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This was so much fun! By which I mean that the panelists were insightful and articulate and really enjoyable to listen to (because wow I fucking sucked ldk;gahg I don't want to draw attention to all the ways in which I sucked but let's just say that I got booted from chat, literally forgot my own train of thought, and generally had no idea what I was doing jkfdklghd;lkga okay I guess I just drew attention to all the ways in which I sucked)

BUT SERIOUSLY, THE DISCUSSION WAS SO AWESOME :DDD ♥

Fandomspotting - Episode 2: Give a Fan Enough Trope (Part 1)

Podcast Download - .mp3, 32 MB

Links from this ep:

Morgan Leigh on fandom and the fourth wall

Chris/Jackson Teen Wolf AU gif-set by tylergarcias

New Inception fan forum: Un Cafe

Queer punk Sherlock Holmes!

Previous episodes:

Fandomspotting - Ep 1: Fandom and the Fourth Wall; podcast format

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OH MY GOD IT'S JOSIE LAWRENCE I LOVE HER TOO, SHE'S SO GREAT, THEY ARE ON WHOSE LINE UK, WHERE CAN I FIND THIS EPISODE ;___;

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Ha ha "PROCTOR", is that what we are calling that position, because REALLY, AJA? PROCTOR???

In other news I saw that the url now associated with me is tumblr and no longer LJ, which... is correct, but now I need a drink or something, man

Fandomspotting—Ep 2: Give a Fan Enough Trope…

When: Tomorrow night: Saturday 9/23 12:30 AM GMT (Friday, 9/22 - 7:30 pm EST) Where: YouTube What: to discuss fandom tropes! Hi, all! On today’s episode, we’ll be discussing tropes! How they’ve changed and evolved over the years, how they help us, and how they limit us, and why we love them/hate them! Panelists: Moderator: Ifrit - http://weatherfront.tumblr.com Erin - http://eleveninches.tumblr.com Hello Tailor - http://hellotailor.tumblr.com Lurrel - http://chibi-lurrel.livejournal.com Proctor: Aja - http://bookshop.tumblr.com Send us your questions via Tumblr ask, email (fandomspotting at gmail), twitter, or the #fandomspotting / #fanspotting hashtag! Don’t forget — if you miss tomorrow night’s ep, you can catch up later via podcast! Thanks for watching/listening in, everyone! We hope to see you tomorrow! :)

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A romance for the ages

Fics that will never be written, part 8: Slenderman/Candlejack

The night air hangs heavy ov

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INCEPTION FANDOM, COME ONE COME ALL TO UNCAFE.NOTQUITEROYAL.NET!

This is the fandom cafe that we've been talking about for quite a while; I'm really very sorry for the lateness, it is entirely my fault and I have nothing to blame but my terrible reading comprehension skills. But thanks to the generous bookshop, IT'S HERE NOW!

It is a general all-purpose Inception fandom cafe where we can hang out together and be pals, intended to be very low-key and welcoming. You don't have to be on all the subforums writing 10k essays on limbo logic-- just come on over and hang out on the off-topic board and talk about the face you found on your toast this morning, anything is fine :D

(I'm also very very sorry about the confusion you are probably feeling right now as you are thinking, wait, didn't hesinmombasa just open an Arthur/Eames forum? The answer to this is YES, and it is my fault for 1. not making it clear that another forum was underway, and 2. not realizing that Un Cafe was ready to go. But because of restrictive host server policies, we agreed that it would be helpful to all move to Un Cafe, where our pornographic content can be as pornographic as it pleases!)

