#medium livejournal

[vraska-theunseen]

watching (whatever) this podcast and these guys r reading the candy land wiki and it's written so seriously like surmising abt the hereditary monarchy and caste system of candyland it's such a good bit and it reminds me of this story the northern caves which u all should read its so interesting it's abt a group of fans on a forum who obsess over this children's book series written by a man with a very specific moral philosophy whose work became increasingly overly complex and inscrutable and a few of them meet up after one of them gets his hands on the author's last unpublished behemoth

[sassygrrl32]

Brand New Blog At Blogger-Rachel Holbert Jones Page

I have a brand new blog that is strictly for microblogging. It’s similar to this one except I haven’t kept this one up like I should have. I couldn’t find a microblogging site I really liked so I chose blogspot and created a blogger blog. The new site is https://rachelholbertjonespage.blogspot.com Until next time……..My story-page……..A Brand New Update: Rehabbing Malachi’s boat on Lake Keowee…

[mikkaeus]

house md hilson fic rec - medium to long fics (10k+)

Other house rec lists: short fics | episode tags | postcanon | infidelity trope (all of these are mutually exclusive apart from the infidelity one) // Edit: I added the longer postcanon fics to this reclist as well because this one got the most traction!

These are all House/Wilson unless otherwise stated. Before we get into the fics, here are some of my fave authors that have written several house fics.

fourteencandles: im literally in love with them . 10/10 writing no notes. also long fics?? hello???

ictus: this author has the range! from emotional to fluff to funny. very smooth writing. all of their fics have different vibes which was fun to read. they’re all very good. 

Transformatron: fics that are transcendent and porny, all featuring a d/s undertone or theme (wilson as the dom)

Namaste (livejournal / ff.net): Some short fics, some much longer ones. Mostly gen focussing on H&W friendship, with some fics on canon pairings. Interesting character studies and discerning prose.

In order of length. *faves, ***underrated faves

*Brain Damage by fourteencandles (8k) (Ok I know this isn’t over 10k but I wanted all of their fics on one post and it’s close enough so.) This was brilliant. Like a real episode of House, with Wilson as the unfortunate patient-of-the-week, with bonus House/Wilson. Characterisation was bang on, and the plot was original and engaging and had a satisfying conclusion. Love to see House taking care of Wilson.

Down to the Water + Bound for Home by blackmare (~10k) Aftermath of season 4. House and Wilson go on a road trip. Quiet and sad and fragile, with excellent writing. This fic appears to have been fairly well known in lj days but I don't think a lot of newer people know about it.

*A Smaller World by fourteencandles (10k) The thing between them works, if Wilson doesn't push for more. God I’m so soft. I have so many feelings!!! In love with this established relationship hilson, still a little precarious, but with Wilson adapting, and House willing to put in effort.

*What's Past by fourteencandles (10k) The guy who used to have Wilson's job comes back for a visit, and it turns out they have more in common than Wilson ever knew.

*Touch Therapy by nomad (10k) It's not that House needs the human contact. It's just that when you're sharing an apartment, these things happen sometimes. Light hearted and funny, canon divergence from when Wilson’s staying on House's couch in s2. This is pretty much the homosexual waters have started flowing in House's direction post. Excellent dialogue.

***not another medical drama series (10k) by captainharkness Retelling of season 1 with House and Wilson as an established relationship. Great slice of life stories! Ongoing. The first is H/W POV, the second is Cameron, and the third is Chase. My favourite is definitely the second one (someone else’s story). I adore seeing H/W through the ducklings’ eyes. 

Synchronicity by copperbadge (10k) Dead patients, car wrecks, drug overdoses, journalists, Comatose Charlie, and orange chicken. Must be love.

systemic by ictus (10k) Ever since Wilson moved in, House has presented with some inexplicable symptoms. Fortunately, he has a team of talented doctors to aid him with his diagnosis. Season 2 fic! This one is funny and sweet and overall a great read.

Rush Down Darkness by Starlingthefool (10k) House MD/World War Z crossover. Told mainly through interview dialogue from house’s pov. Engaging story. House/Wilson definitely takes a backseat to the plot — there’s no grand getting together or anything. That's not to say it's not about them though, because there were still lots of good moments (good in the sense that my heart hurts). More succinctly, it has the vibes of an established relationship fic., although it isn't technically one.

Defensive Strategies by Milkshake Butterfly (~10k) (lj) In which Wilson is tired of being asked out by women when he's not ready to date again, and naturally House proposes a simple solution: pretend to be together. An enjoyable read.

******Commonplace and True by celestialskiff (11k) It would be a simple story--House and Wilson meet at a medical conference, have sex, and enjoy each other's company--but nothing is ever easy, or simple. Explores Wilson's relationship with House, with women, and with himself. House and Wilson throughout the years — with the version of canon where Wilson has cheated on every wife and girlfriend with House. When I tell you I am FROTHING!!! Pining while fucking?? The way it’s never the right time?? The greed of wanting to have your cake and eat it too? (That one’s specifically for Wilson, our beloved three-wives guy.) The vibes are immaculate. The prose is elegant verging on poetic. I’m eating this fic whole and it will be on my mind always. It is THE hilson fic for me. It is criminal that this fic has been up since 2012 and it only has 200 kudos. Go read it immediately & give the author some love.

***Declarations of Independence by Namaste (ff.net, also on livejournal) (11k) House and winter, throughout the years. I really enjoyed this. Excellent writing. Copy pasting a part of a comment by bedawyn which articulates why this fic is unique better than I can: “So far, I've seen a lot of focus in the fanfic (and the eps) on the pain and the Vicodin, but very little awareness of the practical aspects of limited mobility and the emotional impact of those even apart from the pain. So this was a very nice change.”

***Rule of Three by Transformatron (11k) (House/Wilson/Foreman) Foreman sees something he shouldn't have. And, maybe, wants something he shouldn't have, too. This was well written and super hot, with fun dialogue and descriptions that do justice to the excellent writing of the show itself. Foreman is faithfully characterised in a way that made me sympathetic. Also H/W outsider perspective as a third is such a treat to read. Lower me into my grave!!!!

*Warning Signs by out_there (12k) Excerpt: House looked to the left, staring down at the open box. Wilson knew that expression on his face: House was torn between denying it all and gleefully acknowledging his schemes. Normally, his ego won out and, like a comic super villain, he'd explain all. Wilson just needed to stay quiet and wait. This fic was fantastic. I am disgustingly fond. Superb characterisation. Light hearted and funny.

The Oncologist Trap by zulu (13k) (2007) House subtly seduces Wilson. Somehow.

The Line of Thought by tevinterimperium (13k) House and Wilson pretend to be together to play a prank on the ducklings, which is an extremely plausible scenario. From the perspective of the ducklings. Set sometime after 3x15: Half-Wit.

hail mary by ictus (13k) A post-canon fix it! In the weeks since finishing the show and reading this fic there are times I forgot that this wasn’t canon. It’s such a believable (and well-researched) alternate ending that feels like an actual episode.

Son of Mine by simoneallen (14k) Sherlock is House’s long-lost kid. Usually I’m not a fan of cross-over fics but I enjoyed this one. Established relationship on the johnlock side, getting together on the hilson side.

***hearts turn red by ictus (14k) In my head this is the counterpoint to Commonplace and True. When I found it after reading that one it really was a holy shit two fucking cakes?? moment. The delicious infidelity vibes are similar, but the vibes of the writing are pretty different -- whereas the above fic has a more quiet, subdued atmosphere, this one has more snappy prose and it’s more light-hearted with funny moments as well as emotional ones. It’s not just the infidelity theme that makes me crazy about both of them though; it’s how they play on the great tragedy of House and Wilson. In the author’s own words: In a way they do feel a little bit doomed to never quite be on the same page with each other until the very end of the series and by then it's too late. Of course, in these fics, they’re rescued earlier than the end, but the wretched vibes remain. Also, I’m obsessed with this line: By Wilson’s read, House is somehow simultaneously joking and sincere: Schrödinger’s sexual advance. That is the entire fucking show.

