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#Source: the Jenkins comics
honoka-marierose · 2 months
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About a decade ago, Zack Snyder developed a storyline for the DC Extended Universe that involved Bruce Wayne impregnating Lois Lane.
The subplot in which Batman cuckolds Superman was poised to unfold in “Justice League,” with Batman dying in the sequel and Lois raising their spawn with Superman. Snyder’s vision for Wonder Woman was equally unorthodox, with visuals featuring a superheroine who brandished the decapitated heads of her conquered enemies like an ISIS jihadi.
Warner Bros. and DC Studios — which hold a firm grip on their intellectual property — rejected Snyder’s ideas, which were deemed “super creepy,” according to a source familiar with the back and forth. (DC declined to comment for this story. A representative for Snyder did not respond to a request for comment.) But in the next decade, artists and rival studios won’t need permission to create their own take on the characters.
A sad fact of Hollywood is that while superheroes never truly die, all copyrights do. On Jan. 1, Disney lost control of “Steamboat Willie,” and within 24 hours two horror-comedies starring Mickey Mouse were announced. The DC characters are the next major expirations looming on the horizon. Superman and Lois Lane will enter the public domain in 2034, followed by Batman in 2035, the Joker in 2036 and Wonder Woman in 2037.
Chris Sims, a comic book author and Batman expert, expects a flood of unauthorized Batman comics to hit the stands as soon as the copyright expires.
“There’s going to be 100 of them,” he says. “They’re going to have them ready to go.” Movie producers will also be able to make their own versions — much as they already do with public domain characters like Dracula and Robin Hood — though in the beginning they will have to stick to the original versions of the characters.
“You get Batman, but you don’t get Robin,” Sims says. “You get Superman, but you don’t get kryptonite.”
The initial Superman could only leap — not fly. “Those characteristics are going to fall into the public domain one by one,” says Amanda Schreyer, media and entertainment lawyer at Morse.
DC has been preparing for this for years. At a press event in 2023, CEO James Gunn noted that the next Superman film will introduce characters from “The Authority,” a comic series that launched in 1999, in part because the Superman copyright is about to expire.
Jay Kogan, DC’s deputy general counsel, laid out a strategy to protect characters that fall into the public domain in a 2001 article. Since only the older versions lose protection, he urged: “Keep ’em fresh and up-to-date.”
“By gradually changing the literary and visual characteristics of a character over time, a character owner can keep whatever the then-current image of the character is as the de facto standard in the public consciousness,” he wrote.
The company has done a good job of updating Superman, argues Steven Beer, an IP lawyer at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith.
“The public’s perception is the contemporary Superman. It’s distinctive,” he says. “That gives them a lot of protection.”
Another tactic: Maintain a high level of quality control.
“The public should be conditioned to view any works from unrelated parties featuring a trademark owner’s characters as second-rate knockoffs,” Kogan wrote.
Kogan also suggested that trademarks could be used to block the use of a character’s name, image and slogan even after the copyright expires.
But trademark is not a cloak of immunity, argues Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain. “That only prevents uses that are likely to cause consumer confusion about source or sponsorship,” she says.
In other words, the characters’ names should be fair game, so long as it’s clear that the depiction is not coming from DC.
“You could still create a Superman horror movie or Batman horror movie,” says Jonathan Steinsapir, an IP attorney at KHIKS. “You just need to be careful about how you advertise it and how you use images of Superman in a branding sense.”
DC has done a careful job of tying the characters to itself by trademarking the terms “Man of Steel” and “Caped Crusader,” as well as Superman’s “S” and Batman’s logo.
“The bat symbol is a very strong mark,” Schreyer says. “That is going to limit what subsequent creators can do.”
Even so, expect the mid-2030s to see a glut of off-brand superhero content.
“People will make a run at these characters because there’s money to be made,” says Mark Waid, a comic book author and historian best known for his work on DC Comics titles like “Superman: Birthright.” “Or how about Superman versus Godzilla. It’s a gray area. But this town works on the speed of capitalism, right? That’s how we work.”
Sims believes more superhero comics will be a good thing. But the idea that there will be a Superman renaissance is oversold, he says.
“It’s gonna come down to execution,” Sims says. “There’s one company that’s used to doing it.”
Steinsapir says nothing would keep Snyder from making a non-Warners film featuring the DC troika.
“Zack Snyder could reshoot it and make his own new iteration of it,” he says. “You just need to be careful. For example, he definitely couldn’t call it ‘Justice League.’”
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docgold13 · 1 year
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365 Marvel Comics Paper Cut-Out SuperHeroes - One Hero, Every Day, All Year…
Team Supplemental - The LiveWires
Project Livewire was founded by SHIELD as a means of testing a next generation of android operatives. These androids were based on the long-standing SHIELD automaton, the Life Model Decoys (LMDs), and the LMD successors, the Mannites. The androids of Project Livewire combined the super-human abilities of the Mannites with the human appearance of the LMDs.
Most of the work for Project Livewire was done by David Jenkins, the assistant chief designer of the project.   Jenkins utilized self-creating artificial intelligence algorithms to create a series of deadly androids who bare the resemblance of human teenagers.  Jenkins became something of a fatherly figure to these androids and they unexpectedly developed sentience and a sense of free will.  
Jenkins came to realize that the project was far too effective and concluded that it would only be a matter of time before these weapons would be misused in terrible ways.  As such, he altered the main programing of the androids, ordering them to kill everyone involved in Project Livewire and then hunt down and destroy any similar such ‘black operations’ programs.  
Jenkins himself was killed in the slaughter and five of the Livewire androids survived the massacre.  They went on to follow through on their programing, searching out and terminating rogue actors using advanced android technology for the purposes of evil.  
The member of the Liveries include the following:
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Stem Cell
Stem Cell is the tech specialist. She has a nano-factory where a human stomach would be. She uses this to quickly manufacture any technology that her teammates might need.  Stem Cell has become the leader of the squad and she wears Dr, Jenkins’ glasses as a homage to their fatherly figure.  Her nano-factory has allowed Stem Cell to rebuild and recreate each of her teammates if and when they are injured or destroyed in action.  
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Gothic Lolita
Although she is slim and lithe in stature, Gothic Lolita is the actually the primary muscle of the team.   She possesses significant super strength and durability with a library of different fighting styles loaded into her memory bank. Her code-name and look are both in reference to the fashion style popular in Tokyo at the time of her creation.
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Hollowpoint Ninja
The laconic Hollowpoint Ninja is the team's infiltration agent.  He is a master swordsman and sniper and has the ability to turn invisible along with noise bafflers that make his every move entirely silent.  
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Social Butterfly
Social Butterfly's role is to extract information from targets. She uses a variety of means to achieve this purpose. These include micromanagement of her facial expressions and body language, subliminal vocal clues, artificial pheromones, and force field-induced direct brain manipulation.
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Cornfed
Cornfed looks like a big farm boy and seems to be the team's muscle, but he is actually in charge of all mechanical repairs. He can usually be found behind the scenes giving support and coordinating the team's missions.
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Homebrew
Homebrew was the team's tech specialist before Stem Cell. He was killed in action and his source code was corrupted making it so he could not be regenerated.  With his death, the team activated Stem Cell to fill his role.
The team first appeared in the pages of Livewires #1 (2005).  
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grigori77 · 1 year
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2022 in TV - My Top 10 Shows
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10.  THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY (season 3, Netflix)
The lovable and deeply weird adaptation of My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way’s epic mindfuck of a cult comic book from showrunner Steve Blackman (Bones, Fargo, Altered Carbon) has pulled off a particularly impressive feat, managing to drop THREE essentially perfect seasons of TV in a row without ANY signs of flagging in quality, pace or sheer sense of fun.  After the bonkers time-travel shenanigans of the first two seasons, things in the timeline have REALLY gone to pot, and now the gloriously dysfunctional Hargreaves siblings have got a truly diabolical enemy to deal with, namely the Sparrow Academy, a far superior group of superpowered oddballs that were trained by their adoptive father, Sir Reginald Hargreaves (Colm Feore), when he discovered what a “massive disappointment” his original collection of inexplicable orphans would become.  Worse still is the fact that one of them is a new, far more unpleasant version of their late brother Ben (After Yang’s Justin Min), who instantly takes a personal set against them … absolutely bonkers and enjoyably irreverent, this show remains as unrepentantly mad as ever, with the entire cast shining throughout, although once again Robert Sheehan effortless steals every scene as louchely nihilistic clairvoyant Klaus.  Extra kudos of course have to go to the show for allowing Elliot Page to transition as his character goes from Vanya to Viktor, although we should also thank Netflix for seeing the good sense in picking it up for one more season after this given that whopper of a cliffhanger …
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9.  OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH  (HBO Max)
One of the year’s biggest surprise hits came in the form of this riotously unique surrealist sitcom series based on the true life tale of Stede Bonnet, the gloriously flighty 18th Century Barbadian aristocrat who left his plush life of privilege and luxury in order to pursue his personal dream of becoming The Gentleman Pirate.  Problem was, he’s THE WORST pirate there ever was, a genuine embarrassment to the profession, who mostly rose to fame after he was taken prisoner by and become the object of playful amusement of the feared terror of the High Seas himself, Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. The undeniable highlight of this show has to be enjoying the sparkling interplay between the two leads – Rhys Darby is, as always, an unbridled delight as Bonnet, the most unflappably effervescent hopeful idiot to have ever lived, while Taika Waititi’s clearly having the time of his life presenting the most feared pirate who ever lived as a disenchanted but ultimately gentle soul who’s long since grown tired of the ferocious façade he’s had to cultivate for himself over the years.  The rest of the cast are huge fun too (none more-so than Ewen Bremner as Bonnet’s entirely bizarre first mate Buttons), while the characters and sparkling scripts crafted by showrunner David Jenkins (People of Earth) and his writing team are a veritable masterclass in how to present a perfect show about LGBTQIA folk and their daily struggles through the prism of delightful absurdist comedy.
