Persepolis 2.0 is a recaptioned remix of Marjane Satrapi's original Persepolis around the current Iranian election protests. Via Boing Boing.

Sensors indicate someone at NRO has gone completely off their nut.

UPDATE: Bioware has now apologized.

Homosexuality does not exist in the Star Wars universe, according to Bioware, the developers of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the new Star Wars MMO...

Would-be players were discussing in the MMO's forums how the game might handle future gay and lesbian relationships - and Bioware freaked out, shutting down those discussion threads and banning the words "gay," "lesbian" and "homosexual." Says community manager Sean Dahlberg:

As I have stated before, these are terms that do not exist in Star Wars.

Thread closed.

Come now, Sean, aren't we being just a bit naive?

I'm not going to lie. It wasn't easy choosing an accompanying photo for this post.









Given that companies like Bioware are (one assumes) actually trying to make money with their products, it's continually surprising that they degrade and undervalue the importance of slash in fan communities. Why haven't more creators tried to (literally) capitalize on this interest? Aside from J.K. Rowling (who generally stuck to heterosexual coupling, the notable case of Dumbledore excepted) and Smallville (which for years injected a heavy slash subtext into the relationship of Clark Kent and Lex Luthor), SF franchises largely remain terrified of open acknowledgment of their own queerness, much less embracing fans' noncanonical slash repurposing of the work.

I'm telling you, there's money to be made here.

Dubious distinction watch: My referral logs reveal I am currently the top Google hit for "Adam Duritz fanfiction," though the coveted #1 slot for "Adam Duritz fan fiction" continues to elude me. Given that I don't write or publish fan fiction, much less Duritz-themed fan fiction, this would seem to say significantly less about my blog than about the sorry state of the genre.

HALF AN HOUR LATER UPDATE: Mission accomplished. Having achieved my last objective, this blog is now closed.

Playing catch-up.

* Al Giordano reports good news out of Virginia, where Obama has taken an unexpected lead. Flipping VA and NM to Obama and flipping IA to McCain (which admittedly looks unlikely at this point) is, incidentally, one of the many combinations resulting in a 269-269 tie, which would throw the election to the House and cause a legal clusterflunk of epic proportions. (As of right now, we'd win, but it would make 2000 look pretty.)

* Also in politics, people are taking notice of what I've been saying since the primaries: Claire McCaskill is a better surrogate for Obama than just about anybody in the business. Oh, and Obama gave McCain a much-needed bloody nose on the "fundamentals" line.

* The long-neglected art of Iron Man fan fiction has finally been perfected.

* Bad news for veggietopia: eating vegetables shrinks the brain.

* They've found the 20-ft. fence that used to keep the rabble away from Stonehenge.

* I don't trust anyone with a real job in the banking industry, but this shocked even me: Citibank was caught flat-out stealing $14 million from its customers.

* Congratulations, George Takei.

* The Church of England apologizes to Charles Darwin.

* The David Foster Wallace memorial thread I posted to MetaFilter went really well, I thought. So did MetaTalk. Here's something else for the collection—a DFW reading from UC-TV, via my editor at the Indy.



* And the Big Picture has stunning photographs of the 2008 Paralympic Games.

How fan fiction can teach us a new way to read Moby-Dick: Parts 1 and 2.

Quotes to squirrel away somewhere, Michael Chabon edition:

“All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.”

and

“All literature, highbrow or low, from the Aeneid onward, is fan fiction.”

Via the Valve.