Well, all right, maybe not high speed car chases. So, the background: last year, Neil Gaiman, author of such lovely things as Neverwhere and the Sandman series etc., was contacted to speak at a library in Minnesota for a hefty speaking fee, which was paid for by a fund which (a) stated any leftover money would be lost if not used, and (b) was also not available for books, salaries, or other useful things. Neil Gaiman did so, and subsequently donated the speaking fee to charities.

All's well that ends well, right? Well, except that Matt Dean, the House Majority Leader, decided it was time to let his long-simmering grudge be aired to the world: 'Dean said that Gaiman, "who I hate," was a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota."'

Neil is... well, he's not well pleased. Nor is his Twitter. ( Cut for length )

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) 

Grabbed from wank_report.

So toft reveals that she's been interspersing her real requests for fics on sgastoryfinders with fake requests. Some of the "fake" fics actually did turn out to exist, and were found.

Is this hilarious or horrifying? Either way, there's tons of wank in the comments.

Meet Lironess, a person of such stunning perfection that she feels confident, nay obliged, to point out the shortcomings of others. Constantly.

When she's not diagnosing diseases over the internet, she's apparently advocating approaching strangers at cons with skin diseases to ask them:

"OMG What the hell is wrong with your skin?"

Yeah, not even kidding*.

Unfortunately no one told betnoir that icky diseased people exist solely as teaching moments for the beautiful people, and that she better learn to live with it or else spend the rest of her life in misery. Luckily for her then, that lironess is here to explain it to her.

The spat lands in sf_drama, where lironess baleeted her most offensive comments (though considering what's left - just WOW) and apparently whole threads if bizarro goodness like handing out condoms to furries, and horse sex, and her inability to spell freak. she then demonstrates her utter lack of getting teh internets, as well as proving that there really isn't a maximum fail quota per post.

After calling like, everyone, a coward or accusing them of hiding (for commenting in an unlocked post in a very public community? huh?) lironess prepares her flounce by calling betnoir (and everyone else) out. As in, *cue scareh music* she can FIND people:

"It has been fun to watch you all hide on a community and make your statements thinking I would not see and reply. However, I can find all of you, any where."

betnoir names a place and time.

but yanno, it's waaaay to far, plus it'd be a hassle and betnoir's fucking parents would sue and it would be a big mess and lironess doesn't care enough to bother. Or something.



*I debated if this should be in UNF because disability!fail = so fucking unfunny, plus there's bonus!fail on both sides, but for sheer overwhelming WTF wankiness I think it belongs here.

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...

Snapefen are still wanking about Lily Evans Potter. 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 )

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.

snatched from wank_report

"Someone" posts a secret (#114 now bahleeted--caps?) on 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 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.

Inglourious Basterds is the latest Quentin Tarantino movie. Oh No They Didn't, is a gossip site based on LJ that is big enough it's actually taken LJ severs out more than once all on its lonesome (I think the last time was when Michael Jackson died, but don't quote me). Eli Roth is the guy who plays Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz in Inglourious Basterds (he also wrote/directed Cabin Fever and Hostel and its apparently awful sequel. That guy).

It all started when Eli Roth discovered the Inglourious Basterds Kink Meme.

Surprisingly, not via a fangirl breaking the sacred rule of Though Shalt Not Force Porn On The People In It AFAIK, but all on his lonesome. He was pretty much amused and also decided to show it to and discuss it with Quentin Tarantino (who apparently agreed with him the Donny would be a top), and also Christoph Waltz (who played Landa in IB) and apparently his parents, because he's that kind of classy. This garnered many facepalms from fangirls in places like 100_scalps, but shockingly, very little wank.

This resulted in a lot of twittering porn at him and his discovery of ONTD. He made a I <3 ONTD sign. Something a fair few celebs have done in the past.