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8.  THE MIDNIGHT CLUB (Netflix)
Mike Flanagan continues his assault of sheer small screen horror brilliance with this pitch perfect (sort of) anthology series based around the tales told by a group of teenagers thrown together in Seattle’s Brightcliffe Hospice for terminally ill adolescents in the mid-90s as they attempt to deal with impending death and all the horrific emotional baggage that comes with it.  Iman Benson (Uncle Buck, Black AF) shines incredibly brightly in an astounding youthful cast as Ilonka, the desperate dreamer who’s checked in with the intention of discovering the source behind a little known cure for her thyroid cancer which may exist somewhere in the hospice, while Nightmare On Elm Street’s Heather Langenkamp is wonderfully complex as Brightcliffe’s firm-but-fair chief resident doctor Georgina, and a winning selection of Flanagan regulars show up in a variety of roles (along with the resident cast) in a variety of intriguing roles in the titular group’s cathartic late night pastime of telling each other spooky tales.  These are the undeniable highlight on offer throughout the series, covering a fascinating range of genres from mysterious whodunnits and ghost stories to time-twisting sci-fi brain-melters that never fail to impress as Flanagan gets a chance to stretch his range a bit, but the overarching storyline is intensely compelling too as we come to really care about and root for these kids.  As we’ve come to expect from his work, this is spooky, creepy and insidiously unsettling, but once again there’s as much emotional intensity on offer here as bone-deep spine-chilling terror.  Unlike the rest of his TV work to date, however, this one was CLEARLY intended to be a proper ONGOING series … so of course Netflix has gone and cancelled it. At least we’ve got his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher to look forward to, and he’s DETERMINED to bring Stephen King’s legendary The Dark Tower to the screen in far better style than the criminally awful 2017 movie, so there’s still hope …
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7.  CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS (Netflix)
Another big surprise hit sneaking in under the radar this year was this unexpected anime gem from Kill la Kill creators Studio Trigger, based on the cult tabletop RPG which spawned the troubled yet deliriously popular video game.  Anyone who knows me, of course, knows this is RIGHT UP MY STREET, I’m a total sucker for anything cyberpunk, as well as anime in general, so this was a perfect combo for me, but even so I was generally surprised by just HOW UNBELIEVABLY GOOD this actually turned out to be. It’s pretty short too – with ten episodes each clocking at around the 25-minute mark it’s pretty easy to binge in a single sitting – but thoroughly sweet, each instalment propelling the impressively robust story forward at quite the pacy clip towards a suitably explosive climax, with plenty of blistering action and compellingly dark techno-shenanigans along the way.  The real reward here, however, is the characters, a crew of dysfunctional misfits brought together over the course of the series who perfectly encapsulate the brilliantly crafted universe’s dark and dangerous criminal underworld – the central love story between teenage dropout turned cybernetically-enhanced mercenary David and born-survivor elite hacker Lucy is compellingly intense and realistically written, but the best addition here has to be hyperactive pint-sized cyber-badass Rebecca, who’s an ultraviolent delight from start to finish.  The animation is some of the very best I’ve EVER seen in anime, and the design work throughout is never less than stellar, wisely taking its lead from the impressively inventive game but still happy to carve its own path.  The end result is one of the best animated shows I’ve come across in quite some time (it’s not on Arcane’s level, but comes damn close), so it’s a shame that, since it was apparently intended to be a standalone, we’re unlikely to see any more in the future …
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6.  WARRIOR NUN (season 2, Netflix)
Debuting in the middle of the Pandemic turned out to be a stroke of truly great luck for Continuum creator Simon Barry’s unique but also intrinsically challenging adaptation of Ben Dunn’s gloriously bonkers comic book Warrior Nun Areala, which became an impressive runaway hit for Netflix and made a second season inevitable.  Gods knew it quickly earned a rabid following (myself among them) who were champing at the bit for more, but shooting restrictions meant we’d have to wait a little bit … but it’s finally arrived and it is REALLY GREAT, actually IMPROVING on the previous run as we follow unlikely Warrior Nun Ava Silva (a truly spellbinding turn from the thoroughly adorable Alba Baptista) and her gang of rogue holy helpers on their quest to take down the Big Bad false messiah threatening to turn the world into hell on earth, the fallen angel Adriel (William Miller).  Along the way they get into an endlessly inventive series of scrapes, fights and misadventures that are a gleefully subversive joy to watch, but once again the real charm here is the will-they-won’t-they back-and-forth dance that continues between Ava and Kristina Tonteri-Young’s precocious but also thoroughly awkward Sister Beatrice.  Plotwise, things are tied off in a fairly neat little bow by the end of this season – albeit through an emotionally devastating climax which you definitely need to keep the tissues handy for – but even so there’s enough room for more that it’s a criminal shame that Netflix have decided to pull the plug on this one too.
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5.  PEACEMAKER (HBO Max)
Whatever you might think about Warner Bros./Discovery in general regarding its current treatment of the future of the DCEU (especially after the shocking fate that befell the heavily anticipated Batgirl movie), and about filmmaker James Gunn in particular now that he’s taken over as the head honcho on the franchise itself, you can’t deny that he did a phenomenal job with this deliciously non-PC spinoff from his awesome 2021 Suicide Squad soft-reboot.  Michael Cena’s Christopher Smith was one of the film’s biggest hits, so a series following his exploits as the titular antihero was a damn smart move, the former wrestler-turned-actor once again proving what a comedic genius he is as he flexes, gurns and drops hilarious inadvertent one-liners as one of THE WORST SUPERHEROES in the entire DC Universe.  That being said, the show’s frequently stolen out from under him by Unreal and Time After Time’s Freddie Stroma, who’s even more of a blissfully awkward joy as Smith’s best friend/unwitting nemesis Adrian Chase, aka Vigilante, a ridiculously talented combat nerd who desperately wants to be a badass dark avenger like his bestie, while there are similarly game turns from Jennifer Holland and Steve Agee (both reprising their roles from The Suicide Squad) as the downtrodden ARGUS agents charged with keeping Smith under control along with Danielle Brooks’ geeky new recruit, and there’s an irreverent and perfectly scummy turn from Robert Patrick as the Peacemaker’s white supremacist supervillain father August Smith, the infamous White Dragon.  A riot from start to finish, this show is packed with over-the-top, ultraviolent action, jet black humour and an endless series of razor sharp winks, nods and homages from one of the best geek-master filmmakers in the business.  Best of all, though, has to be that STONE COLD GENIUS title sequence, choreographed to perfection to the brilliantly awful earworm Do You Wanna Taste It from irreverent Norwegian glam metal band Wig Wam, which is guaranteed to have you crying you’ll be laughing so hard.  Personally, I can’t wait for more of this one.
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4.  GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (Netflix)
Anyone who’s been following me long enough to know what I like should know that Guillermo del Toro is one of my favourite filmmakers of all time, I simply ADORE his work, so an anthology show of dark and disturbing horror stories shot-right-through with his irresistible geeky stylistic DNA was a no-brainer for me. ESPECIALLY since he opens every episode with an adorable intro where he presents his philosophical thoughts on what we’re about to experience in the style of Rod Serling. XD  The stories on offer, meanwhile, are an eclectic bunch, ranging from short-sharp-shock creature features to broadly satirical body horror, but there’s an impressive line in cosmic terror on offer here too, with several entries wearing del Toro’s deep-seeded Lovecraft influence on their sleeves.  They’re also consistently impressive, without a single dud in the selection, although the undeniable highlights of the whole bunch, for me, have to be the adaptations of actual Lovecraft stories, Pickman’s Model and Dreams in the Witch House, which perfectly encapsulate the author’s restless sense of endless low-key dread and horrific anticipation, with the eldritch horrors unleashed brought to deeply disturbing life through a selection of impressively palpable physical effects that’s become one of del Toro’s greatest strengths.  The production values on offer here are second to none, as is the quality of the ensemble casts and the directors bringing each story to life, which includes the likes of Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice), Panos Cosmatos (Mandy), Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home At Night) and David Prior (The Empty Man) - each filmmaker does wonders for their individual stories, showing spectacular flair and skill throughout, but every single episode still has the titular master of weird cinema’s fingerprints all over it.  Which is exactly what you want from such a wondrous tribute to one of the best visual storytellers out there right now …
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3.  THE LEGEND OF VOX MACHINA (Amazon Prime)
Netflix really seems to have dominated all on the small screen this year, but Amazon have still managed to make their presence felt with one of this past year’s BEST OFFERINGS, in the form of a gleefully irreverent animated adaptation of the first Campaign of wildly successful Dungeons & Dragons-based live-play table-top RPG webcast series Critical Role. Most of my followers should already be keenly aware that I am quietly OBSESSED with the ongoing games, so when they announced this I was almost delirious in my excitement, and this first season paid off all our mad expectation MAGNIFICENTLY.  Starting out as a Kickstarter by the Crit Role gang themselves with the intention simply to make an animated special, the resulting support was SO STRONG they were able to spring for a whole series, which was then picked up for genuine syndication by Amazon, and the rest, as they say, is history … best of all, though, is the fact that, because it’s their baby, the original cast IN THEIR ENTIRETY are involved in bringing it together, from the writing to the character performances, and since they’re a collection of highly talented voice-actors they’ve done a STUNNING job here … but then THEY DO know their characters right to the bone.  Animated with EXQUISITE attention to detail by Titmouse (Metalocalypse, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Animaniacs and Pantheon among others), packed with stunning action and dark thrills and shot-through from start to finish with an infectious sense of humour, not to mention a veritable DUMPTRUCK’s worth of epic feels, this is an absolute riot from start to finish.  I’m waiting with eager anticipation for the imminent arrival of the second season, and am sublimely happy Amazon have already commissioned a third …
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2.  STRANGER THINGS 4 (Netflix)
