Pixel Scroll 10/4/16 But With Strange Pixels Even Scrolls May File

(1) IT CAN WEAR ON YOU. Wendy Ross Kaufman has written a concise history of fan costuming culture that explains why she prefers her activity not be lumped in with cosplay, in “They’re Young. We’re Dead. So it’s Cosplay”.

And so, momentum of the new “cosplay” word grows. The newer, younger crowd makes original work, but since they came to costuming by way of Anime, they still call themselves cosplayers. Cosplayers brand themselves as such, finally showing up on reality shows, and the media is just frantic for them. Most have no idea that this cosplay thing is not Japanese at all. It’s American, misnamed by a Japanese man searching for a name that was not “too noble” for the art he saw at Worldcon in 1984. As one who has never cosplayed, “even once”, it’s understandable how Mr. Takahashi just got it so completely wrong, and completely missed all the subtlety and cultural nuances of what he saw. No outsider could, let alone one from a totally different culture.

Now, as ‘cosplayers’ enjoy their turn at being the darling of the internet, there have been skirmishes about what to call these people who make costumes for conventions. Is it “cosplayer” or “costumer”? Sometimes you hear that one should simply respect a person’s wishes, and call each what they ask to be called. Then you also get the positively rabid insistence from some that it’s all cosplay, and only cosplay, and anything else is somehow insulting to cosplayers. They are absolutely, positively emphatic about it. Even costuming that happened 40 years ago is cosplay and should be renamed as such. No amount of trying to explain how this is not correct, because the whole era was different, will work, and those costumers do not want to rename what they did, nor should they. The audience was different. What was fashionable in costume was different. These costumes can be dated the same way any costumes—even period costumes—date a movie to when it was made, not when it was set. There was a whole community with its own codified rules and expectations at that time that are very different than the cosplayer’s and in no way was the word “cosplay” associated with it, nor would any of them have considered associating what most consider to be “play” with what they did. Simply put, the word “cosplay” did not exist then, nor would it, here in the US, for a decade or more. It would take even longer before it gained any real momentum.

So you can see that it is a bit odd to insist, while virtually stomping oneself into the floor, Rumplestiltskin-like, that 50 years of costume convention history be renamed because the new kids insist there is no difference, and they want their new word—because somehow, it’s better but also the same. It’s a peculiar bit of cultural appropriation that costumers react negatively to. If there is no difference, then that only means that “costumer” is the “correct” term. Why do we need a new word?

You can be cosplayers if you wish, but costumers will continue to be costumers.

(2) RETRO CONVENTION T-SHIRTS. Alison Scott’s Fannish Clothing Emporium (a Facebook link) specializes in wearable fanhistory.  (There’s also a Teespring store).

She launched this summer with a reprise of Margaret Welbank’s shirt for the 1987 Worldcon bid — available in UK and US varieties.

britain-is-heaven-tee

Pat Cadigan put her up to this one –

cadigan-chemo-tee

(3) GET SCALZI AUDIO STORY FREE. This novella is premiering as an audiobook – and you can download it at no charge over the next few weeks – “The Dispatcher: Now Out for Free on Audible + NYCC Signings and Appearances”.

Today’s the day: The Dispatcher, my audiobook novella, is out and exclusively available on Audible.com, for free through November 2. It’s read by Zachary Quinto, who you know from the new Star Trek films as Spock and from Heroes as Sylar, and he is simply a terrific narrator for the story.

And what’s the story? Imagine our world with a simple but profound twist: when someone intentionally kills someone else, 999 out of a thousand, they come back. Murder becomes almost impossible, war is radically altered — and there arises a new class of legal, professional killers called “Dispatchers,” tasked with killing those doomed to die, so they can come back and live again.

(4) LONGER LIST ANTHOLOGY. David Steffen’s Long List Anthology Volume 2 Kickstarter passed its first stretch goal of $3,900, enabling it to add the novelettes, and it’s now raised $4,147, on its way to the $5000 for adding two novellas.