After that it kind of got out of control, progressing from ONTD changing his Wiki page to say he was their Official Boyfriend to him twittering he would think about all of ONTD when he jerked off the night, then posting a picture of a very used looking tissue, then to a very candid interview with questions from a lot of people at ONTD*, to-- and here's where the wank really started, pun utterly and completely intended-- having cyber sex with various ONTD'ers on his MySpace. The Eli Roth tag on ONTD contains basically every screen cap and citation, so I'm not linking to everything individually. Scroll on down.

Then it came out that some of said cyber sexin' ONTD'ers sent him pictures of their boobs.

ONTD proceeds to have a 5000 comment long flamewar consisting of the brilliant arguments (paraphrased, but I assure you all quite accurate as you will see if you click this link): YOU'RE SLUTS. NO WE'RE NOT. YES YOU ARE. NO WE'RE NOT. YES YOU ARE. NO WE'RE NOT. YES YOU ARE.

I think, in conclusion, I would like to say that despite what you may think of Mr. Roth, he certainly knows how to make a girl laugh.

*This is the only thing that is locked, however, you only have to join ONTD to see it. It's... worth it.

[ETA]: Omar Doom answered a similar fangirl written survey for ONTD, said he wouldn't be at all opposed to seeing some fangirl boobs, and the wank goes ever on and on in the comments.

( Spoilers for Torchwood and oh god great linky madness within. Enter at your own risk. )

This post brought to you by the ridiculously helpful mousies on wank_report, the letter W and the number 4. (The W is for wut and 4 is how many cups of coffee I've already had today).

Some of you might know, but Shatterstar has officially come out of the closet in the latest issue with a kiss with Rictor, written by PAD. This character as originally created by Rob Liefeld (lol I know) and of course, he has something to say about this.

“… I have nothing against gays, I have gay family, nuthin’ but love here,”

“As the guy that created, designed and wrote his first dozen appearances, Shatterstar is not gay. Sorry. Can’t wait to someday undo this. Seems totally contrived.”

(He made those comments in his private forum that need an account for log in. This blog reported them)

It starts slow. Most people laugh and point. A bunch of commenters say this comment was rather homophobic and even tough Liefeld created the character, he retained no right on him, Furthermore, many posters comment that the reveal was long in the making and the romantic tension between Shatterstar and Rictor has been developped thoroughly.

It gets a bit more heated when PAD shows up in the comments to mock Liefield some more:
"I find particularly distressing Rob’s contention that Shatterstar can’t possibly be gay because he’s a warrior. That might come as a bit of a shock to Alexander the Great. For that matter, among his assortment of gay friends, I suppose Rob has none in the military since of course gays aren’t allowed to serve unless they keep their mouths shut. Perhaps Rob would like to see “don’t ask, don’t tell” implemented in the Marvel universe."

A few commenters don't agree with the accusation of bigotry and explain so but it stays rather civil. It gets more interesting when Liefield shows up, defending that he was misquoted and PAD is piling on for no reason.

PAD responds : Back in the old days I’d spend entire columns trying to figure out what you meant to say as opposed to what you actually said. But honestly, I don’t have that kind of time anymore. Trust me when I say that you’re not doing yourself any favors.

And he shows off his nice ego: "And just a thought, Rob: people are talking about Shatterstar for the first time in years. He’s making national news. Because of me. Maybe, just maybe, that’s the thing that’s pissing you off the most."

And just when you might think Liefeld is the reasonnable one in this, he throws out a stupid comment: "So anything other than, “Cool, they’re gay after 19 years and hundreds of appearancesl” in regards to Rictor and Shatterstar is unacceptable. Yeah, I didn’t get that memo. Maybe Jack Bauer will be next…." LOL wat. He then proceeds to prove his gay credentials and debate Batman/Robin.

The non existence of bisexuality even shows up! Party for everyone.

And they go some more back and forth and it's really hard to say who is being the biggest hairsplitter in this. Also, had no idea who Shatterstar was but now I kinda one to pick this issue up.

(Be warned: long wank report is LONG. Continuation of this clairvoyantwank post. ETAs are under the third cut.)