An Inconvenient Truth by annathaema (15k) Wilson helps out Cuddy and reveals something about himself in the process. House freaks out accordingly. Also features banana-colored babies, the men's room, and Skee-Ball.

*at the rind by ShanaStoryteller (19k) An AU where Wilson experiences all the near death moments House has in the show as a series of nightmares. Set between 1.19 and 2.05, but spoilers for the whole show. Protective Wilson!! We love to see it. I also like Wilson’s characterisation here - you can very much see how not-normal he is. We love unhealthy co-dependency.

***Esopus Creek by shaycat (24k) An eighty-year-old widower by the name of Eugene Skinner ventures out one September day in upstate New York for his usual morning activity - fly fishing. His leisurely hobby is interrupted by a bickering pair nearby in the river. That chance encounter with Greg House and James Wilson changes the course of his life. Told from the perspective of the last friend the boys make on their final road trip. This was the perfect post season 8, Wilson-still-dies fic. A sad fic but not a depressing one. It’s quiet and heartwarming, in a bittersweet way. Highly recommend. It has great use of outsider POV — I’m always a sucker for it but it worked particularly well in this case to have the angst but not be drowning in it. Also I just really liked the OC.

***Howler Tone by baffledbear (25k) The calls always happen late at night, and they're extremely sporadic, with weeks, sometimes months bridging between them. They talk on the phone otherwise, of course; about patients, or dinner plans, or carpooling. Typical stuff. But the calls that always end a certain way always start a certain way. Wilson is so repressed but so attracted to House. House is taking as much as he can get while still remaining in relative safety. Together they push a platonic relationship to the absolute limits of plausible deniability. Overall totally realistic within the canon of the show — the natural step up from the gay chicken already depicted. It’s just such a perfect scenario for them! That combined with silky smooth prose, faithful characterisation and accurate dialogue makes this fic is a definite hilson favourite and also a hilson-thesis fic.

*The Open Road by Pun (25k) A fandom classic. Road trip fic set in the earlier seasons. It's good; read it.

*He Won't Tell You That He Loves You by hellshandbasket (25k) [In which Nolan pulls at the Wilson thread, and House can't stop it all from unraveling. Repression is a hell of a drug.] Early s6. Another fandom classic that is worth its salt.

no need to worry (making up your mind) by scribespirare (25k) House makes the mistake of telling his mother he can't join her for Christmas because of his new boyfriend. Somehow, this becomes Wilson's problem. Cute and fun. I put off reading fake-dating fics because I was worried about them being OOC but this one definitely wasn’t!

***Sticks and Stones by Transformatron (25k) (WIP) House has an innovative new idea for managing his chronic pain. Wilson’s not sure he approves - but when has House ever asked for permission? This is such a great concept I am climbing the walls!!! D/s with House as the sub. The story is currently still at pre-relationship stage, with House experimenting with BDSM and Wilson being unhappy with the proceedings (for some unknown reason /s). Also the writing is nice and snappy with some great figurative language that manages to incorporate medical themes impressively well. 

Fresh Feeling by justkeeptrekkin (30k) House is tricked into going on a team-building trip with his colleagues. He does far more bonding with Wilson than anyone else. Funny and well written. The team interactions are very cute.

***Tracking Time by Namaste (37k) (ff.net) A look at House and Wilson's friendship over the years and how it has changed from their meeting through the end of the first season. I don’t usually read long genfics but this one was exceptional. I like Namaste’s take on House and Wilson’s characters. And they are a very good storyteller — one thing that you don’t tend to see as much of in fanfiction is the old adage of ‘show not tell’. The writing in this fic is careful and subtle, and lets you read between the lines, making it so that no part of the 37k words is a drag to read.

*The Body Found by fourteencandles (46k) Wilson's missing. When I tell you I cried... Premium angst & hurt/comfort. Excellent dialogue with some alternating POV (House mainly, but you also get the three ducklings & Cuddy).

You Already Know How This Will End by fourteencandles (46k) What if House had gone to rehab right after/around "Merry Little Christmas"? (3.10) This fic was interesting. It’s told in a series of short vignettes with a variety of different perspectives. It’s not really a hilson fic (or a fic for any ship). It just explores the characters. I did wish for more hilson but it’s a good read (I mean, it’s fourteencandles). The one hilson scene near the end where they hire a hooker in Atlantic City lives in my head rent free. Warning that the ending is rather abrupt and I didn’t find it satisfying, but I think it works for this kind of story, in a way. Messy people and their complicated relationships, with a lot of loose ends left untied, because that’s just what life is. 

***For Every Closed Door by starlingthefool (around 50k?) (lj) Overview of the chapters (14 with 4 interludes and an epilogue) is on the author’s lj (scroll down).  House MD/Dead Like Me crossover.  I love this fic a lot! It’s canon divergence from Season 3. House gets killed in a freak accident and becomes a reaper, remaining in the mortal world to harvest souls, able to interact with people but not be recognisable to those that know him. As the author says, this is an Afterlife!Fic and therefore a deathfic. They also said it’s not depressing — which is true, because it’s more plotty than an angstfest, and there are lots of light-hearted parts, but it is definitely heartbreaking at points. I literally cried all the way through the last chapter. Happy ending though!!! Don’t worry about the cross-over aspects. I haven’t seen Dead Like Me, and as far as I can tell, it just takes the premise of the show. I’m glad I found this fic whilst trawling 2000s livejournal because it’s really a hidden gem. Great plot, dialogue, compelling OCs — the whole package! I got so emotionally invested in the story. I think there were maybe a few parts that were a little unpolished but just keep reading. It’s really worth it. 

*A Modest Proposal and Involuntary Commitment series by ignaz (98k) The one where House and Wilson get married so Wilson can’t testify against House in the Tritter arc.  I have an unfortunate habit of downloading fics and then forgetting to bookmark & comment once I’m done, so I don’t have anything detailed to say about this one, but it’s a classic and a favourite of mine.

Twenty Years of Stealing My Food by hwshipper (100k) A backstory taking place over twenty years, from how House and Wilson met all the way to canon. A reimagining of their fucked up, magnetic relationship, with a straightforward writing style. They get together nearly as soon as they meet and maintain a steady open relationship whilst cheating on their various girlfriends and wives throughout the years. 

[slayersweek]

2024 SLAYERS SECRET SANTA INFO AND SIGNUP FORM:

Hello! Please read over the following before signing up. Thank you!

What ‘Secret Santa’ Means: You create a fanwork, and you’ll receive one in return. Everyone who wishes to participate will provide prompts that they’d like to see completed, and another participant will be assigned their prompts and will complete one of those prompts (which one is completed is up to the person they’re assigned to).

When you submit your prompts, you are welcome (and encouraged) to tell me anything you are uncomfortable with or don’t wish to do (pairings, genre, rating, etc), that way the prompts you’re given are something you’re comfortable writing/drawing.

Rules and Regulations:

1) Watch this tumblr!  If you do not have a tumblr yourself, please put it in your bookmarks and remind yourself to check it often.

2) Can I ask for ____?  You can ask for whatever you want- rating, genre, etc. However, please keep in mind that if you’re asking for something super unusual, you might want to provide some broader prompts as well.

3) How long do I have to signup?  Signups will end on Saturday, November 30, 2024. That is all month to sign up!!

4) When is the deadline?  Please have your piece completed and posted by Friday, January 31, 2025. You can post your gift anytime starting from Wednesday, December 25, 2024.

5) How do I post it?  Post it in your own tumblr and link it to us or tag us (@slayersweek) so we can reblog it over here. You may link to where your fanwork is posted off tumblr (to livejournal, dreamwidth, ff.net, ao3, deviantart, etc) in your post.

6) How long does fic have to be?  At least eight hundred words. It doesn’t need to be super-long of course, but we want everyone to get something that’s more than drabble length.

7) Are there any extra requirements for the art?  It can be done in any medium (digital, colored pencil, copic, sketch, etc). Just remember that this is a gift for someone, so make sure it’s a completed piece!

8) Can I do fancomics?  Yes. Absolutely.

9) What if I need to drop out?  Then I would ask you to please let me know as soon as possible (and before the December 25th deadline) so we can arrange a pitch hitter for you. Failure to notify me will ban you from future events.

