Sunday, March 27th, 2011

small but interesting

[info]reovu
So Sucker Punch came out this weekend and not only did it Fail To Impress, But it also Didn't perform as expected

People give their thoughts around the internet. Most people hated it along with a very vocal few who liked it.

HOWEVER, being a Zack Snyder movie... This shit blows up over at the Spill community.

For those of you who don't know: Spill.com is an internet based film review community (that recently expanded to video games) that gives podcasts and animated film reviews.

So as usual, a review is posted (review in bad taste with rape, skip if you wish )

Usually reviews get a fair amount of comments within their weekly film reviews. But for some reason this weekend SHIT BLOWS UP about this movie giving heated debates on Why this is a bad movie and you are bad for liking it; or you need to calm down and have a good time.

And it all starts here (I posted the link from page 45 since that's where it all started. you may have to go a few pages down until the wanky stuff finally gets started)

If you're not in the mood to read ALL of the mess here is a breakdown of the community:

. Spill members hate Zack Snyder
. Film Causes debate because his name is on it
. Usually in the community everybody likes to automatically agree with the critics despite not having seen said movie for themselves
. Debates are caused on OMG THE FILM INDUSTRY IS COLLAPSING NOW11!!11, stop liking what I don't like, why Zack Snyder is the devil.. the works.
. Comments criticizing the reviewers on WELL WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FROM THE TRAILER? OMG YOU'RE SO UPTIGHT

Oh and there was also a cute little side wank about the audio podcasts being too long


note:I edited the entry to fix a link and tags and warning suggested by commentor (thanks) 
(178 comments | Leave a comment)

Monday, September 20th, 2010

What's Black and White and Wank all over?

[info]kittikattie
No, not bad furry skunk art. Pokémon.

For those not in the loop or really not caring to be, Pokémon Black and White launched in Japan on the 18th. Naturally, fandom being what it is these days, the major sites are working their damnest to be the newest with all the 'Mon and such as. Pokébeach and Serebii were two of many sites getting their stuff up with a quickness, with tons of screenshots and images of the new games and characters and such. Anyways, at some point Pokébeach go on and admit on the front page that they are using a ROM to get all their images, and Serebii has gotten their images from Pokébeach.

Can you tell where this is going? Both sites are hit with a C&D notice telling them to take the images down.

Both sites do as they are told. Pokebeach, of course, takes this very maturely like a person should....

Since us posting images of Black and White "has the potential to cause substantial damage to Nintendo," we have obviously complied with their wishes. All recent images of the games have been replaced by Ditto, a Pokemon from 1996 who we feel will best represent Pokemon's current image. We've also taken the liberty to change the name of this site to "PokerBeach" since we figured using "Poké" also has the chance of causing substantial damage to Nintendo's property. We hope that all English-speakers will remove images of Black and White from their websites, forums, blogs, YouTubes, Facebooks, instant messages, e-mails, homes, and minds since under law Nintendo has the right to declare any media they want, on any website they want, illegal and out of the domain of fair use [luckily criticism isn't]. We hope everyone will comply with their wishes or Pokemon may end up in the gutter, since covering and advertising new games for free is obviously counter-productive to Nintendo's sales. I mean, images of the games will obviously cost more damage than minor Isshus like this. Why go after the big guys when you can waste your lawyers' time on small fan sites that only help your franchise?

....or maybe not.

Meanwhile, the fandom reacts up in arms. ElJay Com; Bulbapedia Forums; Pokebeach Forums.

And for those who don't care about the wank, there's 156 of the little buggers* this round. I'm a fan of the deer, the candle, the water otter, and the fire piggy.

*Image shows all 649 (!) of em.

ETA: Having been linked in the comment: Kotaku; IGN.

ETA 2: Pokebeach backpedals, WPM claims he didn't have ROMs (even though front page said so). only used ROMs for plot for a little while and so it doesn't count. Nintendo are Big Bad Bullyfolk kicking people in head. Shows maturity of Target Pokémon audience of 8-12 year old.
(384 comments | Leave a comment)

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

Wendy Pini and the Gay Romance Rip-off

[info]waltraute
We all love plagiarism wank, be it the saga of Cassie Claire or Aja going nuclear on someone. But it's always better when it involves pro authors!

