usually, meta is a -discipline- or science that studies and kind of transcends the other science it is a study of. with fiction-- it gets muddy. they actually call fanfiction itself metafiction-- ie, fiction about a work of fiction. also, you could have meta be a reference to a higher reality within the work-- like the movie, "being john malkovich", but after that it gets murky. i found this article about it, but it doesn't really say anything.

elsewhere on the web i found meta-fiction referred to as "examples of fiction that play with the very conventions of fiction. These are not just experiments with form, but works in which form and content comment on, and inform, each other."
    here they say "Meta-fiction participates in the conventions of a genre while simultaneously critiquing or analyzing those conventions." (which is totally not what i'm interested in at the moment). while here they say it's "literature which is wholly aware of its status as an artform and relates to its own parts rather than external demands, comprising an analytic or deductive, rather than synthetic or inductive, fiction."
    this gets -really- postmodern, understandably, saying it's "fiction which is in the first instance aware of itself as fiction and which may dramatize the false or constructed nature of fiction, on the one hand, or the inevitable fictionality of all experience, on the other."

to me, it's a curious thing. "aware of itself as fiction."
    i mean, you could always claim a story is being "aware of itself" when something is said in a certain way. i mean, it's pretty subjective-- you're aware it's a story, and sometimes it doesn't take much to jar you out and to make you stop and say, "hey. this is a story, and this story -knows- it, goddamnit, look at it! MARY SUE!!!" etc~:)
    and yes, i smell a grad english thesis i would never want to write: mary sue as the ultimate metafiction. *shudders at the prospect of reading dozens of marysue fics as research*
    anyway. to me, a story is becoming aware of itself as fiction when it directly comments on its characters or themes within a (usually but not always) third-person omniscient statement. i dunno if this is precisely "meta" anymore (which isn't a "scientific" but rather a cultural term), or whether it's even metafiction (although, according to one school of thought, if it's fanfiction it's already metafiction, a notion which in light of the recent "keep that literature label away from my fanfic" kerfuffle on f_w i find utterly hilarious).

instinctively, i do feel that metaness (ie, a referencing or study of something else) is inherent in the writing and the phenomenon of fanfiction itself. it feels pretty meta to me, ie, it engages that part of my brain, let's just say. the most direct and plot-based fanfic in the universe is only pretending to be direct. it is actually referencing and commenting on all sorts of issues, implicitly. it is having an opinion of the pre-existing paradigms and characters within the potterverse, based on the "spin" it gives them. i can, i think, easily pinpoint that spin within any fic. gimme a fic and i'll tell you what "school of fannish thought" it subscribes to, 9 times out of 10. now, this might be because people are unoriginal and derivative even of derivative things. yes. but also, i just think that there -are- schools of thought and people -do- fall into camps (ie, opinions on draco, snape, harry, hermione-- there are such things and you inherently -know- of them, most likely, unless you were writing fic in the first few months or whatever and actually were involved in the creation of these paradigms).

anyway, i wasn't even referring to all that when i talked about the "metaness" of any story which comments on its own characters by kind of telling the reader what they feel and what that means. it can be done badly or well (ie, in `mirror of maybe', it's done really badly, whereas zahra's fics and say, lewis carroll do it well, mostly anyway). the point remains, i think it's a sort of greek chorus or commentary placed within the fic. to go back to the greeks, you have the "moral" and the meaning all laid out for you and it's a style. the whole story got framed by it and without this frame, it would actually not work as well. but this is difficult to do in a regular, "modern" story without seeming like the frame is separating and alienating the reader, and you're left with an author, lecturing you (ie, "josh was a sad, sad boy, and he needed tender loving care from someone kind and tender like mike." or, "flying is really the best way for someone to learn how to live.")

but usually i don't mean this when i say meta, and i only ever used meta for that because i think it could actually be seen as related. and that was a really long-winded and (probably) boring way to say, i don't know what the hell i'm talking about ><;;

( and heck, since i'm at it, i could always go on about more things i don't know about and offer my unsolicited opinion on the whole intellislasher thing. don't shoot me. please? )