bookshop

"if you ever doubted that Sanditon was ultimately about fandom, references to LBD fandom abound..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:26:02 -0400

“if you ever doubted that Sanditon was ultimately about fandom, references to LBD fandom abound throughout the show’s interplay with fans. (The Sanditon softball team is called the Sanditon Seahorses, a reference to the fan name for Lizzie/Darcy shippers.) And the fan-created Sanditon Tea—perhaps modeling itself after Adagio’s popular real-life fandom tea service—is making us wish that we could pop in for a Cuppabatch.”

- Can YouTube Roleplay Transform Austen’s Unfinished Novel?

"You will never get a fan to care more about clothes, cars, shoes, or household products than they do..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:39:00 -0400

“You will never get a fan to care more about clothes, cars, shoes, or household products than they do about whether Sterek is going to happen on Teen Wolf.”

- Why Yahoo can buy Tumblr, but it can’t buy Fandom

The unspoken truth behind Yahoo’s much-touted bid to court Tumblr’s younger demographic is that for all intents and purposes, Tumblr culture is fandom culture. There are still plenty of other spaces where fandom exists, but we have never had such a megalithic and central social platform so visibly united under one umbrella. …

Even as Yahoo insists nothing will change, business analysts and media experts are speculating that the company intends to plumb Tumblr for its advertising potential. But if that’s the case, Yahoo should know that when you market to fandom, you have to adopt a whole new way of thinking about marketing, brand advertising, and consumer loyalty. [READ MORE]

(please read this article omg i have never wanted to *drop mic* until this day)

mediumsizedfountain: weird speculation here, but I’m starting to hope that Welcome to Sanditon will...

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:47:58 -0400

mediumsizedfountain:

weird speculation here, but I’m starting to hope that Welcome to Sanditon will turn out to be a stealth bridge between LBD and another Austen adaptation: Persuasion.

In which a young woman and her widowed father move to a popular resort town. And Sanditon, once it is a well-established locale via the current webseries, could act as a stand-in for Bath.

Also, Anne Elliot isn’t a character who would likely start a vlog or twitter, but if she gets caught up in the Sanditon Domino-craze it would actually make sense.

The somewhat plot-free social media experiment that is Welcome to Sanditon would make more sense in this context. (I suppose it could also be a stealth bridge into a Sense and Sensibility or Emma adaptation, as well.)

Reblogging because Sanditon acting as a stand-in for Bath would be absolutely BRILLIANT. (I hateship Austen/Bath so hard, did presentations about it in college, it’s a Thing. I LOVE THIS IDEA.)

screaming. yes, please. TAKE ALL MY NOTES, VINTAGE TIM CURRY,...

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:22:18 -0400

screaming. yes, please. TAKE ALL MY NOTES, VINTAGE TIM CURRY, TAKE THEM ALL.

cleoselene: lol remember when all the haters swore it would be...

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:09:51 -0400

cleoselene:

lol remember when all the haters swore it would be a miserable failure?

rcmclachlan: catbountry: cumaeansibyl: Ruby Rhod is one of my...

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:09:16 -0400

rcmclachlan:

catbountry:

cumaeansibyl:

Ruby Rhod is one of my favorite characters in sci-fi ever because he is Luc Besson’s vision of the hetero sex symbol of the future: a flamboyant, emotionally labile man who wears skin-tight leopard print or decks himself in roses, a man who accessorizes with big jewelry and dabbles in cosmetics. And the ladies love him. Everything about him screams “gay” according to our stereotypes, but he’s portrayed as a 100% straight sexual dynamo.

Besson is one of the few directors I’ve seen who actually recognizes that our ideas of sexuality and gender performance might have changed drastically in the future.

He also has one of the most jarring entrances in a movie. Like the entire movie screeches to a halt because he bursts onto the scene well into the second act and it’s so strange and arresting and Bruce Willis is just like “what the fuck is even going on anymore?”

It’s p. great.

Everyone I know who loves this movie hates Ruby Rhod, but he’s my goddamn favorite. Chris Tucker stole every scene he was in.

Reblogging for Erin and because seriously this is the only reason you need to love the Fifth Element.

Today the Fight Like a Girl anthology went out to all project...

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:21:02 -0400

Today the Fight Like a Girl anthology went out to all project backers.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. <3

So my editor and I were just talking about that Folgers Incest...

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:24:18 -0400

So my editor and I were just talking about that Folgers Incest Commercial—like you do—and I thought to check deviantART.

FANART, YA’LL.

"He placed his long-fingered hand on Jeff’s chest. Jeff heard himself whimper quietly from somewhere..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:02:27 -0400

“He placed his long-fingered hand on Jeff’s chest. Jeff heard himself whimper quietly from somewhere beyond his control. “And what about content, Jeff? I assume there are restrictions? You have to take the fun out of it somehow.”

