Shades of Mauve

Diversity&Inclusion (StartYouStayYou) on Twitter

Fri, 24 May 2013 18:12:28 -0700

Diversity&Inclusion (StartYouStayYou) on Twitter:

psdo:

howtonotsuckatgamedesign:

The latest from Diversity&Inclusion (@StartYouStayYou). EA believes inclusion is a sense of belonging and comfort with being your true self at work. Worldwide

Okay seriously. How am I supposed to continue to bash EA after seeing this? I checked the account is genuine.

One lone corporation wises up, realizes everyone’s money is equally valuable in their pocket, decides to do something about it.

Unless I’m mistaken, because they’ve embraced diversity/inclusion as brand values, this means that any game seeking to be published by EA will have to meet some kind of standard in that regard, correct?

IF CORRECT THAT IS KIND OF A BIG DEAL.

When I see all this support and diversity in their games on a wide scale, being the rule rather than the exception then I’ll *think* about patting their butt a bit.

Ehhhh yeah, brand values and vision statements are all nice and all, but until it shows in actual product and policy it’s not worth much — the communications team behind the diversity push may believe it with all their hearts, but is their message getting communicated internally? That’s actually a lot to assume in a big business.

I walk into a room, and for this industry, I’m impossibly tall....

Fri, 24 May 2013 18:01:00 -0700

I walk into a room, and for this industry, I’m impossibly tall. When they find it hard to pair you up with the opposite sex, then what’s left for a woman? Either you’re the ball-buster or the not-so-attractive girlfriend standing by the lead. I mean, traditionally not so attractive. Because you have your starlets and then you have their best friends who are these character actresses. When you fall within the cracks, you thank God for sci-fi, because they’ll give you a gun, and they’ll say, ‘Go over there and conquer that world. You kick some ass, girl!’

galleywinter replied to your post: Oh my. What if Calliope was just trying to wrap… Well...

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:42:51 -0700

galleywinter replied to your post: Oh my. What if Calliope was just trying to wrap…

Well then youve completely RUINED the surprise. NOW what is she supposed to get you for your birthday/congrats-on-the-build/anniversary/Christmas present?! How dare you be so inconsiderate.

Oh dear.

Y’know, I’m not sure if I peeked early, or if I was supposed to unwrap it MONTHS ago. Either way, I’m an ungrateful ass.

Oh my. What if Calliope was just trying to wrap the present for me?

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:18:21 -0700

Oh my.

What if Calliope was just trying to wrap the present for me?

Oh dear... Or rat. Or possibly squirrel.

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:07:33 -0700

I’ve been collecting huge amounts of cardboard because I want to sheet mulch my yard, and I’ve been piling it all on the back porch. There was one box out there that I hadn’t gotten around to breaking down yet — the long, narrow box my bike repair stand came in, maybe 9” square and four feet long.

I just turned it upside down to start to break it down, and a mummy fell out.

With little scrabbly desiccated clutching claws and a rain of short gray fur.

I’m not sure whether it crawled in there to die or the cats killed it and drug it into the supreme box lair, but I’m betting on the later — which implies the victorious hunter is Calliope, ‘cause I’m not sure Monkey can fit in the box, and I saw her go in there a few times.

It’s kind of ew.

I can’t believe I didn’t smell a DEAD THING four feet from my back door.

"Rather than fighting for every woman’s right to feel beautiful, I would like to see the return of a..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:01:42 -0700

“Rather than fighting for every woman’s right to feel beautiful, I would like to see the return of a kind of feminism that tells women and girls everywhere that maybe it’s all right not to be pretty and perfectly well behaved. That maybe women who are plain, or large, or old, or differently abled, or who simply don’t give a damn what they look like because they’re too busy saving the world or rearranging their sock drawer, have as much right to take up space as anyone else.

I think if we want to take care of the next generation of girls we should reassure them that power, strength and character are more important than beauty and always will be, and that even if they aren’t thin and pretty, they are still worthy of respect. That feeling is the birthright of men everywhere. It’s about time we claimed it for ourselves.”