10) What is a pitch hitter?  If someone has to drop out, I’d still like their giftee to get a gift. A pitch hitter is someone who is willing to do a second fanwork in order to make sure no one goes without a gift.

11) What type of prompts should I give?  Prompts can be anything from something vague like “Lina, Gourry, Amelia, and Zelgadis exchange gifts,” “Sylphiel and Martina go to the beach” to something specific like “I’d like to see a fic where Lina and Gourry are pulled into an undersea world. The two end up facing an ancient source of magic, and they must team up with many witch and wizard allies. I’d like if it featured Lina/Gourry and Zelgadis/Amelia, and if possible… some Filia/Valgaav? A happy ending, please!” You must submit a minimum of three prompts or I cannot fairly give your requests to your Santa.

Please make them more than a characters name. It does not have to be Christmas themed and you do not have to be detailed, but give people something to work with!

12) I have another question!  Then please ask it via our askbox (anon asks are enabled).

Okay, I’m ready to signup! Please copy and paste the below form and submit it to the SlayersWeek inbox to sign up.

GIVING: Tumblr Username: Email or Alternate Contact:   Specialty (Fanfic or Fanart- If you can do both, you may list both): Highest Rating You’ll Work With: Will Not Work With (Any characters, pairings, genres, scenarios, you won’t do): RECEIVING: Do Not Want (Any characters, pairings, ratings, genres, scenarios, etc you don’t want to receive): Do You Prefer fic, art, or no preference?: Three Prompts: 1) 2) 3) Can you pitch hit if someone drops out?:

Please SUBMIT your completed form HERE. If you have any further questions, you can direct them to this blog HERE, or to my personal HERE.

[blubberquark]

Are Game Blogs Uniquely Lost?

All this started with my looking for the old devlog of Storyteller. I know at some point it was linked from the blogroll on the Braid devlog. Then I tried to look at on old devlog of another game that is still available. The domain for Storyteller is still active. The devblog is gone.

I tried an old bookmark from an old PC (5 PCs ago, I think). It was a web site linked to pixel art and programming tutorials. Instead of linking to the pages directly, some links link led to a twitter threads by authors that collected their work posted on different sites. Some twitter threads are gone because the users were were suspended, or had deleted their accounts voluntarily. Others had deleted old tweets. There was no archive. I have often seen links accompanied by "Here's a thread where $AUTHOR lists all his writing on $TOPIC". I wonder if the sites are still there, and only the tweets are gone.

A lot of "games studies" around 2010 happened on blogs, not in journals. Games studies was online-first, HTML-first, with trackbacks, tags, RSS and comment sections. The work that was published in PDF form in journals and conference proceedings is still there. The blogs are gone. The comment sections are gone. Kill screen daily is gone.

I followed a link from critical-distance.com to a blog post. That blog is gone. The domain is for sale. In the Wayback Machine, I found the link. It pointed to the comment section of another blog. The other blog has removed its comment sections and excluded itself from the Wayback Machine.

I wonder if games stuff is uniquely lost. Many links to game reviews at big sites lead to "page not found", but when I search the game's name, I can find the review from back in 2004. The content is still there, the content management systems have been changed multiple times.

At least my favourite tumblr about game design has been saved in the Wayback Machine: Game Design Tips.

To make my point I could list more sites, more links, 404 but archived, or completely lost, but when I look at small sites, personal sites, blogs, or even forums, I wonder if this is just confirmation bias. There must be all this other content, all these other blogs and personal sites. I don't know about tutorials for knitting, travel blogs, stamp collecting, or recipe blogs. I usually save a print version of recipes to my Download folder.

Another big community is fan fiction. They are like modding, but for books, I think. I don't know if a lot of fan fiction is lost to bit rot and link rot either. What is on AO3 will probably endure, but a lot might have gone missing when communities fandom moved from livejournal to tumblr to twitter, or when blogs moved from Wordpress to Medium to Substack.

I have identified some risk factors:

Personal home pages made from static HTML can stay up for while if the owner meticulously catalogues and links to all their writing on other sites, and if the site covers a variety of interests and topics.

Personal blogs or content management systems are likely to lose content in a software upgrade or migration to a different host.

Writing is more likely to me lost when it's for-pay writing for a smaller for-profit outlet.

A cause for sudden "mass extinction" of content is the move between social networks, or the death of a whole platform. Links to MySpace, Google+, Diaspora, and LiveJournal give me mostly or entirely 404 pages.

In the gaming space, career changes or business closures often mean old content gets deleted. If an indie game is wildly successful, the intellectual property might ge acquired. If it flops, the domain will lapse. When development is finished, maybe the devlog is deleted. When somebody reviews games at first on Steam, then on a blog, and then for a big gaming mag, the Steam reviews might stay up, but the personal site is much more likely to get cleaned up. The same goes for blogging in general, and academia. The most stable kind of content is after hours hobbyist writing by somebody who has a stable and high-paying job outside of media, academia, or journalism.

The biggest risk factor for targeted deletion is controversy. Controversial, highly-discussed and disseminated posts are more likely to be deleted than purely informative ones, and their deletion is more likely to be noticed. If somebody starts a discussion, and then later there are hundreds of links all pointing back to the start, the deletion will hurt more and be more noticeable. The most at-risk posts are those that are supposed to be controversial within a small group, but go viral outside it, or the posts that are controversial within a small group, but then the author says something about politics that draws the attention of the Internet at large to their other writings.

The second biggest risk factor for deletion is probably usefulness combined with hosting costs. This could also be the streetlight effect at work, like in the paragraph above, but the more traffic something gets, the higher the hosting costs. Certain types of content are either hard to monetise, and cost a lot of money, or they can be monetised, so the free version is deliberately deleted.

The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to link between different sites, abandon a blogging platform or social network for the next thing, try to consolidate their writings by deleting their old stuff and setting up their own site, only to let the domain lapse. The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to mess with the HTML of their templates or try out different blogging software.

If content is spread between multiple sites, or if links link to social network posts that link to blog post with a comment that links to a reddit comment that links to a geocities page, any link could break. If content is consolidated in a forum, maybe Archive team could save all of it with some advance notice.

All this could mean that indie games/game design theory/pixel art resources are uniquely lost, and games studies/theory of games criticism/literary criticism applied to games are especially affected by link rot. The semi-professional, semi-hobbyist indie dev, the writer straddling the line between academic and reviewer, they seem the most affected. Artists who start out just doodling and posting their work, who then get hired to work on a game, their posts are deleted. GameFAQs stay online, Steam reviews stay online, but dev logs, forums and blog comment sections are lost.

Or maybe it's only confirmation bias. If I was into restoring old cars, or knitting, or collecting stamps, or any other thing I'd think that particular community is uniquely affected by link rot, and I'd have the bookmarks to prove it.

Figuring this out is important if we want to make predictions about the future of the small web, and about the viability of different efforts to get more people to contribute. We can't figure it out now, because we can't measure the ground truth of web sites that are already gone. Right now, the small web is mostly about the small web, not about stamp collecting or knitting. If we really manage to revitalise the small web, will it be like the small web of today except bigger, the web-1.0 of old, or will certain topics and communities be lost again?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Podcasting "Let the Platforms Burn"

This week on my podcast, I read “Let the Platforms Burn,” a recent Medium column making the case that we should focus more on making it easier for people to leave platforms, rather than making the platforms less terrible places to be:

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

The platforms used to be source of online stability, and many argued that by consolidating the wide and wooly web into a few “curated” silos, the platforms were replacing chaos with good stewardship. If we wanted to make the internet hospitable to normies, we were told, we had to accept that Apple and Facebook’s tightly managed “simplicity” were the only way to get there.

But today, all the platforms are on fire, all the time. They are rocked by scandals every bit as awful as the failures of the smaller sites of yesteryear, but while harms of a Geocities or Livejournal moderation failure were confined to a small group of specialized users, failures in the big silos reach hundreds of millions or even billions of people.