SO HOPEFULLY THAT OBNOXIOUSLY COLORED WEIRD-ASS DOODLE CAUGHT YOUR EYE AND NOW YOU HAVE UNCAFE.NOTQUITEROYAL.NET OPEN IN ANOTHER TAB. WHAT? YOU DIDN'T HEAR ME THE SECOND TIME? UNCAFE.NOTQUITEROYAL.NET, FOR GOD'S SAKE, GET A MOVE ON

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HELLO MOD I am not sure if you will see this first or my PM to you on the forum proper first, but-- I was just wondering about the "no swearing" and the "no pornographic content" rules? Both of them seem like they will be a bit difficult to abide by, when the movie itself contains swearing and (I assume) many people will want to discuss and generally ruminate upon porn! If your host server is imposing these rules on you, then there is definitely a solution for that but I-- don't want to get into that here because I don't want to, like, undermine all your hard effort lf;dlkg;dg anyway thank you very much for doing this, and I hope you come back online soooon because I have so many questionssssss

Okay, so I’ve seen a lot of posts in the Arthur and Eames tags recently complaining that there’s no central point for shippers to converge, have a chat, share things, etc so I had the idea to create a free-to-join forum:

Dream A Little Bigger

It offers a place to share/rec fanart and fanfics [...]

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There can never be enough inanimate object fics

Fics that will never be written, part 7: Arthur is Google+. Eames is not having an optimal user experience.

"But I don't understand," cried Eames, "why can't I just display an uploaded avatar? Why do I have to always be showing my face???"

"BECAUSE-- BECAUSE OF REASONS!" yelled Arthur.

[...]

"WHY ARE THERE SIXTEEN WAYS TO ACCIDENTALLY SLIP GOOGLE MY PHONE NUMBER BUT ZERO WAYS TO GET FOLDERS TO DISAPPEAR OFF THE HOME PAGE OF THE NEW GOOGLE DRIVE??!" Eames spluttered, face purple with rage.

"BECAUSE LOGIC IS FOR LOSERS, EAMES!" Arthur shrilled.

(l;fldkhgk;d courtesy of bookshop)

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AW WELL NOW I JUST LOOK LIKE A DICK .__. I mean the clusterfuck that is limbo logic or synchronized kicks aside, it is pretty frustrating to realize that we have basically no reference point to understand -- on a basic level -- how dreams are created. What does it mean to hold an architectural layout in your mind? How do you recall an entire city all at once? What does it mean to FORGE? Does Eames just THINK ABOUT BEING SOMEONE ELSE, REALLY REALLY HARD? And how is it a good idea to consistently give Arthur the job of dreaming levels when, as point, he is also consistently the most likely to GET SHOT (having Nash do it in The Cobol Job made so much more sense, except then Nash also had to run around distracting guards-- shouldn't they have a designated dreamer to just hold the level together in relative safety!) I mean I love the movie too -- though I love the fandom a lot more -- but honestly I don't get it...!

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IT'S OKAY, TROY! THE INCEPTION FANDOM DOESN'T REALLY GET IT EITHER!! WE BLAME CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

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CIRCUIT-CHAPS! Oh god that explanation regarding Second New Old Earth 7 was incredibly vintage Douglas Adams and THIS IS THE BEST SHOW I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE

“Untitled Web Series…” Season 1, Part 1

Inspector Spacetime web series

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Yeah guys I wasn't going to reblog this because I know that everyone who is following me that might be interested at all in this has already seen this post multiple times on their dash already-- but SORRY, BEAR WITH ME, I just think it's a really cool idea that it is going to be live! So that there'll be real-time interaction, and you can send in comments and questions via the Youtube live chat or on twitter :D

WHICH IS WHY BILL O'REILLY IS THE PATRON SAINT OF THIS LIVECAST. FUCK IT! WE'LL DO IT LIVE! Seriously guys we are just starting out and we can't improve without suggestions, so come have a listen if you are free (you can also catch the recorded version later at your own convenience; I won't be online during the episode itself, so that's what I'll be doing this week!)

Tune in at 2PM GMT, Sunday September 16th to hear the very first episode of Fandomspotting, a brand new and super-awesome fannish radio show! It’ll be about one hour long and you can listen at our Youtube channel, where all our future recordings/broadcasts will be located. Our twitter is @fandomspotting, and you can message us whenever, including during broadcasts!

