I almost snorted hot coffee out my nose while listening to this week's This American Life. Because lo, I bring you tidings of great joy. There was wank and it involved Santas. Santas breaking into factions and invoking Godwin's. Online drama. Real life drama. Santa against Santa.

I never considered Santa or Christmas a fandom before, but now I know. They cosplay. They have conventions. They live and breathe Santa year round. And they are as dramatic as any wankers we've ever seen.

If you click the link above, click "play episode" and ff to 22:00 you can listen to the segment. It's 27 minutes of wanky Santa hijinks and infighting.

Background reading:

AORBS website and history.
Santa flounces.
No, this is the real history and archives.

I know there is more, but I figured this was a good start.

Nobody expects the Santa Inquisition?

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 [].

Lambda Literary Foundation: We're changing our submission criteria. From now on our GLBT literary award will only be given to self-identified GLBT authors.

( This does not go over well. )

A Slytherfan 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:

( Read more )

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

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.

condwiramurs/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.'

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 night_train_fm decides to argue with 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! )

mariem_1 beat me to the punch.

Well, if you're looking for some real crazy, look no further than digimon!.

Overlord_Mordax wants to know why people like Ken. Or as one user puts it, why people like her. Mom jokes are taken seriously. Anonymous gets involved.

Mordax BAWS on her own journal.


***brought to my attention by a lovely mouse on wank_report

Oh yeah... I forgot to say 'sorry' in my last post.

Modsquad out. *snap* *snap*

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.

Apparently, braumsgirl26 of Customers Suck! fame has returned as selenafan27 and come to Bad RPers Suck. It starts out innocently enough, with our dear friend asking what a Mary Sue is, seen here: http://community.livejournal.com/bad_rpers_suck/4999066.html#comments

She trolls a bit

http://community.livejournal.com/bad_rpers_suck/5006139.html

http://community.livejournal.com/bad_rpers_suck/4999612.html

http://community.livejournal.com/bad_rpers_suck/4999843.html

http://community.livejournal.com/bad_rpers_suck/5002933.html

and seems to be losing interest. OR IS SHE!?

This evening, a beautiful example of caps-locked stupid is left us by selenafan27 Claus. It's already hit the triple digits and shows no signs of petering out.

http://community.livejournal.com/bad_rpers_suck/5039592.html

Witness the rain of macros! See the stunning vistas of LOLZORS! Hear the cries of EPIC TROLL!

If that's your thing. Me, Imma gonna drink my brandy and listen to the History of Sex on History Channel.

EDITED to bring you more of her glowing wit.

Thanks to a mouse on wank_report for spotting this one.


Over at v_4_vendetta, vixenvenus posts a link to a video. Indignant fapping results.

After things die down a bit, vixenvenus plays mod. And, of course, there are the inevitable cries of "Can't we all just get along?"

ETA: And still more, courtesy of tao_tao.

So, in Wizard magazine, Spider-Man writer J. Michael Straczynski and Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada announced their plans to "fix" Spider-Man and "rip out [the fans's] hearts". Again. Joey Q also shared his thoughts on yaoi went on about his hate-on for Spidey's wife, Mary Jane. Because it's totally her fault the comics suck, you guys, not retcon after retcon after the fugliest costume in the world.

Anyway, the news reached various comics message boards. I'm sure you can guess what happened next.

We're up to 14 pages of wank on Superherohype.com, 11 pages at Comics Resource Boards, and various splurts on the Spider-Man Comics Board.

And if you think I'm going to sum up 25+ pages of wank, you're as nuts as a guy in a Goblin costume. However, I will share the highlights.

( GO, WANK WEB, GO! )

Oh, and meet Thread 1 and Thread 2, both speculating about how Marvel is going to kill Mary Jane again. Then there's their clone friend, OMG Marvel Stop Raping MJ With a Tent Peg! And of course, we can't end a good wank without lots and lots of whining about how Spider-Man has been destroyed forever. Or bets on how long 'til Gwen comes back. Since, you know, no-one stays dead in comics anymore. Not even Uncle Ben.

ETA: OH NO, THEY FOUND US! We're such mean girls, you guys. =(

ETA x 2: Gregation vs. Logic, Round Two! (More in these pages.) I really wish this guy would stop confusing Spider-Man with Peter Pan.

OH!
This has to be seen to be believed!

