So there's this video about Bleach voice actors who were at Kawaii-Kon, an anime convention hosted in Hawaii, where they were questioned about possible romantic preferences for the young man they provide voices for. Johnny Yong Bosch (JYB) is the voice behind Kurosaki Ichigo for the English dub, while Morita Masakazu (MM) is the Japanese seiyū for the dashing hero. No, he's not really dashing. More like cranky.

the toobs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQfkhEK04jE

Then someone dared to ask the million-dollar question: do they prefer RUKIA or ORIHIME for Ichigo?

In summation, JYB & MM both said "Orihime." So there!
( OH. HELL. NO. Voice actors aren't allowed opinions! )
( But this series isn't about ROMANCE!!! )

Bonus references to Avatar: the Last Airbender wank here.

This has been a busy, busy week for Bleach fandom! I have some caps, but tinypic keeps re-sizing the images.

Finally, a friendly reminder to my fellow wankas: don't feed the trolls.

:throws cheese to mousey for collecting links:

( Aww, ETA's for breakfast? You're too kind! )
( We have contact! )

Edit 3: Fandom Wank's name was dropped like it's hott. jaseroque got a special mention for the translation.

Edit 4:( The wank levels up! Or uh... Bankai. )

In the Zelda lovers community on Lj Starrose17 posts a slash fanfic, between Link and Link

RPgod2 is offended and proceeds to give us his thoughts on yaoi

RPgod2 is declared new to the internet, because he did not expect slash in a video game fan community

Rpgod2 clarifies that it was not this *particular* work that offended him, just the idea of it.

Plus sundry other thoughts on yaoi.

ETA: There are also a few choice comments on the dA page of the art that inspired the fic.

Hetalia is a manga/anime series that stars anthropomorphizations of different countries. Stephen Colbert is America (And So Can You). rover_09 posts that "her friend" posted a fanart to the Stephen Colbert forums. Most would think it means it's yet another silly fanart of America and Colbert standing in front of the American flag being America. But to everyone's horror, it's a Colbert/America/Bandit Keith three-way.

The whole community: TAKE THAT DOWN NOW! *FAIL GIFS*

rover_09 reminds the community about "her friend".

Edit:

I am not endorsing this. I put this up because she sent it to me and I wanted to see what others thought of it. You want to yell at someone, go talk to her.

And now we got a sockpuppet troll on page 5: suckonthisnews!

( Cut for tl;dr troll )

400+ replies and rising.

Edit: The Colbert forum post was finally taken down right before this post hit 600.

Edit: Baleeted!

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 )

From the annals of livejournal, I bring you, "Snape is a wonderful man and everyone around him was awful" wank.

randomnesses, a college student in the Harry Potter fandom, posts an essay, "In Defense of Lily Evans," about the rampant misogyny she has perceived in the Harry Potter fandom, especially in regards to the Lily/Snape relationship.

Most posters react in agreement or alarm, not having realized that the anti-Lily sentiment was so strong.

Enter oryx_leucoryx.

"Lily betrayed Snape and married an abusive bastard," "Remus is a dangerous mental patient," and "Lily should have forgiven Snape for being a racist who wanted her dead" comments abound.

And of course, the party continued in the rec post at Snapedom.

Remember the last HP wank - Hermione Granger - Voldemort in the making? Here we have Episode II.

The OP in the previous wank terri_testing wrote a fanfic about Dumbledore's childhood. People in the comments started to argue with each other and wankery ensued.

marionros, who during the previous wank diagnosed Harry, Hermione, Dumbledore, the Twins, James and Sirius as psychopaths, insisted that Harry, Hermione and Dumbledore have Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Lily also has NPD.

And what the heck, so does JKR herself.

My issues, let me show you them.

Snape is a victim of narcissist.

Hermione isn't intelligent and she has bad studying skills.

Pureblood prejudice is probably justified.

James was ever so evil.

JKR doesn't know Neville like I do.

Why did students hate Snape for insulting them? My teachers insulted me and I loved them!

Harry is like a suicide bomber and Dumbledore is like Osama bin Laden.

The whole Wizarding World is a cult, Dumbledore is a cult leader and Harry and Hermione are completely brainwashed.

Because of the Marauders' bullying Snape suffered from PTSD like Vietnam veteran, which justifies his treatment of Harry.

Snape was pressured into joining the Death Eaters.

You call my argument sick, but you find me hot!

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.

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! )

Meta wank of the sweetest kind. 2010 Readercon is being advertised as "This IS your father's con". Needless to say, this is not met with huzzahs. Catherynne M. Valente proposes an alternative to the 2010 Readercon--a gathering of fans at her island place. The man who has singlehandedly run programming for Readercon for 20 years immediately responds with you are wrong and escalates from there, with you are very young or possibly foreign, and my personal favorite, you have to have a score of at least 790 on the analytical section of the GRE to do programming for Readercon. Many people laugh at him. Eric Van says he is no longer responding to stupid comments, and then copy&pastes his everyone IMPORTANT loved us comment everywhere he can find.

Meanwhile, Readercon backtracks quickly.

And for your tasting pleasure, now with added name-calling and objectification of the young, female fans!

eta: Obviously Eric Van could not delegate programming decisions, because no one else gets a 790 on the analytical section of the GRE. But why not use a computer program, someone suggests. Eric gently explains that the "combinatorics problem" is far too complicated for a simple computer program.

(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.)

