Am I the only one wondering about the fact that it keeps getting repeated "these were put up in X number of other cities and no one noticed"? Because if I were doing an advertising campaign, that'd be the very last thing I'd want. I'd be saying, "time for Plan B, because even bad press is better press than none at all."
Consider the players. Turner's called Fox News the propaganda mouthpiece of the White House; Fox News doesn't like Turner much, either. It'd be a pretty savvy plan -- and marketings tend to cultivate that skill, so I don't think this is overestimating them -- if a cynical one, to suggest: why not use Fox's known paranoia to Turner's benefit?
Who's to say that the "people calling in with a panic" weren't from Turner, itself? It wouldn't be the first time a company has created an "anti-campaign" knowing it'd increase sales. (See also: The Tingler and its ilk.) I'd have been more surprised if Fox News had ignored the entire blinky-storm in a teapot. Of course Fox News didn't hesitate to jump: look, an "opening" on their nemesis. Here's proof Turner has no concern for people's safety or peace of mind. Milk it for all it's worth, boys!
The BPD might've calmed down after the first startled reaction. The marketing-me says that's when a few more plants call Fox News to cry OMG! terrorism!, and charge the BPD is doing nothing! Mass hysteria (err, no pun intended) feeds on itself, and the BPD got suckered: with Fox News brewing blinky-box tea at record speed, the BPD ended up stumbling overboard, blinded by the glare of national teapot attention.
Underneath it all: who gains? Turner, all the way.
To the rest of the country, his Network's thumbing its nose at The Man (an action Americans are known to adore), tweaking Boston (associated throughout the country with Those Stuffy Puritans), and he even has the "grace" to reimburse BPD for its naive overreactions. So what if that naivete is quite possibly the very thing Turner Broadcasting easily manipulated to its own ends?
Even more, look at the medium of the message: lite-brights! Classic remnant of a Gen-X childhood, a medium equally ridiculous, charming, and nostalgic. The realization hit me when I heard the two guys behind it had announced at their first press conference that they'd only field questions about "eighties big hair." If that's not a nod to the Gen X'ers, a way to say, "hey, check us cracking on the clueless Boomers, see them completely miss the joke," then I don't know what else is.
BPD loses, Fox loses, Turner pwnz them all.
My biggest stumbling block in college was great description, no conflict, and the flattest dialogue imaginable. Everyone sounded the same, and the creative writing classes didn't ever seem to address it. I'd read published works and could see (or read?) the differences in voice, but had no idea how to incorporate those lessons into what I wrote. So I took two playwriting classes, and in two semesters... wow. Everything from The Curious Savage to 'Night, Mother to Bent to Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to The Importance of Being Earnest to The Women, and more I can't even remember.
The beauty of playwriting (and, I suppose, screenwriting) is that the story must be carried entirely by voice: if the conflict is not in the voice, if the business is not in voice, then it's not definitively there. At the same time, plays like 'Night, Mother and Bent and Breaking the Code had power because of what wasn't said, the spaces between the voice. (I did round this all out years later by watching Joss Whedon's works avidly, as he has a marvelous ear for voice and a sensitivity to pop culture without pandering to the instant-now and thus dating himself.)
Still not published, but I do always get compliments about my dialogue. I tell other not-yet-publisheds to read/listen/watch plays, to get scripts and read them outloud, try to visualize the play from the dialogue alone, see how dialogue creates so much of the story, can relay the entire story in itself.
Now, if only there were a way to isolate pacing, conflict, or description to improve those as well...
I took a Motorcycle Safety Foundation class with a woman who works as a professional translator; she'd attended a women-only MSF course as translator for a deaf woman who wanted to learn to ride, and her client turned around and convinced her to take the class, too. The (deaf) now-rider showed up on her new Harley to watch us take our class, and meet each of us, while our classmate translated. She did mention she picked a Harley to ride because she can feel the engine's vibration more than any other engine, and as I'd ride by the engine's sound, she rides by the engine's feel.
But of the video listed above, the one called "download... wait... done... happy" moved me the most. Like I found myself telling a friend just now (after watching it), yes, a slow connection is terribly frustrating, but in the end, it's the connection itself that matters.
Believe me, there are days I really wonder why I moved to this state. Okay, I admit it, entire months, starting from about the point I signed the mortgage contract to...now.
On the up side, we have almost as much local entertainment in the politics as we used to get living in DC.
Eh, well.
Assertion: This is related: fanfiction interferes with the author's market.
Response: Unlikely. Fanfiction is rooted in the desire for "more stuff like that". Fanfiction is participation in the author's work. Produce more work, those fans will buy it. (And since they haven't spent money on fanfiction, there is not an opportunity cost for doing so. There is one for poor-quality spinoffs.) There are some subtleties here that haven't been explored.
First reaction: Oh, you said it naow, buddy, you're in troooouble.
Second reaction: This thread has 529+ replies and there's something we've not explored? How did that happen?
Third reaction: Where's Fanfic Pt II: Son of Fanfic thread?
Wow, and I thought romance novels basically all consisted of just "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl dies in teeth of combine engine."
Oh, wait, damn it, that's teenage angst novels. Boy, this writing stuff is harder than it looks.
Another note about fanfiction and its position as a gift economy: it's not just gift, it's also purchase but only for the original artist. Fans know better (for the most part) than to bite the hand that feeds them.
F'instance, I participated in the nonfiction side of fandom (essays and analysis) in Buffy, but it wasn't until I saw Spirited Away that I went looking for more, of anything, really. From there I began to develop an interest in anime, and my first introduction to one series was through fanfic. I stumbled over some slash, read, and thought, my god these characters are insane, who the hell would do a series like this? Then, of course, I ordered the series, discovered it was nothing like the slash-fic but all sorts of violent goodness, and by the end...
Well, let me put it this way. The series came out in Japan in 1995. It was finally put on Cartoon Network in 1999, and released on DVDs around 2000 or so. When I started buying copies of the DVDs, it had been ten years since Sunrise started the series. 49 episodes, five to a disk (or so), ten disks total, $26 on average, $21 or so if I could find a deep discount. So all told, I spent over $200 on that one series. Ten years after it was first produced, and all because I read some fanfiction.
Now, multiply my experience by about two thousand -- which is the number of people just on one mailing list for the fandom, even now it's hit its 10-year anniversary. Of those two thousand, I can name twenty in the past two months who have remarked that they've only just discovered the series, and are buying disks -- and without exception, it's because they know someone who writes fanfic, creates fanart, cosplays, something, and were curious, and wanted to see the original, "real" series after solely understanding it via other fans' eyes.
This is why I don't believe that fanfic can, ultimately, undo or dismantle or disparage a writer's or creator's work. Really, a solid fandom will expand and convert newcomers into true believers without the creator lifting a finger. And those true believers will buy fanart, will pay for various merchandise, but they'll also purchase the original work, too; it's their ticket to being able to claim their own interpretation of the work. There's nothing that gets quite so much ridicule in fandoms as the person who says, "I wrote this fanfic, and I've not actually seen the series, but..."
One caveat: fandom goes back to the source, except in cases where the source sucks rocks to a degree that makes the baby manatees cry. I can name at least two fandoms in which the original series was so butchered, so badly plotted, so horrendously drawn that the fandom pretty much "took over" the storyline in a massive, semi-concerted effort to "save" the characters.
I think if, as a writer, the former happened to me, I'd be pleased as punch. If the latter -- the fandom "saving" my creation from me -- happened, it's a major clue-by-four that maybe it's time to go back to working in a bowling alley. Or something.
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