Mock. Mockmockmock. Mockity-mock-mock

10:27am: My fictional bad guys are scarier than your lawyers

Thank you to the reporters on wank report for this one.

Jeanny Driscoll/Drymwyver is a self-published author selling her SGA fanfic, claiming that she has the blessings of MGM in an email. She’s also trying to sell her HP sequel because the Writers Guild of America told her it was okay and J.K. Rowling only holds the copyright to the first seven books in the series anyway. Bonus! She also posed as a US soldier stationed in Iraq in order to receive care packages.

Summary, discussion and links here (includes the text of the now-deleted interview) and here. The interviewer and webmaster of the site formerly hosting the interview shows up here and here and he is not happy. I highly recommend Jeanny Driscoll's and Drymwyver's LuLu pages, which include gems like "This is a romance story set in mystery, and Fantasy", "Its the year 2008 and the world's Elite in Security have formed the new World Network to rout out the enemies and terrorists in the world", along with her self-published V and Peter Pan fanfiction.

ETA: Jeanny Driscoll's LuLu page has disappeared but Drymwyver's is still accessible.

7:05pm: Video Game Reviewgate
Kind of surprised that this hasn't yet been posted about here, as it's been a hot topic of discussion at several video game forums and blogs, not to mention a prime example of Gamer Drama. Anyway, before I start, a special thanks to the guys over at the Cheap Ass Gamer forums for several of these links.

There's a new game by Eidos out called Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, which was heavily advertised on the mega huge gaming site Gamespot (we're talking an ad campaign costing hundreds of thousands of dollars). A Gamespot editor named Jeff Gerstmann gives Kane & Lynch a 6.0, a considerably low score (here's the original review as well as a video version). A rumor reaches Kotaku that Gerstmann was fired over the review.

( Venture forth into the seedy underbelly of video game journalism (and hysteria) )

ETA - The plot thickens; it seems the official Kane & Lynch website hasn't exactly been honest with their review scores (thanks to miraba for the link).

ETA II - Gamespot speaks; Kotaku commenters call "bullshit" (thanks, j_crew_guy and mcity). And speaking of Kotaku, the Kane & Lynch website claims another victim (thanks, princessdot).

ETA III - Destructoid brings the snark.

ETA: Vice City - First the news: mass resignations at Gamespot on the way? If that's too teal deer for you, here's a brief summary of that post.

Also, The Escapist's Russ Pitts weighs in on the whole ugly situation (thanks ghostmaster); no Kane & Lynch review from Yahtzee yet, sadly. Newsweek's N'Gai Croal shares his two pennies as well.

ETA: San Andreas - Gerstmann speaks, plus analysis by Kotaku (thanks, iwanttobeasleep). I love this passage from the first link: Also, see that chart up there? That’s the estimated traffic performance of GameSpot over the most recent seven-day stretch that the figures are available. Remember, this story broke on Nov 29. That’s when people on the Internet started talking about blacking out the site.

Note the lack of a dip.

Go fanboys! Show that big bad Gamespot who's boss!

Meanwhile, Gamespot speaks some more.