With apologies to Monty Python.

Jaina: Trouble at Fanficrants.
Kutsuwamushi: Oh no - what kind of trouble?
Jaina: Ona trlls 's rilin' up the 'mmunity.
Kutsuwamushi: Pardon?
Jaina: Ona trolls 's rilin' up the 'mmunity.
Kutsuwamushi: I don't understand what you're saying.
Jaina: [irritated] One of the trolls is riling up the community.
Kutsuwamushi: Well what on earth does that mean?
Jaina: *I* don't know - Theo Harrison just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at Fanficrants, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Wankish Inquisition.

[JARRING CHORD]

[The door flies open and Wanker Izzanami enters, flanked by two junior wankers, Jinxy-sama and Ravyn Skye]

( NOBODY EXPECTS THE WANKISH INQUISITION! )

ETA!

Izzanami: Wankers, we are being mocked!
Jinxy-sama: What?! No one mocks the Wankish Inquisition!
Izzanami: Ha! Ha! Ha! I have the perfect plan.... Wankers, fetch... the EMPTY THREATS OF DOOMY DOOMINESS!

[JARRING CHORD]

ETA 2:

We have contact. Always happy to entertain, thank you for the compliment.

Oh fair and forgiving denizens of fandom wank, it has come time for us to choose a new champion. Or a new mod, at least. You may have noticed us fading away, like beautiful unicorns. But no more!

Before you are the tasks three that must be completed for consideration:

1. You must locate a truly funny wank. It may be in our archives.
2. A golden apple. You may be creative.
3. Ten disney icons (edit: This can also be Pixar). Sep wants disney icons.

Those that complete this task will be brought before the oracle of Phosfate to hear their fate!




There will be prizes for participation, although they are best described as 'crappy'. Oh, and the mod prize.

AND WE'RE DONE. PRIZES IN NEXT POST

Here we have yet another tale of video game fanboy entitlement, but one that doesn't involve the ongoing Console Wars for a change. In fact, the game involved is a PC/Mac title: Blizzard's highly-anticipated Diablo III.

It all started with an online petition calling for "Renewed artistic direction for Diablo 3". According to the petitioners, the Diablo universe calls for gothic, dark realism, but the new game's art direction is "cartoon'ish" and reminiscent of the Warcraft titles, with color and variety and *gasp* RAINBOWS! What they want is:

( Teh Gothicness, basically )

Rounding out the petition are several links to images depicting what Diablo III should look like. In short, everything should look a lot more grey and brown.

MTV Multiplayer later posts an interview with Diablo III's lead designer in which these fan mockups are discussed and criticized at length. For example, here's what the designer had to say about this one, depicting what the petitioners want in terms of lighting:

The key thing to remember here is that this has been Photoshopped. This isn’t created by the engine. Though it looks really cool, it’s almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can’t have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable. If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons.

Now in terms of the actual texturing, this texturing, where they grayed out everything and it’s very flat and the monsters are all kind of a similar tone — that does not play well. It’s very boring to run through more than a couple of times, and it’s very difficult to tell creatures apart and pop them out of the environment. So those things don’t really work for us. A lot of the lighting stuff I think is very cool, but it’s also not very doable for us.

The rainbow (or lack thereof, rather) in one of the altered screenshots is also discussed:

More rain? It’s funny because if watch later on in the [debut gameplay] video, we have more rain. It is much stronger than that. I’m sure they got rid of the rainbow. Yeah, rainbow — gone. I think our artist just put [the rainbow] in there because they knew that’d be controversial. And I’m sure they were like, “Well we’ll see how far we can push it.”

There is anger and annoyance in the comments, representing both sides of the argument:

( COLOR IS BAD! COLOR IS NOT BAD! )

And of course, there's the obligatory Penny Arcade comic.

ETA: So it seems Blizzard is now looking for a new art director for Diablo III after their previous one quit. Fanboys, now's your chance!