On OTHERKIN, of all places. I guess it could be worse, the OP could have posted
it on Something Awful or Portal of Evil.

No, Otakin will not be ignored, Dan! Just laughed at a lot.

Over on the egl community, mach2kudou posts a photoshoot of her in a Metamorphose dress. She specifically asks that no one offer constructive criticism on her hair, accessories, or makeup (but not on the dress itself). Most of the commenters are fairly positive- a lot of "Actually, I hate that dress, but it looks good on you!" sort of stuff.

However, then things start getting a bit nasty. ( Read more... )

(Posted to fandom_wank because the mabet fiasco was posted here, but if this should go to otf_wank, let me know.)
( ETAs )

Extremely minor spoilers ahoy!

Tonight was the top seven results night on American Idol. The producers divided up six of the contestants into groups of three and told gray-haired spazoid Taylor Hicks that he had to join whichever group he thought was not the bottom three. According to people who were there, during a commercial break Hicks was placed in the middle of the groups and told that he couldn't pull a Bo Bice and not take sides, so he shook hands with one of the contestants in the group he didn't choose, and then went to stand at the other side of the stage, all the while looking quite irate with the powers that be and really rather embarrassed all around.

Most fans think that Taylor handled himself with aplomb in an extremely stressful situation, and that the producers' motives run the gamut from intentionally trying to stir up drama to deliberately attempting to curtail Taylor's unexpected wild popularity to hoping to shift some votes to the highly marketable but functionally retarded Kellie Pickler.

Not clvgal, however. She thinks that over the past couple of months, Taylor has gone from a sweet, offbeat Southern boy to a cruel, spiteful son of a bitch who deliberately insults people by shaking their hands. I think the real question here is whether or not the producers of American Idol forced everyone in this thread to spell despicable wrong.

ETA: The wanky thread seems to be gone, but I can't for the life of me figure out why because wank is ALL OVER THE BOARDS. I'm just going to leave the link like it is, leading to the main boards page, because there is spooge coating the Season Five Contestants board as well as, in particular, the Chris Daughtry and Taylor Hicks ones. There's some choice shit being thrown around by Chris's fangirls. It's like fish in a barrel over there.

Basically, I just stumbled across this at VH1's Best Week Ever Blog and was dumbfounded at the sheer wankiness.

The short version: Joe Rogan dives head-first into the wank when his entire fanboard starts to splooge all over a former poster when they discover ex-poster was, HORRORS, a fatty. It proceeds into trolling, lots of Anti-Semitism (including jokes about the Holocaust) and Rogan being happier than a pig in ... well.

VH1 provides plenty of the wanky links but, if you really want to torment yourself, just surf the thread for yourself.

You might remember Joe Rogan from Fear Factor or maybe from when he trolled some kid on myspace. Maybe even from the one good project he was involved with, Newsradio. I will now always remember him as that guy who is WAY too into his fanboard/spends too much time on the Internet and who doesn't have the slightest clue what the word "karma" means.

Gerard Butler (probably best known at this point from The Phantom of the Opera) has extremely devoted fans who call themselves "Tarts." They hold conventions, show up at movie sets, they swarm talk-show tapings, and have started ganging up at film festival screenings so heavily that they're actually getting mentioned in news articles. Frequently they get into contests of oneupmanship--I met him at the taping, well I got him to kiss me, well I met his mother, and so on--at the gerardbutler.net forums. I'll digress for a moment to tell you my favorite story is how they once said that he was a "precious butterfly" who brought them together to, I presume, stare at him while he flutters around in a Mason jar. This was before they printed out several hundred pages of forum threads, IIRC, bound them together, and presented them to him.

(Wait, I lied. My favorite story is about the article where a Tart actually told a journalist that she has life-size dolls of him.) (ETA: AIEEEEE.)

"Does Gerard Butler think his fans are ‘crazy’?"

Yes. Yes, he does.

As the OP at ONTD then notes, "What was their reaction? According to the person who e-mailed me, they were horrified and set up new rules for their community." The rules (see link for full text) were leaked by an anonymous tipper:

Somebody e-mailed all of this to me, afraid to speak out because she didn’t want to be banned from the community! [My note: The forums are already pretty well known for "disappearing" posts that don't toe the party line.] To quote her:

However, know in advance that, if you accept this mission a legion of porculent grandmas and twiggy tweens will plague your life. It's drama...but a) they were asking for it and b) I firmly believe that it is just the brand of petty-bitchery that makes ONTD such giddy fun.

