The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'fandom'
2006/8/14
What the comic strip Peanuts would be like, had the fans of the day had the same vociferous sense of entitlement they do now:
1962: A newspaper editorial calls Charles Schulz "history's greatest monster" for not letting Schroeder and Lucy get together.
1964: A newspaper editorial calls Charles Schulz "history's greatest monster" for letting Schroeder and Lucy get together.
1966: Fans get impatient with the Red-Haired Girl plotline, declare that she's not worthy of Charlie Brown, and get 10,000 signatures on a petition for Charlie Brown to get a new girlfriend, one who knows magic. And rides a flying unicorn.
(via 
reddragdiva) ¶ 0
2006/7/28
It has been announced that the star of the Harry Potter movies, Daniel Radcliffe, is to appear naked in a West End play. That loud "OMG SQUEE" you just heard was a million Potter fangirls around the world.
2006/4/9
Wired has a photo gallery of obsessive Apple fans; that's Apple, the computer company. It seems that there are people who would do all sorts of things to demonstrate their loyalty, from having the Apple logo tattooed on themselves or shaved into their heads to genuflecting in worship outside the Apple headquarters and dressing up as iPods on Halloween. There's even someone planning a nude calendar of fans posing with their Macs, in black and white with the only colour being inside the sacred machines' screens. Dell and Microsoft couldn't buy loyalty like that.
2004/3/5
Concept of the day (via Found): The Mary Sue story. This is a piece of fan-fiction which is obviously intended as the author's wish-fulfilment trip, features a character who's an idealised version of the author getting to hang out with their favourite Star Trek/Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings characters; the Mary Sue character usually has an Aura of Smooth which causes other characters to trust them and/or fall in love with them for no stated reason, or do other out-of-character things, and often is ridiculously cute, smart, talented or magically endowed, and/or consumed with a very contemporary teen-angst. And, more often than not, has long raven-black hair and exquisitely pale skin.
Or, obviously, Galadriel's secret love-child (Aragorn's unacknowledged daughter) who runs off to join the Company of the Ring, sorts out Boromir's problems, out-magics Gandalf, out-fights Aragorn during the melodramatic scene in which she reveals her true identity, demonstrates herself to be so spiritually elevated that the Ring has no effect on her, and wins Legolas' heart forever.
As you can expect, Mary Sue stories (most of which are probably written by people in the lower reaches of the Geek Hierarchy) are ripe targets for mockery. There is a LiveJournal community dedicated to examining the most egregious examples of Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter fanfic and ripping them gleefully to shreds here; some of the examples (like "Kairi", the raven-haired elf whose abusive father is in league with Sauron, or, indeed, this, or this) sound thoroughly cringeworthy. Anyway, go and read it; it's a laugh-riot.