What should we do about the rolling crisis of the platforms? The default response — beloved of Big Tech’s boosters and critics alike — is to impose rules on the platforms to make them more hospitable places for the billions they’ve engulfed. But I think that will fail. Instead, I think we should make the platforms less important places by freeing those billions.

That’s the argument of the column.

Think of California’s wildfires. While climate change has increased the intensity and frequency of our fires, climate (and neglect by PG&E) is merely part of the story. The other part of the story is fire-debt.

For millennia, the original people of California practiced controlled burns of the forests they lived, hunted, and played in. These burns cleared out sick and dying trees, scoured the forest floor of tinder, and opened spaces in the canopy that gave rise to new growth. Forests need fire — literally: the California redwood can’t reproduce without it:

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/giant-sequoia-needs-fire-grow/15094/

But this ended centuries ago, when settlers stole the land and declared an end to “cultural burning” by the indigenous people they expropriated, imprisoned, and killed. They established permanent settlements within the fire zone, and embarked on a journey of escalating measures to keep that smouldering fire zone from igniting.

These heroic measures continue today, and they’ve set up a vicious cycle: fire suppression creates the illusion that it’s safe to live at the wildlife urban interface. Taken in by this illusion, more people move to the fire zone — and their presence creates political pressure for even more heroic measures.

The thing is, fire suppression doesn’t mean no fires — it means wildfires. The fire debt mounts and mounts, and without an orderly bankruptcy — controlled burns — we get chaotic defaults, the kind of fire that wipes out whole towns.

Eventually, we will have to change tacks: rather than making it safe to stay in the fire zone, we’re going to have to make it easy to leave, so that we can return to those controlled burns and pay down those fire-debts.

And that’s what we need to do with the platforms.

For most of the history of consumer tech and digital networks, fire was the norm. New platforms — PC companies, operating systems, online services — would spring up and grow with incredible speed, only to collapse, seemingly without warning.

To get to the bottom of this phenomenon, you need to understand two concepts: network effects and switching costs.

Network effects: A service enjoys network effects if it increases in value as more people use it. AOL Instant Messenger grows in usefulness every time someone signs up for it, and so does Facebook. The more users, the more reasons to join. The more people who join, the more people will join.

Switching costs: The things you have to give up when you leave a product or service. When you quit Audible, you have to throw away all your audiobooks (they will only play on Audible-approved players). When you leave Facebook, you have to say goodbye to all the friends, family, communities and customers that brought you there.

Tech has historically enjoyed enormous network effects, which propelled explosive growth. But it also enjoyed low switching costs, which underpinned implosive contraction. Because digital systems are universal (all computers can run all programs; all nodes on the network can connect to one another), it was historically very easy to switch from one service to another.

Someone building a new messenger service or social media platform could import your list of contacts, or even use bots to fetch the messages left for you on the old service and put them in the inbox on the new one, and then push your replies back to the people you left behind. Likewise, when Apple made its iWork office suite, it could reverse-engineer the Microsoft Office file formats so you could take all your data with you if you quit Windows and switched to MacOS:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

This dynamic — network effects growth and low switching costs contraction — is why we think of tech as so dynamic. It’s companies like DEC were able to turn out minicomputers that shattered the dominance of mainframes. But it’s also why DEC was brought so low that a PC company, Compaq — was able to buy it for pennies on the dollar. Compaq — a company that built an empire by making interoperable IBM PC clones — was itself “disrupted” a few years later, and HP bought it for spare change found in the sofa cushions.

But HP didn’t fall to Compaq’s fate. It survived — as did IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook. Somehow, the cycle of “good fire” that kept any company from growing too powerful was interrupted.

Today’s tech giants run “walled gardens” that are actually walled prisons that entrap their billions of users by imposing high switching costs on them. How did that happen? How did tech become “five giant websites filled with screenshots from the other four?”

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

The answer lies in the fact that tech was born as antitrust was dying. Reagan hit the campaign trail the same year the Apple ][+ hit shelves. With every presidency since, tech has grown more powerful and antitrust has grown weaker (the Biden administration has halted this decay, but it must repair 40 years’ worth of sabotage).

This allowed tech to “merge to monopoly.” Google built a single successful product — a search engine — and then conquered the web by buying other peoples’ companies, even as their own internal product development process produced a nearly unbroken string of flops. Apple buys 90 companies a year — Tim Cook brings home a new company more often than you bring home a bag of groceries:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18531570/apple-company-purchases-startups-tim-cook-buy-rate

When Facebook was threatened by an upstart called Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg sent a middle-of-the-night email to his CFO defending his plan to pay $1b for the then-tiny company, insisting that the only way to secure eternal dominance was to eliminate competitors — by buying them out, not by being better than them. As Zuckerberg says, “It is better to buy than compete”:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/29/21345723/facebook-instagram-documents-emails-mark-zuckerberg-kevin-systrom-hearing

As tech consolidated into a cozy oligopoly whose execs hopped from one company to another, they rigged the game. They colluded on a criminal “no-poach” deal to suppress their workers’ wages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation

And they colluded to illegally rig the ad-market:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

This collusion is the inevitable result of market concentration. 100 squabbling tech companies will be at each others’ throats, unable to agree on catering for their annual meeting much less a common lobbying agenda. But boil those companies down to a bare handful and they’ll quickly converge on a single hymn and twine their voices in eerie harmony:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/16/compulsive-cheaters/#rigged

Eliminating antitrust enforcement — letting companies buy and merge with competitors, permitting predatory pricing and other exclusionary tactics — was the first step towards unsustainable fire suppression. But, as on the California wildland-urban interface, this measure quickly gave way to ever-more-extreme ones as the fire debt mounted.

The tech’s oligarchs have spent decades both suppressing laws that would limit their extractive profits (there’s a reason there’s no US federal privacy law!), and, crucially, getting new law made to limit anyone from “disrupting” them as they disrupted their forebears.

Today, a thicket of laws and rules — patent, copyright, anti-circumvention, tortious interference, trade secrecy, noncompete, etc — have been fashioned into a legal superweapon that tech companies can use to control the conduct of their competitors, critics and customers, and prevent them from making or using interoperable tools to reduce their switching costs and leave their walled gardens:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Today, these laws are being bolstered with new ones that make it even more difficult for users to leave the platforms. These new laws purport to protect users from each other, but they leave them even more at the platforms’ mercy.

So we get rules requiring platforms to spy on their users in the name of preventing harassment, rather than laws requiring platforms to stand up APIs that let users leave the platform and seek out a new online home that values their wellbeing:

https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/publication/lawful-awful-control-over-legal-speech-platforms-governments-and-internet-users

We get laws requiring platforms to “balance” the ideology of their content moderation:

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/16/texas-social-media-law/

But not laws that require platforms to make it easy to seek out a new server whose moderation policies are more hospitable to your ideas:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/right-or-left-you-should-be-worried-about-big-tech-censorship

The platforms insist — with some justification — that we can’t ask them to both control their users and give their users more freedom. If we want a platform to detect and block “bad content,” we can’t also require the platform to let third party interoperators plug into the system and exchange messages with it.

They’re right — but that doesn’t mean we should defend them. The problem with the platforms isn’t merely that they’re bad at defending their users’ interests. The problem is that they can’t defend those interests. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t merely monumentally, personally unsuited to serving as the unelected, unaacountable social media czar for billions of people in hundreds of countries, speaking thousands of languages. No one should have that job.

We don’t need a better Mark Zuckerberg. We need no Mark Zuckerbergs. We don’t need to perfect Zuck — we need to abolish Zuck.

Rather than pouring our resources into making life in the smoldering wildlife-urban interface safe, we should help people leave that combustible zone, with policies that make migration easy.

This month, we got an example of how just easy that migration could be. Meta launched Threads, a social media platform that used your list of Instagram followers and followees to get you set up. Those low switching costs made it easy for Instagram users to become Threads users — and the network effects meant it happened fast, with 30m signups in the first morning:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/07/06/meta-launches-threads-and-its-important-for-reasons-that-most-people-wont-care-about/

Meta says it was able to do this because it owns both Insta and Threads. But Meta doesn’t own the list of accounts that you trust and value enough to follow, or the people who feel the same way about you. That’s yours. We could and should force Meta to let you have it.

