Comments for Overthinking It

Comment on Of course, their webspiders are probably gathering evidence against us even as I type. by stokes

stokes — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:27:56 +0000

Gab, you’re totally right, but they tried to sue the software producers already, and it didn’t work. Since file-sharing software has legitimate uses, the producers aren’t liable for anything illigitimate we do with it. (The film industry filed a similar suit against VCR manufacturers back in the day, and was rebuffed for the same reason.)

Websites that advertise torrents could be a better target (after all, you’re not allowed to put an ad in the yellow pages saying “Get your crack cocaine here!”), but all that would happen is they’d move to countries with looser copyright laws. I mean, look at the Pirate Bay.

Comment on The Bromantic Gaze by coffee buzz

coffee buzz — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:50:28 +0000

I was so happy that MTV thought to make such a bromantic show, it brought a little tear to my eye…

Comment on The Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock, or, Why We’re All Out of Good Songs by BruceMR

BruceMR — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 02:42:30 +0000

This whole graphic is merely measuring the general decline with age of those doing the judging of the songs. They like the songs they toked to when they were young, and now remember fondly. They didn’t have babies then. Now, they have houses with mortgages they can’t pay and divorce to contend with, and so they don’t love new music as much. Of course: they’re OLD. FREAKIN’ OLD.

I should know: I’m one. Actually, I do like some new music. And, I’ve been thinking lately that the Rolling Stones weren’t as great as we all thought. And, I do like Green Day. And Jet. And …

So, we’re not ALL old and dried up. Some can still FEEL THE MUSIC. The rest are old farts.

Comment on An Unlikely Source of Superhero Fan Fic by DorkusMaximus

DorkusMaximus — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:03:31 +0000

After Hellboy II was released in theatres, I saw a promo for GhostChasers where Hellboy compliments the crew for fighting monsters, only to be disappointed when they tell him that all they do is shoot videotape.
It’s a parody–a very brief one–but it doesn’t seem to fit Mlawski’s definition of fan fiction based on the “Why I’m Not Going to Read Your Fanfic” article.
I thought it was pretty darn funny, though.

Comment on Actual Quanta of Solace by CT

CT — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:03:00 +0000

Wonderful!

Comment on Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad for Women by Lawtears

Lawtears — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:44:58 +0000

I can’t believe you ascribe such importance to American piss. Why do you care so much about this crap? I’d bet 90%+ of viewers aren’t interested. Admittedly, 50% of those viewers watch such films for titilation (I don’t. I use porn for that).

But what about ‘girly’ films and chick flicks? Or “The Island” where Euan McGreggor v2 has absolutely no sexual interest in the female hero? No strong women in them or are you saving your ire for films which might have a masculine slant and hence the hot sexy body look?

Lawtears

Comment on Of course, their webspiders are probably gathering evidence against us even as I type. by Gab

Gab — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:49:58 +0000

Damnit, I misspelled “Foucault”…

Comment on Of course, their webspiders are probably gathering evidence against us even as I type. by Gab

Gab — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:48:33 +0000

Foucoult is sexy. I’m even in the Facebook group that tells me so.

I get frustrated with this crap a lot because I think the bottom line that will save everybody $$$ in the end is for the companies to not go after individual people but instead the suppliers of their software and the websites advertising torrents and stuff. It’s like a zombie video game: you can run around shooting individual or even groups of zombies as much as you want, but until you destroy the facility the virus originated from (or it starts its self-destruct-sequence), the game isn’t over- they’ll keep coming.

Comment on An Unlikely Source of Superhero Fan Fic by fenzel

fenzel — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:37:52 +0000

Also, I kind of take issue with “earony.” It seems to be pretty much nonsense. There is nothing about irony itself that says it can’t be earnest. There’s lots of earnest irony out there that is just irony and doesn’t require an additional qualifier (like, for example, “The Most Dangerous Game,” which I have cited a lot lately to my own amusement. Very ironic story. Earnest to a fault.)

Can somebody explain to me what the word means and what function it serves?

Comment on An Unlikely Source of Superhero Fan Fic by fenzel

fenzel — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:35:18 +0000

This calls for a Venn Diagram.

Parody is almost entirely a subset of fanfiction. The main exceptions would be non-contingent references that are so passing as to not even constitute a crossover (like if Zack Braff has a brief fantasy on _Scrubs_ where he is the Green Lantern), or works that are a combination of hostile and disinterested in the source material to the extent that they fail to fulfill even the very very light burden that the particle “fan” places on “fanfiction.”

But this also means that fanfiction is a lot less strange than we think it is, and I think that’s accurate.

I suppose there’s the additional expectation that fanfiction be produced by amateurs, but I don’t think that requirement really holds as much as we might assume it does.

And it even gets a little muddy with things like Robert Jordan _Conan: The Barbarian_ books. Are those fanfic? He’s not Robert E. Howard, but he is doing it with the legal permission and material compensation from the estate/corporation that owns the rights.

The best way to define fanfiction seems to be to cast a wide net and pull in things like Mad Magazine’s “Star Blecch” http://www.startrekanimated.com/mad_main.html. I don’t see any solid literary criteria that seem to differentiate that from what’s on the Internet and is obviously fanfic.