After season 4 ended in such a crazy place, with Eleven (Millie Bobbie Brown) depowered and Hopper (David Harbour) assumed dead but actually VERY MUCH ALIVE in a Siberian gulag, we were left with a hell of a lot of crazy questions, but we never had any doubt The Duffer Brothers would deliver those answers and more in style. That being said, they really pulled out ALL THE STOPS with this season, not only upping the scale to delirious levels but also massively increasing the overall runtime, which even prompted Netflix to employ a somewhat frustrating tactic of splitting the season into TWO PARTS with an entire month of waiting in-between … but at least the end result was some of the year’s most engrossing and thoroughly AWESOME television. Certainly this one packed the small screen’s biggest amount of WOW, as we’re finally given the fascinating but also thoroughly horrifying origin story to both the Hawkins Lab psychic experimentation project AND the Upside Down itself … giving away more threatens MASSIVE spoilers, but once again every aspect of the show deserves LASHINGS of praise heaped upon it, from the spectacular effects work (particularly some truly stunning prosthetic make-up work bringing the series’ ultimate Big Bad to life) to the uniformly astounding cast, with the ever-reliable returning players (particularly Brown, Harbour, Winona Ryder, Gaten Matarazzo, Sadie Sink and Joe Keery) once again doing their fair share of the heavy-lifting while the newcomers (most notably Joseph Quinn, Jamie Campbell Bower and Tom Wlaschiha) each make strong impressions going forward.  By turns thrilling, terrifying, heartfelt, funny and inventive, but always pitch-perfect in its nostalgic charm, this show continues to be one of the very best pieces of top-notch small-screen entertainment around, and I cannot wait to see what’s to come in the final season …
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1.  THE SANDMAN (Netflix)
If ANYTHING was gonna beat Stranger Things to the top spot, it could only have been Neil Gaiman’s VERY hands-on adaptation of his own thoroughly beloved revolutionary cult comic book series.  Seriously, Gaiman changed the game with this title, so he was THE ONLY ONE we, the hardcore faithful, could possibly trust to bring his masterwork to life on the small screen, and after his astonishing efforts with the Good Omens show we had the utmost faith that he had the chops to pull it off.  We were not wrong … working closely with fellow showrunners David Goyer (Blade, Batman Begins) and Allan Heinberg (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Wonder Woman), Gaiman has produced a series that wisely stays faithful to the original source material, essentially splitting this first season into two arcs, with the first realising Book 1 of the comic, Preludes & Nocturnes, while the second focuses on Book 2, The Doll House.  Tom Sturridge (The Boat That Rocked) was PERFECT casting as Dream of the Endless, one of a unique family of near all-powerful cosmic beings charged with the control and caretaking of various aspects of the Universe itself – Dream, obviously, rules over the province of the Subconscious, while his sister, Death (Killing Eve’s Kirby Howell-Baptiste), is pretty self-explanatory, but not at all what you’d expect.  After imprisonment for almost a century, Dream is looking to put his house back in order, but this brings him into direct conflict with various entities, including, dangerous “sorcerer” John Dee (David Thewlis), the Devil themselves, Lucifer (Gwendoline Christie), and monstrous rogue nightmare The Corinthian (a chilling performance from Boyd Holbrook), while the foundations for a far darker, more wide-reaching conspiracy are being laid by hands much closer to his heart … this adaptation is nothing short of a MASTERPIECE, Gaiman and his helpers bringing his creation to life in the most magnificent of ways in one of the most spectacular chunks of television I’ve ever had the privilege to witness.  Spellbindingly beautiful, emotionally devastating, spine-chillingly horrifying and effortlessly entertaining in equal measure, every single element of this show was brought to bear with the utmost attention to detail, and the results are nothing short of perfection.  Netflix have wisely picked it up for a second season, but we can only hope they maintain their faith in the series long enough for Gaiman to bring the entire saga to life …
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Honourable mentions:
The Boys (season 3, Amazon Prime); Andor (Disney+); House of the Dragon (HBO); 1899 (Netflix); Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount+); Obi Wan Kenobi (Disney+); Reacher (Amazon Prime); Interview With the Vampire (AMC); The Man Who Fell To Earth (Showtime); Gangs of London (season 2, Sky Atlantic)*
*What can I say?  There was A LOT of great TV this past year …
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writerswritecompany · 2 years
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Read: The 3 Pillars Of Horror
Source: The Jenkins Comic
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canmom · 1 year
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Comics Comints 3: Animal Man
Previously on Comics Comments: [The Incal] [Solo Levelling]. (Yeah this name is kind of terrible isn’t it? Part of me is like ‘for god’s sake change it’ and part of me is like ‘commit to the bit’.)
I think you could say I tend to like three different sources of comic. One is webcomics. The second is manga (and also manhwa). The third? Comics written by a wizard in the 1980s.
You see, most of the real ‘classic’ comics from this period are by some sort of wizard. Alan Moore? Famously a magician and really looks the part. Grant Morrison? Chaos magician. Alejandro Jodorowsky? Read the last first post in this series lmao.
It’s not actually all that surprising since comics are an incredibly densely symbolic medium which give you a pretty direct line of attack on the collective unconscious, if you believe in that. Being a wizard is probably pretty good training for writing interesting comics. Or maybe Alan Moore’s success just kicked off a fad of trying to find more British wizards to move comics off the shells at DC - pretty much Morrison’s own account of their introduction into the world of comics.
And that brings us to...
Animal Man
(1988-95, written by Grant Morrison, pencilled Chas Truog, Tom Grummett and Paris Cullins, inked Doug Hazlewood, Mark McKenna, Steve Montano and Mark Farmer, coloured Tatjana Wood and Helen Vesik, lettered by John Costanza and Janice Chiang, covers illustrated by Brian Bolland... phew...)
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So. Animal Man! Basically the story as Morrison tells it in the intro to the collected edition is...
In 1987, at the height of the critical acclaim for Alan Moore’s work on SWAMP THING and WATCHMEN, DC Comics dispatched a band of troubleshooters on what is quaintly termed a “headhunting mission” to the United Kingdom. The brief was to turn up the stones and see if there weren’t any more cranky Brit authors who might be able to work wonders with some of hte dusty old characters languishing in DC’s back catalogue. As one of those who received the call that year, I had no idea who I might dig up and revamp. On the Glasgow to London train, however, my feverishly overstressed brain at last lighted upon Animal Man. This minor character from the pages of STRANGE ADVENTURES in the ‘60s had always, for heaven only knows what murky reasons, fascinated me and, as the train chugged through a picturesque language of Tudor houses and smiling bobbies on bicycles, I began to put together a scenario involving an out-of-work, married-with-children third-rate superhero who becomes involved with animal rights issues and finds his true vocation in life.
You can read the full introduction here. It’s pretty funny.
In fact, Morrison is leaving out a little of the story. The ‘headhunting mission’ took place after Alan Moore decisively cut ties with DC over issues related to royalties (particularly for merchandising) and a proposed age-rating system. He stopped writing for them after finishing the last few issues of V for Vendetta, and DC went looking for someone new to fill his niche of ‘left-wing British guy, good at prose, wizard’. Along with Morrison, they found...
Jamie Delano, who was approached by DC as the writer of the Swamp Thing spin off Hellblazer; Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, who collaborated on the Black Orchid limited series, as well as the famous and acclaimed Sandman; Peter Milligan, who launched a new Shade, the Changing Man series; and Scottish creator Grant Morrison, whose pitch of an Animal Man series was approved. Later British creators to work on American comics include Mark Millar, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis and Paul Jenkins.
This also comes in a time when American comics are getting more and more literary aspirations: complex characterisation, more naturalistic dialogue, less emphasis on superheroes. Which can perhaps also be attributed to Alan Moore. The ‘British invasion’ might be compared with the rise of gekiga in Japan in the 60s and 70s, although here the change was happening not in alternative magazines like Garo but the most mainstream comics. Putting in a pin in that, because I need to learn more about this period.
I came to Animal Man knowing really only one thing: that it gets increasingly metafictional, culminating in an arc where the protagonist goes and meets Grant Morrison themself. This does indeed happen and it’s cool! But before that a bunch of other stuff has to happen to set up the thematic significance of this metafiction...
What follows: a lot of art and story breakdown.
Morrison is a very interesting figure who I’d like to learn a lot more about. I thought of them as another example of the ‘spend years making sequential art instead of transitioning’ archetype, but it seems maybe a little more complicated than that - I think I need to do more research before I try and say anything definitive about the many noticeable ways trans girls figure in the imagination of comics from this period, and it doesn’t factor much in Animal Man compared to say Doom Patrol.
Indeed, main character Buddy is an almost parodically Normal Dad, a blonde white man living in an American suburban house with a white picket fence and... well, 2 children, not 2.5, but you know.
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Into this world comes all sorts of weird stuff because it’s a Grant Morrison comic, and a lot of the humour in the earlier parts of the comic comes from the idea of shining a look at the fringes of the DC universe away from the central superhero battles, with a local low-tier superhero making TV appearances and becoming a minor celebrity. I think ‘everyday life in a world where superheroes are real’ has been done a lot since then, but it’s done well here. Being a superhero for Buddy starts out as just a day job; obscure superhero teams from Morrison’s encyclopedic knowledge of DC comics history are made into obscure superhero teams in-universe as well.
I don’t read American comics nearly as often as I read manga and webcomics - working on filling in the gaps there - so it’s hard for me to comment on Truog’s art in contrast to other comics. Which means what strikes me is probably more traits of ‘American Comics’ than this one specifically, but what ho...
The immediate thing I noticed is the immense anatomical precision, particularly when it comes to drawing muscles - something I’d also been struggling with at the time I read it so I was paying attention lol. Peter Chung made an interesting remark in an interview which I’ll quote here...
I think a lot of illustrators realize—and you see this a lot in American comics as well—that if you draw costumes realistically, it's very difficult. You end up spending all your time trying to create believable drapery. So the tendency is to draw skin-tight costumes that mold around the body. This allows you to use the body more. You see this with classical sculpture, and dancers. You try to use the expressive qualities of the human body more—that's why sculptors prefer to work with nudes, as opposed to trying to make the clothing look accurate. Otherwise you end up concentrating on the clothing and not the person. 
Fairly early on, Animal Man’s outfit is updated to include a leather jacket, and there’s a solid sense of how to handle the cloth. Here’s an action scene from fairly early on with Buddy fighting against a rat monster created by the tragic villain B’wana Beast (more on him in a bit)...
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You can see how the cloth stretches at the elbow and bunches up on the inside fold. This also shows a few other aspects of the art: the shading is completely carried by hatching in the linework, with the colours being flat, either pastel or highly saturated. I think this is in part a limitation of the printing technologies of the time. There’s occasional use of screentone, as you can see on the top right panel there (which downscaling has turned into a moiré pattern...)