I thought I'd pop in and see what HP fandom is up to this day. And, whatdayaknow? My favourite Slytherfen are still around. angakkuq posted about this here for the_hms_stfu

The title Rehumanizing the Slytherins: How Fandom Gave Humanity Back to a Quarter of the Wizarding World" made me weepy, albeit because I was laughing so hard. The linked essay is only a precis of the 20 page "academic presentation" sagedarkwoods gave. It's pretty standard pretentious fan meta, with headings such as "Queering the Slytherin Identity". (To her credit, there's no argument being made that being a Slytherin is just like being gay, only that some fans see it that way.)

The comments, on the other hand.... I'll just excerpt my favourite:

( This causes self-esteem issues and mental health problems. )

ETA: Bonus Wank:How Would Harry Potter Judge Susan Boyle? in which it is revealed that Snape is just like Susan Boyle, and Harry is Simon Cowell, but meaner. On the other hand, JKR is Simon Cowell, because JKR has had makeovers, and Cowell arranges makeovers. (Hat tip to mariem_1 for links in her own post.)

Yanked from wank_report

Springjack starts a discussion over at TV Tropes.org about Nakama. He doesn't like the term. He thinks it should be "Fellowship." He doesn't care that the site has been unable to resolve this issue in the past. HE IS SURE HE CAN CONVINCE THEM!

His main argument seems to be that if you google the word you get a yaoi fansite and a lot of steak houses. He doesn't like the "Japanophile" term because it doesn't fit like a glove.

Springjack argues with every bit of semantics because "Tropes aren't a second language. They're slang." And when people try to meet him part way it's not good enough. And he continues to rail and lecture no matter what anyone says.

They put it to a vote and even though it is voted down Mr. Springjack can't STFU. And we're only at page 3 of 12. It devolves into discussions of "ohana" which Springjack suggested as a joke, but people seem to like. And then about kneepit vs kneebutt.

Springjack wanders off and the debate over a closed issue limps on. O_O

SGA ficcer is not getting the acclaim she says she deserves. So she is going to delete her LJ. Her 560 "friends" are not fawning enough so what's the point?!

There are at least 60 comments on her epic fic's last two chapters now. I'm too lazy to figure out how many there were before she flipped out. Also she posted the last chapter only yesterday.

And the mea culpas pour in--three pages of "I'm sorry/I suck/Plz don't go."

( cut for dead links )
ETA3: BAHLEETION!! (saved pages below)

page 1, page 2, page 3, and expanded smackdown. And page 4 thanks to longtimegone! :D

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.

Over in scans_daily today there was a post containing a recent xkcd strip about Nice Guys (TM).

Cue two-hundred comments worth of people arguing about whether people who makes friends with someone just in the hopes of eventually dating them are just shy and insecure, or if they're manipulative assholes.

It's not the most vicious wank in the world, but it does contain the occasional gem like:

"People like that need insulting if it helps them stop acting that way."

"Well, some say the same about women who keep staying in relationships where they get beaten."

Bit small compared to the past couple of wanks but full of fangirl rage and lulz.

Some information to better understand the wank. In Japan there is an agency called Johnny's that is the major male idol agency in the country. Most of the most popular boy bands are signed with them, one of these groups is called NEWS.

A few days ago a German NEWS fan chyco_chan decided to share scans from a German J-Pop magazine, that is notorious for poor research and nabbing whatever pictures they can find on the net for their magazine, as this time they snagged two pictures of NEWS/Kanjani8 member Ryo Nishikido for an article about gay life in Japan.

In the words of chyco_chan:

BUT why??? Ryo = gay??? XDDDD
That's bashing XD (not even by us sou~ XD)

She then tries to get people to contact Johnny's about the magazine to tell them about it in the comments as she's afraid of being blamed if the magazine goes out of business.

And then cue the fangirl rage and lols at the article in the seven pages of comments this post has spawned.

There is someone that questions the 'calling someone gay=bashing' of the OP but then goes on about homoerotic the pictures are, despite them being, y'know solo shots.

And we have some minor capslocking of rage against other fangirls by bugattack.

Plus rage against the magazine as this would 'hurt' Ryo if he ever saw it from yamapilovergyal.

And many, many 'Poor Ryo' and 'Johnny's should sue' than it's worth counting.

Over fanficrants; oceanica ranted about sexual orientation in Naruto fandom.
It looked normal until emperorsteele decided to join the rant.

"Could" provides for possibility. If something doesn't exist or is not true, then it's not possible.

Girl likes guy. She is straight UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. UNTIL that point, it's just whistful fantasy that she wants the clam.

Anyway, the OP was saying things like "Likes girls.. possibly bi". I mean really? What does it take to convince some people that someone is straight? In a boy's action story where romance is hardly ever a focus, no less?

Bit late to the party on this one, but I've got one name for you: Dumbledore.

Oh sure, point out the ONE time something like that happened!

I guess that means ALL characters are secretly gay!! My bad!!!

So on and on and on and on and on....

ETA: Fandom is such math.

MOAR ETA: It's dragged to ffrantsrants.

ETA'S MOM: Seem like he is having fun in another wank entry.

DEAREST PAPA OF ETA: Another butthurt and FFRR.

And no, I'm not going to defend this position ad infinitum for 5 hours straight against heterophobes. The OP asked for opinions, and I'm gicing mine. If anyone has a problem with this view, kindly count to ten and pass up on hitting reply, kthnx. My E-mail inbox is still crying from the last wankfest. Please, think of the inboxes!

My "problem" seems to be that I have an opinion about the nature of the written medium (and to a lesser extent, the nature of sexuality) which rubs people here the wrong way because they assume that having that opinion translates into real-life quasi-homophobia, making me a horrible person, thus giving them an excuse to attack me because it's not politically correct; or rather they feel compelled to disagree in order to defend their beloved slashfics.

ETA'S SIS: He is now temp banned from FFR