Wendy Pini is best known as the co-author of Elfquest, a comic about elves. I've never read it, so just fill in the blanks here, look it up in wiki, etc. She's now publishing Masque of the Red Death, inspired by the famous Poe story but with gay romance in outer space. Of course, she's totally been getting hate mail from gay men about this series.

But, you might say, as you look at this extensive writeup of comparisons, doesn't that look a lot like Colleen Doran's A Distant Soil?

We're catching up on this one a little late, so if you look at the version on LJ, there's a whole host of ETAs, including the claim that Wendy Pini has never seen ADS...except a preview of it was published in one of the Elfquest issues. Oops!

You can see Colleen Doran's work at her website, if this writeup sparks your interest.

Thanks to the anons at wank_report.
(475 comments | Leave a comment)

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Small Who fandom wank

[info]_rukia
[info]mrv3000 sets out to address a lingering prejudice in fandom, one she is personally affected by. Doesn't sound funny so far, right? Just wait.

You see, it's not racism, or sexism, or classism, or anything similar Miss 3000 feels the need to address, oh no! Instead, she decides to discuss one of the more persistent problems in fandom: the horrors of OTP-ism! For you see, according to her:

I'm a serial OTP-er. I rather doubt this will ever change. Pretty much all of my fannish experience (even before the 10 years I've been hanging out in fandom) has been me latching on to one pairing and squeeing the hell out of it. I don't find it particularly juvenile that I generally only ship one pairing, but yet I see so many comments that indicate as much. That somehow a person is enlightened if they can multi-ship (or really enlightened if they like threesomes or more) and some sort of idiot fangirl if they OTP. Or that if a person has an OTP, then by that very definition they must be on a crusade to wreck every other pairing. Um, say what? Just because I don't find some other ship plausable doesn't mean that someone else can't. (Unless they believe that my thinking trumps their thinking; in which case, dude, get me a latte! I've always wanted a minion!)

Many people agree (especially at first), several people don't, and the whole thing rapidly spirals into a debate about whether or not 'mono-shipping' is the same as OTPing and if the 'true' in One True Pairing inherently invalidates all other ships. [info]jaythenerdkid/[info]bewarethespork writes a reaction post discussing 'sign-systems' as they relate to Doctor/Rose shippers, where people respond Very Seriously, and the entire thing pretty much reads like a war about whose shipping patterns are betterer with some big words thrown in.
(413 comments | Leave a comment)

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

It's been in Oprah magazine and continues to be relevant big time

tetradecimal
Elsewhere on the internet: LJ reveals some news to its users about a redesign of the LJ homepage. Changes involve a feature showcase, links to the latest LJ news posts, and a brand new section smack in the middle of the page:
"Oh No They Didn't" shows popular entries from ohnotheydidnt.

22 pages of comments follow, half of which appear to be people complaining about the new change and ONTD in general, and the other half comprised of ONTD members buckling down for some earnest, dedicated trolling.
Read more... )
(305 comments | Leave a comment)

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

Wank machine keeps on rollin'

[info]beejium
1. Pixar makes incredible, mind-blowing third movie in Toy Story series.
2. Rotten Tomatoes logs over 130 reviews - all positive.
3. Toy Story 3 gets it's first (so far, only) bad reviews.
4. Internet explodes. (Also here.)

The wank seems to be focused on Armond White's review, as he is known for seemingly giving any review that goes against the general consenus. (He inexplicably seems in favour of Transformers 2, for instance.) He also doesn't appear to have actually watched the movie (identifying Hamm as a villain.) His negative review was actually predicted by a number of commenters in this earlier article, asking readers to predict where Toy Story 3 would end up on the Tomatometer rating.

It's all very dramatic, with wank in every corner. But of course, the most important Toy Story-related argument is and always will always be: Buzz/Jessie or Woody/Jessie?*


*Anyone's who's seen the movie will know the right answer to this.
(356 comments | Leave a comment)

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Youthwank: LJ is protecting children!

[info]elfwreck
Livejournal decided to tag fanficrants as may contain explicit content, which means that nobody logged in as under 18 can see the posts. People logged out can see them, and click the "Yes I'm 18" button—but ffrants doesn't allow anon or non-member commenting. Officially, it doesn't allow sockpuppets, either.