In comparison to manga, beyond the general differences in character design, it’s interesting to see what’s different in how action scenes are conveyed. The panelling is generally very regular and rectangular, but there will occasionally be layouts with figures overlapping the border. Some of the ways of conveying motion, like dynamic unbalanced poses, or replacing lines with perpendicular hatching, is also widely used in manga; some aren’t, such as the motion arcs you can see in the page above. There usually isn’t a lot of exaggeration or extreme perspective distortion.
I think the colouring weakens it. The colours mostly serve to separate out different volumes, but they don’t really convey much in their own right. Out of curiosity, I tried putting the page above through desaturate and threshold filters to see what it would look like uncoloured. Here’s a threshold, which is what the inked page would look like...
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and here’s a desaturate, which replaces the colours with pure value:
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So you can see having some values to separate different elements helps, but honestly I think I prefer it desaturated lol. Still, it’s much better than the overly rendered hyper-contrast style that became popular a decade later.
The other big thing that’s different from what I’m used to in manga is the large amount of narration accompanying panels, typically but not always first-person. This is apparently something Alan Moore is responsible for establishing with V for Vendetta. I think the potential drawback with this approach is that your eyes may go straight for the text boxes, and skip the drawings entirely.
There are absolutely good sequences though, such as when Buddy and his friend the physicist
Despite these small complaints, the art generally works very well. Where it gets interesting is later in the comic when things start to get very meta, so you get a character’s deterioriation represented by using unfinished art (sketches or uninked drawings), and later messing with the formal elements like panel borders. There’s a sequence where a highly advanced Buddy fights an evil version of Superman from another timeline during a massive reality breakdown provoked by a character who is aware of all the discarded storylines and timelines in the DC universe and wants to save them, and thus you get pages like this:
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Animal Man’s villains are rarely ever especially villainous, and the tone of a lot of the earlier stories is Buddy finding out about the situation and trying to prevent a tragic outcome and usually failing. Morrison used the comic to some degree to soapbox for animal rights, with early arcs dealing with animal experimentation labs and sadistic dolphin hunters. At one point he even pops by the UK to help out some hunt sabs. But it’s more using this as a source for stories than something purely didactic, and leans into conflicts like Buddy’s ambivalence when his ecoterrorist allies kill a firefighter during an attack on an animal lab as part of a broader arc of his life going to shit; he is, superhero or not, just one man who gets swept up in larger events most of the time.
Speaking of larger events, Morrison’s run on Animal Man coincided with one of DC’s periodic massive crossover events called uhh (*looks up*) Invasion!. Basically a bunch of aliens show up, so Buddy’s helping fight them; then off-screen a ‘gene bomb’ goes off which scrambles Buddy’s powers. (This also played into Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol, which I’m still reading at the moment, so more on that in the future!) The storylines associated with this event - one about an alien artist who wants to terraform the Earth, the other about a washed-up suicidal supervillain - are both good, and ‘aliens show up’ is really not far outside the usual sort of things that happen in Animal Man, but it’s funny that Grant Morrison, at the time ‘just’ an up-and-coming new writer at DC comics, is now probably the only reason that this whole event is still remembered in 2022.
Anyway, let’s get into the metafiction stuff. The story is full of DC deep cuts, and Morrison seems to be very interested in how fictional characters are constructed, how they relate to their readers, how their stories are affected by the outside world...
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The first movement in this direction is the story about Wile E. Coyote, which sees him rebel against God for creating a life of ceaseless violence for cartoon animals - only to be punished by incarnating him as a werewolf in the real world. Over the course of that story, Wile E. Crafty is run over, shot, crushed, and blown up, becoming a kind of Jesus-like figure whose suffering is supposed to save the animals. It’s a wonderfully batshit idea, and it works well in context - apparently this comic sold like mad so Morrison was encouraged to take it further. Animal Man’s role in this story - as in quite a lot of stories - is to witness Crafty’s death.
Thus over the course of Animal Man, we encounter a pair of aliens who find that the general trends in comic writing of the day - the emphasis on more complex characterisation for example - is increasingly straining the fabric of fictional reality...
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The aliens stage an intervention to try and use Buddy’s memories to repair the timeline (or something??), but this ends up unleashing more chaos down the line, as more and more characters start attaining a fourth-wall breaking awareness. The next arc sets up some unexplained weirdness: a strange ghostly figure of Buddy attempts to communicate with his family, while meanwhile we’re introduced to the character of Highwater, a Native physicist who’s drawn into the mystery of an Arkham Asylum patient who seems to (for our outside eyes) have fourth-wall breaking knowledge.
So after the incident with the aliens, Buddy meets up with Highwater, and they go into the desert and have a peyote trip which leads to some fun imagery, hero gets power up. Meanwhile, government/corporate goons kill Buddy’s family. He gets back, and we find out the cause of the ghostly Buddy: distraught, he tries to time travel back to save them, but when his means of time travel doesn’t make that possible. The guy from Arkham Asylum meanwhile summons a bunch of DC characters from various discarded storylines and alternate universes; the aliens intervene, and Highwater ends up sealing it all off again, in the process becoming a mute Arkham inmate.
Buddy demands answers from the aliens, but they peace out; nevertheless he finds a strange door which takes him to a metafictional plane where he can - much like good old Crafty! - go and demand explanation from his creator. He soon finds discarded fictional characters in a realm where nothing can form stories, and is given a dying monkey with a typewriter that’s writing the comics script, and instructed to carry the monkey to the mythical city of ‘Formation’. (So I guess it’s still kind of animal related!)
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But like all the other people Buddy couldn’t save, the monkey dies, and his journey takes him back to the start. After all this he finally gets to meet Grant Morrison!
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The final issue has Morrison talking to both Buddy and the reader - giving acknowledgements, telling the story of their childhood imaginary friend Foxy, and explaining the craft of comics-making to Buddy and musing on the differences between comics life and real life.
Which is a fun little dialogue, because while it is drawing our attention to the constructed and arbitrary nature of everything in the story, it also at the same time has to function as a story. Buddy’s reactions - panicked incomprehension, questioning - have to continue to feel natural. Even though the comic is turning to us and saying ‘this man is fake’, it does its level best to cue us to think he’s real.
I like metafiction, but after you’ve handled the ‘character discovers they’re fictional’ scene, you need to figure out what it’s actually for. In this case, it’s part of the comic’s general theme of powerlessness and futility. Here’s the key page:
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...which literally leads to a panel where Morrison turns to the camera and tells you to join PETA, something that hasn’t aged especially well. Morrison agonises a bit over why we use real death and suffering as entertainment - why they’d think about using their own cat’s death as material for this story - and then leaves, resurrecting Buddy’s family on the final panel.
So! Long summary over (thanks for bearing with me, I wanted to get it all straight in my head).
At this point, ‘fictional characters discover they are fictional’ is a pretty heavily done narrative, so you have to have some kind of very strong reason to use the device. I think that was way less true in the 80s - Italo Calvino’s novel If on a winters night a traveler was only published ‘79 after all!
In this case, its use is to provide a little reflective monologue on 1. living in a cruel and nihilistic world, in contrast to fictional characters who have a creator they can confront 2. Morrison’s position as an outside writer being pulled into the vast machine of the DC universe. Their intervention is... an interesting kind of critical, seeking to update rather than simply write out dubious past storylines, so the story acts as a kind of critical commentary on its predecessors. This is most apparent in one storyline which sees the old character B’wana Beast, a Tarzan-like figure who gets animal powers from a special helmet and is known as the ‘White God’, passing on his powers to a Black anti-apartheid activist. A lot of others simply deal with nostalgia, getting older, the world moving on and becoming more complicated.
Morrison describes their final storyline as an anticlimax. Which like... on the one hand, how could it possibly be? Buddy has uncovered the truth that no character in the setting can know. But on the other hand, by heavily emphasising everything is arbitrary, it does indeed dismantle the tension; there is no way it could be anything other than a final storyline.
Buddy spends much of his narrative under Morrison being unable to do more than stand by as terrible things happen around him. He tries extremely hard to be caring and empathetic, and this is often appreciated but rarely enough to save anyone. In the end he ‘realises’ that ‘he’ has even less power than that - he’s just an instrument of Morrison and whichever next writer (who would apparently choose to turn it into a story about quantum mechanical weirdness, but I stopped at the end of Morrison’s run) so not only are his efforts futile, even his motivation is also not under his control. All pretty solid as far as ‘pseudo-existential’ stories (in Buddy’s words) go.
And yet, as Morrison notes in their conversation, ‘Buddy’ will likely outlive Morrison themselves. To elaborate on that, we can see the figure of ‘Buddy’ conjured in our minds by the prompt of this book lasting as long as it continues to be printed, read, and iterated on - a meme, egregore, etc. etc.. This is the very hollow form of ‘life’ given to dead people who pass into memory, but it isn’t nothing; to create a character who’s not forgotten is quite an achievement.
Morrison’s theme of limited, even disabled characters for whom things never seem to go quite right is the whole impetus of Doom Patrol, so I guess I’ll pick up this thread when I finish digesting that one. Even so early in their career, they’re a very witty writer with a real knack for coming up with compelling, thematic scenarios and convincing characterisation. (Morrison had been writing comics in the UK for 5-6 years before that, so it’s hardly like this is the first time they wrote for a comic, but they were still younger than me at the point they began Animal Man.)
All in all, Animal Man is a compelling story that still holds up very well in 2022. If you want to read it, ComicExtra has the most complete collection of scans I found - scroll down to the 30th anniversary deluxe edition, which is annoyingly uploaded in reverse order.
Next up we’ll be doing a manga! I recently caught up with the absolutely delightful Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirohama, and I can’t wait to dig into all the brilliant techniques she’s using in the art of this manga. See you then.
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Fence Marry Kill
by Southern_MF_Democratic_Republicans
“Harvard, Harvard, Eugene – next!” Kally gave an unsurprised eyeroll. “You can’t just say Harvard twice.” “Not only can, but did, thank you.” Harvard sighed. “Aiden, I love you, but play by the rules please.” “Why should I? I gave my honest answer. If the rules don’t like it, that’s their problem.” “Is anybrody gonna talk about how he just said he’d kill me with zero hesitation?” Eugene mumbled, “‘Cause I’m honestly feeling a little bit threatened right now.” -- The King’s Row boys play FMK at a midnight feast. Misunderstandings ensue.
