I have watched the original Planet of the Apes films, and there are three things of which I am certain. One, that I’m a little bit more wary of apes now than I was before.
Two? That Doctor Zira is probably one of my favorite characters in film.
How We Talk About Mary
I grew up with Bruce Springsteen. When my father was home from work trips, he would sit in his basement office, the “woah-oh-oh-oh-oh”s floating up the staircase into the living room. I don’t know if I can call myself a fan, exactly, because I don’t know if I can disentangle him from my dad, from how I look back at my childhood. Ironically, much of Springsteen’s music tackles the process of looking back on childhood from a complex present, so there’s a good number of his songs that reduce me to tears. Springsteens’s got an emotional shortcut to the angst (“angst”) of my white, suburban upbringing in America.
Janelle Monae’s music also reduces me to tears, but for very different reasons.
Photosets: How fans are using Photoshop and screenshots to create a new art form on Tumblr
There’s a unique art form that blossomed on a unique social platform, spurred by the unique way fandom democratizes art. Photosets, edits, or photomanips–they go by all those names, and yet many other things do, too–rose as a way for fandom to express itself beyond the bounds of fanart or fanfiction, and the aesthetic sensibilities that have risen from them have had wide-ranging implications on fandom on Tumblr.
Shower Comics: The Ugly and The Sensational
The Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang run of Wonder Woman was extremely excellent; I started pulling issues with my local shop towards the climax, and it did not disappoint. It was sad when the writing and art went to Meredith and David Finch, simply because the old run was over, but I figured I could give it a shot. I ended up putting their first issue down and writing them off within a couple of pages, and I’ll tell you why: it was the shower scene.
The Revival of the (Fanfiction) Author: On an Author Coming Back to Life
Rose Christo is the pen name of a mildly successful author of fantasy fiction. She also authored My Immortal, the most (in)famous fanfiction ever written. She’s planning on releasing a memoir next May telling the whole story–but Tumblr outed her before news of the book release could drop. So how does this affect where we stand with our favorite fanfiction?