The wank is playing out in a couple of posts at ffrantsrants

jinxy_sama is surprised anyone's upset:
I thought it already was marked Explicit Adult Content. I have to say I find it surprising that so many of you who so vehemently disapprove of loli/shouta ... would not dissuade actual underage individuals from creating socks or moving to DreamWidth in order to view content inappropriate for children, ie. rape, bdsm, a myriad of different kinks, explicit smut, etc, etc. With the comm in such disarray over the inability of minors to partake, maybe it's a good thing LJ took the reigns."
Several people point out that "not wanting kids to read x-rated fanfic" is not the same as "not wanting kids to read ranting about fanfic, some of which is x-rated." It's also pointed out that some of the "minors" now being excluded are legal adults in their countries of residence.

But, she continues, sending a lemon to a person under the age of consent via email constitutes corruption of a minor, which, if prosecuted by a parent, could land someone in jail. That's not wank, it's fact. (Plz to ignore the total lack of any such prosecutions in the history of the internet. It's fact that it could happen!)

Yeah, says izzanami, you think telling kids to go to DW to see things ADULTS get triggered and squicked by is alright? You may think that sex should be an open subject for children (and I think it should be), but unless YOU are their PARENT, it doesn't matter.

(All arguments are more persuasive with some words in caps. Really.)

Jinxy says "it should be up to the minor in question's parent/guardian to decide what they deem suitable for their children's eyes, not any random person on the internet."

(LJ's staff is, of course, not "any random person on the internet." You *know* they polled the parents of every minor on that comm.)

Izza brings on the Special Logic: Even though *she's* an enlightened and sensible parent who doesn't believe in hiding the existence of sex from kids, it's totally reasonable for LJ to take a stand against it, because not every parent agrees with her, and *of course* policies should be based on the most hysterical parents' wishes.

Buried in the (mostly frozen now) subthreads are bits about how LJ is only protecting itself from lawsuits (which nobody is admitting has nothing to do with whether or not the content is dangerous for children), and speculations about the real purpose/intent of the "May Contain Explicit Content" tag: "Once a comm has even one entry marked as explicit it's supposed to be marked as 'may' contain explicit adult content, that "may" part is very important."—because once a comm. has a single locked-to-adults post, no minors should be allowed to join that comm.. Riiiiight.

Also includes tangential wank about whether FFR does, or does not, disapprove of loli. IDEK.

jadedissola explains the whole situation to an unhappy 15-year-old:
But we have to protect you from reading about such naughty things, otherwise you might get IDEAS and you might start thinking about trying this S-E-X thing for yourself! Clearly, without all this talk of sex, you'll never think of trying it on your own/fantasize about celebrities! What's worse, you might get the idea that sex is something to be enjoyed, maybe even celebrated! You need to understand that sex can KILL YOU (or at least give you babies).

Try again in three years when, magically, you become an adult overnight and suddenly your brain will be capable of handling all these grown-up ideas.
(1142 comments | Leave a comment)

Monday, June 7th, 2010

♫ My my my my Mitchell ♫

tetradecimal
Brought to you by wank_report!

Clan Mitchell is a Dreamwidth community revolving around the fictional Mitchell family, which appears to be a huge group of people who live in the Carolinas under the administration of a matriarch named Momma, generally serve in some branch of the U.S. military, and/or operate under a general curtain of good ol' American values, get-well-pies, and care packages.

Motto: "The Mitchells will inherit the earth: the meek don't move fast enough."

From the profile:
"So ivorygates and synecdochic made up a bunch of crazy Southern relatives, and the "Fuck Canon, Fanon Makes More Sense, Dammit" club (meetings on alternate Tuesdays, free t-shirts at the recruiting tables, bring your own beer but the cookies are free) firmly believes that "Kansas, my ass" is the best way to approach Cameron Mitchell's home life, and, well, there should be more fic about these people!

Not necessarily a shared-continuity set of stories -- use as much or as little as you'd like -- but a shared-character-list and a place for people to build a shared-world. Grab a Mitchell and start writing. Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated. And probably baked for."


It all starts with a ficprompt... )
ETA: Revenge of the Sith: cap including the offending fic.