Words: 3303, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
Fandoms: Fence (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: M/M
Characters: Dante Rossi, Bobby Rodriguez, Kally Jenkins, Tanner Reed, Harvard Lee, Aiden Kane, Seiji Katayama, Nicholas Cox, Eugene Labao
Relationships: Nicholas Cox/Seiji Katayama, Nicholas Cox & Eugene Labao, Nicholas Cox & Bobby Rodriguez, Aiden Kane & Harvard Lee, Kally Jenkins & Tanner Reed, Bobby Rodriguez & Dante Rossi, Aiden Kane/Harvard Lee, Bobby Rodriguez/Dante Rossi, Kally Jenkins/Tanner Reed, Those Last Two are Up To Interpretation
Additional Tags: Misunderstandings, Fluff, Party Games, Established Relationship, (that's the haiden), Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Sex, Not More Than Canon Though, Unless you count hypothetical sex, hypothetical sex, Fuck Marry Kill, THAT'S IT THAT'S WHAT IT IS, Seiji Katayama Is Bad At Feelings, Post-Disarmed, Canon Compliant, Epic Bromance, Hurt/Comfort, Pining, Humor
source https://archiveofourown.org/works/44864896
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certifiedslytherin · 1 year
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Fandom and their power in social media.
Let's start with what a 'fan' means. According to Hills (2002), a 'fan' is fixated on a specific actor, celebrity, movie, television show, or band. Most of us are fans of something, be it K-Pop, C-Pop, Anime, or even comics. The title "fandom" is produced by gathering these fans with common interests. Therefore, through a fandom, the fans can build their community where they can express themselves when interacting with the people with common interest (Subcultures and sociology, n.d.).
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Fandoms are mostly criticized for being obsessed with their favorite(s). Well, not necessarily. It does not apply to everyone, although there are fandoms who have unhealthy obsessions towards their favorite(s). Some fans or fandoms are toxic, too, and that makes the media look down upon fandoms. Nope, I will not name any fandom and create havoc here. Let us pass this unit in peace, okay!? Okay!~
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Anyway, let us go back to the topic of the week. 
The power of fandom in social media. 
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As discussed earlier, fandoms are generalized as obsessive individuals who bring nothing to society but "going crazy" for their favs. But, let's focus on the good side that's often missed by people with such mindset.
In June 2020, Black Lives Matter allowed the fandom of BTS, ARMYs, to help and support the movement. The Black Lives Matter Foundation confirmed that BTS and their label donated $1 Million dollars to support the campaign. In less than 24 hours, ARMYs used their influence by supporting the movement by raising over 1 Million dollars, too, matching the amount BTS and their label donated. The fundraising was successful as a Twitter account (as shown in the screenshot below) took the lead and helped create the hashtag #MatchAMillion, to request ARMYs to help donate and to help spread the fundraising for the movement. Hence, the fundraising made it to several news articles highlighting the fandom's success and positive power.
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Source: https://twitter.com/OneInAnARMY/status/1269793116023926786?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1269793118339072003%7Ctwgr%5E490b763ba6cfde48e4d1b1ba00999ce680616b46%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fvariety.com%2F2020%2Fmusic%2Fnews%2Fbts-army-matches-black-lives-matter-million-dollar-donation-1234627455%2F
Although BLM was not the only successful campaign that the ARMYs as a community have helped to fundraise, it somehow proves that we, as a fandom, are helpful in many ways, especially in spreading words and influencing others to do the same (good things). This was also because the fandom is organized and filled with diversity.
Through social media, especially Twitter, as most fandoms are on the platform, their presence made it easier for interaction and words to spread easier. The involvement of fans, for instance, on social media, makes it possible for media information to be easily shared, or as Jenkins, Ford, and Green (2013) put it, "spreadable."
Conclusion
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To summarize, the power of fandoms in social media should not be looked down upon as they influence the media and increases fan culture by creating their own identities on social media to interact with people with the same interests. As fans, we should use our voices to break stereotypes of what the poeple thinks about fandoms.
References
Hills, M., 2002. Fan cultures. Routledge, London.
Jenkins, H., Ford, S., Green, J., 2013. Spreadable media: creating value and meaning in a networked culture. NYU Press, New York.
Subcultures and sociology (no date) Grinnell College. Available at: https://haenfler.sites.grinnell.edu/subcultural-theory-and-theorists/fandom-and-participatory-culture/ (Accessed: November 11, 2022).
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ao3feed-spuffy · 1 year
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Buffy meets Venom: A Symbiotic Bond is Formed
by DeamonQueen
Joining the Initiative for information was not one of her best ideas but at least she got a new friend despite it. Read on as Buffy and the Venom Symbiote beat up demons, a mad scientist/crazy College Professor, and a Frankenstein monster, all while our favorite Slayer tries to avoid (Keyword: tries) having sex with the local chipped vampire. Did I mention he was a hot, local chipped vampire?
Words: 1136, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Venom (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Categories: F/M
Characters: Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Buffy Summers, Spike (BtVS), Willow Rosenberg, Tara Maclay, Xander Harris, Rupert Giles, Riley Finn, Graham Miller, Maggie Walsh, Joyce Summers, Faith Lehane, Michael Hall (Venom Comics), Adam (BtVS)
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers, Riley Finn/Buffy Summers (Temporary), Xander Harris/Anya Jenkins, Tara Maclay/Willow Rosenberg
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Action/Adventure, Dramedy, Humor, Government Experimentation, Slow Burn, Romance
source https://archiveofourown.org/works/42225795
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alecbicheno · 2 months
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Blog post 3 - Transmedia and intertextuality in Star Wars
Star Wars has a lot of content spread across multiple different forms of media featuring a vast array of stories and characters, and as an avid fan of the Star Wars franchise, I believe there are examples of both intertextuality and transmedia within the different pieces of media, particularly in recent years.
What is transmedia and intertextuality?
Transmedia is where a story is spread out over multiple properties within a fictional universe, a more complete definition would be this one from Henry Jenkins.
“Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.” (Jenkins, 2007)
This form of storytelling has been on the rise in recent years with the most notable example being the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with another example being the DC Extended Universe.
When it comes to intertextuality, a good definition is: “Intertextuality is the relationship between texts”. (Heckmann, 2023) It’s basically when texts reference other texts, with texts meaning movies, TV shows, books, etc. There are different types, each referencing other texts in different ways which I will discuss later.
Intertextuality in Star Wars
There is more than one kind of intertextuality in relation to the Star Wars franchise, one of those is explicit intertextuality. This is associated with things like remakes, reboots, and sequels and prequels, the last two being heavily associated with Star Wars.
There are:
3 separate trilogies of films, the original trilogy, a prequel trilogy, and a sequel trilogy.
Two spin-off movies, one of which being a prequel that leads directly into the first movie.
5 live action shows
5 animated shows
4 canonical games, plus many more
Various other canon and non-canon shows ranging from kids shows to anime.
Countless comics and books, again a mix of canon and non-canon material
Many of these pieces of media are prequels or sequels to others. They can slot into a timeline before or after another piece of media, often directly referencing or leading into one another.
It is important to note that in Star Wars many pieces of media were “removed” from the cannon after Disney acquired it, so much of the material is now no longer canon and known as the expanded universe or legends. It gets more complicated when new material is made using the old material as a source or influence. So, taking this into consideration, the intertextuality aspect can become complicated as some non-canon pieces reference the canon ones, but this ultimately means nothing.
There is also implicit intertextuality, which is associated with parodies and satires, such as Spaceballs (1987) and special episodes of tv shows.
How Star Wars is transmedia
In recent years the material has become more cohesive in order to tell a much larger connected story instead of several separate stories in the same universe.
The various new shows have been telling a story with characters appearing in each other’s shows, sometimes for just one episode or to serve a larger role in that story. This is all building up to a larger conclusion similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Avengers Endgame (2019).
Does transmedia help the Star Wars franchise?
In recent years online streaming services have dominated the market, massively increasing the reach of their audience. This enables the studios to consistently put out new content with interconnecting stories that will get a guaranteed viewership.
The promise of an interconnected story has viewers rushing to watch the next piece of content released to not miss out on anything leading up to the culmination of said story. It is a formula that seems to work, the above-mentioned Marvel Cinematic Universe had a multiple year long story culminating in a grand conclusion in Avengers Endgame (2019). Which, as of writing, still sits at the number two spot of highest grossing movies of all time.
Star Wars has been creating an interconnected story with some of their newer shows on the Disney+ streaming service. There are some that are set around the same time period and have been slowly building to a movie which will likely feature many of the characters from these shows in a similar way to Avengers Endgame (2019).
This method of transmedia storytelling will definitely help the franchise as it has created a new interest and generated new excitement as to what’s coming next. Pair that with the consistent viewership provided by the streaming service its on and the franchise will profit overall. However, this method isn’t without its drawbacks.
Sometimes some shows, or specific seasons of them have been not well received for various reasons. Whether it be a lower quality of CGI due to budget or time constraints, or a character being handled wrong in the viewer base’s eyes, these issues may actually do more harm than good for the franchise as fans lose trust in the handling of future shows and characters. Also, there is potential for the franchise to go a similar way to the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where the abundance of content has seen a decrease in quality as more content per year means a shorter time frame for production. Or the sheer amount of time required to watch all this new content has become too much for fans to dedicate their time to, causing burnout and a drop in viewership.
So, while I think that this method of transmedia storytelling does help the franchise overall, care must be taken going forward when making these movies and shows in order to keep this newly generated interest.
Bibliography
Avengers: Endgame. (2019) Film. Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. [DVD]. USA: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Childress, E., 2023. THE 50 HIGHEST-GROSSING MOVIES OF ALL TIME: YOUR TOP BOX OFFICE EARNERS EVER WORLDWIDE. [Online] Available at: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/highest-grossing-movies-all-time/ [Accessed 19 October 2023].
Heckmann, C., 2023. What is Intertextuality — Definition and Examples. [Online] Available at: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-intertextuality-definition/ [Accessed 19 October 2023].
Jenkins, H., 2007. Transmedia Storytelling 101. [Online] Available at: https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html [Accessed 19 October 2023].
Spaceballs. (1987) Film. Directed by Mel Brooks. [DVD]. USA: MGM/UA Communications Co.