But that’s not enough. Meta claims that it will someday integrate Threads into the Fediverse, the collection of services based on the ActivityPub standard, whose most popular app is Mastodon. On Mastodon, you not only get to export your list of followers and followees with one click, but you can import those followers and followees to a new server with one click.

Threads looks incredibly stupid, a “Twitter alternative you would order from Brookstone,” but there are already tens of millions of people establishing relationships with each other there:

https://jogblog.substack.com/p/facebooks-threads-is-so-depressing

When they get tired of “brand-safe vaporposting,” they’ll have to either give up those relationships, or resign themselves to being trapped inside another walled-garden-cum-prison operated by a mediocre tech warlord:

https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-algorithmic-anti-culture-of-scale

But what if, instead of trying to force Zuck to be a better emperor-for-life, we passed rules requiring him to let his subjects flee his tyrannical reign? We could require Threads to stand up a Fediverse gateway that let users leave the service and set up on any other Fediverse servers (we could apply this rule to all Fediverse servers, preventing petty dictators from tormenting their users, too):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/platforms-decay-lets-put-users-first

Zuck founded an empire of oily rags, and so of course it’s always on fire. We can’t make it safe to stay, but we can make it easy to leave:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

This is the thing platforms fear the most. Network effects work in both directions: if your service grows quickly because people value one another, then it will shrink quickly when the people your users care about leave. As @zephoria-blog​ recounts, this is what happened when Myspace imploded:

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2022/12/05/what-if-failure-is-the-plan.html

When I started seeing the disappearance of emotionally sticky nodes, I reached out to members of the MySpace team to share my concerns and they told me that their numbers looked fine. Active uniques were high, the amount of time people spent on the site was continuing to grow, and new accounts were being created at a rate faster than accounts were being closed. I shook my head; I didn’t think that was enough. A few months later, the site started to unravel.

Platforms collapse “slowly, then all at once.” The only way to prevent sudden platform collapse syndrome is to block interoperability so users can’t escape the harms of your walled garden without giving up the benefits they give to each other.

We should stop trying to make the platforms good. We should make them gone. We should restore the “good fire” that ended with the growth of financialized Big Tech empires. We should aim for soft landings for users, and stop pretending that there’s any safe way to life in the fire zone.

We should let the platforms burn.

Here’s the podcast:

https://craphound.com/news/2023/07/16/let-the-platforms-burn-the-opposite-of-good-fires-is-wildfires/

And here’s a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the @internetarchive​; they’ll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_446/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_446_-_Let_the_Platforms_Burn.mp3

And here’s my podcast feed:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

Tonight (July 18), I’m hosting the first Clarion Summer Write-In Series, an hour-long, free drop-in group writing and discussion session. It’s in support of the Clarion SF/F writing workshop’s fundraiser to offer tuition support to students:

https://mailchi.mp/theclarionfoundation/clarion-write-ins

[Image ID: A forest wildfire. Peeking through the darks in the stark image are hints of the green Matrix "waterfall" effect.]

Image: Cameron Strandberg (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fire-Forest.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[naranjapetrificada]

Ship Manifestos?

Do any of my fellow OFMD fans who are also Livejournal veterans remember how common ship manifestos used to be? I'm not saying they were exclusive to LJ, just that I tended to see them more commonly there, and as a discrete thing from the way general meta seems to take shape on tumblr dot com. Which is fine! The medium is the message etc, but I just started thinking about how I never see them anymore.

I think I'm thinking about this because more than in any other fandom I've ever participated in, I find myself baffled by A Few Particular non-canon ships in a way I can't possibly account for. Even with the requisite probable lack of hinges, I find myself missing the ship manifesto as a form in this situation. It's making me feel old and nostalgic and also like, fundamentally divorced from the way my brain used to handle even those ships that weren't for me.

Beyond the obvious internal fandom discourse we've had at length (and don't need to rehash) about the ways shipping does and does not feel different with ofmd, I wonder if this is more of that "we're so used to queer romance as subtext or afterthought that we handle queer-centric stories strangely" phenomenon?

[merlincinema]

Merlin Cinema Round 1 Masterpost

This year, we've had some fantastic fanworks in the form of fic, artwork, and manips. These authors and artists not only blew our minds but forced us to think out of the box and made us so grateful to have such an amazing, hardworking group of people involved in this year's fest. We congratulate all the participants of this year's fest for their successful posting. Without you all, this fest would not have been a success. So, without further ado, we proudly present to you this year's masterlist:

[Art+Fic] Mise En Place by s0mmerspr0ssen, papysanzo based on Bella Martha Pairing: Merlin/Arthur Rating: E Word Count: 30k Medium: Digital Art

[Fic] The Mistaken Bride and the Dragon by Chaosgenes based on I Am Dragon Pairing: Merlin/Arthur Rating: T Word Count: 2,130

[Art+Fic] The Hawk and the Bear by Excited_Insomniac, Papysanzo89 based on Ladyhawk Pairing: Merlin/Arthur Rating: T Word Count: 15.7k Medium: Digital Art

[Art] Merlin Stardust AU by dollopbrain based on Star Dust Pairing: Merlin/Arthur Rating: G Medium: Digital Art

[Fic] The screams of the innocents by HadrianPeverellBlack based on Silence of the Lambs Pairing: Merlin/Arthur Rating: T Word Count: 3048

[Fic] For Merlin by HadrianPeverellBlack based on The Departed Pairing: Merlin & Arthur Rating: T Word Count: 622

[Fic] Return to Oz by Sage_Owl based on Return to Oz Pairing: Ygraine/Uther, Gen Rating: T Word Count: 10,035

[Fic] An Adventure Involving Dragons by thenerdyindividual based on Barbie Island Princess Pairing: Gwaine/Merlin/Arthur Rating: M Word Count: 70 118

[Fic] That Loving Feeling by ravenwilds based on Top Gun Pairing: Merlin/Arthur, Gwen/Gwaine Rating: T Word Count: 32,500

[Art] Sweet Home Ealdor by Esseff based on Sweet Home Alabama Pairing: Merlin/Arthur Rating: T Medium: Edits/Manips

View this post on Tumblr | LiveJournal | Discord

[homestuckreplay]

Webcomics at Day 100 #4: explodingdog

Pages read: 2000-01-10 - 2000-09-17 (100 update days, but over 500 pages) & 2009-04-13 - 2009-05-26 (a further 13 days/42 pages)

Reason for selection: explodingdog may have been the first popular webcomic to work from reader submissions, and its drawings look like they were made in MS Paint, both key features of early Homestuck. explodingdog also broke containment, with many of its drawings spread elsewhere without attribution, such as being turned into LiveJournal icons or even painted on a building in Seattle.

Original run: 2000-2015, with lots of pages but an intermittent update schedule. Ongoing while Homestuck is getting started.

Content warnings: Extreme (but very abstract/cartoon) violence, gross-out humor involving bodily fluids

Overall thoughts:

I love the idea for this comic. Readers send in a short phrase via email, which can be absolutely anything, and artist Sam Brown chooses the ones that inspire him and draws a picture based on that phrase. However, reading the comic as an archive in the future, I don’t love the execution. Quite a few of the drawings made me openly groan, roll my eyes, or shake my head. There were definitely a few that got genuine laughs out of me, but they were a small percentage.

None of this is intended as shade to the artist – Brown seems like a decent guy based on the interviews I’ve read, and I hope he had fun making this. Running a webcomic for fifteen years is an impressive feat in itself, but this one just isn’t for me, at this point, in its current form.

Brown has stated that he has ‘never really seen explodingdog as a comic’ and calls his work a ‘collaborative art project’ although his reasoning hinges on the idea that comics have to be funny, and that humor isn’t the goal of his work. I personally think that comics are a medium that can work in any genre, not just comedy, and so webcomic is appropriate. In an essay, Kyle Conway argues that explodingdog is an absurdist theater performance, employing improvisation and experienced as live by its audience. Conway also highlights the design of the website, where instead of placing the most recent installment on the homepage as most webcomics do, individual titles have to be clicked on to see the accompanying artwork. In Brown’s words, ‘the story happens in your head’ between the title and image.