The first topic is Fandom’s Fourth Wall, which is particularly relevent at the moment thanks to things like AfterElton’s Slash Poll and the various goings-on in Teen Wolf and One Direction/Larry Stylinson fandom. The Fandomspotting hosts will switch around a bit from week to week, but this episode will be hosted by me (HelloTailor), Aja from the Daily Dot, Cherrybina from Merlin, Inception and One Direction fandoms, and cthonical from Grimm, Mentalist and Mass Effect fandoms.

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What I don't like about tumblr is, of course -- as with everyone -- an issue that has mostly to do with what my favorite method of fandom participation is. And what I love to do the most in fandom is participate in comment threads where people shoot the crap and joke around about the characters and the setting! Like, when people pile on each other yelling "AND THEN ARTHUR IS LIKE, FUCK YOU, I'M GOING TO FINISH THIS QUESADILLA FIRST, I WAITED TWO WHOLE WEEKS FOR THIS" and then someone else jumps in and says, "LOLOLOL AND EAMES IS LIKE, OK BUT GUNMEN THO :(" Honestly I'd... probably be happy never reading or writing another ~polished~ fic again if my fandoms could be filled to overflowing with that sort of interaction. You can only really do that through reblogging on tumblr! And because I feel pretty awkward when those conversations get long because WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHOSE DASHBOARDS ARE GOING TO BE INUNDATED WITH THIS, and also because it's hard to keep track of who said what last and where, tumblr probably isn't the platform for me.

In addition, I get kind of weirded out by the thought that a lot of the things a user likes are obvious to the casual observer, because doesn't that make you feel like you know them? And I don't know if you are knowable through the things that you like, or if I am knowable through the things that I like, or really whether any of us are knowable at all-- I mean, can't we be sincerely fond of people without knowing them, I mean, do I know who the hell I am? I LIKE FOOTBALL, BUT ALSO I DON'T? Whenever I reblog something I like (which is slightly different from reblogging something I want to add to), I feel a little antsy that through the action of reblogging, I am portraying myself as someone who likes that thing! Since I have a compulsive desire to never bookmark or keep track of anything I've ever enjoyed, that sort of reblogging for me feels so much like a shout of LOOK AT ME, THIS IS WHAT I LIKE. (Reminder, I'm not saying that the act of reblogging itself is like this, but that it feels like that for me; I'm not saying that tumblr is a piece of shit excuse for a platform, but that I don't mesh with it)

ALSO, since reblogging allows you to bring a conversation into your own space when adding to it, I think it makes a lot of people feel safer about expressing their opinions-- which makes sense, but I just feel... safer when my opinions are scattered everywhere and difficult to find... because I know I'll probably contradict myself in about a week or two, and I don't want anyone that happens to be reading this blog to think, oh, I see, Ifrit is a person who has these opinions about these things. No! Maybe I am, but maybe I'm not! Maybe I'm just a person who had this opinion about this one thing because of what they read earlier on that day, or because of the person they talked to over lunch, or because they felt generally angry at the world that entire week, or because they'd just found a twenty-dollar bill on the floor and felt like everything was made of vanilla milkshakes!

So what it boils down to, I guess, is that I don't want a space of my own when it comes to fandom. Which is why even LJ felt very limited to me, because I wanted there to be just one huge marketplace where people would go and yell at each other, not dozens and dozens of journals and communities where conversations would take place. I've never actually been in a mailing list fandom, but I wonder if that's what I would have liked-- with each e-mail, you're talking to everyone! Though I guess I also like the thought of people stumbling onto that marketplace and discovering it, and that doesn't really work for mailing lists so much. Or a forum with flat comments instead of nested threads, I'd like that too, I think. In fact in some ways, it would also be pretty nice if everyone were anonymous at all times-- and if nothing were ever archived so that no one had to stress out about ~creating things of merit~ because it would all just disappear in two weeks anyway--?

