Communities, anyone?

[telophase]

Prompted by a thought from coffee_and_ink in the post on manga stories and cliches, I've just registered the community manga_talk for discussion and analysis of manga. It may or may not go anywhere - I did this on impulse and will think for a while on exactly what it should cover. homemade_manga is more geared towards the act of making manga, mostly with art posted and getting crit for it, so I'm thinking straight art crit posts should be directed over there, although I can see where they could become springboards for discussion. But, heck, I'm open to anything.

I've started throwing a few interests into the profile. Anyone wanna be a mod? You get issued with a shiny new modstick and banhammer, more because I like saying "modstick" and "banhammer" than because I think they'll be necessary. (I figure anything gets too heated, I'm pointing it out to fandom_wank or i_wank and letting the mockery do its thing.)

Thoughts? Ideas? Bueller? Bueller?

And oh yeah - I started fic_sans_pareil quite some time ago for recs of outstanding fic, and it promptly leapt into obscurity. I wandered over there for the first time in ages and saw that a number of you had joined the comm - does anyone feel like rescuing it from oblivion? :) My original idea was for it to feature recs more like reviews, where the poster spent a little bit of time talking aobut why they found the fic so good (or at least pointed to links elsewhere where they did that), but if anyone wants to take over or be a mod or whatever, they're welcome to change it to whatever they want.


Heading to the grocery store and home now - will wait and see if anyone makes any comments by the time I get home. :)

Comments

[hatchet-hands.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good idea for a community. Remember, though, communities that promote intelligent discussion and dissemination of manga works will always come second in popularity to "OMG INU YASHA = TEH HOTTTT!!! EDWERD ELRAC = TEH L33T!!!!" - type communities. I bet if you advertised it on other communities with a succinct description as to what you want to achieve with manga_talk, you'd get some serious folks interested. You'll still get the occasional 11-year-old Dragonball Z nutjob, though, but that comes with the territory, I guess.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Well, of course. And I assume that the nature of the comm will change over time - if it ends up with 100 members, 85% of which want to OMG INU YASHA TEH HOTT!! and 15% of which want to discuss Rumiko Takahashi's use of Japanese legend, the OMG crowd will probably win. :)

I'll have to come up with a good description of what I want it to do first, though - right now there's a few things of what I don't want it to do, but that's always a turnoff when confronted with a list of Don'ts.

I don't want it to:

-- be full of people announcing doujinshi and merchandise for sale on eBay. (I'm willing to bend the rules for people who are members in good standing of the community and who've posted good content before, but the drive-by advertising is Right Out.)

-- step on the toes of homemade_manga or online_manga or manga_artists, although there's a grey area here between getting advice from people and asking for crit. I think I may do what DeviantArt does in its Art Scene forum, which is that you're OK to post and ask for general advice but crit on specific works should go to one of those other communities.

I do want

-- analysis and essays
-- discussion like the recent stuff on story here.
-- reviews
-- industry news
-- links to any or all of the above

Heh. You got stuck with me thinking out loud. XD

[telophase.livejournal.com]

To articulate this point a bit more -- I don't want it to be focused primarily on creating manga; that's what those other communities specialize in, as well as the Pseudome Forums; it's for a bit more meta-level discussion. Although, of course, some talk about it is fine - even thuogh I might ask people to post it in one of the other communities and just post a link to that here.

I also don't want drive-by postings of advertisements for published or posted manga (although you get a miss if you're an active participant) -- I just restricted posting to members only, so you have to actually join the community and not just friend it to post.

[homasse.livejournal.com]

Sounds exactly like the comm I have been wanting for a long, long time--an active lj comm for intelligent manga discussion, litcrit, and the like.

Since I know exactly *bupkis* about how to create manga, there's no worries at all about it going in that direction. ^_^v

[telophase.livejournal.com]

XD

I also forgot to mention that I'm lenient about off-topic discussion in the comments, because I know that's the sort of thing that helps build community - my opinion is that people coming in with modsticks and laying into everyone when a discussion gets sidetracked hurt a community more than help it.

