Analysis: Too Much? Too Little?

On this blog, we tend to analyze the bejesus out of certain things. Okay, maybe a lot of things. And as readers of this blog, I’m sure you agree (at least somewhat) with our analyses. But I think the question everyone needs to ask themselves is, “Are we doing too much analyzing?” In other words, are we making something out of nothing?

There are two layers to this question. Layer one: did the creators of a show intend for x to mean something? For me, this question really doesn’t matter. So the motels in Supernatural frequently have the same setup right down to some of the wallpaper (it’s the x in our above layer one). Is it a coincidence? Never, because somebody made the decision to make everything similar. Maybe they didn’t make it intentionally, but they did make it. And even if we had the opportunity to ask the director what every hotel looking similar means, he might say that he has no idea what we are talking about. So the ‘intended’ part of the question renders layer one moot. It’s up to us how deliberate anything that can be taken as symbolism is.

Layer two is: is it in fact symbolism? I think that’s also up to us to decide. We are given all of this information (the show) and it’s up to us as an audience what to do with it. Due to Moffat being a little crazy when it comes to details, we as fans have learned to keep our eyes open for any little thing. Maybe it means something, and maybe it doesn’t. For example, many people thought Clara was the child of Human Ten and Rose because a ‘shop girl’ gave Clara the Doctor’s number. It turns out that wasn’t true (whether it means something else is a completely different story that could turn into an entire post so I’m not going there). My point is every detail can’t be something. A minute detail might just be nothing. We as viewers have to process and figure out which details are important and which ones aren’t.

So we are just going to keep doing what we’re doing. However, sometimes we’ll be wrong. If you feel we’re wrong or going way too far, call us out in the comments. We love ourselves some lively debate.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Imagine Your OTP

It seems like I’m always late to the party with these things. That is to say, this is another webcrush that has reached its end of its regularly scheduled life.

With the birth of the internet, fans of certain things were finally able to congregate together and support each other though more organized gathering places such as forums, chat rooms, and writing hubs like Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.net. Needless to say, thanks to places like this, fanfiction became one of the most numerous, and infamous, mediums on the web. Being a fanfiction author myself, there’s nothing I like better than seeing other people’s takes on characters and the plethora of creative ideas that weave themselves through the authors words. AUs, family problems, medical issues: I love all of them. Yet sometimes when I finally put pen to paper myself I face a very serious issue: I have no fucking clue what to write about. That’s where this site comes in.

Perhaps it’s a little bit catered to my endlessly shipping heart, but the Imagine Your OTP Tumblr has provided me with more prompts and more bursts of creativity than anything else has in a long while. As advertised in the title, this Tumblr offers a large array of reader-submitted prompts with a theoretical pairing (or OT3, depending on the prompt) being placed in a number of situations. Yet, perhaps contrary to what one would guess, not all the prompts are romantic and not all the prompts hold a Disney style ending. The prompts can range from simple scenarios such as “Person A and Person B are treasure hunters” or “live in an apartment together and Person A hates Person B’s cat” to more involved ones containing socio-political intrigue. And for every “Person A has an awesome time with Person B” there’s a “Person A ends up killing / dying with Person B” to follow it up. As to be expected though, many of the prompts are romantic in nature varying from adorable fluff to NSFW smut, but luckily all the posts are tagged for your convenience so you can merely skip these if they’re not your cup of tea.

Strangely Accurate

Imagine Your OTP is, at its core, a distillation of the larger fanfiction sites, or writing sites in general, where only the most basic of ideas are being shared with not attempt at convincing anyone that certain characters need to take the anonymous roles of A and B (or even C). Even if you’re not using it to stoke a writing muse, it’s still plenty fun just to browse through, to see all the different and creative ideas that have be submitted over time. Hopefully though, if you’re going through a rough patch in your writing or it simply feels like there’s too much and nothing at all to write about, this site can help you out the way it has helped me in the past.

Web Crush Wednesdays: A Game of Thrones Supplement

So, I guess Game of Thrones is pretty cool or whatever.