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bersergner-blog · 2 months
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Sources & Significance 1_1.5 - Sources - Transmedia
What is a Transmedia? Transmedia is a form of media that has broken from the boundaries of it’s original conceived medium and bridged to other forms. For example: almost any Marvel IP. Starting as comic books, they have bridged into novels, films, games, series (both animated and live action), toys, etc. So in a sense it is a story translated or adapted across multiple forms of media. This can evolve into it’s own form of storytelling, known as ‘Transmedia Storytelling’, it focuses on the combined “Universe” of the story as it is translated across multiple forms of media and the resulting ‘holistic experience’ of the completed whole of these forms.
So what makes this different from Intertextuality? The transposition of one (or several) sign systems into others. Intertextuality focuses more on the translation of familiar ideas into other media. So a famous scene may be spoofed in another work, we as viewers recognise the Intertextuality as it draws on a common cultural currency. It is additionally separated into two forms ‘Unconscious’ - Intertextuality beyond the author’s control. The use of elements that have seeped into culture and are universally drawn on. ‘Conscious’ - The intentional studying of sources to inform a desired effect. This is particularly interesting as a critical filter for questions about Authorship, Ownership, Originality, Creativity (or the lack thereof) and Plagiarism. The onus of Intertextuality intentionally shifts from author to reader, as it is their own cultural experience and knowledge that determines their critical opinion of the work’s Intertextuality. However it is not always the work of easter eggs and cultural retreads. It can also be used to distill the ‘essence’ of a work into sequels or remakes, translations from medium to medium, transitions between genres (Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer), etc. But it also perpetuates the common-held belief that there are no original ideas.
It can also be interpreted in the sense that characters move across interrelated titles in the same universe referred to as ‘Radical Intertextuality’, the “movement across texts or across textual structures within the same medium” - H. Jenkins (2011) “Transmedia 202: further reflections”. Parallel to this exists Multimodality (Jenkins 2011) the movement of a sign across separate kinds of representation and modality (for example a character changing across different forms depending on the medium). Which also brings us to the equation: Radical Intertextuality + Multimodality = Transmedia
Different Media with different elements and developments. “A process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systemically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience” & “There is no one single source or ur-text where one can turn to gain all of the information” - Jenkins (2007). This is an incredibly popular practice especially in the current creative climate. Examples include: The Matrix, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. All feature multiple films, series, comics, novels and video games. All contributing in their own way to the lore of the series overall. This is entirely intentional and encourages the interested party to search out and “master” all the knowledge associated to the creative universe. A very modern approach that would not work in a classical sense and would be borderline impossible to maintain before the internet age. This approach invites interaction. Driving fans to feel a personal engagement with the transmedia, the formation of rabid fandoms. in a sense it is driven by fan interaction, while transmedia can exist outside of a fandom it’s structure is likely to crumble without the community to hold it up. It can be considered inherently capitalist in it’s current form, especially since the expansion across different forms of media is likely driven by profit. However it’s most important inherent feature is it’s incompleteness. An ever expanding universe means fandoms will be eternally engaged with the continuing bulk of transmedia that will add to their understanding of the creative universe as a whole.
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pavelmamichev · 3 months
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Sources and Significance - Blog Post 3
Session 3 - Sources, Intertextuality and Transmedia
During our third lecture, we learned about transmedia and intertextuality. A transmedia franchise is one that expands across multiple media types. E.g. Movies + video games + books + more.
Transmedia franchises can seem powerful and unstoppable but they also have some limitations, for instance:
They could stifle the creativity of creators as they need to make sure the narrative of the franchise is consistent across multiple media-types. This also makes it difficult for newcomers to get involved into a franchise, if there are so many episodes and narratives across different media types it can feel overwhelming and difficult to know where to start.
However, transmedia franchises also have many positive effects: They have the potential to have more interesting stories, as creators are able to explore their narratives from different angles otherwise impossible. This can been seen especially strong in movies to video game conversions and vice versa. A video game allows the player to be inside the story him/herself. This allows for many new narrative possibilities and narrative types, such as emergent narrative structures to be incorporated into the franchise.
Jenkins, H. Says, in the article titled Transmedia 202: Further Reflections that "Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story."
Another positive feature of transmedia is it allows much wider audience engagement and participation. For instance, some people prefer movies while others may prefer video games or books. By spanning multiple media types, a franchise can reach a much wider audience.
A great example of a transmedia franchise is Pokémon -
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It has a presence within many media types - Comics, cartoons, films, video games, toys and playing/trading cards. As well as more.
It also has many different narratives. For instance, the video-games have their own narrative which is separate from the TV cartoon but shares the common elements of the world, certain characters (and this provides a lot of intertextuality to the cartoon TV series, as the player can recognise them within the game), Pokémon species and ultimately the "hero's journey" of the protagonist, but this time the player is able to control the journey themselves and explore the world at their pace whilst collecting their favourite Pokémon.
Another large segment of the Pokémon franchise is the trading/collectors cards. These are collected by fans and traded + battled thus engaging participation and reach of the franchise itself.
These characteristics make Pokémon undoubtably a large and successful transmedia franchise.
References
Tajiri, S. (1996). Pokémon. [Animated Series]. Nintendo, Creatures, Game Freak.
Jenkins, H. (2011). Transmedia 202: Further Reflections. [Article] http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html [Accessed 20 December 2023]
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3. SOURCES - Intertextuality and Transmedia
Intertextuality and transmedia are powerful tools, that allow the consumers to enjoy the same franchise as different mediums. We can not only enjoy the comics about the superman, but also watch the movies about the character, play games as a superhero and so on. This allows us to explore our favourite franchise even further, speculate more with friends about the lore, and generally have more excitement with the franchise. That is what makes transmedia a very interesting and exciting concept.
Henry Jenkins describes transmedia as… “a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.” (2011) One of the biggest challenges of converting the medium (for example, adapting the movie into a video game), is understanding what made it great in the first medium, and then attempt to make it great in the second one. During the adaptation of the medium, artists must understand that, for example, applying the same rules from movie art to a game art will completely cross out the video game as a medium. 
Andrzej Sapkowski’s (1990) Witcher, as a franchise, is a great example of transmedia - Coming initially from books, then into games, into comics - and then finally into a series. The great fact about Witcher as a transmedia is that no matter which type of medium you choose, you will always get a story-oriented content: No matter if you read, play, or watch a movie - you will always have an opportunity to experience the world that the title is settled in, it’s characters, their level of actions and finally - the setting. Developers of each medium took the Witcher (1990) story as an independent source, ignoring the aspects of the original medium and focusing on the details of a new one. Each medium excitedly experiments with the original Witcher text and its own medium to expand on the existing world from a new perspective, such as an interactive world (video games), deep characters (books), and strong immersion (series). If the consumer did not enjoy one medium from the franchise - they can always try a different one and see if they will like it or not.
When the Witcher TV series (2019) was released, people did not enjoy the fact that the characters did not look familiar as from video games, but I don't think that they had to. Here, I agree with Henry Jenkins one quote where said that “Some have tried to argue that games are a key component of transmedia, but I do not want to prioritize digital media extensions over other kinds of media practices.” (2011), and I agree with this quote, since there are other components of transmedia like books, music, drawings that could also share the transmedia.
My final example of a media, that could support the quote above would be Sonic The Hedgehog (2020) - Coming from the game industry, and being released as a movie - it became extremely popular in the cinemas, claiming the viewer's hearts. What's great about this example is that the viewers do not have to play the game to love the movie. It became popular not because there was a game about the hedgehog or because of a large fan pool from the said game, but because of masterful use of the movie genre, good writing and so on.
Conclusion - Transmedia allows the creators to expand their ideas beyond one medium. With transmedia, people can not only read about their favourite fantasies but also listen to them, play them, and watch them. In other words - enjoy them in the best way they want to. With Transmedia there is only one big challenge -and it is to properly transfer or expand the selected media to a new medium, making sure it will be constructed reasonably and be enjoyed.
References:
Andrzej Sapkowski (1990), Witcher (9 vol.). Poland: SuperNowa.
Sonic The Hedgehog (2020), directed by Jeff Fowler. [Feature film]. Paramount Pictures
The Witcher (TV series), Netflix, December 20, 8:00.
Jenkins, H. (2011) “Transmedia 202: Further Reflection,” Henry Jenkins Pop Junction, 31 July. Available at: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html
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Animal Crossing Through the Lens of Transmedia
SOURCES & SIGNIFICANCE, BLOG POST #3
Transmedia storytelling represents the systematic dispersal of a fiction’s key elements across multiple media channels to create a unified and coordinated experience (Jenkins, 2007). A key element of most fiction is characters, as such characters are generally considered as a transmedia phenomena because they move across media borders (Thon, 2019) and can be the main driving force behind some transmedia franchises branching out into other media forms or creating sequels. Character driven franchises can be very popular, examples of this include the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel comics, games, figures, etc. and the films and games, etc. based in Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
Animal Crossing, by Nintendo, is another example of a character driven transmedia franchise; each installment is an additional role-play using existing and new characters in a fresh, but functionally familiar, setting. Animal Crossing characters, also known as villagers, are “collectibles that connote status; players use the characters in Animal Crossing: New Horizons to trade so that they can decorate their virtual islands with them” (Blom, 2023). The implications of which will be explored later. Animal Crossing currently stands at 23 publications, all featuring a repeating cast of characters, and while only 12 of which received official publication outside of Japan (Fandom, 2023), it has a rich and diverse international community. Its content spans games for console and mobile as well as manga, anime and even a calculator app! It has had successful international collaborations with Puma, Build-a-Bear (Game8, 2022), and the most recently announced Lego (fig.1), (Lego, 2023).
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Fig. 1 Kapp'n's Island Boat Tour LEGO set
Its integration of collectible, interactive NFC technology through character cards and figures (amiibo) was a genius take on classic card collection trading games also popular in Japan (and internationally), such as Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. Which turned their virtual collectability of Animal Crossing characters into something physical and unbound to the villager limit in-game.
Nintendo also creates its own merchandise (Nintendo, 2023) to broaden the brand and has used Animal Crossing skins featuring their characters and art style for the Nintendo Switch, and other consoles, to promote sales for new and existing customers who want to add to their collection of themed consoles. This is a fascinating concept which I believe encourages consumerism and feeds the capitalistic component of transmedia through merchandise (AFFUSO, SANTO, 2018).
