you see me rolling up, pops, you step aside

I called for a knight, but you’re a bear

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:32:33 -0400

I called for a knight, but you’re a bear

astraxin: Couple clothing in e16 <3

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:54:51 -0400

astraxin:

Couple clothing in e16 <3

“Mr. Sulu, remind me to never piss you off…”

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:27:25 -0400

“Mr. Sulu, remind me to never piss you off…”

Do you think the writers of Elementary wrote Irene as Moriarty the whole time, and to explicitly examine and subvert the women in the refrigerator trope, or was she fridged and then the writers (who purposefully gave themselves wiggle room) saw how people reacted and switched it up? Like Elementary seemed to get more and more aware of what their fandom wanted with things like representation, more Bell, more Alfredo, more Clyde, etc. re-watching the show makes rewatchin the fridging more bearable

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:11:00 -0400

I find the idea that they didn’t plan it the whole time utterly mystifying tbh. The entire narrative of the season is clearly structured around it.

I mean, I was never upset over Irene being “fridged” because I never believed for a second that she was dead. I didn’t think that she was HERSELF Moriarty because I thought that would be too awesome for network television, but everything about her supposed death screamed “not actually dead” in addition to the fact that you don’t just kill off one of your most iconic characters sight unseen.

Not to mention that I think this grants a little bit too much credit to fandom and its preferences. I mean, shockingly, sometimes there are professional writers and showrunners out there who care about representation and are actually pretty good at their jobs?

All my life men like you have sneered at me. And all my life...

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:17:15 -0400

All my life men like you have sneered at me. And all my life I’ve been knocking men like you into the dust.

virgin-who-cannot-drive: Gwen on Nikolaj // Nikolaj on Gwen ( x...

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:11:22 -0400

virgin-who-cannot-drive:

Gwen on Nikolaj // Nikolaj on Gwen ( x )

… Something.

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:54:48 -0400

… Something.

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:27:00 -0400

mirecuerdoentusojos: More Jaime/Brienne sketches from ASOS:...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:55:03 -0400

mirecuerdoentusojos:

More Jaime/Brienne sketches from ASOS: Brienne helping Jaime shave at Harrenhal + Oathkeeper

okayophelia: “Literally objects start moving when the guy...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:28:00 -0400

okayophelia:

“Literally objects start moving when the guy enters a room. He’s an actor of uncommon power and uncommon humanity.” — Guillermo del Toro

#[muffled immigrant song scream in the distance]

cleoselene: damn I’m looking at Garrett Wang’s twitter and it is really on...

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:18:36 -0400

cleoselene:

damn I’m looking at Garrett Wang’s twitter and it is really on fire:

I

love

you

Harry

Kim

we deserve much better than we've had: okay here's my problem with Amazon trying to monetize fanfic:

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:36:20 -0400

we deserve much better than we've had: okay here's my problem with Amazon trying to monetize fanfic::

desidere:

My problem is not people trying to make money off of fanfic. A.) bc that already happens, and B.) because it should be happening more.

That is to say, fanart is a widely accepted and respectable medium other fans will pay for and to me, it is no different from writing. Both include work, talent, effort, creativity, and skill to do. Fanartists can do work as gifts for friends just as much as they can take commissions from people for money.

A few years back Wired Magazine put out a special larger issue that I honestly wish I could re-purchase because the article in it was that good. It was an issue about Japan and how it (especially Manga and Anime) influences American culture and vice-versa. I went looking for the Article in question: Japan, Ink: Inside the Manga Industrial Complex.

Let me just pull some quotes for you:

Fans and critics complain that manga — which emerged in the years after World War II as an edgy, uniquely Japanese art form — has become as homogenized and risk-averse as the limpest Hollywood blockbuster. Pervading the nation’s $4.2 billion-a-year industry is a sense that its best days have passed.

Which ought to make what’s happening here at Comic Ichi — a manga market the size of several airplane hangars that will attract some 25,000 buyers — so heartening. The place is pulsing with possibility, full of inspired creators, ravenous fans, and wads of yen changing hands. It represents a dynamic force that could reverse the industry’s decline.

There’s just one hitch, one teensy roadblock on the manga industry’s highway to rejuvenation: Nearly everybody here is breaking the law.

[…]

The violations at Super Comic City were so brazen and the scale so huge — by day’s end, some 300,000 books sold in cash transactions totaling more than $1 million — that just about any US media company would have launched a full-metal lawsuit to shut the market for good.

[…]

“The dojinshi are creating a market base, and that market base is naturally drawn to the original work,” he said. Then, gesturing to the convention floor, he added, “This is where we’re finding the next generation of authors. The publishers understand the value of not destroying that.” And as the manga weeklies falter and decline, new talent is more important than ever. Meanwhile, Takeda said, the dojinshi creators honor their part of this silent pact. They tacitly agree not to go too far — to produce work only in limited editions and to avoid selling so many copies that they risk cannibalizing the market for original works.