Conway’s arguments make sense from his position as a real-time reader. A huge draw of explodingdog is the knowledge that the captions came from ordinary folk on the internet, and that you, the reader, could submit a caption, and a cooler guy on the internet would think it was interesting or poignant or funny enough to make a drawing out of. The moment between clicking on the page’s title and seeing its corresponding image, where the reader comes up with their own interpretation of the title, is meaningful when the drawings are given out a handful at a time on sporadic days.

But these things don’t work the same in an archive. There’s a much greater distance between the reader and the creator, with no chance of personally becoming part of the work. And having to click every individual page from the menu isn’t a smooth reading experience for over 500 pages at once – there’s no ‘next’ button, although weirdly the entire image on each page functions as a ‘previous’ button, which makes an accidental click really frustrating. Brown knew from the start that creating art on the internet made it more temporary than physical art, as websites changed form over time – in a 2006 interview, he said ‘i think it is very possible that either because of government regulation or changes in technology or greedy corporations or a combination of all three, the internet as we expect it to be in 2006 won’t exist in ten years.’

The response to explodingdog during its release seems extremely positive, with lots of people praising how it twists the meaning of prompts and comes up with unexpected interpretations. I personally found that it got very repetitive, very fast. The same twists would happen in a lot of drawings, and would usually involve 2000s-era internet humor such as robots, aliens, stick figures bleeding due to missing their head or limbs, green monsters that are referred to as ‘monkeys,’ and riffs on the idea that ‘other people are stupid.’ There are recurring characters, including the Red Robot – famous enough to be featured in quite a few other webcomics – a second robot that grows roses in its stomach, a guy watching TV in a space wasteland, Phil, and more.

In some cases, an entire picture is reused. ‘better than being lost in the city’ (6/29/2000) and ‘In the morning things will be better’ (7/13/2000) feature the exact same piece of art, the later one slightly zoomed in. ‘toast from a toaster’ (1/11/2000), ‘Toast goes in the toaster’ (6/19/2000) and ‘Toast’ (7/17/2000) all three contain the same image. The gimmick, as discussed often by Brown, is that the images are inspired by the captions – not that the images already existed and happened to fit something that was submitted. I really hope this disappears in later years.

Like other comics I’ve read, I did notice a lot of improvement in the art between 2000 and 2009 in terms of complexity and ease of understanding. In both cases the art is mostly irregular, childlike stick figures and blobs, with no intent for the art to be technically good. In 2000, there’s a lot of muted colors including browns, grays, khakis and oranges. The color palette often isn’t nice to look at (in my opinion) and as the images often depict unpleasant things such as vomit and lobotomies, they sometimes feel like shock value art. In 2009, the colors have brightened and become more varied, and there’s more use of backgrounds even when the image doesn’t require it. The stick figures are more polished with smoother lines. I was surprised to learn that Brown was already a fine art graduate in 2000; in the nicest possible way, he does such a good job of hiding any actual skill.e

I think that even in the modern day there is great potential for certain explodingdog comics to be used as reaction images or ‘tag your oc’ style memes. However, due to the nature of the project, I think this comic would be better enjoyed as a greatest hits collection than as a full archive.

Relevance to Homestuck: explodingdog is one of the webcomics linked from MSPA under the heading ‘No Shortage of Good Websites,’ and due to its prominence in the 2000s, may have been a direct influence on Hussie choosing to work from reader commands. They’re both comics that collaborate with their audience and invite readers who want to share in the work’s creation.

In explodingdog, the images vary on how they relate to the captions – some draw the phrase straight up, some are a ‘yes and,’ some are a direct response (if the caption is a question) and some feel unrelated, but feature a stick figure who could possibly be saying that caption. The ‘yes and,’ where Brown uses the phrase and adds a second, followup phrase that changes the context, were the most effective ones for me. This might be because they felt the most Homestuck – Hussie does the same move where they take a reader command and add something else so that the command is followed, but is different to intended. A recent example is p.597, where the command is ‘Use ice maker, it’s still hot around here.’ and the response is ‘yes, Dave uses the ice maker, and it’s full of cherry bombs, not ice.’

Finally, both comics put out a large number of pages per day, unlike the majority of comics which stick to a single page per day. Both explodingdog and Homestuck published 4-6 pages on most update days in their first years, and both occasionally broke into double digits. Clearly some aspect of their creation is designed to make a lot of content, as fast as possible, to the point that some readers might consider them quantity over quality.

Continue reading? In a 2004 interview Brown said ‘my website is available to anyone on the Internet for free, but millions of people would rather see porn or sports scores.’ I’m not huge on either porn or sports scores but I still think I am one of those people.

[hdowlpost]

How To Submit Your Gifts

We had people ask about submitting the H/D Owlpost gifts and the header templates. :)

So here comes the Submission Info for Your Gifts! First things first: If you have any problems, concerns, or questions about your gifts or giftees, please email us at hdowlpostmaster@gmail.com.

You still have almost four weeks until November 22 when submissions are due! We cleared off all the mice droppings and pumpkin seeds gift wrappings and ribbons from last year's fest, and the Owlery is spic & span, waiting for all your sparkly gifts to arrive. The AO3 Collection for H/D Owlpost 2024 is open.

If you haven't confirmed your Assignment yet, please do so now.

We will send out Check-in mails in the next days. Please reply to them so we know that you are on track with your Owlpost gifts. A short "All well" is perfectly fine. Or tell us how we can help you!

Don't wait with your submission until you've created all your gifts: It's best for us when you send us each gift as soon as you've finished it, one after the other.

SUBMISSION INFO:

• Please post your gift fics, podfics, art, pictures of craft gifts, recipes etc. to the Harry/Draco Owlpost 2024 Collection! The Collection is moderated and unrevealed, so gifts will not be revealed before the posting date. You as the creator will remain anonymous until we de-anon the Collection for the Big Reveal on January 12, 2025.

• After having posted your gift to AO3, please fill out the header template below and send it to the mod email: hdowlpostmaster@gmail.com We will use this header for posting your gift at LiveJournal, tumblr and the Owlpost Discord.

• When sending your email, include your username in the subject line as well as the name of your recipient. EXAMPLE: "Username - Gift for X") --> "Owl_Saviour - Gift for Blond_Git"

• Please send the header for each of your gifts in a separate email. It makes our job so much easier.

• If you want us to post your fic to A03, let us know and we'll happily post it for you.

Gift Header

Here's the template for the header.

Gift from: Title: Summary: Word Count OR Art Medium OR Podfic Length: Rating: Contains: Notes:

( TITLE )

FOR PODFIC GIFTS, please add: Podfic cover: add here who created the podfic cover, you or someone else Podfic length: add the length of your podfic Podfic gifts are not anonymous.

ABOUT BETA GIFTS: If you are gifting a beta reading, please contact your giftee and offer your beta services. For beta-reading gifts, anonymity is waived between gifter and giftee. But please do not tell other people or post about the beta gift you are giving. The beta reader should still be anon for fandom at large. The betaed fic does not have to be Drarry or even a Harry Potter fic. It can be any story that is agreed upon between the beta and author. Beta-readings should be completed by the submission deadline of @hdowlpost Fest (November 22, 2024). Once you have finished the beta, please send us an email and tell us which story you betaed. Thank you! ♥

ABOUT COMMENT/REVIEW GIFTS: Please use this alternative header.