Over at doctorwho a user psychedelicsand decides to share her 'art' with the community. Red flags instantly raise, as well as Crystal-wank comparisons, as her 'art' looks like it was run through paintshop filters. The original post has been bahleeted but a mousey over at wank_report has a screen cap of the original post with some of the early comments.

With the post bahleeted, psychedelicsand makes sure she gets her say against all the naysayers (I suggest trying to not look at her default icon there)over at doctorwho. Where she gives us such gems like:

I don't think I can take this anymore... I have done nothing wrong.. ever... I posted those images in my previous post because I really did paint them.. and people responded with so much hate. I'm not a hateful person. I'm not a liar. I'm an existentialist and a writer, I treasure experience.

And:

My message to all of you is: IF YOU THINK I'M A LOSER, FINE, TAKE ME OFF OF YOUR FRIENDS LIST BUT I AM NOT A LIAR AND I HAVE THE PROOF THROUGH WORKS IN PROGRESS TO SHOW YOU. AND YOU, WHO ADDED ME AND NEVER RESPOND.. WHAT'S THE POINT? The whole world is fucked. Everything I do, no matter what it is, is wrong. No one gives a shit about me or the things I have to say.

When I fucking twisted my ankle today people literally SLOWED DOWN IN THEIR FUCKING CARS to gawk at me. Not once did anyone offer to help me or drive me to the hospital. Not once has anyone ever showed any interest in anyone other than themselves. Fuck. My Husband went to a house to ask to use the phone. . . and you would think as the woman stared at me from her doorway with "Aww that's awful." in her tone, that she would have offered me a drive. Funny.

So the message is

FUCK YOU ALL.

The wank may no longer be on LJ but there's some over on DA where psychedelicsand goes by lord-of-time. You get the, waah they're so mean and I that was totally my work that she posted on her LJ and wanking in the comments on her DA page.

ETA: Her LJ account have been bahleeted. And now I feel bad about being too lazy to think about capping any of it. =( But she has left a parting message on her DA, though has bahleeted all other entries.

tzikeh has a burning issue and a desire to ask a question of Doctor Who fen that is fandom specific, but not so specific to actually be referred to, even when asking permission of the mods to explore the question.

Eventually someone winkles the Great Mystery out of her, and it turns out that all Doctor Who fans are apparently Icon-thieveing bastards.

Evidently she's discovered one of the few pockets of wank that hasn't yet been thoroughly explored by the DW fandom, and the fur begins to merrily fly to correct this.   Arguments on fair use, pointing out that US law is not international law, cries of "Get the hell over it" and threats of litigation from felines commence

Alrighty, first and foremost ASSUME ALL LINKS IN THIS POST TO CONTAIN CONTENT THAT IS NSFW! . I cannot stress this enough. If I didn't think blinking red text would incite justified rage, I'd put it in that. THESE LINKS ALL HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO HAVE VERY VERY NSFW CONTENT! So I'll try and summarize it the best that I can here.

Yesterday on the Discovery Channel 'Mythbusters' message boards, a questionable image started being spammed. The image contained what was claimed to be one of the hosts, Adam Savage, doing what I'm going to politely describe as a somewhat mild Goatse impression (DON'T LOOK IT UP IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD). Naturally the threads containing said photo were quickly deleted... but of course not before plenty of folks had the chance to save the evidence.

Encyclopedia Dramatica already has a write-up, including a screenshot from the original chaos on the Discovery Channel message boards of a post from a concerned parent (copypastain' so folks won't have to click it):

"this is to whomever is posting the photos of Adam naked, my 11 year old son woke up early and hopped on the computer to come here to see what episodes are coming up (this is one of his favorite shows) and clicked a photo link (i wont post it here) but the link seems to contain naked photos of Adam Savage, he was terribly upset by these and I feel compelled to contact media sources for scarring my young boy. this WAS his favorite show, hes been crying all morning. It seems to me the names of these invaders are googleable and come back as members of www.ebaumsworld.com please look into this, and until i see an apology for this consider my family no longer viewers of Mythbusters OR ANY Discovery channel shows, if these are the kinds of perverts you put on air. thanks"

There are massive threads about it all over the web, including on Something Awful, ONTD, and Digg.com.

