Welcome to the new home of Reading221b! We are a reading group dedicated to fanfiction based on BBC Sherlock. We spent our first few years on Livejournal, and recently relocated to DW.

Most of our conversations are locked to members-only, but membership is open to everyone. We hope you'll join us -- or, in the case of our old crew on LJ who are likewise new to DW, rejoin us! If you don't use dreamwidth much, you may find it useful to follow our announcements tumblr, which will post updates about fic nominations, new discussions, &c.

If you're new to the comm, please take a moment to look at our community guidelines.

Other important links:
FAQ
Current/Upcoming Calendar (coming soon!)
Master List of Previously Discussed Fics
Leading Discussion: the How-To Post

Most of our fic discussions are locked to members, but membership is open! Join the community and you'll have access to years' worth of wonderful discussions. (You can also take a look at an unlocked discussion here.) Our discussions never close -- they get slower, but they never stop completely -- so feel free to add your own thoughts!

We are still learning our way around Dreamwidth, but we are hoping to get a new round of discussion up and running soon! In the meantime, say hello (for the first time or again) in a comment on this post.

reading221b_mod

Have a question that's not answered here? Drop us a private message at the mod DW account.

How do I get to lead a discussion?

All you have to do is to tell the world that you want to! Discussion leaders volunteer to lead conversations about a particular fic or a particular stream, rather than making a blanket offer. You can express your interest during the nominations period, either by nominating a new story (or seconding a nomination, if the nominator has said they might want help) or volunteering for a Leader's Choice stream.

Boy, I really love this story. I can't wait to squee about it with other people. I'm good to go, right?

Not really, no. The discussion leader's job is to make room for the full range of responses, and not everybody is going to love the story. As far as we're concerned, that kind of disagreement isn't a problem, it's an opportunity for everyone to learn more about how the fic is working: why it is affecting different readers in different ways, or even seems to be saying different things to different readers, or seems convincing or in-character to only some of its audience.

You don't have to defend the fic against every criticism somebody raises; in fact - although you are of course welcome to respond, and to offer your own interpretation - it's important to us that everyone knows (and feels) that they are allowed to criticize the stories. We don't welcome fic-bashing (or author-bashing, or character-bashing) but this kind of productive criticism - aimed at reaching a better understanding of the story - is our lifeblood as a community.

If you don't think you would feel comfortable leading a discussion on these terms, you may not want to be a discussion leader for this comm.

What should I talk about in my opening discussion post?

Talk about the things that drove you to nominate (or second) the story in the first place! You can start with your own reactions: what did you love? What did you find interesting? What did you find confusing, or frustrating, or left you wishing something had been different? Secondly, you can raise questions to help get underneath your reactions: what are the attributes or aspects of the story that elicited those reactions from you? What other things (e.g. particular views of of the characters, understanding of the fic's genre) has to be in place, do you think, for the story to elicit that response? How does the story conform to, or differ from, the patterns laid down by other fics of this kind?

if you would like more guidance in developing your opening post, you can contact the mods. We have a template we can send you to help get you started. We can also throw around some ideas with you, if we're familiar with the story.

When the time comes for me to start the discussion, how do I make the post?

When you do post to the comm, please use Discussion Post: [Title of fic] as the subject. Please use the following header at the top before starting your discussion:
Title:
Author:
Rating:
Warnings:
Links:
Author's Summary:

A bit of introductory matter: your own expansion of the author's summary, some words about what makes this story wonderful, and/or interesting, and/or problematic.

***CUT***

The bulk of your discussion should go below a cut, so as not to swamp people's feeds. Including a cut is easy, and there are a few ways to do it, which you can red about here.

comments: In the past, many of our discussion leaders have organized the conversation by "threading" comments: that is, they have created comment on the original post for each of the different major areans of discussion that they take to be importnat. For some longer fics, discussion leaders have also created comments for different parts of the story. We do not require that you use this method to organize discussion, but we do recommend it.