Gift from: Review/Comment of: TITLE OF FIC Summary of Fic: Word Count of Fic: Rating of Fic: Commenter's Notes:

Last and final things: Email us if you have any problems. We are very generous with extensions and we totally understand that people may need an extension. So don't hesitate to ask for for one. We try to make Owlpost work for everyone and have as little stress as possible. ♥ If you need to drop out of the fest, please email and tell us. We swear that we understand; life happens, no judgement. But we need to know so we can find pinch-hitters. ♥ ♥

Your Owl Postmasters @kittymiaomeow and @vaysh11 & the Owls

[sassygrrl32]

Finally Got Tire Fixed In Slidell, La~Rachel Holbert Jones

I got into the Walmart Auto Care Center (formerly Tire & Lube) this morning to get the car tire for the Ford Flex fixed. It turns out there was nothing wrong with the car tires. It was just low on air but all four were low on air by about 12 pounds which is surprising. I’m equally surprised the tire pressure warning didn’t come on sooner. I thought it would come on when the tires dropped by only…

[fanwork-exchange-promos]

Multifandom: New Year's Countdown 2024 - Sign-up Open Till November 30

Posted by: lee_bella newyearcntdown is running New Year's Countdown 2024, a multi-fandom December prompt challenge focusing on the end of the year and winter holidays. Sign-up is required to participate in it. You can create your own list of prompts with the prompts provided. You can also request for the mod to create a prompt list for you. There are several levels of difficulty: Easy (post a total of 8 works), Moderate (post a total of 12 works), Hard (aim to post all 25 days), and Overachiever (aim to post all 31 days). This mainly serves as a personal goal; you are not required to stick to it. Sign-up is open from November 1 to November 30. See the links below for the Dreamwidth and Livejournal sign-up post. Links: Dreamwidth | Livejournal | AO3 | Rules & Prompts | Sign-up on DW | Sign-up on LJ Medium: Accepts any medium of any length. Welcomes both fanworks and original works. Timeline: Sign-up: November 1 - November 30 Posting opens: December 1 Posting soft close: December 25 Posting hard close: December 31 comments via The Fandom Calendar https://ift.tt/lPpmR6e

[shelandsorcery]

High Intensity Comic Work

So my first round of art school was a fine art degree. And I didn't really know a lot about art careers and I wasn't really sure what I WANTED to be doing, but I did kind of chafe against the "comics aren't art" vibe some teachers had. And then Shannon Gerard came and talked. And Shannon's gone on to do a lot, a LOT of really cool stuff (http://shannongerard.org) but her talk was about, or at least mentioned, how she was doing comics as part of a cross-disciplinary masters, by making them with lithographic prints. Which is, I think, a real flex. Like, it's one thing to draw a comic, and another thing to draw it backwards, soak it in chemicals, and then, one page at a time, pull the right amount of successful prints from the stone, before you could draw the next page. It still boggles my mind. Just fuckin incredible. And her process did two things - it elevated the medium to something the more traditional fine art faculty would engage with, and it also used the then popular genre of autobio/confessional comics, which probably also helped get fine art profs to connect with the project. So my memory of her talk is prettttty faded, but what it did was give me permission to be a real shit about bringing comics back into my fine art work. Clearly I just needed to use more punishing mediums! So I did. Did I have anything to say WITH those comics? No. Would that stop me? Also no. So, in my final year of art school, baby artist shel decided to paint and etch comics of the most banal shit you can think of.

I did a BUNCH of these, and if you think these painted ones are... slow and meditative....

Wait'll you see the blood, sweat and tears I poured into intaglio prints of empty spaces:

These were etched and aquatinted into copper plates, printed by wiping ink into every crevasse in the metal and then wiping all the excess ink off the face, then squeezing them through a huge heavy press, one print at a time.

That said I do still like these haunted window views inspired by taking the subway up past Yorkdale station every day for school. But oh my god the LABOUR it took to make these. Was that the secret to making them fine art? I do not know, I just know I gave it a real good try. I even screenprinted a deconstructed journal comic, god help me:

Anyways, the last piece I made this way was also the first fine art painting I ever sold, and it was titled "waiting" and it was a journal comic about doing my first Canzine alone when my teammate ditched. Painted in layers and layers of acrylic, across six canvases.

Did I use these as livejournal icons for years after? Yes. Anyways now when I feel like I'm being a bit of a try-hard, I at least know where I learned it. Oh my gosh okay I did make ONE more of these, the year after I graduated. It's very angsty.

Read the full article

[animanga-bc-tournament]

What is animanga Before Crunchyroll

This is a period in time roughly from 2005-2014 when the world is fully post-internet and Japanese anime and manga was already fully integrated into international youth culture and readily available to people outside of Japan.

Animanga fans had access via legal offline channels such as: television, home video, libraries, and bookstores. And illegal online channels such as: Youtube, pirate streaming sites, and torrenting. It is also a period with a sudden change in our general media viewing and reading habits impacted by events and technological innovations like the 2008 financial crisis, the introduction of social media as a primary way to be online, smartphones, and the slow death of live TV

Why start this period in 2005?

This page will be primarily dedicated to the English language distribution and fandom around anime and manga. By this point in time we are well beyond the stage of “evangelizing” animanga as mediums and a canon of “must watch/read” series has already been established.

The above mentioned channels were well established and readily accessible. Depending on where you lived you had a higher chance of being able to go to the bookstore and read the latest Fruits Basket volume, go to anime conventions, watch anime on TV, or join your school’s anime club, than in say 1996. The media industry in several countries outside Japan has or will soon start investing in the distribution of translated animanga for the first time ever. The US manga bubble spearheaded by Tokyopop is also still a few years from bursting.

From this point on online fan communities dedicated to anime and manga also steadily expanded via forums, database sites, to eventually meme aggregator sites, or facebook groups around 2010. In 2005 Geocities pages dedicated to sharing information are mostly dead and platforms such as Livejournal become the new place to engage in fan activities and access unofficial translations until the site was en masse abandoned following its 2009 acquisition by SUP Media

Why end this period in 2014?

Short version: 2014 is when the Naruto manga ended a mere 2 years after the Bleach anime ended its Japanese broadcast. Marking the end of the chapter on a seemingly endless period where every week without fail you could expect not just a new chapter of the manga, but a new episode of the anime version for the mega hits Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach. Kids today will thankfully never know what it was like for years have all of these series as a constant presence in 2 mediums simultaneously. This trio was controversially called the “Big 3” by fans. I could also easily leave it to the fact that of course after 9 years fans have obviously grown up and moved on and the face of the industry itself is completely different. But was just the medium that changed? What about the way international fans interacted with it? I will now present my case on why we can use the popularity of Crunchyroll as a service to make a pre- and post- era in the way international fans consumed animanga.

When the US manga bubble burst after the 2008 financial crisis there was a massive shift in which manga was licensed. The publishers that survived the collapse had to downscale their output leading series to be cancelled or go out of print for several years. The cost of manga also went up turning translated print manga into bigger investments for consumers. Another major shift is online fan translations (scanlations) becoming more prominent and accessible, with new aggregator sites appearing one by one. Not only could you read as much manga as you wanted for free with unedited art and a translation that felt more “authentic”. The high output from the fan translators revealed not just how much manga was not being licensed; the international publishers were often really far behind and much slower than the original Japanese serial.

The popularity of scanlations has always caused obvious tension to the decisions on what US publisher would license as companies like Viz Media and Vertical inc repeatedly expressed the belief that fans would never buy a title they already read for free online. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that as the fansubbers of the 1990s proved, unpaid fan translators were and still are the most significant tastemakers and gatekeepers of Japanese media for an international audience.

This sets the stage for what i personally believe forever changed the way international fans watch anime (and in turn read manga): social media and the premiere of Kill la Kill and Attack on Titan. Prior to this the average international animanga fans experienced anime rather delayed. There is little awareness of what was actually new in Japan and to the average fan watching anime recommended in online or offline communities may have been enough. But how many official channels like TV, video rentals, and home video sales were actually available as distributors went out of business or lost their licenses how was a fan supposed to watch the series they wanted to see? And what if you didn’t even live in a country with any of these official channels? Fansubs or DVD rips uploaded to Youtube, torrenting sites, or other unauthorized streaming aggregators successfully democratized access to anime for anyone with a stable internet connection. The high output of fansubbers just like scanlators also revealed again just how far behind the official channels were. Why wait for the right to purchase something when you know you want it and can just get it for free online?