This weekend, Torchwood fans flocked to Chicago for TorchSong, a John Barrowman-centric convention with a website that looks like it was modeled after a Geocities page circa 1997, a half-assed commercial that aired on BBC America, and some awfully expensive tickets.

When the con was first announced, the only guests were John, his sister Carole, and Mark Sheppard. When people started emailing the organizers about possible other guests, they were emphatically told while more guests would be coming, there would be no other Torchwood guests because it was a John Barrowman event, not a Torchwood event.

Ticket sales apparently convinced them this was not a good strategy, so over the following months they added Kai Owen, Tom Price, and Gareth David Lloyd. Fans squeed, and despite being not particularly impressed with the organizers' behavior, they willingly plonked down as much as $500 to see John and friends and to see John perform. (Later, 'special' auction packages went for up to $1,410.)

Then things start to go wrong.

On Wednesday, Kai Owen was forced to drop out due to a family emergency. Thursday, the day before the con began, they announced that John Barrowman had torn ligaments in his ankle and he would not be attending.

Aaaaand we're off.

( Act I: Pre-Con )

( Act II: The Convention )


( Act III: The Ongoing Aftermath )
ETA3: "UR JUST JELUS!!"

ETA4: Con-goers have now created their own special clubhouse: torch_tanic (torchsong_09 post announcing it. Commenters are not amused, but you'd never know it because she deleted all the wholly negative ones. Raise your hand if you've got a screencap.) (Thank you kaylamds for the heads-up.)

Information culled from an anonymouse source on wank_report.

Daddy's Little Cannibal was a Twilight fic writer, and apparently quasi-BNF enough to merit at least one interview, with 43 stories to her name that garnered multiple awards. Her most popular story was Cigarette Burns, which her twin sister is now posting for her posthumously.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention. Daddy's Little Cannibal died on May 8, 2009, after being involved in an accident with a drunk driver.
( Tragery! Or something else? )

The end! ... or is it?

Is it a social experiment? Attention seeking? Was she just tired of flitting from xanga to xanga and craved a more dramatic way to disassociate herself from her previous activities? And who is the anonymous source on wank_report - grudge? overzealous detective wanting to show off their leet snooping skills? or one of the wankers, trying to garner more attention? Only time - and possible ETAs - will tell!

ETA: I found a single now-deleted flame c&p'ed by other authors on FF.net.

So I've been idly checking back here on and off all day to see if this wank's been reported yet, and finally decided I should just go ahead and write it up myself.

So, apparently, a big spoiler for the upcoming "Heroes" season finale broke on the interwebs yesterday. Today, the interwebs are responding in fine form, determined to break the "Heroes" writers right back.

Here, we have what started out as a spoiler wank, which has forked off into 'ship wanks, character hate wanks, an entitlement wank, and Fandom v. Fandom wank. Three Four wanks for the price of one!

( Runs a bit long. Also, do I really need to say that a spoiler wank will contain spoilers? )

Watchmen screenwriter David Hayter writes a sincere but slightly tongue-in-cheek open letter on Hardcore Nerdity to Watchmen fans and non-fans, to urge them to see the movie more than once in order to understand it.

One of his other points is that he thinks those who hate the movie on principle without having seen it should let it marinate in their minds and give it a chance:

It may upset you. And it probably will upset you.

And all along, we really meant it to. ...All this time, you’ve been waiting for a director who was going to hit you in the face with this story. To just crack you in the jaw, and then bend you over the pool table with this story. With its utterly raw view of the darkest sides of human nature, expressed through its masks of action and beauty and twisted good intentions... Like the Comedian on the Grassy Knoll. ...You'll be thinking about this film, down the road. It'll nag at you. How it was rough and beautiful. How it went where it wanted to go, and you just hung on. How it was thoughtful and hateful and bleak and hilarious. And for Jackie Earle Haley.

Trust me. You'll come back, eventually. Just like Sally.