“Well we’re not allowing crossover, where characters from two fictional worlds interact.” Jeff could barely get the words out now. He had never felt this strange intensity, this lust for anyone. He felt a strange throb where his soul had once been, years ago.”

- Amazon to monetize fan fiction, he moaned | MobyLives

Dustin wrote Jeff Bezos fan fiction and it is beautiful.

(via libraryjournal)

The true and overlooked origins of Tumblr

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:49:59 -0400

The true and overlooked origins of Tumblr:

Karp wasn’t the first person to create a tumblelog, the term used to describe the stripped-down blogging and content curation he has become known for. He wasn’t even the second.

The true origin of Tumblr involves a German and an American, hundreds of lines of code, and their common desire to change the way we think about blogging.

AMAZON ANNOUNCES FRANCHISE-BASED FANFIC PUBLISHING ENGINE

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:23:03 -0400

AMAZON ANNOUNCES FRANCHISE-BASED FANFIC PUBLISHING ENGINE:

daricemoore:

telaryn:

pangurbanthewhite:

daricemoore:

imaginarycircus:

patchfire:

bookshop:

READ THIS Gav wrote it while I screamed at her about Fanlib and franchise tie-ins and flailed a lot on twitter. A great summary of the many many problems with amazon’s new scheme to profit from fans writing fanfic.

A quote in the article: “Fandom has always been a fundamentally anti-capitalistic endeavor… it’s the only place I know of where writing is a uniquely playful act. It’s about fans taking mainstream culture and redefining it and owning it in a creative but not monetary way. Its inherently subversive. The idea that a huge corporation will be selling fanfiction and that the original creators would benefit monetarily from that is extremely disturbing to me.”

Yes. It is inherently subversive. And for some of us, that’s kind of the point.

This is truly Fanlib all over again, but seems worse. The idea of show creators and producers making profits from fanfiction disturbs me greatly. The idea of having TO PAY for fanfiction goes against the very nature of fanfiction and the spirit in which it’s created and shared.

I would hate to see this as the beginning of a trend to commercialize and monetize fanfic. Last time it flopped maginificently. They don’t understand fanfic writers or readers. They don’t even seem to know what shows people actually read and write for in large numbers. And I hope that most of us want to charge money or pay it.

There is beauty and freedom in writing about a show/book/song/film you love and sharing it with fellow fans. Once you add in money it becomes something else.

I love fanfiction. I would be thrilled to my toes if anyone ever cared enough to write fanfiction for one of my (hopefully future published) novels. But I would not want to see people charging readers, or readers having to pay. I would NOT want to make money off those sales. It would change the dynamic in a negative way for all of us.

There’s no saying what sort of restrictions would start to come into play—censorship, etc.

I also believe the EL James thing was a fluke. Plenty of fanfic writers have filed the serial numbers off their fanfic and sold it. Most of it remains unheard of. (Feel free to turn this into a debate about Cassie if you want to, but I wash my hands of that.)

There’s a separate conversation here about making money as a writer and selling things you’ve crafted. But I don’t have the bandwidth or my ideas in order for that.

Please continue this conversation and pass this link around?

My first thought was that as an author, I would be very hesitant to open up a door like this. I wouldn’t mind fanfic being written about my work at all (SOMEDAY, PLEASE), but once there’s money involved, I see the following issues:

1. Copyright. Does it hurt my copyright of the world/characters if I allow others to make money from them? Further, what copyright do the fanfic writers retain on their work using my world/characters? How would that pan out?

2. Veto power. If a fanfic writer and I are making money from their interpretation of my world/characters, I’d want approval/denial power — something I wouldn’t care so much about with open-source fanfic (as it were). If the work is being published as “official fanfic” then I would not want it to go out without MY approval as the OFFICIAL arbiter of the original world/characters.

3. Legal protection for the rest of us. I thought fanfic’s only real protection was that it made no money, so this seems a bit troubling. (I also agree: who would pay for it?) If some fanfic is “legit” does that mean other fanfic can be attacked as illegal?

FWIW, filing the serial numbers off a fanfic to publish it legitimately doesn’t strike me as a bad thing, so long as they’re filed off very well. Don’t just change the names and hair color, in other words. ;) I once read an amazing Potter fic that really shared nothing but Latin versions of family names with the original — it was set in the Roman Empire (and sadly was never finished and I’ve lost track of the author). She could have — and I hope she did! — finished it, changed the names and published it, because the serial numbers were already mostly worn away, and the story was GOOD.

I disagree in that I think if you start from having to file the serial numbers off, it’s a bad thing and plagiarism. Where your first step to seeking publication is covering your tracks.

