Notes on Virtual Comm and Mailing List Assignment

As you can probably see from most of the postings I'm trying to keep a focus on fandom because I feel it's a topic that's really been missing from out classes as a major aspect of virtual communities.

The Mailing List and Community I have chosen are both fan based.

The Mailing List
I decided on the McShepSlash MailingList at yahoo for a couple of reasons. One is that it's a fic based mailing list where a lot of people post their stories for other people to read. Another is that it's slash: homoerotic stories written about characters where you interpret the subtext to imply a relationship which may or may not be there in the canon (the story as given/original source material). McShep is the ship (or relationship) between Rodney McKay and John Sheppard in Stargate Atlantis. And another is that McKay is the main reason I watch the show so it's a good enough reason to join the mailing list. If you'd like to see what a McShep fic is like here is a rec for one of my favourite series of stories which is PG/M so no naughty unless you want to read it *grin*. Another good site for SGA fic is the wraithbait archive.

The Community
This was a bit harder to decide because I was tempted by Suicide Girls, which is a pseudo-porn site focussing on goth/punk grrls, or by one of the large fic archives like fanfiction.net (ff.net - a multifandom fic archive) or fictionalley.org (harry potter fic archive) or possibly Uniquely Pleasurable (a community dedicated to promoting original slash). Neopets or Habbo hotel were other possibilities. But in the end I decided to go for something which is near and dear to my heart: Browncoats: Official Serenity Fan Site.



Serenity: The Official Movie Website

Serenity is the new Joss Whedon film based on the tv series Firefly which was cancelled mid season due to bad programming schedule by fox executives - there is a lot of bitterness about the cancellation in the fandom and a lot of excitement about the film.

It is a fantastic SF-westernesque show with a great cast (including Nathan Fillion (Caleb in S7 Btvs), Alan Tudyk (I Robot, Dodgeball, A Knight's Tale), Gina Torres (Cleopatra 2525, Jasmine in S4 Angel), Adam Baldwin (Hamilton in S5 Angel)), great plotting and is just one of the best pieces of SF to come out since Babylon 5. You can buy it in Borders and at all good retailers worldwide (if they don't have it they're bad!).

The Community itself is pretty interesting because it's pretty explicitly a marketing enterprise for a film that came from a show that *supposedly* didn't get the ratings (it deserved). There are over 33000 members. You can earn points for promoting the movie in a Peer2Peer advertising exercise. If you get enough points you can get free stuff and status and things. You can also get points for making banners and lj/aim icons - an example of fan production using copyrighted materials (images of the cast/sets/branding) to promote the film in a sanctioned way.

I will analyse this site more in depth and give updates on some of my observations as I participate in different parts of the community.