Also, please tag your post with the round number (e.g. "round 2") and with the name of the stream. Please DO NOT tag it with other streams or genres, even if you think the fic could be classified that way.

reading221b_mod

Hello and welcome ! We are a reader-centered community for discussing Sherlock fanfiction. We hope you find it to be a place that is both engaging and comfortable .Our members have worked hard to build an atmosphere that is friendly and gracious. We try to ensure there is room in our discussions for a full range of responses to the stories we read: enthusiasm, confusion, frustration, interpretive speculation, and critique. Our readers have found all sorts of ways to learn from one another, and to keep their disagreements friendly and constructive.

We're glad you're here, and look forward to hearing your thoughts during our next discussion (or in one of our older conversations - our discussions never close, so although the older ones are usually less active, plenty of people are still paying attention!)

In order to make sure that the community continues to be thoughtful, friendly and constructive, we have instituted some guidelines for participation.

***Author Participation Policy***
as noted above, this community is focused on the readers of fanfiction (though of course, plenty of us are writers as well!) Our primary purpose is to provide a place for people to discuss the fanworks they've read in a way that is about their experiences and interpretations as readers, and those of other readers. Because the authors of the fics we read are among us as friends and fellow-fans, we often give primacy to their ideas about their own work: their inspiration, their goals, their sense of whether the story succeeds. It's one of the great privileges of the fanfiction community that we get to learn those things, and we don't want to ignore that, which is why authors are welcome to participate in discussions of their fics; but we ask that they do so on a limited basis, because authorial presence can also sometimes inhibit the reader's freedom to think about her own encounter with the story. This community is here, first and foremost, to give readers a space to discuss their thoughts and feelings about a story with other readers.

Here are the parameters for an author's participation in discussions of their own work. (comm members, please help the authors observe these boundaries!)
* In order to give your fic's readers time to bring up their own concerns and ideas first, do not join the conversation until 48 hours after the initial discussion post has gone up.

* In order to preserve the comm members' freedom to engage with your story on their own terms, please do not join the main discussion threads. Instead, create your own "author thread" and use this thread to ask or answer questions, or to raise other ideas. You should absolutely feel free to respond to points that have been made in the main discussion, but please put your responses in your own dedicated thread. Soe of our readers are very interested in talking to authors, and others are not; we want that choice to be theirs to make.

taking part in conversation: come on in, the water's fine!
* Conversations are moderated to make room for people to speak frankly but also treat one another graciously. With this in mind, we encourage you to share your thoughts and interpretations, even if they seem to be at odds with the general current of opinion so far, or if they take the conversation in a different direction.

* One of the benefits of LJ is that a new line of conversation doesn't overwrite or cancel out an old one: by raising a new topic, you're only adding to the discussion, not taking away. Please feel free to raise points about a fic under discussion, even if it's not been included in the initial kick-off post or any of the discussion leader's points for discussion.

* The more, the merrier! We would love to hear from you, even if you feel like you don't have much to add beyond a "me too," or if you aren't sure why or how you've formed your opinion. If you take the time to raise the point, somebody may chime in and help you get some clarity about your own thinking.

challenging other people's opinions and judgments: I'm ok, you're ok
* We are all here to learn from one another. That means making room for opinions and interpretations that are not your own. You should feel free to challenge interpretations that don't seem right to you, but please remember that there are a lot of ways to respond to the same text. Maybe they see the story differently than you do; maybe they saw it the same way, but responded to it differently. That's what makes discussion interesting and keeps it flowing!

* If somebody else's response or reading feels wrong or upsetting to you, please don't feel like you need to withdraw! It is absolutely okay to talk about the things that feel inaccurate or upsetting to you, as long as you do it constructively. You can do this by asking the other poster (and other members as well) what about the story makes them interpret it, or react to it, in the way they do, and follow it up with an explanation of why you see it differently.