Okay, okay, fine. I love Game of Thrones. I love all the drama, all the dismemberments, all the scenery, and of course, all the fantastic characters. What I love most about it though, is the richness of its universe. It’s clear that there are hundreds of houses the audience may never know about or lands that may never be visited within the story that the audience is allowed to view, but it’s clear that they all play a role in things like how a character may strategize their tactics for battle or how they may choose their allies. While the show does a rather good job at giving the audience information on Houses, lands, and other such things that directly affect the main players, sadly there are many things that are resigned to staying questions in the viewer’s mind.

A good example of this: the other day I was talking to my girlfriend about the late King Robert’s rebellion and his relations to the Starks. Now, as someone who hasn’t read the books and doesn’t really have any plans to in the future, I know that Robert was in love with Ned Stark’s sister and eventually took the throne from the mad king, Aerys Targaryen. Little did I know all the extra delicious tidbits that had been left out of the show—no doubt due to time constraints—that she had only been too glad to tell me. Such as there being certain other, juicer elements at play during Robert’s rebellion (of course, when playing the game of thrones, nothing is ever as it seems). So while the show is wonderful, those of us who aren’t taking the literary pilgrimage presented by George R.R. Martin are dreadfully out of the loop on some things.

Though today’s webcrush may not fill this information gap entirely, it certainly is a great start. Today, I bring you youtuber gameofthronesfan94 and their stash of videos on the mythos of Westeros.

As much as some of us fans want to read the novels, we just don’t have enough time or the will to sit through those bricks (I proudly place myself in the latter category), especially not with all the ‘glowing’ reviews of Martin’s writing style. So, stumbling upon a channel with lore that I can watch, or at least listen to while I’m doing other things—guess what I’m doing right now?—is a godsend for me. Not only is the lore interesting, but I love the fact that these history lessons are given by the characters that know them best. A study on the Targaryens is given by the little shit Viserys and likewise the history of House Greyjoy is presented by the Greyjoy children. (And since I love House Tyrell, I’ll give you a snippet from them. Biases, ho!)

So, if you find your knowledge of the kingdoms of Westeros a little lacking but simply don’t have the energy to get into the books, I’d highly recommend taking a look at these videos. Now if you excuse me, I’m going to get back to my regularly scheduled sobbing over Theon.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Tee Turtle

I ordered this one!

I wrote another web crush ages ago about a nerdy t-shirt site called TeeFury, and I’ve got another one shirt site for you today called Tee Turtle.

Tee Turtle is a somewhat similar site, but what I like better about this one is that it has a set of shirts that are available every day by the same person (I assume the host of the site) and has a weekly guest designer. What it lacks for in variation it makes up for in consistency. In recent days, TeeFury has been putting up some real stinkers (in my opinion). And I love all of the Tee Turtle shirts. All of them. And while they cost five to ten dollars more on Tee Turtle, I’d rather pay the couple dollars more for a shirt I like more.

I love the drawing style on all of the shirts, and I love all of the subtlety and wit in many of them. I’m the type of person who prefers my nerd shirts subtle, so I appreciate what the artist in question, RamyB, is doing.

So if you are interested in some (more) wares, go check out Tee Turtle!

Pottermore: A Closer Look

Remember that thing called Pottermore? No? Well, maybe there is a reason for that.

That reason being it is boring as… the most boring thing you can think of. Watching paint dry. Watching a kettle boil. Like those, but on the internet. Now, the internet is not supposed to be a boring place. I guess Pottermore got it wrong.

Now, why do I think Pottermore is so boring? Because all you do it click to the next page with limited interactions with the story. Are you supposed to be Harry, or some random student? The game has a really hard time defining that, because it treats the player like s/he is a combination of the two.

Now I understand that the website is supposed to be super safe for kids, but that doesn’t explain the lack of interaction with the chapters of the book itself. I feel like I go through the chapters each time they come out hoping that something exciting will happen, but nothing ever does. It’s a total letdown every single time. And while I do get some enjoyment out of casting spells, the user interface for that feature is convoluted to say the least. And don’t even get me started on potions. It’s so difficult to use and time consuming that I get no enjoyment out of it.

And speaking of chapters coming out, when does that happen? How long has Pottermore been public? A year and a half? And how many chapters do we have? Forty two? That’s sad. I guess it is faster than the rate the books came out, but come on. A year and a half in internet years is a century. And I’m sorry, but that’s just too long to hold anyone’s interest in something that is boring to start with.

