Dearest, beloved, Fandom Wank.

I know you were looking forward to great excitement today. Some of you said words to me that indicated you anticipated fiery 'judgement' upon those who remained fresh and dewey white, those you call n00bs.

Anyway, you got today instead.

Stop anticipating things, we'll just break your hearts.

Sincerely,

Sepia P. Magpie, Esq.



PS: Use this post to reflect on how you could be better people. Or just fuck around in the comments.

This one's a little old now, but still gradually racking up comments.

For those who don't know, For Better or For Worse is a comic that's been going on since the seventies, and which a lot of people have grown up with. The story's been running down for the last couple of years since its creator was planning on ending it when he contract runs out next month (she's now changed the plan to freezing the characters in time, when in the past it's always been one of the few newspaper strips that weren't). Many people have been unsatisfied by what's been happening in the strip since she started trying to tie up loose ends, especially with the plot around Elizabeth Patterson, who has in the past year given up the life she'd been building on her own to move back into her parent's home and be shoved into a relationship with a man that a lot of readers hate.

Eric Burns from Websnark has a suggestion for how to deal with the dissatisfaction people have been feeling. That suggestion being that once FOOB is time-frozen webcartoonists should continue the strip, fixing what went wrong. Just make sure to change the character names first.

At first everyone who comments likes the idea, but since that blog is read by a lot of cartoonists you can imagine that it's only a matter of time before someone shows up who doesn't like the thought of using somebody else's creation. Then we get into the arguing about things like the merits of fanfiction, whether this is a display of fannish entitlement or not (something that Eric has looked down on before), and whether lawyers can be wrong or not.

William G., one of the people most against Eric's idea, goes on to make his own post on the subject, and then another in response to an article at Comixtalk about it that's still getting comments. Then over at Damn Good Comics there's yet more discussion.

...because I posted to the wrong fandomwank before. *shame-face*

Stephanie van Doleweerd is mad as hell and she's gonna send a letter!

In addition to being the Web Developer for Lynn Johnston's rapidly deteriorating comic For Better or for Worse, she is also the inspiration for the speech-impaired character Shannon. (Correction: Stephanie is a different person than the web developer,</a> and thus may not be the wanky party, even if she did ask for this action to be taken.) The denizens of binky_betsy, among many other places, resent the way Shannon is used only to impart life lessons to the youngest Patterson child April, or the way her character is developed only to be good and saintly and not a complete person. Recently, Shannon made a speech to her high school's cafeteria reminding everyone that making fun of her and her friends was not cool - and the response in-strip was the comics equivalent of the slow clap. Since most people on the Internet have actually attended high school in the past couple of decades, however, more likely responses and storylines for Shannon were outlined in parody strips.

Van Doleweerd, whose boss Lynn is well-acquainted with internet parodies of her work (and has been featured here before for quashing such), quickly found these parody strips and interpreted them as making fun of Shannon-Stephanie personally. (There is also some debate that Lynn's employees may have purposely brought the parodies to Shannon-Stephanie's attention.) Instead of making a speech like comic-Shannon, however, she responded with a flurry of C&D to anyone whose IP sat still long enough. The result was not a slow clap.

Sure, LKH is wanky, but FBorFW wank seems to be epidemic, y'all. I presume that in the next act, Farley's real-life counterpart is gonna get wanked for saying he's racist against pit bulls.

ETA: The prior Lynn Johnston cease-and-desist wank.

Also: Icon is now more pleasing to brain and psyche. Though I'd always liked having the little sprite gambol about on my screen. Any more lip, though, and I'll dig up that picture of Carrot Top's... Carrot nethers!

Is Lynn Johnston going to join the ranks of Lee G*ldb*rg an' Anne Rice? Say it ain't so, April Patterson!

The FOOBiverse is a Livejournal community dedicated to the Canadian comic strip For Better Or For Worse. Since its origins as a part of the Fametracker forums, members have poked fun at, an' criticized heavily, Lynn Johnston's storylines, artwork, retcons, an' anything else related to FBorFW, and it's now listed on FBorFW's Wikipedia page an' everything. Johnston - or one of her employees, called "Lynnions" - has been diligent about sending CoD notices to any journals caught reproducing her artwork in any way, shape, or form, so most posts just do a panel-by-panel critique.

But satire is fair game, right?

Well, it appears Lynn's sense of humor is as frozen as a caribou carcass in the Canadian Arctic. Livejournal now threatens suspension of users who have icons reported as mocking FBorFW. Specifically, they seem to target aprilp_katje, who specializes in making icons mocking April Patterson. Predictably, wank continues, an' a helpful mouse points out to those whining that "There is No 'Free Speach' in Canda". As at least one of the targeted users vows to fight this, I'm sure this will continue to grow. Sic Semper Tyrannis, an' Godspeed, brave ones.

Full disclosure: I'm not in this one, but I do have an irrational hatred for April Patterson. Please, no Canada-bashing.

ETA: Some April-related blogging satire. And here is Comics Curmudgeon's cease and desist mention from tiki, though it appears that fighting it actually works.