Mind you, I'd raise my eyebrow at *posts* that were off-topic to start with, but comments are OK. :D

[homasse.livejournal.com]

Dude, I'm *lazy*. Active, anal modding requires more effort than I put in to anything. But laying down the high holy smackdown when someone is being a flaming tard is another story *entirely*.

Tangentally-relate if you squint really, really hard is OK, "OMG LYKE INU IS S0000 HAWT N HE N SESSHY SHOULD TOTALLY SCREW!!1! SO KAWAII! LOOKIT MY FANART! ITS SUGOI!1" is gonna get the "Oh, HELL NO" from on high, and if they're lucky only banned, and if not, my foot up in their ass. Make a special trip from Japan just to do it, oh my yes.

*knock knock*
Moron: Hello?
me: Hi, are you inuheartsesshykawa11?
Moron: YEAH! *sparkles*
me: *boots them in the ass* Ahh, that was cleansing.

[herchuckness.livejournal.com]

I nearly created a similar manga community today, must be going around. XD Would this be a community for analysis somewhat like your essays, or general discussion? Either way I'm joining, it sounds interesting.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Something in the water, obviously! XD Er, rather than me type in my speculation again, I'll refer you to my answers to the comment above yours, where I spend some time thinking out loud about this.

[gryfeathr.livejournal.com]

*de lurks*

All of this sounds like a fabulous idea. With so many people out there who want to start manga, there really is a need for these sorts of things. (Like myself, who keeps toying with the desire to create, and find such sutdies of manga-works utterly fascianting. There's so little good information out there, espeacially that kind that works on such an intelligent, in-depth level. Unless you want to translate thigns from Japanese..)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

There's so many people who have friended me just for the essays, and there's enough blogs and such out there about it that its time might just have come.

[homasse.livejournal.com]

*waves hand in the air* Ooh, ooh, can I mod? PLEASE? *g* I want an intelligent place to discuss manga, and be able to keep the tards at bay when they rear their tardtastic heads.

Likewise, I can take over the fic one, since I'll pimp it like mad. You know, once I'm no longer stuck internetless come September. *cries*

Yes, I have no life outside of the internet. Cry for me. *snicker*

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! You have officially been added as a Maintainer for both communities! Do what you will with fic_sans_pareil - I've left myself as a maintainer for the nonce, just to make sure that your access is OK first. Once you've decided to your satisfaction that removing me won't suddenly leave us both without access, you can do what you will. XD

I've rambled a lot about what I'm thinking for manga_talk in answer to the first comment above, so I'll direct you there is you've got ideas. :)

[homasse.livejournal.com]

Read and agreed with whole heartedly. I'll write an introduction post for the comm in a day or so, as well as get the ball rolling with some massive pimping with groups of people I know for a fact are a) rabid posters about this kind of stuff and b) not flaming asstards. I won't be able to mod it at all during the first month or so--yay, hospital--so you'll stay listed as maintainer for a while. ^_^;

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Sweet! And no prob! Thanks. :)

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

If you want a third co-mod for manga_talk, I'd be happy to sign on. Well, happy to sign off if we can agree for draconian treatment of nonsubstantive posts. I think it's reasonable to say this is a place for discussion and criticism, not flaming and not OMGHOTTT squeee, which isn't to say that you can't include OMGHOTTTT squeeeee in your discussion. But I was really hoping for was something more like your manga analyses, or mine, or the panel discussion, or even short reviews of new manga.

It does kind of work for the comics discussion, and for mutant_allies, although I think MA kind of got replaced by the newsletter community.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Sounds good to me. I tend to get wiffly and nonconfrontational about things, so having two co-mods wearing the jackboots will help. XD

I do want to work out exactly what it's about and what will and won't be tolerated before getting it really going, just to make sure everything's clear, but that's only sensible.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You've now been added as maintainer and should be able to stomp away to your heart's content. XD