And how are you all doing, on this fine Saturday morning? Get ready for the Saturday Linkspam!
Afghan women boxers eye Olympic knock-out
Just a little something to brighten everyone’s day! I’m an Olympics junkie, and it’s stories like these that really make me wish for the next games, which take place in London next summer. I’ll keep my eye on these ladies and hope that they do well.
12 Reasons to Ignore the Naysayers: Do NaNoWriMo
I originally heard about NaNoWriMo when I was thirteen years old. Writing a novel in a month, or 1667 words per day, didn’t seem like such a hard thing to do. Ah, the naivety of youth. I got about five hundred words on the first day before I got distracted and never completed that first novel.
I came back to NaNoWriMo during my first year of college. My roommate and I both competed in the contest, and won with just a few hours to spare. Now, I’ve heard a lot of praise for the ‘competition,’ although it’s not quite a competition except if you think of it as a competition with yourself, and a lot of criticism, so it’s not for everybody. But for me, this list, in response to another blogger’s criticism, gives the perfect reasoning for why this is a useful and fun thing to do for yourself, whether you’re a professional writer, an amateur, or someone who just does it for fun.
“Underground”: From Bootleg to Breakout
If you’d found out that your entire comic, six whole issues worth, had been posted online for free, you would think you’d put up a great deal of fuss. However, when Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber’s ‘Underground’ was posted in its entirety on the Comics and Cartoons section of the infamous but popular imageboard known as 4Chan, instead of demanding instant legal action, he did something different. Lieber engaged the readers there, answering questions, joking, and even providing the entire comic on his website for free download, along with mentions of ‘if you liked it, you should buy it.’
Surprisingly, there was a rise in sales from both Amazon and from their site on Etsy. While this isn’t a good business model for DC or Marvel in the long run, it’s an interesting look at what communication between fans and creators can accomplish and, with a little tweaking, could possibly provide insight into the way to solve the problem of comic scans.
Flash mobs are a great way to brighten someone’s day and bring a little bit more of the performing arts into the world. As a student of music and a budding singer, I’ve loved opera ever since my first voice lesson, where I started learning ‘Voi Che Sapete’ from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. If you combine the two, as the Opera Company of Philadelphia has done here, it’s perfection. In a world where the love of opera dwindles, we desperately need to do all we can to spread the love as much as possible in hopes that someone else will realize just what a special thing an opera can be.
Fannish Potpourri 