- go read the whole thing, seriously

What this tells me is six years later in 2013, Corporate America is finally trying to figure out fan culture but blatantly has no idea what the fuck they’re doing because they’re largely clueless to the fact that it already happens, at least regarding art.

Here’s what’s wrong with how Amazon is trying to do this:

Corporate Hollywood is trying to foster a system that ensures anything highly popular in fanfiction can be immediately adapted from the author without compensation.This sucks for two reasons: It means they can undercut Hollywood writers with unions — in favor of stealing from fans with no unions, no money, and all their copyrights already signed over to the company in question. That’s bullshit for all writers, professional or otherwise. It does not foster the next generation of writers, it just screws them over.

As the article points out, the whole point of the remix culture with doujin is often to write scenes or scenarios that are sexual and/or would never happen between two characters otherwise. (Please, let me be amused for approximately forever that they used doujinshi that pair Roy Mustang and Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist as an example of fans fantasizing sexual relationships that don’t exist into comics.)

Please keep in mind this is also cheap and free market research for Corporate America when you sign up.

The manga industry as of 2007 did not attempt to control the doujinshi industry by dictated what could and couldn’t be written according to whose copyright licenses are already paid for and whose aren’t.

And let’s be honest, the quote from this article:

The official versions and the remixed versions weren’t side by side. But they were for sale perhaps 10 yards away from each other. In the same store. Think about that in a US context. You walk in to Barnes & Noble and walk out with a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — as well as an unauthorized remix of a May-December romance between Hermione Granger and Professor Minerva McGonagall. Our American IP lawyer is starting to get woozy again.

Tells you how much has changed in the last few years, because nowadays, Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series is sold in the same bookstores are Harry Potter, and Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey are often placed side-by-side If you liked this, read this…

and if you think Amazon isn’t trying to give publishers a way to make sure that the next 50 Shades is all going to be their money and profit and not yours you have another think coming.

This isn’t the read/write/remix culture I asked for, this is just a corporation trying to make money off of me for free, for something I already do, for free at my expense. And that’s some kind of bullshit.

mystery is my boyfriend: "elementary doesn't feel like sherlock holmes."

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:35:07 -0400

mystery is my boyfriend: "elementary doesn't feel like sherlock holmes.":

cezura:

I’ve been hearing this claim a lot lately, in various forms, and it’s a little bit unsettling. “Elementary is great, if you just forget that his name is Sherlock.” “He just seems like a clever guy whose name happens to be Sherlock.” “I’m just not feeling Sherlock Holmes from this character.”

There seems to be one “logical” justification that people tend to use, that there is too much changed from the canon to be called Sherlock Holmes (which I will probably address in a later post.)

Instead of the “logical” focus, I thought about the gut reaction portion of it for a bit I think and I figured out why people don’t ~*~feel~*~ Sherlock Holmes in Elementary. And that is that we as audience members of his crime solving adventures, the way he employs his deductions are different from the “Sherlocky” method that is usually employed. The thing is, I don’t think that the “deviation” in deduction style is either substantive or significant.

When Sherlockians think Shelock-style deductions, we usually think wild, rapid-fire conclusions that seem to come out of nowhere that are later explained by joining strenuous networks of circumstances that happen upon something true. What we’ve found over the course of Elementary is that our Sherlock deploys his deductions a bit differently.

Of course, he does have his spurts of “traditionally Sherlockian deductions.” He deduces that Joan is a former surgeon, that a patient died on her table, each of his deductions explained later. He finds Moran seemingly miraculously, and calculates the vehicle where thieves have gone with only set of tire tracks. Among other moments, he sounds and feels more like Holmes is traditionally portrayed.

Why? Because when he initially announces deductions, they stimulate the surprise and admiration in his audience because his conclusions seem impossible to come to. It’s only later when he explains how he comes to these conclusions that we feel quite silly after understanding the clever yet simple logical jumps that Sherlock is able to make. There is wonder from the audience (and Watson, famously, in the canon and other adaptions) in the ways of Sherlock’s enigma and independence of thought. He is mysterious and unreachable in his ability.

The original Sherlock Holmes explains it adeptly in A Study in Scarlet:

“I’m not going to tell you much more of the case, Doctor. You know a conjuror gets no credit when once he has explained his trick, and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.”

But our Sherlock in Elementary is different. The story was never about him. It was never about how he has a superior intellect or can blow everyone away with his deductions. The story was always about leading his spectators through his thinking process. It was always about working with Joan and Bell and Gregson as equally intelligent people to solve the crimes. It was always about relaying his thinking process out loud, so that everyone reaches the finish line of understanding at the same time instead of leaving his colleagues and his audience in the dust.

The story was always about our dear Watson learning by his side, about her working her way through the cases and receiving feedback from Sherlock as she improves as an investigator. We can see the very poignant message of the story in Snow Angels:

SHERLOCK: They came out of EROC with $33 million in small bills. They loaded their haul onto an ambulance American-made in the late nineties. They haven’t been gone more than an hour.

JOAN: The driver had a lazy eye, the other two men had basketball caps, and one has canine lupus. See how it feels?

