subdee

Deadline for the next run of fan_extension courses is August 27th. I'm already overscheduled next semester T_T so I thought I'd teach one. Right now I'm looking at two that could be okay.


The Evolution of Fanon
This would open with a short definition of "fanon" and a call for students to introduce themselves with the most bizarre, anti-canonical fanon they can remember encountering.

Also, a description of course requirements: to pass, must turn in "final project," an account of the introduction and adoption of one piece of fanon, preferably with names, told entertainingly. If students don't feel up to this they can participate in all of the discussions instead (instructor preference, however, is for submission of final project). Following this course should suggest avenues of research for the clueless, if I'm doing it right. ( Read more... )


This is Science, yo. This is Serious Buisiness.
In this course we will be conducting Serious Scientific Research. There will be five projects, each lasting one month. To pass, participants must sign up for and contribute to at least two of these projects. Sign-ups will remain open until the end of the third month. ( Read more... )

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Tari and V[1] said I should poll this, so here, have a poll:

[Poll #801022]

Questions? Suggestions? Bueller?

[1] WHO ARE AWESOME. We met in New York yesterday and did the bookstore/comicshop/bookstore/cafe thing[2]. tarigwaemir, I'm glad I could meet you in person again. falxumbra, we should meet again before the end of the summer. I'll be back in NJ from the 28th to the 31st, maybe we could arrange a dorky dance videogame party on one of those days? DDR is in Michigan but I still have In the Groove, maybe O, N, F could be convinced to come.

[2] Haul:
Cantarella vol 1-3 (You Higuri)
Scott Pilgrim vol 1 and 3 (Bryan Lee O'Malley)
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Alexander McCall Smith)
Fifth Buisiness (Robertson Davies)
Dictionary of the Khazars (Milord Pavic')

Splitting this off from the previous post, because it was getting long. Apologies to anyone who'd already filled out the poll.

( tl;dr )

Enough of this seriousness. I need to be distracted from my essay-writing like I need a bullet to the brain and I was thinking, you know that DVD commentary meme? The one where the author picks a story to disect in detail. If were to do one of those, theoretically I mean, which story would you like to see me to do?

[Poll #750258]

Out of curiosity, which one of these would you rather see:

( one )
( two )

So.

[Poll #730071]

Sorry about the delay on Call Me Anytime. I haven't give up on it or anything like that, it's just that uhh Suikoden V got in the way. (more on this later) Also I bought waaaaaay too many books during the Ann Arbor Book Festival. I read and read and read, and the pile does not get any smaller. (more on this later too.)

EDIT - does anyone want to write the next entry at chain_of_fics? The line is "Maybe he had done it because she had warned him, who could tell."

team7 and I were talking about the revival of fanthology as a themed recs comm. The way it would work is: there is a new theme every two weeks, which is announced two weeks in advance. During that time, group members post fanfiction reccomendations that somehow fit the theme. All fandoms welcome.

I thought this could also work on an A side/B side system, where the themes for the first half of each month are perfectly respectable and/or have literary merit, while the themes for the second half of each month are the opposite. High school au and mpreg and vampirefic so on, fics whose ff.net summaries are wearing out your scroll button. Because there are always exceptions to badfic rules, right?

What I mean to say is please fill out this preliminary survey.

[Poll #678170]

If one "other" box is not enough for you (oh please oh please oh please say it isn't), there's always comments.

Now that there are these themes, I need your help remembering a couple fics.

( What was the name of the fic where... )

Have you ever had one of those all-nighters where you think, this is so STUPID, it's only three hours of work so why am I spending all night on it? Yeah. On the plus side I did manage to finish two books during my "break" from lab-report writing. (On the minus side, they weren't very good books. ;_; C.J. Cherryh, I'm realizing, can be almost entirely desribed by the phrase "unnatural preoccupation with sentient alien lizards.")

This entry is part of my ongoing struggle to post shorter entries! I'm a natural lumper so this splitting-content thing is hard even if it is more organized. Poll!

[Poll #599957]

memlu's on an uploading roll! Her summaries are really good too. The two series she's done recently are:
1. Gokusen and
2. Hana Yori Dango

1. Gokusen
Gokusen's basically a yakuza/high school gag comic, like Giant Step or GTO or Cromartie High School. It was made into a live-action drama a few years ago. The drama's cuter than the manga, but ultimately not as funny *I* thought (although on the plus side it did have a fairly hot guy playing Shin).

I love Gokusen with all my heart, however I am sort of bummed that in the ONE case where I am all for student-teacher, the student-teacher relationship isn't canon. Or, well, it sort of is, but it is also canonically problematic and so...perhaps I take these things too seriously. Repeat to self, they aren't real yakuza, they're manga yakuza. They aren't real yakuza. Yeah.

2. Hana Yori Dango
aka that manga I had this nagging feeling of having heard of before, but didn't actually know anything about. (tarigwaemir wrote fic for it? And team7 sometimes mentions Meteor Garden, the live-action soap opera. Other than that, nothing.)

I'm up to volume 5! I'm having a really hard time. I swore in the first volume I'd never like That Jerk With the Pouffy Black Hair and, horrible track record aside, I haven't really seen anything to change my mind. It's less that Dyou-whatever is a terrible monster (this isn't Hot Gimmick) than that I can't STAND it when he succeeds in guilt-tripping Tsukkaki for something that is OBVIOUSLY not her fault.

It's a shame about HYD, actually, because how many times in shojo manga does the heroine NOT end up with the first guy she shares a panel with? In a way it's subversive.