* In the same vein: please remember that it's okay to agree to disagree in your head and leave it at that. You are not required to engage in topics of conversation that are upsetting or triggering for you. While these discussions may tackle some serious issues and delve into serious topics, we don't want to make your life difficult by implying that you must participate in all facets of the conversation. If you don't like a conversation or the way it is heading, you are welcome to disengage in order to keep yourself safe.

* This community has worked hard to cultivate a comfort with disagreement. That means that you should feel free to push back on things that other people have said, but also be prepared for the fact that somebody else might push back on you. We have managed to navigate some pretty significant disagreements in the past without anybody turning nasty or dismissive.

keeping our doors open
* If you get excited about someone else's ideas and wind up going back and forth with them for awhile, that's okay! We only ask that you make sure to seed your comments with at least one question that is open to anyone who wants to respond, and not just to the person to whom you're responding. That will help reinforce the sense that these conversations are open and shared.

* If you have concerns about the way another community member is participating, please drop the mods a private note by clicking here.

nominations etiquette: matching stories to streams
We try to be as inclusive as possible, to folks from all across fandom: that means creating space for conversations about less-popular genres and fics, while making sure that everybody feels welcome to participate in those conversations, if they so choose.

In order to make sure that the nominated stories are well-suited to streams, we have built a few layers into the nominating process.

1) we ask all nominators to consider whether their story is a good fit for the stream, and whether their enthusiasm for this particular fic is at odds with the stream itself. (that is: if you find yourself writing "normally I don't like reading angst, but this particular angst story..." in your nomination post, you probably want to think hard about whether the story really belongs in the angst stream, and whether it's fair to folks who are really invested in the genre at hand.)

2) we ask other members of the community to weigh in if they see a nominated fic that does not seem to match the stream. We have, at present, no ironclad policy for determining when a fic gets pulled from the nominations list; what happens next will depend on how that discussion develops.

To keep this process running smoothly, please:
1) be polite, whether you are challenging someone else's nomination or responding to someone who has challenged yours.
2) remember that when someone questions the suitability of your nomination, this challenge is in no way a reflection on the quality of the fic: they are simply about whether the fic is a good fit for the stream. These challenges are also not about you as a nominator. Everybody draws genre in different places, and the question of fit is always a local one. People can legitimately disagree with each other about the boundaries of a category or genre; boundaries like that are never clear, or stable, or absolute. If somebody questions whether your nomination belongs in a given stream, that's about this community, right now, not a judgment for all readers at all times.

reading221b_mod

This list is in alphabetical order by fic title. This list grows longer with every round -- to find a fic quickly, we recommend you use your search tool to locate it.

Links will take you to the discussion. A link to the fic itself can be found within the discussion post.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE LINKS HAVE NOT BEEN UPDATED SINCE WE SWITCHED SITES! Right now, these links will still take you to LJ. We hope to update this list soon, though obviously there are a lot of links to correct and it will probably take us awhile. You can still use the list itself for reference, and pull up the relevant discussions from our archives by using the tags for round number and stream.