Comments begin in the 'we love Watchmen (although some of us have reservations about the swinging massive blue dong), go Dayter' mould, until people, from page three onwards, suddenly notice the metaphor he used to describe how the movie should make you feel:

DUDE. No one asks to be cracked in the jaw and bent over the goddamned pool table. Was there NO OTHER ANALOGY you could have used? Do you realize that you're comparing your movie to a rapist and the moviegoers to victims asking for it? And what is this "You'll come back. Just like Sally" crap? Do you have any f***ing idea how offensive that is? Could you not have come up with some other analogy, some other pithy tag, something that doesn't make it out like the Comedian was doing Silk Spectre a f***ing favor when he beat her bloody and tried to rape her?

Did you mean to do that?? If not, erm, consider your words more carefully next time you do the "open letter" thing, because wow, did that part get away from you.

Dayter comments on page 7 with an apology claiming he does not condone violence against women, which is edited into the original article. People briefly thank him for apologising, and then attack him again. Dayter responds graciously via huge spoonfuls of sarcasm and retracting his apology (page 8):

Clearly, you can't get less hateful or spewy than that. I humbly retract the statement.

Anyway, I'm sorry you disliked the film.

And you're right, I don't know why I ever set out to do this in the first place. It's really the world I'm hurting. Damn my family, and their almost-constant need for food!

On top of all of this there's huge amounts of movie rage, but the best thing about the whole altercation is the people at Hardcore Nerdity going so far as to make a video response urging people to LEAVE DAYTER ALONE, starring a very angry Dr. Manhattan.

At the end of yesterday's Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee attached a trailer for a new project he's working on, a television pilot called Game Damage. It's a live-action game review show starring Yahtzee! YAHTZEE YAHTZEE YAHTZEE! It'll be like a half hour of Zero Punctuation! Woohoo! Yahtzee! Live! In the flesh! YAHTZEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Wait a sec. Who are these other two guys? They're Matt and Yug. They run Australian Gamer.

Cue an explosion of fanboy hatred directed at these two. It's all over the YouTube comments, the Game Damage forums, The Escapist forums, Kotaku, etc. (Yug's put together a nice list of places commenting on it here.)

In addition to some constructive criticism, we've gotten such classy, highbrow comments as:

"Matt kind of looks like he has early onset of Parkinson's."
"If Yahtzee wasn't in this it would be called Brain Damaged."
"C'mon don't be so hard on Richard Simmons Jr. and Harrypotterfan3445.Kekeke."
"This is like Top Gear, except Hammond was given AIDS, James as a FTM butch and Jeremy made a god. A gay god that straight men with magic rainbow kisses."
"Replace the non-yahtzee people with a hot girl who know's nothing about games and maybe add someone who knows something about games but isn't a someone i'd beat up on the playground."

In this week's Australian Gamer podcast, the trio discuss the legitimate criticism they've received as well as the whining from entitled fanboys. It starts around minute 26, if you're keen on listening.

So today's Fandom Secrets post had a secret about a show called Kodomo no Jikan. WHat is Kodomo no Jikan about? Honestly I have no idea, but going by the posts in the community it's some anime about an elementary school girl who tries to have sex with her teacher.

Oh, but wait! Kodomo no Jikan is actually deep and meaningful!

Fandom Secrets' response: bitch say WHAT!?

But people keep defending it, because it really is more than pedobait! Seriously! Also, there's lots of South Park comparisons, because the two series are so much alike! But some say it's not.

Either way, there's a lot of fail on both sides.

From the website that pissed off all their fandom user base twice, Livejournal has decided to go for the gold and piss off their entire user base this time around. I present to you...

The Profile Massacre of 08!

In other words, Livejournal changes the profile design without warning and announces it later. Naturally, Livejournal users are very unhappy. There's more unhappiness to be found over at the news post. (Which hilariously includes a reminder that permanent accounts are going on sale.)

But that's not all! More hilarity ensues when the LJ Design Team posts again and clearly ignores the complaining.

Oh, Livejournal. What WON'T you do?