There's still heavy debate on if the picture is real or not, with folks pulling out their degrees in Photoshop all over the place and the blame being cast on everywhere from good 'ol Ebaumsworld to /b/. There has been no official statement from the Discovery Channel on the incident, and so far the hubbub seems to be confined to the internet. But oh, what a hubbub it is.

ETA: Added the 'concerned parent' quote from ED.

ETA 2: According to what's being said on the 'Discussion' page of the ED article, it's possible the 'concerned parent' screenshot was faked. Moreso, it's possible there never was any spamming of the Discovery Channel message boards. Making it quite an epic (and judging by the reactions around the web, successful) joke.

I posted in clairvoyantwank about a fan“artist”, seriiyah, who was claiming to have done some charcoal drawings of LOTR characters. They’re obviously a couple of simple photoshop filters over screencaps.

Everyone boggled at the amount of people who believed her. Hardly anyone seemed to be calling her on it, so there wasn’t much wank bar the original “art” itself.

And now the one or two comments mentioning (fairly politely) photoshop have disappeared. And all new comments on her posts are now being screened. I think that's reason enough to move it over here.

Clearly this is a person with absolutely nothing to hide!

[ETA]: And apparently she changed part of her LJ profile right after I wrote her up on clairvoyantwank: Before it said her parents didn't find out she was deaf until she was in school because she couldn't hear the teachers, and now it says "I loved music" as if she somehow... became deaf?

Hm. Keeping those facts straight is so HARD.

[ETA]: She's deleted both the posts I linked to at clairvoyantwank, but someone capped one of the posts and its comments before it went kablooey.

[ETA]: The mod of the lordoftherings comm calls her out:

Dear [info]seriiyah,

That was the most pathetic attempt to pass off "artwork" that obviously isn't yours I've ever seen, and I've been in fandom for a long time. Since you're unable to delete THIS post, I can feel free to express my opinion. I'm going to try and delete your post, but since LJ keeps kindly changing their policy on community mods deleting posts, I may not be able to. Just so you know, we know you're full of crap. Have a nice day.


Love and stuff,
your friendly community mod, [info]arien

__undertow posts a photoshoped picture of her as Amanda Palmer into the fancom.

demonfafa bitches at her: The post is pure vanity. The only thing it has to do with the Dolls is the fact that you (poorly) photoshopped yourself to resemble Amanda. If you had taken the time to dress up in costume (see above icon) then maybe this would be a worthwhile post. You're presenting yourself as pretty mindless and vapid, not to mention oblivious.

Never mind that her icon were she is dressed up as Amanda just shows her with some white face-paint.

o_wanderlusta know what? If this wasn't photoshopped and you applied makeup instead, I bet you wouldn't recieve such snide "OMG UR DEFACIN' AMANDA!!!11!!!1" comments</i>

http://community.livejournal.com/dresdendolls/780867.html

dodger_winslow takes Supernatural screencaps and runs them through photoshop filters, before popping them onto her LJ and claiming they're her "paintings". In one such example, people comment, and she responds, claiming the images are digitally painted, among other things.

Some people also decide to call her on her bullshit, and there's a lot of tl;dr.

In fact, a whole seperate post of tl;dr! Huzzah!

Talking about dredging up the past...remember all the angst when Gary Oldman cast as Sirius? All cries of "He's not cute enough! He doesn't have the rugged good looks and the pustules that ooze male sexuality? Where's the bulging biceps and the gigantic throbbing d-"

There was sobbing, wailing and the sound of a thousand keyboards misspelling words and replacing all the letter c's with k's!

But that's not all! There's the inability to tell apart shoddy photoshop with high end posters! There's endless barrages of "I hope you jump of a cliff!" And more! Go forth, boggle:

http://darkmark.com/galleries/details.php?image_id=2936