Petty bitchery, you say? Here begins the naming of names. (Scroll down to "LadyKatheryne.")


ETA: It's IMDB wank, but you get to see the players in action.

"What kind of weirdo would go chasing off to Scotland?" "I DID!" And they're off. Hang in there as the conversation changes from "You're crazy" to "No, we're not" to "Oh God, it's the gb.net people!" and thence to "Also, you are OLD."

The Man is changing like a magnificent Butterfly! I told y'all.

Thanks to Witchery Bitchery for the extra links.

BPAL wank that isn't about BPAL. It's about eBay. Or more specifically, that ever-controversial subject, sniping.

If you don't know anything about eBay: sniping is when someone waits until the last minute to bid on an auction, hoping to snag it before the other person has a chance to rebid. Of course, eBay has a bid proxy system - you enter a (hidden) maximum and the system counterbids for you automatically until you're maxed out - so the snipe is only successful if the late bid has a higher maximum than you do. (Ties go to the earliest bidder.)

The pro-snipe contingency says that sniping is just how the game is played. The anti-snipe contingency says that sniping is rude, sneaky, and mean.

So, girltuesday bid on some BPAL and got sniped. And boy, is she pissed.

( sniping is evil. )

( no, sniping rocks! )

( not about sniping, just a little bit of wank dessert )

From a beautiful and talented mouse on wank_report and moonjaguar:

You thought this was all, didn't you? Well, you, my dear, have no idea of the depths of the wank. Oh no.

As far as I can tell, It starts here, in the Joe Rogan forums. They find the Not OK post and rag on it. One clever troll, Dandello, aka lynny posts on prime_liquor, PZB's fan-club comm.

Then it gets... knotty.

PZB's fans troll in lynny's journal (and I'm not sure where the virulent child-free-ness comes from, but it's spooging all over the damn place) and the orignal post, counter-troll, there are missing/stolen flickr accounts, and some other stuff that somehow got wound up together with this. PZB's LJ is full of ... anger & pretension, as is Prime_Liquor and now my head hurts and I need some good booze, good sex, or my mommy. I'm just not sure which.

So, once upon a midnight dreary, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child wrote a character by the name of Special Agent Pendergast into their series of thriller novels. And the fans looked upon this and saw that it was good.

Then they attached a messageboard to their website. An EZboard website no less. Hmm. And then the board grew and grew, so a fan with the username Dragonesse took on much of the moderating duty.

Then, about a week ago, without warning, she deleted a large number of the accounts and people were locked out of the boards. There was a fair amount of surprise and scratching of heads. But it turns out that the n00bs were starting to chafe. And the tally of members went from over a thousand to two hundred and forty.

But some aren't too sure about the rather extreme measure. Well-reasoned arguments, tl;dr, and mild hysteria result:

( Highlights )

And then, suddenly, the boards are back to normal and the mod has left a lovely passive-aggressive goodbye note. She later posts the following while drunk. EZboard censors the post, for added hilarity.

( Nobody appreciates my genius! )

Well, "@#%$" you too, then.

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab (BPAL) are a popular gothic perfume oil seller. They sell a wide range of pure perfume oils which are individually hand mixed; consequently there is a huge backlog and orders take a minimum of two months to arrive. To combat this there are several LJ communities devoted to swapping and selling the oils independently.

In one of these, still_serenity makes a snarky post about remembering to order from the site rather than buying off a community.

Various snippy dialogues (in which passive-aggressive :)'s are heavily abused) ensue including such jems as:

there will always be people like you who would rather beg here than give your money to the business that creates the product you crave. [*]

Wow, who lit the fuse on your tampon? Maybe you should go back to bed and try to get up on the right side.
...
your comments are the equivalent of the RIAA whining about the sale of used CDs. My advice to you is the same as to them: try living in the real world. [*]

Wow... you really are the rudest, most unpleasant person I have run into in this journal or the forums. I thought BPAL made people happy- not a bitch.

If it bothers you so much- stay in the private BPAL community I see you belong too and keep your rudeness to yourself. [*]

And yes, perfume oils can be a fandom. How else would you class an obsession with something so great that you would put potentially poisonous substances in food to eat or wore it even though it gave you hideous welts because it smelled so good.