Holy ETA, Batman: (thanks, mousie)
"When someone has put in a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to create an absolutely beautiful sandbox to play in (a sandbox that they love very very much), and then not only allows you to come in and play in their sandbox, but graciously opens the door and INVITES you in, you don't shit in the sandbox. You don't. M'kay? Good."

We can't stop here, this is ETA country: It's time for the public address roll, looks like. From [info]eilan:
* slybrarian calls for fair and balanced.
* quinfirefrorefiddle & co. are appalled at F_W's lack of journalistic integrity.
* Synecdochic's state of the union, and also ivorygates is banned. Or left. Either way, she's not a mod any more.
(2531 comments | Leave a comment)

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

She's been glamoured too many times already. Who knows how much of her is left.

[info]maximuski
First True Blood wank!! *is excited*

Here I present you: midnight_charm's crazy shipping theories.


Bill Compton, the Lord of the Rings )

YOU ALL HAVE BEEN FOOLED. This is what REALLY happened at the beginning of episode 9 )

ETA: I added some more explanations for our non-True Blood fans :). My additions to the quotes are in [].
(207 comments | Leave a comment)

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

Beat your breasts, maidens, and rend your tunics.

[info]ari_o
There once was an archive for Yuletide
and when it died every other fool cried
stop thief
in erroneous belief
that their fics were about to go worldwide

background )

the set up )

coda )

OH ETA: [info]melodyclark is here to show us all that even older women like to wank like horny thirteen year olds, but if she doesn't give it a rest I'm worried she's going to go blind, develop hairy palms, AND come down with a raging case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

thanks to [info]inquisition for the heads up.

eta 3.1415 The abyss is looking into us... and it's fucking stupid. :D

bonus lulz: [info]tzikeh point out to me that [info]melodyclark tried to edit her fanlore page.

text for anyone who can't or doesn't want to load fanlore )
(1520 comments | Leave a comment)

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

lj genderfails, bnf responds with accidental russophobia, a couple of fanpoodles slip the leash

[info]cimorene111
It all starts with what people are already calling LJ Genderfail: the newest beta version of LJ added a mandatory "gender" field to the sign-up process and eliminated the "unspecified" option (LJ quickly responded that the mandatoryness and binaryness of the new question were an accidental bug, and that the code was not going to go live. Of course, not everyone believes them about the "unintentional" part).

Well-known SGA BNF, former lj staffmember and co-founder of Dreamwidth Synecdochic made a call-to-action post that included the line,

It's been a while since I've been furious with anything LJ has done; having DW has done a lot to calm down my knee-jerk "AUUUGH NO" whenever Moscow does something stupid again.


A few people, some Russian and some not, are offended by this, and object. Synecdochic apologizes and edits the post after a request for clarification, but that is not enough to stop Ivorygates from making her side look bad.

Furiosity (who identifies as Russian) had objected to dismissing an entire culture because you're mad at some of its representatives, and Ivorygates takes the opportunity to school her. In her own cultural history. Because, you know, Russians don't understand freedom: it's not in their culture! America's special history of free speech can't be truly respected by them! (At this point Synecdochic freezes the thread.)

But Ivorygates isn't done! Bell had commented to Synecdochic that saying "Moscow" made a decision wasn't the same as saying "San Francisco" did because "Moscow, in US rhetoric, is that creepy place with commies and weird politics and gangsters". Ivorygates PMs her about this claim,

Are you actually -- are you actually seriously -- suggesting that identifying as a Russian national -- online, where you are safe from physical attack and can maintain anonymity -- presents you with duress identical to the harassment and persecution that transsexual and genderqueer individuals experience not only on-line, but in every facet of their lives?


Furiosity also posts to ask people to apologize instead of getting defensive when informed that they have offended "someone's race/culture/language/sexual orientation/gender identity/whatever". In her post meddie_flow comes to Synecdochic's defense with the ever popular Bingo square of "She didn't mean anything by it" with a side-order of "don't turn everything into a lynch-mob". Being offended by russophobia is also likened to being offended by the color red, and I'm honestly not sure if the irony there was intentional or not...
(483 comments | Leave a comment)

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Courtesy of wank_report....

[info]snacky
The not quite so triumphant return of Victoria Bitter.

In which we discover that VB is the writer of a very popular HP fanfic, and *GASP* is planning a con for fans of said fic to get together. By con, I mean "convention" and not "swindle" although, who knows, it could be one and the same again.

