Fan Fiction vs. Tie-In Fiction: A Framework
Every once in a while, fandom is beset upon by a series of somewhat aggressive arguments about the function of accuracy in film/tv adaptations. The best of these follow my own path, which involves assessing the work on its own terms before going back to look at how it functions as an adaptation. The worst of these, however, fall into a familiar trap of damnation by comparison — typically by comparing an adaptation to fan fiction. Essentially, the argument goes, substantial deviations from the source material make a work more fan fiction than adaptation; by doing so, these works become worse off. Fan fiction, in other words, is, by implication, a lesser form of art. None of this, of course, is particularly surprising. While many fan fiction writers and the community which surrounds them find great value in fan fiction and its various related works (fan art, etc.), there has always been a side of the broader fan community which views such works as a lesser fan pursuit, artistically weak, or, in the most brutal rejection, contemptable garbage (sometimes verging on a kind of moral decay).
4 Things Twitter Could Do to Make Blue Worth Paying For (But Probably Won’t)
Over the past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about why Twitter Blue has not been the success its new owner had hoped for. While subscription numbers are hard to assess, Endgadget reported that as late as mid-January, Blue had only 290,000 subscribers worldwide, which doesn’t come close to Musk’s demand that the company get half of its revenue from subscriptions. Using absurdly basic math, you’d need 15.6mil subscribers at an $8/mo average to meet half of Musk’s revenue expectation of $3bil. If you’re in podcast circles, you’ll sometimes hear that anywhere from 1 to 10% of your listeners will subscribe to a Patreon (in my case, it’s about 3.7%). For Twitter, the target is around 3.4% (depending on the number you use for active users), which should be achievable in a short time frame. And yet, all data suggests that this isn’t remotely the case. But why? What is keeping Twitter from reaching a subscription milestone? There are probably dozens of reasons, from violations of the trust thermocline, Doctorow’s enshittification theory, distrust in the ownership of the platform, the consumer conception of value as free things become paid things, and so on. Twitter, in other words, is a mess.
2022 is Here (or, Hell, I Need a Different Year…)
1. 2021 is a Thing That Happened, But Nobody Wanted It 2021 is gone. It’s back there. Submitted to the book of time for appraisal, and it will be found guilty of being largely a miserable affair. Some scholars might even say it was an avoidable mistake. Now, we’re in 2022, and unlike 2021, when I thought that maybe we’d get our shit together and push forward to some new future worth living in, I just don’t have a lot of good things to say about 2022. Omicron is here, and if Google statistics are anything to go by (pulled from NYT), we’re looking at yet another year of this shit. 824,000 people dead. Possibly as many as 50% of COVID survivors get some version of “long COVID,” which can, in some cases, be debilitating for months or life. I mean, just look at it…
On Ethics and Linking Policies (or, Yeah, DNL Doesn’t Work That Way)
The Internet is a wonderful place. The Internet is a terrible place. The Internet is where dreams go to live and die in a messy conglomeration of joy, hate, madness, rage, love, sadness, and bewilderment. We want this Internet place to be safe for everyone. Yet, so often it is not. Given the right prompting, Internet detectives can hunt down your information, reveal your identity, and really ruin your day. Hell, in some cases, these folks have ruined entire lives, making people feel unsafe in their actual homes. It’s an obvious problem, and one that thus far we don’t really have a solution for — at least, not one that doesn’t involve putting your entire online identity behind a firewall of private accounts. Even then, it doesn’t necessarily work, since your private accounts can be infiltrated by especially motivated people.
On Forgiveness and Redemption (Storify)
[Update: since a number of people are reaching my blog via this page, please see this addendum post, which includes an apology and other things related to this post.] You’ll need to click the “read more” because the darn Storify is so long that it floods my main page. [View the story “On Forgiveness and Redemption” on Storify]
A Conversation with Josh Vogt About the Internet and Perverted Things
(Trigger warning for anyone bother STD analogies…) SCENE: In the minutes before Shaun’s new editing website went live, an unsuspecting Josh Vogt is gifted an exchange of adolescent absurdity on Facebook. SHAUN: I want to announce this thing, but I can’t do it if the stupid thing doesn’t propagate. Make Internet love and spread already! JOSH: You make it sound like an STD. SHAUN: It’s kind of like one…It waits for an unsuspecting server to touch it in its delicate place, and then infects it with new information. That’s all STDs are. New information. We just perceive it as genital warts. JOSH: Ew. Though that’d make an intriguing character POV. SHAUN: I’m actually laughing right now because that’s funny shit right there. JOSH: Someone who worships disease because it’s just information and information must be shared to have value. SHAUN: I’m going to tweet that… JOSH: No no! I’m stealing your idea. You’ll see it in a book someday. SHAUN: That’s cool. I just want to tweet the convo. Because it’s funny. But I can save it. JOSH: Naw. SHAUN: I’ll use it as blackmail when you sell the story. JOSH: Spread the love SHAUN: I will spread Internet genital warts. Yes. JOSH: So is Twitter an orgy then? SHAUN: Yes. I can’t tweet this. Some of the sentences are too long. Can I put it on my blog? JOSH: Sure nuff. SHAUN: Woot! IT HAS PROPOGATED! JOSH: Heheh SHAUN: http://thedukeofediting.com/ My Internet genital warts virus has flowered! JOSH: I really hope this isn’t anything I dream about tonight…Soon, websites will instead be known a webstds SHAUN: We’re part of the future, Josh. Part of the *FUTURE.* THE END