If that isn’t a hit in the face I don’t know what is. The tradition of Sherlock Holmes expects us to be impressed with Sherlock’s deductions that come seemingly out of nowhere. We are supposed to applaud his talent and expect an explanation later. Not so in Elementary. From the get-go - the very first episode - Watson establishes that this behavior is patronizing, immature, and unacceptable. The showy shimmer of Sherlock’s deductions is soured once we realize that it actually makes more sense to be upset about Sherlock leaving us behind in the dust, rather than struck with wonder. It’s this arrogant, showy behavior that feels like Sherlock Holmes, but also manages to make everyone around Holmes feel inferior.

If that’s what it means for Sherlock to “feel like Sherlock Holmes” then I don’t want it.

I want our Sherlock, who is still incredibly intelligent and can make great logical leaps without pause, who has a vast knowledge of useful topics for crime-solving, who thinks and acts in such a peculiar way that is characteristic of the Sherlock Holmes from so long ago. There’s no question that Elementary’s Sherlock is Sherlock Holmes. The difference is that he is able to prove himself able to grow and develop as a person, willing to accommodate others. Sherlock Holmes from canon was afraid of being an ordinary man. Sherlock Holmes from Elementary has no qualms with helping make extraordinary of “ordinary” people. And that doesn’t subtract from the integrity of Sherlock Holmes at all.

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:49:00 -0400

rose-papillon: What they were really thinking.

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:20:42 -0400

rose-papillon:

What they were really thinking.

lulubonanza: Run for cover, Here comes trouble by...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:18:27 -0400

lulubonanza:

Run for cover, Here comes trouble by *The-Orange-One

amazonpoodle: ROSA, WE HAVE YOUR BACK! Hi everybody, So I’ve...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:12:52 -0400

amazonpoodle:

ROSA, WE HAVE YOUR BACK!

Hi everybody,

So I’ve been on-and-off Tumblr a lot recently, but for the last two weeks it’s been because of a family emergency. Rosa, my little sister (well, okay, she’s 23, but she’s little to me), had a serious fall while she was rock climbing with a friend in Moab. She fractured some ribs, got a concussion, and injured her spine really badly — she’s paralyzed from the waist down. I’ve been out in Colorado, first with Rosa at the hospital in Grand Junction to which she got coptered from Moab, and then to get her settled in for longer-term rehab in Denver.

My family and Rosa’s friends are running a fundraising campaign to pay for Rosa’s medical expenses (two months of inpatient spinal rehab alone is looking like it’ll cost us at least $40,000, and that’s even with insurance paying for 80% of the first month. Just the ambulance transport from Grand Junction to Denver cost $4,000); for my mom, my stepdad and me to take turns visiting Rosa at Craig Hospital in Denver this summer as all of us live 2,000 miles away on the East Coast; and to give Rosa some support post-rehab — accessible housing, continued occupational and physical therapy, the whole shebang.

Rosa is one of the most active, athletic, stubborn, badass people I know. She hikes, races, mountain bikes, skis, snowboards, rock climbs, and works as a guide for several different wilderness programs. Sometimes she does all of this at 10,000 feet above sea level. She’s got a ridiculous puppy named Hank that she’s training as a therapy dog. She’s in school for nursing. All of that stuff is what motivates Rosa and gives her joy, and all of it is still completely possible for her (she’s already got her eye on the Paralympics, not kidding), but she’ll need a lot of support to get there.

My family just started a fundraising website here. Any amount you could donate would be a huge help, and if you can’t donate money — believe you me, I understand being broke as a joke — I’d be so grateful if you’d give this post a reblog. Rosa and her girlfriend are reaching out to their network of people who also dig living at high altitudes; my stepdad’s got his academic peeps; my mom’s got her fellow social workers and therapists. I have you guys. <3

Thank you so much,

Z

Amazon: WHAT'S A FANFICTION

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:48:30 -0400

Amazon: WHAT'S A FANFICTION
Amazon:
Amazon:
Amazon:
Amazon:
Amazon:
Amazon: CAN YOU BUY IT

And see, the thing about “They’re not targeting fandom, they’re targeting the...

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:40:45 -0400

And see, the thing about “They’re not targeting fandom, they’re targeting the people who still buy tie-in novels even though the internet is full of free fanfiction,” (besides the fact that fandom people do in fact buy tie-in novels, so those groups are in no way mutually exclusive)is that I feel like people buy tie-in novels because they want to buy the “official” canonical continuation. As such, the willingness to pay for those derivative works does not equal a willingness to pay for fanfiction. The assumption of authenticity is what differentiates licensed tie-ins from fanfiction.

Arguably a ridiculous distinction, but it does matter to people for whom “fanfic” is a dirty word. In being upfront in calling it fanfiction, Amazon is instantly, whether it intends to or not, almost exclusively targeting fandom just by virtue of the connotations of the term itself.

ybee: drowning in brienne feelings at 2:30am

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:05:17 -0400

ybee:

drowning in brienne feelings at 2:30am