- I don’t want to be told I’m pretty as I am - I want to live in a world where that’s irrelevant (via brute-reason)

"We [Fraction and his wife, Kelly Sue DeConnick] were pregnant at the time, and while I was out there..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 06:01:02 -0700

“

We [Fraction and his wife, Kelly Sue DeConnick] were pregnant at the time, and while I was out there I started to realize that if I had a daughter, there would come a day when I would have to apologize to her for my profession. I would have to apologize for the way it treats and speaks to women readers, and the way it treats its female characters.

I knew that if we had a daughter, because I know my wife and I know the kind of girl she wants to raise and I know the kind of girl I want to raise, she was going to look at what I did for a living and want to know how the fuck I could stomach it. How could I sell her out like that?” Fraction continued. “That conversation is still coming, and I’m bracing for it in the way that some dads brace for their daughter’s first date or boyfriend. I became acutely aware that I had sort of done that thing that lots of privileged hetero cisgendered white dudes do. ‘I’m cool with women, and that’s enough.’ It’s not enough. It’s embarrassing to say, because we somehow have attached shame to learning and evolving our opinions, culturally, but I became aware that there was a deficiency of and to women in my work, and all I could do at that moment was take care of my side of the street.

”

- Writer Matt Fraction on his role on expanding the profile of female characters in the Marvel Universe. (via goodmanw)

purple-goat: Faintly, the tiny goat in a fabulous outfit :D

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:37:43 -0700

purple-goat:

Faintly, the tiny goat in a fabulous outfit :D

Going to have a mental breakdown trying to choose a heating system for my new studio. I thought I...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:35:05 -0700

Going to have a mental breakdown trying to choose a heating system for my new studio.

I thought I already did this, but there are always more questions.

scienceing: An exotic creature from an alien world.

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:01:07 -0700

scienceing:

An exotic creature from an alien world.

highfiveshiningstrike: ACTING

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:01:33 -0700

highfiveshiningstrike:

ACTING

coelasquid: erihan replied to your post: What does cilantro taste like to people that don’t… ...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:40:40 -0700

coelasquid:

erihan replied to your post: What does cilantro taste like to people that don’t…

there is a taste to it other than soapy things?

Studies have shown the soapy taste that makes some people hate it is quite possibly at least partially due to an inherited genetic factor rather than regional preference, which I guess wouldn’t be unheard of when you look at chemicals like PTC that some people pick up as a very strong bitter taste and some people cannot taste at all.

When I was little, I thought cilantro tasted like soap and I hated it.

Now I’m older, and I still think it tastes a little like soap… but I like it.

visiblespectre: ktshy: drawing-bored: isn’t sass an emotional...

Thu, 23 May 2013 06:01:01 -0700

Leonard Nimoy (1968)

Zachary Quinto (2009)

visiblespectre:

ktshy:

drawing-bored:

isn’t sass an emotional response?

The human half brings the sass.

Golly

So how are you supposed to see ‘em?

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:01:17 -0700

So how are you supposed to see ‘em?

mizzkatonic: Always reblog pug bantha.

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:01:30 -0700

mizzkatonic:

Always reblog pug bantha.

Oh Freddie. One of the anti-fic comments on a blog post discussing the Amazon Worlds thing...

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:26:57 -0700

Oh Freddie.

One of the anti-fic comments on a blog post discussing the Amazon Worlds thing was:

Write your own stuff or shut up. The world doesn’t need your particular view of Luke Skywalker and his daddy issues.

Which is clearly a territorial author being a jerk, but I’m SO DAMN AMUSED by their choice of example. I mean, of all the IPs to whine about, Star Wars — which has been licenced and franchised out the wazoo; which has a huge line of published, ‘soft canon,’ fic-like EU novels; which has later components crafted by the original creator which were widely panned as narrative crap — is hardly a good way to make your point! If anything, Star Wars is like an epic counter example!

If you’re a territorial book author who wants to make a point about fic, stick to using examples of fic derived from single-author-owned worlds, mmkay? Basically everything else is already waaaaay too complex in terms of IP law, canon, and quality.