A Little Competition by entanglednow (Round One Point Pumpkin, Halloween)
A Trope Too Far by Persiflager (Round 3, Humor)
broken hearts, like broken bones by tyleet (Round 5, Adlock)
Cake and Other Sins by indybaggins (Round 3, Holmescest)
Crazy For Love by prettyvk (Round 3, AU)
Don't Is Not The Same As Haven't by Impractical Beekeeping (Round 2, Rare Pair)
Eight and Fifty Nights by PoppyAlexander (Round 4, Leader's Choice - Angst)
Given in Evidence by verityburns (Round 1, Casefic)
Hitting the Water at Sixty Miles an Hour by what_alchemy (Round 1, Wild Card)
I Used To Live Alone Before I Knew You by etothepii (Round 2, Short AU)
Master of Disguise by earlgreytea68 (Round One Point Pumpkin, Halloween)
Murder Will Out and Intimate Knowledge by keerawa and tiltedsyllogism (Round 4, remix stream)
No Bangs Without Foreign Office Approval by reckonedrightly (Round 5, genderswap)
Opposition Party by mydwynter (Round 4, Lestrade stream)
Parallel, Perpendicular, Parabola by calamitybreak (Tuesday221b)
Please by thisprettywren (Tuesday221b)
Rebound by tiltedsyllogism (Round 5, femslash)
Red Velvet and Reciprocity by cherrytide (Round 2, Hidden Gems)
Saccharomyces Cerevisiae [Baker's Yeast] by yaycoffee (Round 4, parentlock/kidlock stream)
Save the Last Dance For Me by Lilith/Citrine (Round 5, Mrs. Hudson)
Searching the Wong-Baker Scale for the Face I Want to See by merripestin (Tuesday221b)
Seeds by thesardine (Round 4, Leader's Choice - Angst)
Seven Times a Night in Baker Street by achray (Round 3, Canon Compliant/Missing Scene)
Silence by prettyarbitrary (Tuesday221b)
SPQR by hoc_voluerunt (Round 5, Historical AU)
The Adventure of the Crossed Streams by mydwynter (Round 5, casefic)
The Anatomist by rosa_acicularis (Round 5, Molly Hooper)
The Cold Song Series by eldritch-horrors (Round 2, PWP)
The Frost is All Over by Chryse (Round 1, AU)
The Heart in Him by azriona (Round 3, Omegaverse)
The Making Of by Emma Grant (Round 4, OT3 stream)
The Paradox Series by wordstrings (Round 1, Alternative Narrative)
The Progress of Sherlock Holmes by ivyblossom (Round 3, Romance)
The Queen of Gondal series by AJHall (Round 4, fusion stream)
The River Variations by withoutawish (Round 2, Short Casefic)
the sensation of falling as you just hit sleep by greywash (Round 3, Angst)
The Scotch 'Verse by earlgreytea68 (Round 2, Mystrade)
The Speed of Objects in Motion by holyfant (Round 1, Angst)
The Violet Hour by breathedout (Round 5,
Wellspring by mresundance (Tuesday221b)
What to Do When Your Flatmate is Homicidal by hyacinth_sky747 (Round 1, Humor)
Willow Ward by ununpentium (Tuesday221b)
Winter in London by Waid (Round 2, ACD)

reading221b_mod

please note that this FAQ has been cut and pasted from our old LJ site, which means that the embedded links will still send you there. We hope to update the links in the coming weeks.

FAQ

This FAQ will no doubt grow, and undergo minor adjustments, as the community finds its feet. If you have a question or a concern that you don't see addressed here, leave us a comment on the Ask-A-Mod post, or drop a message to the mod account.

How do I join? Do I need to wait for approval before joining a conversation?
Joining is super easy! Just hover your mouse above that little icon next to the group name, and when the textbox appears, click "Join Community". (You'll also want to click on "watch community" to add it to your friends list.) There's no queue or further approval needed before you join the fun!

You will need an DW account, if you don't have one already, but they are free and easy to set up. You can even import your old LJ over here, although it can take several days for the import to complete.

Why are there so many discussion streams? How can I find the conversations I want?
We run about 6-7 streams per round, based on a much longer list of possible genres and pairings. We try to mix them up from round to round in order to keep things interesting and fresh. You can always find links to current nomination threads or the discussion calendar in the sticky post, or go to our main journal page and check the sidebar for links to recent conversations.

How did you choose the streams that we have? There are important things that are missing, and then there’s this other category I don’t think should even be here.
Current streams were chosen with a) great angst, consternation and regret and b) a very clear intention to leave them open to revision. The mods had to pick some things to get started with, and we tried to pick streams that reflected what’s being written, but we are thinking of these categories – and we hope you will, too – as a kind of working template.