(Also, if the serial numbers are already mostly worn away, that at best does not speak well to your quality as a fanfic writer).

However, using similar character types or ideas, that’s totally cool and expected, and I’ve done it myself.

Other than that, this is a very well thought out post that sums up my problems with this new system as well.

What a lot of people seem to be missing in all the hoopla is that right now, this new program of Amazon’s is exclusively for three fandoms: Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries. All of which are ”owned” by Alloy Entertainment - a mass market packaging company that produces tie-ins of these properties for Warner Brothers Entertainment.

What these three fandoms have in common: all started life as YA book series, all became successful television shows, and finally - ALL ARE CURRENTLY PRODUCING TIE-IN NOVELS (what fanfic is called when it *is* legitimately produced and published) along this *exact* business template.

Amazon has not figured out the magic key to unlock all fic writers everywhere getting to be published in their fandom of choice. They are taking an existing (admittedly exploitative) way of producing this kind of property to the next level.

Will more franchises jump on this bandwagon? Possibly. But those will be franchises/fandoms/whatever, where authorial intent or ownership of their creations has long since fallen by the wayside.

The fact that they’re currently producing tie-in novels is the funny thing, to me — by enabling legally-sold fanfic, they’re licensing their own competition! (Which is one good way to own the competition, I guess.)

And yeah, tie-in novels have always kind of struck me as the legit form of fanfic. ;)

reblogging for epic discussion, and also because one of the things i was yelling at gav this morning was that this development will make it that much harder for hypocritical authors who have written franchise tie-ins themselves but who are stringently anti-fanfic to claim that there is some kind of lofty moral distinction between the two. (Lee Goldberg, Diana Gabaldon, Orson Scott Card, GRRM, I’m looking at you.)

The rise of the anti-fandom fandom

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:30:53 -0400

The rise of the anti-fandom fandom:

The phenomenon has become Tumblr’s Newton’s Law: For every great fandom, there’s an equally vocal anti-fandom, bringing it down a peg or three.

…

The Tumblr Your Fave is Problematic (YFIP) has one purpose: making sure you have a list of all the uncool things—read: racist, homophobic, sexist, ableist, sizeist, transphobic—your favorite celebrity has allegedly done or said. Normally it flies under the fandom radar, serving its intended purpose as a resource for people looking for the other side of the endless waves of praise that fandom can bestow on its chosen heroes.

But when it made an extensive list last month of problematic things that acclaimed young adult novelist and resident Tumblr saint John Green has done, said, or written—including his appropriation of Cinco de Mayo, his creepy tale of trapping his wife into a first date, and his references to fat-shaming—the backlash was immediate. [READ MORE]

Can Kickstarter save manga publishing?

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:21:50 -0400

Can Kickstarter save manga publishing?:

Manga legend Osamu Tezuka’s Crater will come to the States for the first time thanks in large part to crowdfunding efforts.

Tumblr's advertising problem summed up in 1 orange cat

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:09:55 -0400

Tumblr's advertising problem summed up in 1 orange cat:

Now that Yahoo has purchased Tumblr, a good deal of speculation has gone into the question of, you know, what the hell Yahoo is going to do with it. A blog post by noted media analyst John Battelle floated the idea that it’s all about Tumblr’s native advertising system, something Yahoo is just beginning to explore.

There’s just one problem with that hypothesis: Tumblr users hate Tumblr’s native ads.

And they especially hate having their dashboards pay court to Home Depot’s ugly orange cat.
.

AMAZON ANNOUNCES FRANCHISE-BASED FANFIC PUBLISHING ENGINE

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:50:37 -0400

AMAZON ANNOUNCES FRANCHISE-BASED FANFIC PUBLISHING ENGINE:

READ THIS Gav wrote it while I screamed at her about Fanlib and franchise tie-ins and flailed a lot on twitter. A great summary of the many many problems with amazon’s new scheme to profit from fans writing fanfic.

10 things Tumblr can teach Yahoo about the Internet

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:25:57 -0400

10 things Tumblr can teach Yahoo about the Internet:

kansouame:

bookshop:

One of the Internet’s oldest companies has a lot to learn from the young community it just acquired.

However unwilling Tumblrites might be, they still have much to teach Yahoo about the ways and means of Internet culture. If Yahoo is paying attention—and to be fair, the press release does state, “we promise not to screw it up”—it could carry these lessons far into the future.

As long as it doesn’t pull another Flickr or Delicious.

Here are the ten things Tumblr can teach Yahoo about the Internet.

1) You’re only as good as your community.