Did you know that VB, in his/her* new fandom persona, has "fought with three different paramilitias", "never thought about an ideal job outside of the military", "has a heart condition that gives me less than ten years to live", and is super chivalrous: "Even after coming nearer than I ever have to being destroyed by a woman I loved for almost seven long years, even after she took my son from me without so much as a goodbye and left me destitute for someone she'd been seeing behind my back, I still hold no grudge against womankind."

All these fun facts and more to be had here. Deleted, but screencapped here, and html here.


(Look, I know there's no wank yet, but it's VB and Turimel, so let's take a nice stroll down memory lane.)


*am not sure if VB is actually trans or if IDing as male is part of the scam, so covering my bases here. ETA, again: Okay, folks, I've been away the whole day, and I've got back to an exploding inbox, and I haven't had the chance to go through the whole thing, but I wanted to address this issue.

I was trying to err on the side of caution in regards to past actions, but doesn't matter if I'm unsure or not, using female pronouns or referring to VB/thanfiction as "s/he" "it" or "s/h/it" is disrespectful and hurtful to other transfolk, and I apologize for this. I'm sorry that my choice of pronouns has cause people distress.

So please stick to the male pronouns. Regardless of if this is VB's identity or just another grift, it stands less of a chance of hurting people if you use the male pronouns.

Also, anons, tread carefully. I turned anon commenting on so everyone could play, so let's not ruin it, okay?




ETA, ONCE AGAIN: Anon commenting is off. And please read this. Thank you, [info]white_serpent.

Male pronouns, please. No more transfail, thanks.





ETA: Oh boo, beat to the punch. Sorry, folks.

ETA #2: Other post deleted! Have fun here. Also, anon commenting is ON, since there was an anon at wank_report who seemed to have more details on this.

ETA: #3: More links, from the comments (thank you, lovely wankas!):

Fic comm and where planning for the con is happening

Screencap of Turimel's deleted FW post

Andrew/VB's Twilight artwork

Terry Boot's head is pastede on yay?

Tv Tropes (beware!) page for thanfictions's Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness

thanfiction on Twitter

Oh, as usual, dear

More details from luvscharlie - thanks, [info]luvscharlie! I don't suppose you have more to share, hmmm? :D
(3416 comments | Leave a comment)

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

Lily Potter Wars, Part III: Death Eaters are like Muslims

[info]mariem_1
Snapefen are still wanking about Lily Evans Potter. [info]terri_testing posted an essay More on Lily's behavior in SWM: Lily the Prefect? on Snapedom. An excerpt from this essay:
Read more )

Batshit flourishes in the comments:
Read more )
(397 comments | Leave a comment)

Friday, November 20th, 2009

We don't actually know if this is plagiarism wank, unless someone out there is an internets lawyer

[info]bobafeis
Here's some Project Runway plagiarism wank to go with the lovely vanity pub and author wank. I hope it goes without saying that there might be a spoiler or two for the finale, but I'll say it anyway: There are spoilers for the finale in this post.

Project Runway "villain" and finalist Irina had a shirt in her final Bryant Park collection that has all the reasons she loves New York written on it. Oh, wait. Those aren't the reasons she loves New York, those are the reasons that someone who wrote a famous New York Magazine article loves New York. And this is the same girl who was going to feature Coney Conney Island artwork in the collection until she was told that it would be copyright infringement? And NY Mag says that she didn't ask permission? And I don't even have to tell you that this isn't going to end well, do I?

And then spoileriffic things happen! And so does wank. )
(98 comments | Leave a comment)

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Back off, man, I'm a scientist!

tetradecimal
From wank_report:
Genevieve Koski, writing for the A.V. Club, offers her opinion on a recent screening of Ghostbusters for Better Late Than Never, the feature in which authors who never experienced some element of the pop culture of the past go back and review it with the jaded eyes of the present. Her opinion, of course, is negative.

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. )
...I don't have to warn for Ghostbusters spoilers, do I?
(387 comments | Leave a comment)

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

Wil Wheaton vs. A Pirate: Clash of the Internets

[info]platedlizard
You'll have to excuse me. I decided that I wanted a Dvorak keyboard instead of a Qwerty keyboard and I am basically relearning how to type.