Far from being set in stone, these different streams are intended to be a way to get us started, to help us figure out, as a community, what kinds of stories people are most interested in discussing, and what kinds of divisions are most helpful. So even if you're not keen on the current arrangement, we ask that you give them a shot for these first few weeks. The mods are hoping that, once we've all had a chance to try them on for size, we will all be better equipped to revise the streams to suit our needs as a community.

Who chooses the stories that we read?
We have two different models, a community-based voting system (described in detail here) and a Leader's Choice stream, in which a single member is given free reign to bring up a fic of their choice for discussion, with no prior voting or nomination procedure. Most rounds will include a mix.

How do the discussions happen?
On the day that discussion is scheduled to start, one person – the person who originally nominated the fic or the appointed Leader of the stream – will make a post describing some of the noteworthy things about the fic and raising some questions for discussion. After that, everyone in the community will be able to join in, by commenting on that original post. Folks should feel free either to respond directly to points raised in the initial post, or to bring up some other aspect of the story.

The conversations will be lightly moderated, to ensure that nobody is being savage in their criticism or hostile toward other participants.

Please read (or at least skim) the extant comments before commenting yourself, so that you can situate your contribution as a response to others who may have already taken up the topic you want to talk about.

Why is there only one post per week? I want to talk about more stories than that!
We are delighted to hear that! We are limiting things to one new conversation a week for this initial phase only, while we try to get our protocols in place; but our plan for the long term is to have several conversations going at once. (Keep in mind that you can continue to discuss a story even after another conversation has been launched!)

I volunteered to open the discussion for [nominated fic]. When and how should I post?
If you’re unsure when to post, check the calendar to find out which week your fic is scheduled to go live.

Presumably, you’re already familiar with the fic (if you nominated it), so before you post, spend some time coming up with discussion questions/comments for any aspects of the story you would like to discuss. If you'd like some help with this, drop the mods a note, and we will send you a general template for writing a launch post and coming up with questions. You may find it helpful to use the category designation (e.g. angst, Mystrade, crossover) as a starting point, but please don't feel limited to that: you can approach the story from any angle you find interesting!

When you do post to the comm, please use Discussion Post: [Title of fic] as the subject. Please use the following header at the top before starting your discussion:
Title:
Author:
Rating:
Warnings:
Links:
Summary: (you can use the author's summary, or add your own if you prefer)
*
Discussion: (Please use an LJ-cut for the majority of the discussion; you can leave a paragraph or two above the cut if you want.)

This is an awfully long FAQ.
Yes, we are aware this is very detailed! Because there aren't a lot of precedents for this kind of in-depth discussion community in fandom, we're trying both to be as transparent as possible and to leave things open to revision, so we can re-calibrate as as we go along. We’re glad to have all of you around right now to take part in this initial stage as we figure out how to make this a lively, welcoming and satisfying place for discussion, and we hope you'll join us in the efforts to tinker and adjust until we find a comfortable stasis.

If you're feeling overwhelmed or intimidated, here are some things to keep in mind:

As long as you're not attacking anybody or being rude, there's no wrong way to post.

The mods are very happy to hear from you! If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, you can leave a comment on the Ask-A-Mod post; alternately, you can message the main mod account, and you will receive a response within a few days. If for whatever reason you’re uncomfortable messaging all three of us, you’re welcome to message any one of us directly and we will handle it discreetly. Messaging the main mod account, reading221b_mod, is preferred.

Finally, please remember that, at its root, this community is for you. We're trying to juggle a lot of details, but the focus of our entire existence as a community is based on expressing our love for Sherlock, interacting with fandom (perhaps in ways that can be somewhat difficult to find online), appreciating the hard work and dedication fanfiction authors put forth, and enjoy great stories. We hope to avoid getting bogged down in details to be able to create an organized space for discussion.

A BBC Sherlock Fic Reading Group

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