Amazon to Create a Fanfic Publishing Model

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:05:47 -0700

sinvraal:

“SEATTLE—(BUSINESS WIRE)—May. 22, 2013— (NASDAQ:AMZN)—Today, Amazon Publishing announces Kindle Worlds, the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so. Amazon Publishing has secured licenses from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment division for its New York Times best-selling book series Gossip Girl, by Cecily von Ziegesar; Pretty Little Liars, by Sara Shepard; and Vampire Diaries, by L.J. Smith; and plans to announce more licenses soon. Through these licenses, Kindle Worlds will allow any writer to publish authorized stories inspired by these popular Worlds and make them available for readers to purchase in the Kindle Store.

Amazon Publishing will pay royalties to both the rights holders of the Worlds and the author. The standard author’s royalty rate (for works of at least 10,000 words) will be 35% of net revenue. As with all titles from Amazon Publishing, Kindle Worlds will base net revenue off of sales price—rather than the lower, industry standard of wholesale price—and royalties will be paid monthly.”

Press release here.

That’s… interesting. When I first logged on this morning and saw references to monetizing fanfic I got a bit twitchy, since legal issues and money go hand-in-hand, but a split-royalty set-up is actually an intriguing way of dealing with the fact that the hypothetical fic author is making money off of someone else’s work. And obviously the rights for this would be hyper specific, so you’d only get (original) authors who had no problem with derivative works (or perhaps don’t really care and like an extra pittance in royalties :P).

Another question is whether readers used to getting fic for free would pay to read it. My guess it that they might, IF the fic author was someone they already recognized as a good one through free fic… which might actually go a long way towards ameliorating another obvious problem that jumps out at me, which is a ton of crappily written work diluting the ‘brand’ of the original world. I’m not as concerned as the writer here about readers keeping the canonical/non-canonical worlds straight — I think it’ll pretty obviously be FIC and therefore non-canonical in the eyes of readers, money or no — but the idea of crappily written, crappily edited fic being charged for? That’s a potential well of bad press. It can backfire on Amazon, the original author, and the original publisher — “I hate X because I hate their fandom” is very much a thing, after all, and “X must be just trying to make a quick buck because they allow monetized fanfic that’s CRAP” could also be a thing.

A lot of the further knock-on effects for authors (both original and fic) depend on the explicit wording in the contract. And, now I think of it, potentially in their original publishing contract, too (if it says something like ‘all rights not listed herein remain property of author’, then they should have control over new uses like this; if all enumerated rights go to the publisher for a set period of time, then the publisher could do this without the author’s consent… I think. That’d be bad). For a contract specifically for this, I’d imagine an Original Author would be wise to make sure it was explicitly stated that the IP was still theirs for any further contracting purposes, and the fic authors couldn’t sell rights to, say, a movie version of the fic — but I honestly can’t imagine a publishing house OR amazon falling down on the legal job enough to not include those details.

It may be that this doesn’t faze me that much because most of my personal experience with IP law is in the music arena. If I record a tune written by someone else — a cover — and sell CDs, there’s already a really simple model for that, and it basically works out similarly to what’s shown here. I have to give them credit, and I have to give them a share of the profits. It’s called a Mechanical License, and the current standard rate is 9.1 cents per copy of recording sold. (The Amazon Press doesn’t make the royalty rate for IP rights holders clear; it only gives the number for fic authors, and anyway their pilot licensed ‘worlds’ all appear to be franchises, which means the original author wrote as work-for-hire and doesn’t get diddly for this or other uses of their work — NOT your standard author situation.)

So, that was long, but there’s still a lot of supposition going on here. As long as publishers don’t try anything sketchy with claiming rights to this kind of thing without the original author’s explicit permission, I’m quite intrigued to see where it goes.

me: I'm so full omg I'm not gonna eat for days

Wed, 22 May 2013 06:01:10 -0700

me: I'm so full omg I'm not gonna eat for days
me: are those brownies

bellecs: that I dont know.

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:01:29 -0700

bellecs:

that I dont know.

"For my roofing project I bought a framing gun and a palm nailer. That’s not a religous..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:26:36 -0700

“For my roofing project I bought a framing gun and a palm nailer. That’s not a religous reference, though I’m sure if Pontius Pilate’s men had one, they’d have used it.”

- A normal conversation with Dad