From Clairvoyantwank.

Someone posts a pirated download of Wil Wheaton's audiobook Just a Geek. Wil finds out and is Not Happy.

an open letter to the guy put the just a geek audiobook on his website for people to steal. )

No word yet from Lee Goldburg, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.
(222 comments | Leave a comment)

Banned from Octocon!

[info]dhole
Before I get started, a disclaimer: The closest connection I have to Irish fandom is that I've flown over bits of Ireland from time to time. And, when I was a kid, I saw a lot of commercials for Lucky Charms. So I'm probably going to be missing a few subtleties. Also, this is something that happened recently, and recently . . . recently isn't really the decade that I'm best at.

With that said, it seems that there's a guy named Pádraig Ó Méalóid. Who's active in Irish con-going fandom. Or at least, he's active in large parts of Irish con-going fandom. But not Octocon, the Irish National Convention, which is going to be held next weekend. You see Pádraig got a letter the other day, that went a little something like this:


Hello,

I'm writing on behalf of the 2009 Octocon Committee. I am the Co-Chair.

Due to your behaviour at the convention some time ago and your online behaviour earlier this year we have come to the unfortunate decision to ban you from this convention. We believe that your attitude towards us has been far to aggressive both online and in the past at the convention.

This matter is not open for discussion and we will not enter into any online discussion regarding this nor will we discuss this with any other persons. This decision is final.

We are deeply saddened by this as this is the first time a committee has had to ban someone. We will of course will refund your money; if you reply to me with your address I will forward this onto you as soon as possible.

Regards,

Nichola Hannigan


Now, if you're like me, you look at a letter like that, and think "she probably meant 'far too aggressive'." Also, you'd find that third paragraph amusingly repetitive. (I have to warn you, if that was actually your reaction, you're going to want to lay some tarp around your work area, as one of the links that comes later is going to make your head explode. And that's hard to clean up.)

And, if you're someone like Pádraig, you'll go ahead and post the letter to your livejournal. I mean, I'd have done that as well, but with far more mockery.

But Pádraig wasn't the only place in which this news was broken. Cheryl Morgan happened to mention it as well. To quote the seemingly innocuous paragraph:


In less good news my email is currently buzzing with the news that my good friend Pádraig Ó Méalóid has apparently been banned from the convention. I know that Pádraig has been rather critical of the Octocon committee this year, and perhaps rather more aggressive about it than he should have been, but I know my fan history well enough to remember that banning people from conventions rarely ends well. The right way to deal with one’s critics is to prove them wrong by running a great event.


Comment 3 is by one James Brophy, who was, at that point, on the Octocon committee. And he's there to link to the convention's Code of Conduct, and defend the committee's decision. Against all challengers.

The first one he takes on is Pádraig. To his protestations of "I don't know what the hell they're talking about," James replies with "You turned your ignorance of your own actions into a press release." Zing!

Then there's another challenger. Gary Farber replies in his own, inimitable fashion. And at great length. And other people agree with him. Also, Chris O'Shea points out that the code of conduct in question wasn't actually put up on the web last week, which is apparently after whatever happened that made them kick Pádraig out of the convention. It also is in the realm of possibility that the code went up after they sent the letter.

Chris concludes with:

Octocon’s PR has the ears of the world at the moment, it would be a good time to explain what is going on, because in the absence of such, things will only get worse.


James isn't going to take that lying down! In the next comment, he announces his resignation from the con committee, and comprehensively flips his shit. This is where the grammar induced head-explosions are going to start, by the way, as his language skills seem to go at the same time as his temper.

I'm not a hundred percent capable of parsing the claims in the post, but as I understand them, they more or less go as follows: a) Pádraig is a mean guy. b) Also, he says mean things, both to people, and about people. c) One time, he took some prints from a photographer that he shouldn't have.

Rather than do a play-by-play for the rest of the thread, I'll summarize. Gary makes fun of James's difficulties both with the English language and with logic. James explains that one of the lurkers who supports him isn't speaking up, because he's a writer, and fears that Cheryl Morgan will ruin his career. Cheryl gets upset at that, and bans James from her blog, until she's contacted by the guy in question. Which, rather surprisingly, she is, so she un-bans him. Various other members of the committee show up, not so much to explain their actions, as to explain that they wanted this to be kept private, and they are saddened that Pádraig has put his own interests above those of a convention which he's not allowed to attend.