Enter Crunchyroll: the site was founded in 2006 as a for-profit media hosting site for east asian media. A lot of the media hosted was unauthorized and illegal but some distributors chose to look the other way. This was until Crunchyroll started securing more and more funding in turn letting them enter legal partnerships and distribution deals. Eventually striking gold with partnership with Studio Gonzo and the acquisition of the Naruto Shippuden anime rights. Eventually all unauthorized media was removed from the site as they built a catalogue of anime for consumers to legally stream, at a price. In parallel to this, by 2012 fansubbers could and were expected to keep up with just about every new anime airing in Japan.

Another change happened in our daily lives: smartphones became a piece of technology most people owned. And the abrupt consumer shift from live TV to streaming was right around the corner.

A gradually acquired awareness of just how far behind and slow official “legal” channels were was already completely reshaping the way the most avid fans viewed anime. So was our new phones. The smartphone wasn’t just good for watching anime while you were away from home it also made reading manga online an even easier experience. How were the official distributors supposed to compete with this?

Unfortunately most pirate streaming sites were slow to implement players that functioned on smartphones, Youtube was also not far from implementing an aggressive DMCA strike system preventing new anime uploads. A service like Crunchyroll became more and more attractive as it was available in almost any region outside of Asia. With a big catalogue of titles that put Netflix and hulu to shame and a smartphone app that worked smoothly, it didn’t seem like a bad deal for people who wanted to watch anime on their phones or other devices, not to mention the premium gave you HD quality. A luxury the illegal sites couldn’t always grant. And it offered what previously only fansubbers could: you got to see brand new episodes of subtitled anime only an hour after it aired in Japan. It’s second major selling point to younger and less financially free individuals was that free users could watch as much as they wanted as long as they sat through ads, were fine with SD quality, and being 1 week behind on brand new anime.

Socially the immediacy and size of large scale social media like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter cultivated bigger and bigger and more public communities. It became more and more commonplace to not just watch and read whatever was recommended to you but to keep up as well as finding the next cool thing before anyone else. So what channels would keep you updated on everything new? Trustworthy sources were for many still difficult to discern. More and more fans were watching new anime at the same time as Japanese viewers via illegal and legal channels, but what would it even look like if everyone watched the same show the same time as Japanese viewers?

When Attack on Titan premiered in April of 2013 we learned. Its immediate success was unprecedented and shocking. In a matter of weeks previously unprecedented changes happened within the official channels. Not only could the US industry observe how overnight every online community was discussing this new series, Crunchyroll who streamed the series from episode 1 could provide them the actual numbers proving its success. For the first time the dub specialists Funimation would offer an unsubtitled and ongoing series for sale on iTunes. Kodansha America as well had lucked out by licensing the manga over a year prior giving the US industry another rare example of how a successful anime can give a previously niche series an unprecedented boost in sales. For fansubbers and anime and manga aggregators to keep up if a hit like this was to occur again they had to somehow work faster than Crunchyroll, or just steal from them.

Attack on Titan i think was the first time such a huge group of people all at once learned and experienced how to keep up with a brand new anime and still ongoing manga. October the same year Kill la Kill, an original story and the first work by Studio Trigger directed by the already acclaimed Hiroyuki Imaishi premiered. Once again there was an unprecedented amount of attention from international fans given to a series that was still airing in Japan. This new desire to be part of a series as it was happening was not just significant to the way international fans started viewing and evaluating anime and manga but also new opportunities for the industry to make a profit by investing more and more into “simultaneous” streaming

I didn’t read all that, sorry

Fans come to expect instant access to brand new anime and manga -> Crunchyroll is the only service able to fulfill that expectation and can do it faster than a fansubber -> in 2013 an unprecedented hit opens the eyes of the industry and anime fans alike -> now discussions and trends among international fans of anime and manga is more than ever centered around what’s “new”, a huge shift from when awareness around “newness” was vague or less relevant to how international fans interacted with animanga

How will you qualify an anime or manga as B.C. (Before Crunchyroll)

This blog and its polls will be primarily centered on the offline and online English speaking fan communities. English Second Language speakers are included in this.

Any survey will include works that received translations (official as well as unofficial) into the English language. And with consideration of these criteria

If anime: did it air on TV in the US, Canada, UK, or Australia? If so when and through which channels. Because the aforementioned delays in distribution this will matter more than when it first aired in Japan. I will continue to make 2005 my start point but exceptions might be made for series that were in some way rereleased or put in long term syndication. 2014 is the end point because of the above mentioned changes in how a lot of us watched anime was completely changed by this point in time.

Did it receive a fansub? When and by which group(s)? Identifying the groups also allows us to map out who were the tastemakers and what they wanted to make accessible to other fans. This is very key for anime that sustained popularity despite not being accessible through official channels for extended periods in the years 2005-2014. Also if you don’t live in the countries listed above it was most likely the only way you watched anime.

How often did it appear in “Anime is life” collages? (VERY IMPORTANT DATA!! how else are we supposed to quantify its cultural impact)

If manga: was it licensed by a US publisher? If so when and by who? This also matters more than when it was serialized in Japan. Viz Media’s Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump, and Tokyopop’s catalogue are very defining of the first half of this era and shaped our manga starter pack years after they stopped existing.

Did it receive a scanlation? When and which group(s)? Once again key to identifying the true tastemakers starting around 2010. Scanlations were not just key in bringing fans brand new manga hot off the Japanese presses faster than a US publisher could, but was very important in making manga that were neglected by publishers accessible in English.

Any criteria you want to suggest or already use yourself to determine eras of animanga? Or perhaps your own memories of this time? Feel free to share!!

[tasticbastard]

i’m thinking about past debates and discourse between fob and mcr fans over which band has the better lyrics and every time it comes up it makes me want to bash my own head in out of frustration.

the lyrics in fob and mcr serve different purposes and are born from different wells of influence so it just feels wild to try to say that one is objectively better than the other. it’s like comparing apples and oranges.

pete wentz is a poet first and foremost so he approaches lyric writing the same way with very intentional word choice and turning of phrases. this has lead to Many Fights between him and patrick bc the rhythm doesn’t always translate satisfyingly which gives fob their signature slightly off-kilter and irregular rhythms as patrick figures out a way to make it work with the music. he’s also very introspective and confessional, something he derived from his livejournal blogging (you can often find many lyrics are recycled from his blog posts) a lot of his writing is based on real life experiences and his perspective of the world.

gerard way comes from a more visual narrative perspective. they have said that comic books and movies and theater have influenced them tremendously as an artist and that’s definitely something he brought to mcr. this is not at all to say that gerard is impersonal in his writing approach, they just more often filter it through a pulpy genre narrative and cloak it in literary metaphor that makes it rewarding to engage with. this is also not to say that gerard’s writing process is entirely hinged upon overall storytelling, as i believe they’ve mentioned before in passing that the overall concept narrative only comes together at the end and isn’t premeditated (kind of like a breaking bad approach to writing, where you follow the organic line of decisions and consequences rather than relying on an outline)

all this to say, fob and mcr work in different mediums of writing and you may resonate with one more than the other based on your personal taste rather than objective quality. it’s an exhaustive waste of time to try to argue which is better when they are simply created and engaged with differently.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/732102519664361472/i-think-it-should-be-compulsory-for-people-who

If you want a distaff counterpart to AO3/Livejournal style fanfic fandom, you probably want hentai doujunshi.

In doujunshi spaces, you get tons of guys, most of them straight and cis, telling stories about blorbo from their shows, often with the same kinds of tropes you see in AO3 fanfic. There's a focus on shipping, blatant self inserts abound, porn without plot is about as popular as plotty smut, the same AUs get recycled for multiple fandoms, silly tropes exist as both kinks in and of themselvs and as shortcuts to get the characters into relationships. Compared to AO3, there is more focus on the smut than on the plot, and works tend to be shorter, but that's as easily explained by it being a visual medium as by the genders of the fans creating and reading the works. Most of it is het, but you also see plenty of f/f and even some m/m, primarily written by and for straight men (which mirrors how a lot of Livejournal and mailing list fic was het, with plenty of m/m and even some f/f, largely by and for straight women),

Since I don't speak any Japanese (I read doujunshi in translation), I can't say much about the fan communities surrounding these works, but from the works themselves I can say pretty confidently that it's the same thing as the traditional fanfic fandom we have going on in English.

--

Spear counterpart.