I had really high hopes for this site. I don’t think I’m wrong in saying a lot of people did. But the rate at which chapters are released is way too slow and the game play is too dull to hold anyone’s interests.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Rantasmo

Perhaps this is a little cliché—or perhaps it was just inevitable, I haven’t yet decided— but the time has come to pay partial homage to one of the most, if not the most popular internet sites for nerdy introspection on various media outlets. To get technical, I suppose it would be a partial-partial homage. If you are familiar with the site ‘That Guy With the Glasses’, then I’m quite sure you’re aware of Lindsay Ellis, more commonly known as The Nostalgia Chick. Today’s web crush is from her own site, Chez Apocalypse  which leads us to this startling conclusion: Lady Geek Girl and Friends needs more gay.

Honestly, before I watched this video, I had nothing outside of a vague idea of the entire Chez Apocalypse line-up (despite watching a hefty portion of them on TGWTG). So, I guess thanks to my undying love of analysis on every nook and cranny of Disney movies I’ve been exposed to the wonderful Rantasmo. It’s disappointing that I’ve never even so much have heard of the series before especially considering how wonderful the title is and that he’s been putting out episodes for almost three years.

His series ‘Needs More Gay’ explores the effect the gay community has had on various media—the results sometimes being just as favorable as unfavorable—and in turn how some of those outlets have affected the said community at large. He also discusses how, while more out in the open, the LGBT* community is still not exactly being given a fair shake at exposure, especially when most of said exposure is being done through subversive means.

I have to be honest, this section of social justice is certainly not one I’m as well versed in as I would like or probably should be. What Rantasmo does in comparison to some other commenters on the web is initiate a dialogue that is simple to understand and doesn’t go on for terribly long. Clocking in at around four minutes each, his videos are a lovely and pithy way to get your feet wet in the vast sea of LGBT* discussion. Also, in true TGWTG style, he manages to insert humor into his videos so it doesn’t seem like you’re taking that media class that you scheduled at eight in the morning for some reason (it seemed like a good idea at the time). Plus the topics that he chooses to cover have a nice range from the more obvious topics—see: Lady Gaga—to lesser discussed topics such as television horror shows.

So if you have time, of which I’m sure you have at least four minutes to spare, I’d check out one of his videos. I’ll post one of my favorites below. (Okay, so it might be the newest video posted, but I think it’s a really interesting look at one of the movies I wanted to see but never got to.) And who knows, you might just find that you yourself just might need more gay.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Food Network Humor

Sometimes you get drawn into a fandom you never expected, a fandom you never knew existed, and for me this stared before I ever truly knew what being a fan of something was. As a kid, my parents used to placate me and my brother by sitting us in front of the television, as many parents do, and while we enjoyed the classics like Rugrats and Cow and Chicken, I veered from the cartoony path slightly. My televised love didn’t take the shape of an animated figure; he wore glasses, went to ‘Bed, Bath, and Beyond’, and talked about science. Yes, it’s true: Alton Brown was my first crush and my first fandom was Food Network.

Every Girl’s Crazy ‘Bout a Sharp Dressed Man

I know it’s difficult to believe, but Food Network does indeed have its own fandom, its own fanfiction, and their own annoying fanpeople of a sort—they’re definitely not as vocal as some fans I’ve seen, but sometimes it’s hard to get excited over Cupcake Wars (like, all the time). We have our own ‘stans’ (people that viciously support a certain person), and let me tell you, the hate-following behind annoying chef extraordinaire, Bobby Flay, warms my cold, shriveled heart. No site documents these actions better than Food Network Humor.

Er, documented.

Unfortunately, FNH has gone on an indefinite hiatus after creator Jillian Madison became burned out on all the craptastic new shows Food Network began shoveling out. I can’t blame her. However, she kindly has kept all the posts up so old readers and newbies alike can enjoy her sardonic humor when discussing things like how Guy Fieri mispronounces his last name or Sandra Lee’s horrendous Kwanzaa cake.

As this is essentially a gossip site, there are a plethora of articles reveling in the juicy gossip happening behind the scenes, not to mention several articles that reveal some of your favorite chefs’ opinions on women and the LGBT* community (For instance, Guy Fieri? Not a fan of the latter and quite possibly the former too). I revel in all this information: it’s so satisfying to see the little cracks of imperfection in people that are built up to be such pillars of their community. However, this site has also given me a great love for Paula Deen, who loves the site and is quite open about how she has become kind of a joke to the greater internet public. It has also kept my love for Mr. Brown at an all-time high, as he is pretty much the most amazing person on the Food Network and doesn’t take shit from any of his co-workers (and, surprise! Actually knows about food).