That is what I think today, but ask me tomorrow and I might be like UGH THAT'S A TERRIBLE FUCKING IDEA, THEN IT WOULD BE A FANDOM WITHOUT A HISTORY AND NOBODY WOULD EVER REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT AN IN-JOKE MEANS AND WHY IT IS FUNNY!!! Anyway, this was all probably just a way for me to procrastinate, so now that that's done, I suppose I ought to get back to getting eaten alive by school. Wow I bet this entry is really fucking disorganized and reads like a splatter of lukewarm brain soup but in that case it is probably beyond salvaging, I am not going to read it over! It's a mess! It'll stay a mess!

You know what I really like about tumblr though, is those gifsets that are remixed to tell completely different stories :3

The best thing about this whole series is that my editor actually called it “The Livejournal Trilogy.”

THE LIVEJOURNAL TRILOGY!!!!!!! 

So, in case you missed it:

Part 1: The Demise of a Social Media Platform: Timeline of LiveJournal’s Decline;  

Part 2: Keeping Track of a Fandom Diaspora; aaaaaaaand 

Part 3: why we hate tumblr so much but keep using it anyway:

The pros and cons of fandom on Tumblr

For months, arguments about Tumblr have been circulating fandom like a looping GIF. Fandom is using Tumblr more than ever, but many fans hate what Tumblr is doing to fandom. [...]

Read more at the Daily Dot, where it took us 20 minutes to post this because what the fuck is your html interface tumblr arghhhhhhhhhh

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Is this what semiotics is about

I think I missed the memo that should have informed me exactly what emotion the :P emoticon is supposed to convey

because I try to think of real-life situations in which I would stick my tongue out and they all involve me using it to punctuate remarks like "AND MY DAD CAN BEAT UP YOUR DAD SO THERE" / "AND NOW I'M TOO FAR AWAY FOR YOU TO HIT ME BACK SO THERE" / "AND I DON'T WANT TO GO TO YOUR STUPID PARTY EITHER SO THERE"

and also they involve me being five years old

but I don't think anyone online is using it like that and I don't know what it means

WHAT DOES IT MEAN

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THIS IS SUCH A GOOD FORD ;___; omg look at his recalcitrant ginger tresses and his massively ticked-off face and his insouciant color scheme and JUST EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM, DOESN'T HE OOZE "WILLFUL ADOPTION OF TERRIBLE LIFE CHOICES"

also omg Colin ;lkfd;lgkhg;kfl

Cause sometimes the only thing to take your mind off things is Ford furiously flipping off the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy corporate building as he falls to certain death by Vogon.

Not happy with how it turned out- but hey. practice practice practice! :D Might try again (as this is my favorite scene), and include Colin the Robot.

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Askboxin'

That is very sweet of you, Poetry Recommendations Anon, I hope that I am amusing you at least with my panicked excuses for why my answers are so terrible. Nabokov's English works are, I think, some of the purest distillations of good mechanical writing that has ever existed in the English language; in that he showcases stylistic fireworks at their finest, at their most untouchable lofty fucking height. I don't know if I love Nabokov because I consider stylistics the most important part of writing, or if I consider stylistics the most important part of writing because I love Nabokov, but up until maybe three years ago, I would have said that he was my favorite writer.

But there's something weird about academic perceptions of Nabokov, because he's only very rarely taught in classes that are not exclusively about him-- at least in the schools I attended, people tended to dismiss his stuff (especially those other than Pale Fire) as "texts that you can't do much with", a bit closer to Tolstoy than Dostoevsky, in a way. My concentration has nothing to do with Nabokov so unfortunately I've never taken a class on him and I'm not equipped to evaluate this view of his corpus -- and I also don't know if this view is pervasive in other schools as well -- but despite myself, I think all of it must have tempered my love for him somewhat. I'm not sure who I'd eagerly put forward as my favorite writer anymore! However, I'm still of the opinion that it does a body good to go back to Nabokov once in a while just to see what absurd pyrotechnics words are capable of.

DYING FOREVER ALEESHA if this is true then it is probably because of soju! Even so, I'd be pretty surprised-- is this per capita? Total amount of hard liquor consumed?? DID WE BEAT RUSSIA???