That adds the following stories, including one that is just being announced as part of this update (marked with a * in case you’re just tuning in)

  • “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” by Elizabeth Bear
  • “So Much Cooking” by Naomi Kritzer
  • “Another Word For World” by Ann Leckie
  • “Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” by Rose Lemberg
  • “The Deepwater Bride” by Tamsyn Muir
  • “Our Lady of the Open Road” by Sarah Pinsker*
  • “The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” by Catherynne M. Valente

On to the novella stretch goal! (And if that one’s reached, to consider what else to consider after that.)

Thanks to all 212  backers, BoingBoing and File770 for signal-boosting, and to everyone else who has helped spread the word!

(5) JUST. ONCE. MORE. Can’t find that I’ve linked this story in the Scroll before – it’s Yes! Magazine’s full-length article about the “Just. One. Book.” effort,  “A Mom’s Plea for Library Books Brought in 15,000 – And Transformed Her Small Town”.

Books change lives. Everyone reading this knows that. But what about 15,000 books donated from around the world to a struggling rural school, where the library has been closed for a decade? That many books can change a community.

At the cusp of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges sits Greenville, California, a town of 1,130 residents. The town and the surrounding Indian Valley community are right now exploring all the benefits of this gift—enough volumes to fill several libraries in a place with scant library services.

Like every good book, there’s a story here.

Margaret Elysia Garcia wasn’t thinking about the shuttered sawmills and empty storefronts of Indian Valley when she posted a blog entry titled “Just. One. Book.” She was thinking about kids…

(6) MASTER OF STONELORE. Fantasy Literature scored a big interview — Hugo Winner N.K. Jemisin talks THE FIFTH SEASON and THE OBELISK GATE

WARNING: THIS INTERVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR BOOK 1 AND 2 OF THE BROKEN EARTH SERIES

Kevin Wei: First, let me just say congrats on your recent Hugo win! We’re great fans of your work here at Fantasy Literature, so I just wanted to start us off by talking about how you write. I know you’ve said in the past that your writing process differs depending on what you write. Has the way you’ve written BROKEN EARTH differed significantly from the way you’ve written other works? Was there a large difference between the writing processes for The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate?

N. K. Jemisin: My process is still pretty much the same, at the planning stage. I outline, and I will put together different sets of information storage, like at one point I used to use a wiki. Now I just write notes, endless notes. I’ve got a file that’s nothing more than stonelore that I’ve made up and another file that keeps track of all the seasons, and then a file that keeps track of the way that plate tectonics would have moved over the years, and all kinds of stuff like that. But I think the difference now that I’m writing book three of the trilogy is that I am now completely off the outline; I have been pantsing it almost exclusively, which is not normal for me, and I’m not sure what that’s going to mean. I think it’s mostly just that I’m working at speed right now, and I’m working at such speed that I don’t have time to even slow down enough to check my outline and make sure I’m on track. It’s a fairly simple story at this point, all of the place settings have been moved and the chess board is all set up now it’s just a matter of “now fight.”

(7) REPEALING THE INFORMATION AGE? Poynter.org reports “Newspapers hit with a wave of requests to take down embarrassing archived stories”.

In May 2014, the European Union’s highest court ruled that there is a privacy “right to be forgotten” — and that Google needed to respond to any reasonable request that information “inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive” be removed. (The case was brought by a Spanish businessman who wanted to unpublish an account of an earlier insolvency).

The right to be forgotten concept has not yet made it across the Atlantic, but it is easy to imagine privacy advocates taking up the cause in state legislatures or Congress.

I became aware of the recent surge in such requests six weeks ago when Zach Ryall, digital managing editor of the Austin American-Statesman called Poynter asking if we knew of an ethics code providing guidance.

“This is getting scary,” Ryall told me. “We are responding to more and more of these…And when I checked with my colleagues at other Cox papers, I found they are too.”…

Checking with chains, Randy Siegel of Advance Local told me the inquiries are not yet a big problem. Brent Jones, standards and ethics editor of the USA Today Network, commented by email:

Newsrooms are guided to keep the bar high when considering removal of content from digital platforms. Our journalists strive daily to preserve the integrity of the published record, including publishing corrections or clarifications. We do so in the interest of the public’s right to know now – and in the future. Take-down requests are weighed on a case-by-case basis with senior editors, and some situations may require legal guidance….