While not unique to Animal Crossing, the popularity and exclusivity of some of Nintendo's merchandise and collectible technology has created a commercial sub-culture of collector markets, unofficial copies of NFC codes, and scalping (purchasing with the intention of reselling for a profit). This has given rise to complaints about the scarcity of items created by Nintendo that may encourage unaffordable resell prices and piracy of functional game items that add to players' experiences (Tassi, 2015; Amiibo Doctor, 2021). Nintendo is taking actions to reduce scalping in the future specifically for their consoles (GoNintendo, 2023), which could be in the company's best financial interests, as well as limiting the quantity of amiibo purchasable by end consumers. However, it can also be argued that a certain degree of merchandise scarcity adds value and hype around the acquisition of rarer products (Belk, R. 1982).
The most famous of Animal Crossing's consumer-created markets is Nookazon (a play on words of the shop-keeping characters unique to the franchise and the mega online store Amazon.). It is a self-contained market which facilitates private trading of items and villagers for in-game currency within the franchise's most recent release Animal Crossing: New Horizons (AC:NH). The controversy surrounding Nookazon is a good example of how the interactive components of transmedia can alter the vibes of a franchise. Nintendo intentionally added the element of trade to AC:NH to promote player interaction, but scammers, using Nookazon as a platform, could over-charge for items others wanted, or not finish the trade at all (Wood, 2020). It could be said that the darkest moment of AC:NH digital black market trading was the trafficking of villager characters for obscene amounts of in-game currency (Stone, 2020). This stopped when Nintendo introduced importing villagers through amiibo, but instead grew the physical black markets previously discussed.
In contrast to the aforementioned negative aspects, there have also been wonderful fan contributions to the Animal Crossing universe that, although non-canonical, add a story component to the characters that is a little lacking within the franchise, such as the 3D animated short stories by Densle (2023). The in-game interactivity Animal Crossing promotes in the community through user-created designs, island tours and the massive subculture of island design ideas on YouTube and social media, is a beautiful example of convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006) as consumers expand and take ownership of masses of creative content that enrich the Animal Crossing world.
This study shows that it is key to consider the more negative aspects that can come about when expanding a franchise through further media. I think the balance of scarcity to build hype requires delicate handling as it can create a black market where people who may feel they are missing out on key experiences may turn to even if they generally do not support piracy. If handled carefully, the benefits of consumer interaction through this hype are substantial as the consumers can begin to self-promote the franchise and grow the community in wholesome ways.
References:
AFFUSO, J., SANTO, A. (2018). ‘Mediated Merchandise, Merchandisable Media’. Film Criticism. Volume 42. (Issue 2). [Online]. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/48731358 [Accessed: 28 October 2023].
AMIIBO DOCTOR. (2021). How Nintendo Can End Amiibo Scalping. [Online]. Amiibo Doctor. Available at: https://amiibodoctor.com/2021/11/06/how-nintendo-can-end-amiibo-scalping/ [Accessed: 22 October 2023].
BELK, R. (1982). ‘Acquiring, Posessing, and Collecting; Fundamental Processes in Consumer Behavior’. In: BUSH, R., HUNT S. (eds). (2011). Marketing Theory: Philosophy of Science Perspectives. Decatur: Marketing Classics Press, Inc.
BLOM, J. (2023). Video Game Characters and Transmedia Storytelling. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. pp.10-11.
DENSLE. (2023). MASK: The Animal Crossing Series. [Video]. [Online]. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxQhSYU39PpJWgM5qC2Eo2gBOXDyNpCTn [Accessed: 22 October 2023].
FANDOM. (2023). Animal Crossing (series). [Online]. Animal Crossing Fandom Wiki. Available at: https://animalcrossing.fandom.com/wiki/Animal_Crossing_(series)#:~:text=In%20the%20following%20timel [Accessed: 22 October 2023].
GAME8. (2022). List of ACNH Merch and Collabs. [Online]. Game8. Available at: https://game8.co/games/Animal-Crossing-New-Horizons/archives/373675#hm_2 [Accessed: 22 October 2023].
GONINTENDO. (2023). Nintendo looking to avoid scalping issues with their next platform (UPDATE). [Online]. Available at: https://www.gonintendo.com/contents/22355-nintendo-looking-to-avoid-scalping-issues-with-their-next- [Accessed: 22 October 2023].
HASSLER-FOREST, D. (2018). ‘Transmedia World-Building Beyond Capitalism’. Science Fiction, Fantasy, And Politics. 42(3). [Online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3998/fc.13761232.0042.304 [Accessed: 28 October 2023].
JENKINS, H. (2006). Convergence Culture : Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.
JENKINS, H. (2007). Transmedia Storytelling 101. [Online]. Henry Jenkins. Available at: https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html [Accessed: 27 October 2023].
LEGO. (2023). LEGO® Animal Crossing™. [Online]. Lego. Available at: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/themes/animal-crossing/about?consent-modal=show&age-gate=grown_up [Accessed: 22 October 2023].
LUU, D. (2020). [Online]. Nookazon. Available at: https://nookazon.com/ [Accessed 22 October 2023].
NINTENDO. (2023). Animal Crossing. [Online]. Nintendo Store. Available at: https://store.nintendo.co.uk/en/animal-crossing-view-all [Accessed 22 October 2023].
STONE, R. (2020). How Selling My Animal Crossing Villager On the Black Market Made Me a Millionaire. [Online]. TwinFinite. Available at: https://twinfinite.net/features/how-selling-my-animal-crossing-villager-on-the-black-market-made-me- [Accessed 22: October 2023].
TASSI, P. (2015). Nintendo Needs To Get Its Amiibo Act Together. [Online]. Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/04/04/nintendo-needs-to-get-its-amiibo-act-together/ [Accessed: 22 October 2023].
THON, J. N. (2019). ‘Transmedia Characters: Theory and Analysis’. Frontiers of Narrative Studies. Volume 5. (Issue 2). pp.169-175. [Online]. Available at: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/fns-2019-0012/html [Accessed: 27 October 2023].
WOOD, A. (2020). Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Nookazon explained: How to use the fan-made store. [Online]. GamesRadar+. Available at: https://www.gamesradar.com/animal-crossing-new-horizons-nookazon-explained/ [Accessed: 22 October 2023].
Image References:
LEGO. (2023). Kapp'n's Island Boat Tour. [Online]. Lego. Available at: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/kapp-n-s-island-boat-tour-77048 [Accessed 22 October 2023].
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miraculouslb02 · 5 months
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On February 12, 2023 known as Superbowl Sunday, a twitter user by the name of “Dear Ashley” decided to stir the pot. After the big halftime show performance by Rihanna, Ashley made a bold statement about R&B Singer, Usher Raymond. Ashley stated “He doesn’t have enough pop hits for a thirteen medley performance”. In Ashley’s tweet, she also decided to use Beyonce’s past Super Bowl performances as a reference, stating Usher would give an “ok” performance.  The article linked to this discussion post contains a full breakdown as to what happened, including  responses to the tweet made by Ashley. Let’s just say, twitter users were fully engaged in that discussion. 
On September 24, 2023, The NFL made it know that Usher would be the headliner for the Superbowl in Las Vegas, Nevada. Does it surprise anyone that seven whole months after the debate was sparked surrounding Usher as a potential performer in the future, we get the news he will be headlining the big game? As an Usher fan myself, I do not find it a coincidence at all. For those who do not know, Usher has a residency in Vegas where he hosts his own private concerts. Each of his shows for the Vegas residency have sold out and attracted celebrities to come see him live. The NFL wants more In-person attendees and at home viewers , so why not bring in the man that is selling out every night in Vegas. There is a small chance I believe the NFL and Apple music considered Usher prior to the tweet, or maybe the tweet was all the confirmation needed by the corporations to give Usher the green light. Either way I am excited to see what songs will make the thirteen minute set list, because every hit pop song by the artist  won’t make it. 
Reflection: 
Connective blogging defined by Rheingold causes bloggers to “Go beyond telling your public why you should click on a link. Reflect the source or idea you are linking to. Read carefully and critically, and write something about what the linked source means. Push it further by thinking of a broader context and bringing in another link. Make the connections clear to your public” (Rheingold, pg. 124).
In terms of content matter, making my blog post about Usher was relevant for the communities that anticipate the halftime performances at the Superbowl. Also, fans of the artist love to read about big news that could change the whole trajectory of his music sales. If you were an avid user of twitter at the time the tweet went out, this type of blog would interest you. Primarily twitter users with strong views about the current state of music would love to read this blog and comment their own views on the individual who made the tweet, and Usher as a performer. 
The voice I imagined for this blog was more of a commercial voice. Halftime shows are focused on entertainment value and making sure the crowd is having a good time. Also, drama on twitter in this case is comical,  especially since it feels like one of those  “now go and eat crow” type of moments.
Speaking of twitter, Mashbels’ Beginner’s Guide to Twitter, touched on the topic of Retweets which are “Re-Sharing or giving credit to someone else’s tweet”. As someone who is not on twitter, I am sure Dear Ashley had over a hundred thousand Re-tweets since there was a deep rabbit hole of replies to her original post. I am also certain those Retweets enabled a high leveled  participatory culture back in February. Rheingold stated each of the main elements of participatory culture from Henry Jenkins and his team. One of which for a high leveled participatory culture are  “members who believe their contributions matter”(Rheingold, pg. 113). Those of us who comment on social media sites and repost content, we believe what we share and say is important. We want our spectrum of followers to engage in entertainment, healthy discussion, sometimes drama and gossip etc. I have noticed on tik tok for example, when I repost something I do look in my  activity to see who interacted with my own content/ content I reposted. 
This brings me to another aspect of twitter coming from Hootsuite on Twitter lists. When I read the section on Keep your eye on competition, I noticed something interesting. The sentence “But you don’t want to reward competitors with a follow, or let them know that your monitoring  their tweets”. This reminds me of when instagram users like myself would view other pages and try not to accidentally like any photos as you scroll through someone’s posts. This made me wonder how much monitoring is done by the average social media users on sites like twitter instagram and tik tok. More importantly, tik tok has a privacy setting where some people can see if you viewed their page, or you can hide your viewing activity. 
