I've seen this linked on multiple blogs, including Wil Wheaton's, but if you haven't yet, you should read Dances with Penguins. The article is not only about the passing of tv_elf, but fandom and the friendships we make because of it.

The piece triggered sdwolfpup to post some of her thoughts about fandom. (And, hopefully, she won't kick my ass for linking. ;) One line of her post stood out in particular for me:

So I supposed it's a combination of all of that: contribution, interaction, brainpower devoted.

I've thought about what differentiates being a fan and being in fandom. I could never quite nail it down until I saw SDW's words. There's a lot of TV series and movie series I'm a fan of. Many I've talked about in this LJ. A few I've even spent a significant amount of time analyzing before I entered the 'Not That I'm Bitter' stage. But I really only consider myself to have been part of two fandoms, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica. I've analyzed both series until I thought there was nothing left to analyze and then found more to analyze. I've gotten into long discussions with people and maxed out posting limits. I've hunted down spoilers. Read copious amounts of fic and fangirled the actors and actresses. And while all that makes me feel as if I'm in fandom, what makes me feel a part of fandom is I've contributed. More so with Battlestar than Buffy since I've written fic, storyboarded a vid, and had that crazy idea to start a fan community for a certain actor. But I think you cross that line when your love inspires you to create, whether it's meta, fic, vids, icons - whatever you love to do, and you feel compelled to share that love with others.

And speaking of fandom, I have links!

If you are a fan of 30 Rock and Mad Men, get ready for your worlds to collide. Jon Hamm is joining '30 Rock' and it looks like it could be a reoccurring role. Until Liz screws it up. ;)

Time reviews the 'Dollhouse' pilot. I didn't spot any spoilers beyond a description of the characters and premise. Some things they liked about the show, some things they didn't. My favorite part:dionusia launched Lee Adama Week on Monday. And I missed it! I'm a bad Lee fan. :( Or I just don't have a lot of Lee fans on my Flist. Which may seem odd, but when I started really getting into the show I friended people who did an awesome job of looking at the show from all perspectives, whoever happened to be their favorite character was secondary, and I just never branched out. Anyway, dionusia is currently collecting links for Lee Fest. I left links to some old stuff of mine, but I hope to at least get some BSG thoughts up by Saturday.


( Super brief thoughts on tonight's 'The Office: The Surplus'. )

Tags: fandom, lee meta, the office
Current Mood: contemplative

Six Apart's CEO finally speaks to us, ya know, the users. But only after talking to everyone else. (Thanks abbylee and blondeheroine for the links.)

I am thrilled that they are trying to clean up this mess, accounts will be restored, and that they admitted they screwed up. I'm even willing to give them a sliver of slack since I think we are all aware of how miscommunication can cause big problems. However, take some customer relations classes people. Hire yourself a good PR firm. Don't keep compounding mistakes.

There are still people talking about leaving. I get the anger and frustration, but the pessimist in me says that this could very well happen again elsewhere.

Tags: fandom
Current Mood: working

I feel drained just reading about the current situation on LJ. Applause to those spear heading efforts to force Live Journal/Six Apart to re-evaluate. I know many people are considering moving to other blogging sites. That just seems too daunting a task for me. And I hope that between fandom outrage and news sites beginning to pick up the story Six Apart will pull their heads out of their collective asses, back track, and do the right thing. I'm sure a few disgusting sites were eradicated, but a lot of innocent people had years of work vanish without a word. Would it have killed them to have people investigate the comms before suspending them? Most of us surf LJs before friending people and we can tell pretty quickly if it's someone we want to be 'friends' with or not. This just seems like they didn't even make an attempt to look before they leaped.

There's a lot of links and discussion out there which I'm sure most of you have come across. I'm just going to point out this brief write up at boingboing.com because a) it's brief ;) and b) it sums up some things about Six Apart nicely.

I did end up archiving my journal last night. It's something I've been meaning to do for awhile and since everyone else was doing it...here's the archive I used that most people were linking too. I got a wee bit confused after clicking on download and then download again. Under the latest releases section I (eventually) clicked on 32-bit windows and it was smooth sailing from there.

Now back to the regularly scheduled entertainment news...

( Really, really brief thoughts on the season finale of 'House'. )

Because Ausiello has been increasingly pissing me off (there is a difference between sarcasm and rudeness dude) I've been exploring other entertainment news sources. TV Squad had a couple of links recently that I thought might be of interest to some of you.

The 'Veronica Mars' That Could Have Been.

And for those wondering about a certain obscured plot point in the season finale of 'Lost'.

Now I shall go do some work I brought home from the office. ::grumbles::

Tags: fandom, house s3
Current Mood: exhausted