For now, case-by-case seems to be the norm. I was surprised to read that since the EU ruling, Google has received literally hundreds of thousands appeals to disable links, granting about 40 percent but turning down the majority.

Makes me wonder if the Internet Archive is responding to requests to take down old news items?

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • October 4, 1931 — The comic strip Dick Tracy, created by Chester Gould, made its debut.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRLS

  • Born October 4, 1941 — Anne Rice
  • Born October 4, 1988 — Melissa Benoist

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born October 4, 1923 — Charlton Heston.

(11) JACK VANCE PHOTO ALBUMS. Andrew Porter remarks, “If people only knew Jack Vance as an old, sedentary and very rotund author, these images will open your eyes of what he looked like as a newlywed, with his wife Norma, just after World War Two and in the years following: http://menno.pharesm.org/jackvance/albums/.

(12) ANOTHER TIME AT BAT. Collider says Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie Newmar are still busy in the genre — “’Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders’ Adds to the Voice Cast as New Images Emerge”.

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, the latest animated effort from Warner Bros. Animation and DC Entertainment, has added a few quality names to the film’s voice cast, along with a few new images showing off the classic designs of the 1960s Batman characters.

Adam West (Batman), Burt Ward (Robin) and Julie Newmar (Catwoman) own top billing, but Steven Weber and Thomas Lennon–-join as trustworthy butler Alfred Pennyworth and Chief O’Hara, respectively–headline an impressive array of actors who were excited to give voice to a role in a Batman film. In addition to Weber and Lennon, the cast includes:

Jeff Bergman as the Joker and the revered Announcer, William Salyers as The Penguin, Wally Wingert as The Riddler, Lynne Marie Stewart as Aunt Harriett, Jim Ward as Commissioner Gordon, and Sirena Irwin as TV show host Miranda Moore.

(13) CHANGING OF THE GUARDIANS. Petréa Mitchell noted MiceAge has a new Disneyland update that includes details about the new Guardians of the Galaxy makeover for the Tower of Terror, and some epic-sounding stuff about Star Wars Land that we may or may not eventually see.

The construction scaffolding has been growing on the sides and back of Tower of Terror, and by Halloween it should be nearly fully shrouded in scaffolding and tarps. That’s about the time that the construction footprint will have to expand enough to shut down the DCA parade route through the remainder of the construction timeline until next May. Without the ability to perform a parade during construction DCA will still go full steam ahead on one of Christie’s pet projects, the food and merch “festivals” in DCA that will begin November 11th and continue through the spring in one form or another. And when the scaffolds come down, this is what will be seen from throughout DCA – as the video says, inspired by oil refineries:…

 

(14) THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST. According to the League of Supercritics:

The Wicked Witch of the West is the ultimate archetype for the modern witch, so everyone wants to their own version of her. Too bad MGM holds the copyright to the one everyone knows.

 

(15) OH, THE DINOMANITY! Mark Evanier relives the anguish of being a first-run Flintstones fan, before the invention of the VCR.

Still, that awful night, I actually missed an episode of The Flintstones! A whole, actual episode of The Flintstones! On Monday, I pumped my schoolmates who’d seen it for details…and expressed shock that some of them could have watched but hadn’t. What the hell was wrong with those children?

I consoled myself that all was not lost; that some (not all) of the episodes were rerun near the end of the season…so I had a chance. As it turned out, this was not one of the ones that was repeated and I figured sadly I would never see it. Who knew at the time those would all be rerun and rerun forever and someday, I’d even be able to buy a copy of it and watch it whenever I wanted to? I finally caught it a year or three later in syndication by which time my interest in The Flintstones was somewhat diminished.

So let us pause to remember that because of technology, no child ever has to endure that pain today. Whatever ten-year-olds are watching today — Son of Zorn or Bob’s Burgers or Elena of Avalor or Naked and Afraid — they never have to miss an episode.

It’s a great time to be alive.

(16) NEW SPACE TRAILER. The Space Between Us Official Trailer #2.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, JJ, David K.M. Klaus, Nigel, Petréa Mitchell, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Alison Scott for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Nigel.]