LINCOLN. BIG GUY, BIG REACH, SKINNY GUYS FIGHT TILL THEY'RE BURGER. But really, I wonder how much earnest difference an inspiring lunch can possibly make? If I had lunch with Sakyamuni Buddha, would I be a more enlightened person by the end of it? If I had lunch with Rahm Emanuel, could I convince him to be less pigheaded (and also shirtless) by the end of it? Probably the change we want rarely ever comes from knowing what we didn't know before, but from learning how to believe and internalize what we already knew-- and lunch is just an awesome chance for lifetime bragging rights. Anyway, in the end, I think I'd want to have lunch with a person I miss very much.

I... actually haven't read any Julie Otsuka... the excerpts I've seen were beautiful and I really really really want to read her stuff, but I just... HAVEN'T, YET. :'( This is what I hate about being an English major-- I don't want to call the assigned reading useless because hardly any reading is actually useless, even when it's personally super uninteresting and obsolete and also PLAIN OLD WRONG, but just the sheer volume of the mandatory material makes it really difficult to do any leisure reading on your own! Also it does not help that I spend my leisure time frantically trying to do anything but reading, I suppose........................

HAHAHA MY "MUSIC" AND MY "ART", KIND ANON, THANK YOU :')))) It's funny how we feel so much less pressure when creating in forms of media other than our primary, right? Regardless of my obvious lack of talent / training / practice! Or maybe that is because I am pretty used to horrifying my music and art teachers and now I am solidly comfortable with my own mediocrity in those fields-- my piano teacher told me to my face that the day she could stop teaching me would be the happiest day of her life lf;dk;g and in art class once, the teacher looked at my watercolor and just stood still for a few moments, frozen in astonishment, and then she said "...that... no... that's not how you watercolor..." and trailed off into silence. Whereas I suppose the worst I have heard from writing professors is "you are probably not good enough to do this for a living or an MFA" so I still cling to some sort of misguided hope in that regard? WHO KNOWS!

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It's very probable that people who were involved with Inception are aware of the fandom, at least tangentially -- flashback to that time with the explicit A/E fanart on hitRECord (not that that's a surefire guarantee that JGL saw the fanart himself) -- but Inception is a totally different animal from TW in that it was more or less a business-minded venture among professionals just doing their job, whereas the TW actors are budding professionals who are also avid fans of the show, acting in some part as liaisons and allies for the fandom proper. Oh god this is reminding me of how much I still want a television series about induced dreaming, sob

I've been using "arthur x eames" the most so far, but "arthur and eames" does have the benefit of being a lot more useful for tag-based commentary! Ooh maybe Inception fandom should have, like, a ~PSA~ type thing advocating the use of a standardized tag, with fancy rebloggable graphics and stuff, oooooh.

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bookshop's tumblr yesterday was like all of my favorite things flashing before my eyes (K-POP, LES MISERABLES, UTADA HIKARU, FANDOM TALK, OH GOD) and it felt somehow really... gauche to reblog everything... so I am meekly settling for reblogging just one thing, and it is this. Because INCEPTION FANDOM

One of my favorite things about this fandom is that undercurrent of THIS IS SO SILLY!!! running beneath our unironic love for the pairing, the movie, Christopher Nolan. Like-- we really are very fond of all of it, but there's a certain irreverence that makes the fandom really FUN, and I think it's just so great that we don't feel the need to affirm the flawlessness of our source material in order to play with it and enjoy it every way we can. The canon came to us and gave us some building blocks and then left us, the way it does; we're the ones that keep each other standing, and that's awesome. ♥

(Next fandom agenda: standardize the Arthur/Eames tumblr pairing tag l;flkd;g)

So we didn’t win but today alone has prove that A/E and our fandom is stronger than ever, we are respectful of each other and other fandoms, and we don’t ask for much. We may not be as big as we used to be but we are still here and I love it so much it kind of scares me. :’)