“My beef is really with the factors that gave rise to this state of affairs, and I realize this beef is deeply stupid: I bridle at the idea that good stuff could be public in the first place, that I should have to share my tastes with the wider world. My love of knowledge-hoarding was part snobbishness, part proprietary, part nesting: I liked the idea that my favorite movies, books and music are for me and a select few others, because they’re special and they’re part of my life. To think that everyone in the world might love them just as much makes me feel like a salt molecule in a tub of brine. Like friendship, taste should be somewhat exclusive — your friends are the ones you choose above all the other bozos. If everybody is friends, then no one is, really. The same applies to being fans of Arcade Fire.”

Why the Old-School Music Snob Is the Least Cool Kid on Twitter - NYTimes.com
  • Source: The New York Times

“For a long time I never looked. People used to say to me, “Do you ever look at the fan sites or see what people have said online?” I was truthful; I said I didn’t. Then one bored afternoon, I googled “Harry Potter.” Oh… my… God. I had NO idea. The shipping wars? For people who are over 18 who may not know about this — because I certainly didn’t — it’s like cyber gang warfare. People who wanted Harry and Hermione to end up together … they’re still out there! Get over it! And other people who wanted Hermione and Ron. And there are very weird couplings as well, but we will not go anywhere near there.”

J.K. Rowling (via the-power-of-potter)

(via solemnlyswearuptonogood)

Some Fandom Links

This weekend I ended up falling through one of those random rabbit holes on the internet and researching some fandom stuff. Now I have all these tabs open, I’m not really sure what to do with them so I guess I’ll dump them here. 

Random things about fannish activity becoming meta-fannish: 

Fanon

Meyshi’s profile - details how fans filed DMCA takedown notices of each others’ commentary on their fanfic. 

And old Harry Potter fandom dramas from back in the day:

Tragic-ish Death of Limeybean // Petter Pettigrew Pseuicide Wank!

Cassandra Claire

HP Lexicon drama (I couldn’t decide if this should go in the first category or the second)

“Participating in cultural life is not something out of ordinary to us: global culture is the fundamental building block of our identity, more important for defining ourselves than traditions, historical narratives, social status, ancestry, or even the language that we use. From the ocean of cultural events we pick the ones that suit us the most; we interact with them, we review them, we save our reviews on websites created for that purpose, which also give us suggestions of other albums, films or games that we might like. Some films, series or videos we watch together with colleagues or with friends from around the world; our appreciation of some is only shared by a small group of people that perhaps we will never meet face to face. This is why we feel that culture is becoming simultaneously global and individual. This is why we need free access to it.”

We, the Web Kids - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic

“The incantation of names is, on its own, a powerful literary style. The enchantment the Eragon series projects is not that of a story well told but that of an alternative world fully entered. You sense that when you hear a twelve-year-old describe the books. The gratification comes from the kid’s ability to master the symbols and myths of the saga, as with those eighty-level video games, rather than from the simple absorption of narrative.”

“The Lord of the Rings,” “Twilight,” and Young-Adult Fantasy Books : The New Yorker

“I argue that what Hegel means in this passage and what Gaga is attempting to say about identity have much in common. Hegel’s argument is that the really real, the “actual”, the human subject, must include both itself and the perception of itself. There is always a distance inherent in identity, a sense in which a person knows who and where they are, and also that they could be something else someplace else. Thus, in a way, identity is an empty space, a gulf across which the self is perceived by something at once itself and alien. Compare this idea to one of Gaga’s tweets in the days before the video was released: “We bare an Unbearable Human Inability: to just ‘be.’” She grasps what Hegel means when he writes that “this substance is, as Subject, pure, simple negativity” – humans are nothing more than the perception of something missing, of a void wherein that perception will always struggle and transform in an attempt to be fulfilled. Hence the arduous distance Cyborg Gaga must traverse, which leaves her ankles caked with blood, before she can return to a home as alien as it must be familiar. Hence the painful, rapine, monstrous transformation Mermaid Gaga undergoes before the throes of pleasure, before the coming-home of orgasmic ecstasy; hence the desire of Nightie Gaga for her dream object, which is after all only an inversion of herself. That tweet also includes “love is a result” – the result of this striving, a homecoming across the gulf of the self, which is perhaps not so different from the gulf between two selves.”

Gaga Stigmata: Yoü and I

Raw Pinkamena 3d Print (by Hashbrony)

This is making me incredibly happy. Someone out there is part of the My Little Pony fandom, then decides that fan art and whatnot is not enough, so starts building 3d models of the ponies, and getting them printed from Shapeways… Mind you, the pony lacking color is a feature, not a bug, so you can customize it yourself. THEN, decides to post a video of the thing to YouTube, set to a song remixed from the show by another Brony. Seriously, remix culture is ridiculous.