Across the Pretentiousverse. Boross the Snooziverse. Sadie Has Teh Boobs...iverse.

Watched Across the Universe last night.

I can't decide how I felt about it. I think the easiest is to separate it into two bits: the movie-movie, and the "omg look how fucking stylish and awesome and trippy we are omg" visual bits.

Although I think I covered how I felt about those with that one line. And one addition: I'd been told, and was expecting anyway, that there was far more style than substance, and to some extent that's very much true. There were times I was getting sucked way way in, to the point where I was starting to love the characters I'd had trouble mustering up any care for, and BAM some stupid surrealist LOOK HOW FUCKING HIP I AM arty crap would pop up and knock me right out of it. It was too jarring.

Movie-movie wise, I liked it. The plot was cliché, but I love me some clichés, presented well and with characters I could get into.

Problem being I just could not get into Lucy (and, to a lesser extent, Jude - he was an excellent foil for Max, but ugh not a main character at all). It was equal parts dislike and disinterest WHAT A FANTASTIC COMBO.

I loved Max. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. OMG. Loved. And Sadie, and JoJo (and OMG the Let it Be scene was OMG), and OMG PRUDENCE. Even if she totally wasn't in it enough to even have a purpose I LOVE PRUDENCE.

There was a point at which it switched from a really enjoyable ensemble movie to a Jude and Lucy movie, and I felt somewhat cheated, because it was the ensemble and the mix of stories and all that hooked me, and suddenly I was left with Spoiled Princess and Captain Blando.

From about ( spoilers )

But OMG YOU GUYS Bono was OMG OMG. Also: OMG.

In short: If you can get past the OMG WE'RE SO ARTY, and the biiiiig stretch of "hey let's make the blandest supporting cast the main focus for a while", and you like musicals, and Bono, and are a sucker for a happy ending, it's reasonably worth it. That's a lot of ifs.

Questions and Snarkitude Raised by an MIT Convergence Culture Consortium Piece

I mentioned, a few posts ago, that I'd be dissecting an essay titled Fans, Producers, and when Real Person Fic actually becomes about Real People, posted at MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium. But I was rereading it to get an idea of how to approach it, and realized there were really only two paragraphs I wanted to attack.

Quick note: I use "fandom" here to mean "fanworks-producing fandom", just to avoid confusion. And because I'm a ficcer exclusively, and the essay was discussing fic, that should maybe say "fanfic-producing fandom".

Not by the sex, which I never actually got to, but by the simple fact that someone I know had walked into a room and said something innocuous in a fan story on the internet. And not just any story posted by an enthusiastic 14-year-old on Quizilla, but fanfic that was very much a part of the social economy of fandom, written by people whose fannish identities were based much more heavily on their role as a fan writer than as a fan of this particular band. In short, my friends didn't just have a fan fantasy written and posted online -- they had been brought into the social culture of fanfiction as a product, in the way a new spinoff of the Stargate franchise might be.

( OMG so much wrong with that. )

OKAY MOVING ON. This is a quickie, and really it's just a question.

While one of the central premises of RPF has always been that these public personas that celebrities construct are no more "real" than a fictional television character, it becomes difficult to maintain this conceit when the "characters" in question begin acknowledging and commenting on the fics in interviews and even in fan communities.

Okay. So. My question is: How does any given celebrity's knowledge of fanfic make their public persona any less a construct?

I think I know what she's getting at here - that the fourth wall in bandom is a little sketchier because of celeb knowledge of just what's going down.

But she didn't go there. She went from "your fourth wall is questionable" (which I addressed in an earlier meta piece) to "YOU'RE LYING ABOUT HOW YOU CREATE CHARACTERS". And I don't get it. Anyone?