Photo via thirdfloorblog

This is a lesson Yahoo notably failed to learn with Flickr and Delicious. Forget branding your community; your community is now your brand, and with the Tumblr community, attempting to superimpose a brand will only backfire. Tumblr communities are largely self-branded and independent, devoid of any strong connection to Tumblr staff. Their loyalty is to the collective image of Tumblr users as a group, not to Tumblr CEO David Karp, to Storyboard, or to any future Yahoo employees. With Flickr, Yahoo largely ignored the community. With Tumblr, it does so at its peril.

[READ MORE]

Read this. Seriously.

thank you!

Biggr may not be bettr for Flickr usrs

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:59:55 -0400

Biggr may not be bettr for Flickr usrs:

At Yahoo’s triumphant press conference yesterday in New York, it tried admirably to take the spotlight off its latest acquisition, Tumblr, and shine it on Flickr.

Yahoo took a huge gamble with the Flickr redesign, especially coming at a moment when everyone is looking at Yahoo’s relationship with Flickr users as a study of its potential relationship with Tumblr users. At yesterday’s press conference, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer assured attendees that Yahoo’s new executive team had learned from past mistakes, which include a notoriously long line of failed acquisitions.

But judging solely by the response to the Flickr redesign coming from its core userbase, it seems Yahoo is repeating past mistakes: making major decisions and changes without consulting its core communities of users, and attempting to fix what isn’t broken.

“I feel cheated and ripped off,” commented longtime Flickr user Brian Aslak.

My 9 years of loyalty to Flickr has been punished.

STOP PISSING ON MY LEG AND TELLING ME IT’S RAINING!

I am so angry at the Flickr staff that I could cry.

Tumblr gets trolled by fake Yahoo staff blogs

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:11:01 -0400

Tumblr gets trolled by fake Yahoo staff blogs:

Brace yourself, Tumblr: the reign of terror has begun. The reign of terrible troll blogs, gullible Tumblr users falling for them, and Tumblr banning them for impersonating Yahoo staffers, that is.

10 things Tumblr can teach Yahoo about the Internet

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:10:09 -0400

10 things Tumblr can teach Yahoo about the Internet:

One of the Internet’s oldest companies has a lot to learn from the young community it just acquired.

However unwilling Tumblrites might be, they still have much to teach Yahoo about the ways and means of Internet culture. If Yahoo is paying attention—and to be fair, the press release does state, “we promise not to screw it up”—it could carry these lessons far into the future.

As long as it doesn’t pull another Flickr or Delicious.

Here are the ten things Tumblr can teach Yahoo about the Internet.

1) You’re only as good as your community.

Photo via thirdfloorblog

This is a lesson Yahoo notably failed to learn with Flickr and Delicious. Forget branding your community; your community is now your brand, and with the Tumblr community, attempting to superimpose a brand will only backfire. Tumblr communities are largely self-branded and independent, devoid of any strong connection to Tumblr staff. Their loyalty is to the collective image of Tumblr users as a group, not to Tumblr CEO David Karp, to Storyboard, or to any future Yahoo employees. With Flickr, Yahoo largely ignored the community. With Tumblr, it does so at its peril.

[READ MORE]

The Shipping News: Slashy TV Finales, Yahoo Ruins Fandom! - thebacklot.com

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:12:38 -0400

The Shipping News: Slashy TV Finales, Yahoo Ruins Fandom! - thebacklot.com:

Plus “2 Fast” is 2 Fabulous and stunning webcomic “Starfighter”.

You guys! it’s my week to do the Shipping News, and this week’s was E P I C. check it out for thoughts on everything from Vin Diesel to the SPN season finale to Saturday Night Live’s canonical gay wedding to Yahoo/Tumblr to PRINCE OF TENNIS. oh my god why didn’t i include some GIFS of ryoma playing tennis on a rainbow or conjuring up a cyclone smash? remedy this in comments for me, will you?

Also we already have a really interesting question in the comments about excusing queerbaiting:

“All of these shows and films praised for their homoerotic undertones and the actors doing their queerbaiting things - do any of them have any actual gay characters?

I know Hot Fuzz doesn’t - does the new Star Trek? Shield? The Avengers? The Fast and the Furious? I hate to see lots of praising of the slash potential for shows and films that actually have zero actual inclusion, or, at best, minimal tokenism

I hate it far more when the actors, writers et al then play up to the queerbaiting. Should I praise Simon Pegg for feeding meat to slashers to help promote a film that has zero actual GBLT content? Should we be happy with that? Gay and bi male sexuality being used to promote a show or film but too nasty to actually include in it?

Why poke at queerbaiting as at least dubious but then unquestionably embrace it elsewhere in this column?”

I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts on this. What’s the line between celebrating and enjoying casual mentions of slash fandom, like Simon Pegg’s active embrace of Hot Fuzz slash fic, and embracing the mentality that causes actual queer erasure in the media we consume?