After reading the article that opposed Henry Jenkins' understanding of what participation is, which involves online interaction through making content, sharing with others, and engaging in discussion about the content to continue the process . The author, Christian Fuchs argued “Participation means humans have the right and reality to be part of decisions and to govern and control the structures that affect them” (Fuchs, pg. 5). As for my take on this, both Jenkins and Fuchs are right. The main emphasis Jenkins had was focusing on using online platforms as outlets for participation. Fuchs on the other hand was talking about human beings participating in a general sense, which can  apply to both inside and outside the internet. Neither definition is incorrect, they just belong in certain aspects of human life. Jenkins definition of participation more specifically participatory culture is more internet focused than Fuchs broad definition of what participation is . 
Overall, this is my first time using tumblr but I really enjoyed this assignment and I hope to engage in more discussions like these over blogs.
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recentlyheardcom · 5 months
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This is a superhero age, considering the current craze spread across the globe. The love that the super characters from comics are getting now, is unparalleled and unimaginative when compared to the entire history of the big-screen depiction of them. Their impact in films wasn’t so charismatic before 21st century. Especially after Sam Raimi’s and Christopher Nolan’s influential portrayal of superheroes. Audiences got to see how and in what actual manner, the superheroes are to be presented in a movie. Moreover, solo superhero films have been so great and meaningful that people have even imbibed their qualities and morals in their own lives too! That’s called a true film and the magic of a comic book based superhero. Here’s our hand-picked list of 6 best solo superhero movies of all-time. 6- Spider-Man 2 (2002) Image Source: images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com There’s no doubt that when it comes to the most loved, childhood superhero of each one of us, it has to be the web slinging, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. There’s something about Peter Parker, that’s so special and relatable which makes you admire him endlessly. But it was Sam Raimi who took this character on a level of popularity where Spider-Man became immortal! Spider-Man 2 is considered a masterpiece for many things. It shows the true character struggle that Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker goes through and you feel it, the entire film’s story. The way this movie’s story connects with the viewer is very impactful and shakes your inner cockles. There are so many scenes where you are about to cry and in some, you just let your tears come out. 5- Black Panther (2018) Image Source: www.aljazeera.com This entry doesn’t need a word. It became a cultural phenomenon of not only 2018 but for generations to come. Wakanda came alive not only on the big screen, but truly in everyone’s heart too. Director Ryan Coogler crafter this marvelous and colorful superhero flick in his own unthinkable and magnificent manner. And on top of it, Chadwick Boseman’s King T’Challa aka Black Panther stole our hearts with his undying strength, kindness, and love for his people. Along with him, his brother or in other words, the villain, Erik Killmonger (played by Michael B. Jordan) also stole the hearts, because his motivation for his actions was equally justified too. The fight for the throne of Wakandan King, between both of them turns out to be an emotional family matter in the end where Erik eventually dies in the end but the expressions on his face even while dying, are exceptional-he dies to be proud of himself! There are many things which this film teaches you. If you want to take any leaf out of its story, you can watch it again and again and become inspired. 4- Wonder Woman (2017) Image Source: i0.wp.com Female empowerment came to a sudden high after this directorial by Patty Jenkins. Wonder Woman brought a revolutionizing and feministic change that was very much required considering the current scenario. Gal Gadot infused life into the character of Princess Diana of Amazon. Her first big screen origin story swayed each woman and moviegoer in a mesmerizing manner. Set during the events of the first World War, Princess Diana also helps in stopping battles among the nations that compromised the lives of those living near borders. In one of the scenes, that is now remembered as the iconic ‘No man’s land’ scene, the way Wonder Woman rises to the moment and ends a long-running battle in a few minutes, leaves you speechless and in awe of her. She calls out for mercy, peace, and harmony among people in the world, but also prepares herself to fight the evil Ares. More: Halloween is going to open big at the US Box-Office! 3- Iron-Man (2008) Image Source: am24.akamaized.net “I am Iron-Man”. This line has become so much integral to the lives of superhero fans worldwide that it’s meaning has reached to another realm! In 2008, Robert Downey Jr. took up the role of his life when he donned the armour of Iron-Man.
Who knew it would turn out to be a game changer, not only for the actor himself, but will make him a different person too, altogether. Director Jon Favreau wasn’t sure if he had made a great superhero film. Marvel Studios was just born with this first attempt and Kevin Feige was the head of it. Everyone was praying it to be a hit at least. And when the film released eventually, the theaters were thronged by audiences and they were just shouting ‘Iron-Man’. And what started after this flick, is a history, in the history of superhero films itself. Robert Downey Jr. has now become synonymous with Tony Stark and it looks like no one wants him to quit this role ever. What more respect a superhero movie can get than this? It says everything, right? More: TOP 7 HOLLYWOOD MOVIES BASED ON MAGIC AND ILLUSION 2-  Logan (2017) Image Source: www.hindustantimes.com The last appearance of Huge Jackman as the clawed mutant, Wolverine couldn’t have been so memorable. Logan made him another kind of character, the one we hadn’t seen in any of his previous X-Men outings. The old man Logan of this film’s story was a struggling, aged man who just, wants to stay away from violence at any cost since he doesn’t want his past to haunt him back. He is trying to save Professor X who’s also physically dying himself! Director James Mangold was so good with his directing creativity in this film that it was touted to be an Oscar contender for Best Picture and Best Director honors. The ending scene brought tears in theaters when Logan dies finally and that funeral was so-so emotional. Jackman will be there as Wolverine forever after this movie alone-he was at his lifetime best. More: Venom achieves ‘symbiosis’ with the box-office! Scores biggest October opening of $80MN 1- The Dark Knight (2008) Image Source: user32265.clients-cdnnow.ru Christopher Nolan needs no introduction because everyone knows what he does when given a movie making camera. As a director he is a modern legend. But with the superhero trilogy of Batman, he did something unsurpassable. And 2008’s The Dark Knight became a benchmark for future superhero flicks, in other words it’s a gold standard now for making comparisons. Joker’s menacing acts combined with Bruce Wayne’s moral codes was so heavily impactful that it just didn’t look like a superhero movie at all. Rather, it appeared as if some great emotional, political and philosophical drama was going on the screen! Christian Bale made the character of Wayne immortal and his every action won the hearts of his believers and all Batman fans. He just nailed it to perfection. But to make him so great there was another equalizer too, actor Heath Ledger’s Joker! Words fall short whenever his name pops up in the mind. The anarchistic actions of Joker challenged Batman’s morals at every point throughout the film. No surprise that this movie was also touted to be bag the Best Picture and Best Director honors at the Oscars. It somehow missed them tough, but won the Best Supporting Actor Academy award for Heath Ledger’s performance. And that says it all. More: Venom Review: Everything collapses, but Eddie Brock and the Symbiote!
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denisezd0 · 5 months
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 Academic Blog #3
Analyzing Transmedia from Star Wars
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I will look at the IP, Star Wars, to analyse what characteristics transmedia franchises have? The limitations and possibilities of transmedia.
The film depicts the story of the Jedi Knights, who, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, were on a mission of justice, fighting the evil dark forces of the Empire. The Jedi are a group of extraordinarily gifted individuals who, through a variety of screening processes, are given rigorous and special training at an early age, to recognise and use the Force.
I first watched Star Wars when The Walt Disney Company acquired Lucasfilm and Disney announced the production of a new Star Wars trilogy, the seventh film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. After watching it, I went to look up the information and thought it was strange. Why were the releases and episodes in a different order? After that, I kept seeing all sorts of peripherals, and I realised that Star Wars is an American epic space opera transmedia production and that the series was created by George Lucas and originated from the 1977 film of the same name.
Henry Jenkins defines 'transmedia narrative': "Transmedia narrative represents a process in which the components of a novel are systematically dispersed across multiple delivery channels to create a unified and coherent entertainment experience". "Central here is the relational and dialogical dimension of transmediality, how media texts work in concert to build story worlds. I argue that transmedia world-building is more inclusive and provides a stronger framework for transmedia creativity and playfulness. The possibilities of transmedia are also reflected in expanded audiences, lower costs of dissemination, and higher rates of dissemination. In terms of its media development in addition to the story of the films, there are animations, comics, novels, and television games that add to the plots between and around the films, and the galactic history of Star Wars dates back more than twenty-five thousand years before the six-part series, and more than thirty to a hundred years after, and is still expanding to this day. These extra-film stories are referred to as "Expanded Universe", meaning expanded worlds of the original stories. Instead of serving just one type of audience, it is the audience of multiple media that creates this world, so I think that the development of transmedia can maximise the audience. It reduces the cost of communication because of the native nature of the audience group. Integrated transmedia will also lead to more multi-source perception because by getting information from different sources, the audience will feel that the world we create becomes more and more concrete and real.
Cross-media limitations, plot complexity, power management difficulties, budgetary difficulties. Too many complex premises and settings are added. Viewers have to have seen other media before they can understand or enjoy it, resulting in an inability to fully understand the structure of the story when watching only one medium. For example, the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series is a story that takes place between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, while Star Wars: Rise of the Guardians follows Revenge of the Sith, which tells the story of events before A New Hope.
Lucas himself once admitted that he was at most a third of the credit for that Star Wars industry we're talking about. "I'm the father of our Star Wars film world - the filmed entertainment industry, the films and the television series," he said in 2008, "I built the world, I trained the creators, I finished these works. I was the 'Holy Father,' and that's what I did. Then we had the licensed merchandise licensing team, and they messed with the games and the toys and all the other stuff. I called these guys 'The Holy Son' - and The Holy Son pretty much did whatever he wanted to do. Then we had a third group - the 'Holy Spirits', bloggers and Star Wars fans. They created their own world. I'll worry about the Father's world; the Son and the Holy Spirit can go their own way."
References
Voorveld, H.A.M., Neijens, P.C. and Smit, E.G. (2011) ‘Opening the black box: Understanding cross-media effects’, Journal of marketing communications, 17(2), pp. 69–85.
Lähteenmäki, I. (2021) ‘Transmedia history’, Rethinking history, 25(3), pp. 281–306.
Bestor, N. (2021) ‘Making and remaking the Galaxy Far, Far Away: Transmedia worldbuilding and Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game’, Science fiction film and television, 14(2), pp. 145–168.
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