As one might expect, there's some discussion about there elsewhere on the internet; the one bit that jumped out at me as providing useful data was a comment on lj which suggested that one of Pádraig's major sins was founding a convention that's been more successful than Octocon over the last decade or so.

And that's all I've got.
(355 comments | Leave a comment)

Monday, October 5th, 2009

[info]sepiamagpie
Dearest little wankahs, what makes a perfect wank?

I'm not asking this because I'm trying to perfect a Get Wank Quick scheme*, though. Honest.



*Voodoo, not trolling.
(203 comments | Leave a comment)

Also I know the ponies hate me

[info]ari_o
snatched from [info]wank_report

"Someone" posts a secret (#114 now bahleeted--caps?) on [info]fandomsecrets and the image is stored on her easily identifiable photobucket account. She claims to be lonely and not have any friends and she wishes the Avatar characters were her RL friends. But she means local friends, not imaginary intarweb bitches her LJ friends.

Responses are mostly of the "Oh, snap!" variety except for the "What am I? Chopped liver?" one. It's really a very mild response though [info]yukinoomoni is outed by name.

She doesn't overreact at all: )

eta: F_W is not your therapist. If you can't lol at a wank maybe you need to go for a walk. I thought this was funny. lol sociopath.
(415 comments | Leave a comment)

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Hermione Granger - Voldemort in the making

[info]mariem_1
A Slytherfan [info]terri_testing writes an essay The Wizarding World and the Otherworld, where she argues that Harry Potter books are horror, not fantasy and that Hogwarts is like the school where the Native American children were brainwashed:

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The essay provokes a chorus of "I agree"s and complaints about JKR's treatment of Snape:

[info]mary_j_59 (see "Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!")

This is brilliant, Terri! And absolutely consistent. You know, my sister and I went to hear Rowling, Irving and King in NYC, and we both liked John Irving (reading from Owen Meany) best. Now the reason is clear. Rowling is actually a horror writer, like King, and I do not like horror. Still less do I like horror disguised as a children's fantasy quest. Irving, on the other hand, was writing in the great tradition of picaresque novels - a tragicomedy with a moral core.

But what I still wonder is: did (and does) Rowling know that she has actually written a dystopion/horror story? Somehow I don't think she realizes this.


[info]condwiramurs/[info]00sevvie

I second the 'brilliant' comment. And I highly doubt Rowling is aware of what she has actually written. She is too utterly blind to the reasons we like Severus, for example, to have any clue that she may have written something different from what her perfect picture of her work in her head is. I'm sure she thinks we're just getting it 'wrong.'

[info]oryx_leucoryx (see Cry the Beloved Slytherins)

So if Severus Snape actually survived Nagini's bite, returned to the Muggle world and became some kind of counselor to delinquent youth or someone who runs an anti-bullying program (by working both with victims and perpetrators) he would be a hero with a rather protracted but complete journey? Starting out as the victim of neighborhood bullies (I doubt Petunia was the only one who knew that the strangely dressed kid was the Snape boy from Spinner's End) who must have dreamed that magic would solve his problems, learned that magic simply gave bullies more dangerous/'interesting' ways to hurt people, played a key role in getting rid of the biggest bully in the magical playground and came home to use non-magical ways against bullies?
***
bohemian_spirit has some fics in that general direction - in her 'Light Between the Cracks' series Severus Snape of canon years was secretly married to a Muggle school teacher and while at his Muggle home watched over the neighborhood children. And in her 'Professor Grunge' Severus immigrates to the US instead of joining the Death Eaters. He studies at a wizarding university and becomes a teacher who fights bullying and uses music to assist in magical healing.


But the real fun starts when [info]night_train_fm decides to argue with [info]terri_testing and says, among other things:

'Hermione exiling her parents to Australia'
She did that because she was terrified (with good reason) of the DEs coming after them: Voldemort was taking over the government, had already ordered several public mass-Muggle-killings, and anyone remotely connected to Harry was a potential target. According to Jo, Hermione reversed the spell ASAP once the threat was over. For that matter, is it ever outright stated that she didn't sit down and discuss it with them first?


That doesn't go well.

Hermione is teh ebil! )
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