My favorite, and MadameAce’s favorite, portion of the site though, are the ridiculous recipes people find on Food Network’s main site, and damned if some of them lead me to wonder if we’re all going to be forced to live off of Hamburger Helper and other boxed foods in the future. Let me show you an oldie, but goodie as an example:

How Easy is That?

Excuse me while I let out a few tears; whether they be of laughter or horror, I may never know.

I know I’m not the only one waiting for the triumphant return of this blog. Indeed, we are legion, we are many—well, there are a lot of us anyways. Until then, I suppose I’ll have to make due with watching the weekly cake battles and yelling at people on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives that no, you really don’t need that much pepper in your damn sandwich. My work is never done.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Albinwonderland

I follow Albinwonderland on Tumblr and on Youtube. And I have to tell you—I adore her. A geek, a feminist, a fashionista, and an overall good person.

You probably know Albinwonderland from her “Shit Tumblr Girls Say” videos, but she is so much more than that.

Albinwnderland has talked on a variety of subjects from weight issues, to self-esteem, and most recently, about the “fake” geek girl controversy spurred on by Tony Harris. She’s taken a lot of shit for talking about these issues on YouTube and I want to support her.

New ‘Shortpacked’ Arc Hits Close to Home

I’ve been noticing a trend not only on my Tumblr dash, but in the general consensus of the net and its denizens on what the hot topic issue to discuss this season is: sexism! But when is it not sexism, honestly? At least this time there’s a figurehead for our discussions: Tony Harris. Harris, a comic author that has worked for both Marvel and DC, recently has come out saying a whole slew of offensive things that boil down to “hey girls, you can’t actually like nerdy things because you’re a Fake-y McFakerson and I’m on to you and your tricky lying skank ways.”

Okay, it was better thought out than that (barely), but it brings up a point that we’ve already brought up here once, and will probably do so again: is it possible to be a fake nerd or geek?

I’m Pretty Sure We All Know That Feel

More importantly though, does it even matter?  Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that yes, there are fake nerds and geeks that want in this super special club of fandoms and feels and whatever else there is. Who’s going to care or notice? For one, if they’re attending cons, they’re essentially giving money to support other nerds and geeks. If they’re watching shows, they’re adding viewership ratings that may help keep the show on the air. Literally, the only problem I can see with this is that the lack of knowledge they may have on your fandom of choice may be slightly annoying. If that’s the case, either teach them and help them understand—who knows, you may make a nerd/geek of them yet!—or ignore them and go on your way. It’s. Not. That. Hard.

There Are Some Things You Just Can’t Ignore

But, I’ve completely veered from what I wanted to bring to light for today. This morning, I checked out the webcomic Shortpacked (which we’ve already praised for one of author David Willis’s previous strips) and was completely sick to my stomach, but in a good way, I’m hoping. It seems as though in his latest arc he’s going to tackle this new, unapologetically geeky girl generation through the eyes of Lucy, the newest addition to the Shortpacked line-up and also an unapologetically geeky chick, and her being harassed by someone that looks freakishly like Mr. Harris. Although it’s only on its first page, it’s already uncomfortably hitting close to home. I’m interested to see where he takes it, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope it ended in a cosmic dick punch.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Groupon Says

So I know we all know Groupon, but if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you’ll notice they have some really hysterical and random stuff! It’s called Groupon Says! This is what it is according to Groupon:

Groupon Says is a treasure trove of treasure—mind treasure. In addition to featuring a daily deal, Groupon provides a daily hyper-factual insight that enlightens and entertains. Each day, Groupon’s world-spanning, crack team of researchers, scientists, para-archeologists, and community-outreach volunteers contribute their encyclopedic worldliness to provide secret histories, stories without endings, and truth without limits. Trust only Groupon Says, America’s Least Biased Fact Source, to lovingly comb your brain hairs with the comb of knowledge.

Did I mention that their spokesman is this cat?  Would that makes it a spokescat or a spokesfeline?  Anyway, I’m going to share some of their wise tidbits with you!