Everything. The way Jo curls her wrists and then raises the roof. The weird hand gesture Brent does when he says “Indigo Bunting.” Daye’s face at all times. But also everything.

Reposted from http://ift.tt/XY41Z6.

thoughtsthatfester:

On Emma’s clothes…

So, I like fashion. A lot. I read a lot of fashion blogs. I keep up with designers. I shop a lot. One of the things that keeps bringing me out of the world of Emma Approved is the clothing posts.

Read More

This sounds like another area (along with the posts on the otherwise-in-world blog pointing to the out-of-world videos) where Emma Approved falls short of the standard for believability that some viewers would like it to meet.

I wrote a long post about this on my iPad this morning that the Tumblr iPad app silently ate (I hate how it does that). But the gist was this: With the transmedia being lazy about mixing in-world and out-of-world experiences, Pemberley Digital is continuing a trend that’s been in place at least since Domino: Making choices that benefit the show’s accessibility and appeal at the expense of believability, especially for the subset of fans who choose to invest heavily in the world.

The choice to make the videos The Office/Parks and Rec-style, with events being taped for a hypothetical future documentary, feels like a safe, conventional choice. It solves a lot of problems they wrestled with throughout LBD, and does it more elegantly than the approach they used for Sanditon.

What it doesn’t do is work well with the transmedia. When they use the in-world transmedia platforms to promote out-of-world elements, they’re basically putting the transmedia second, subordinating its believability to the desire to promote the videos.

I wonder how that makes Jay Bushman feel. He’s written about how important it was to him that LBD elevated the transmedia to a co-equal storytelling tool, rather than treating it like the poor relation. Some of my favorite moments in LBD where when the transmedia pushed into my world in a way that I hadn’t been expecting. I see that Jay isn’t on the masthead of the Emma Approved videos; Alexandra appears to moved up into the Transmedia Producer role. (Note: Not to take anything away from the work she’s doing. But I wonder if Jay’s absence is a factor in this.)

My understanding is that they have hopes of spinning EA out into some sort of video distribution beyond YouTube (something about trying to get a deal to distribute supplemental content on a cable network?) They have their eyes on a more-lucrative prize than pleasing the subset of fans who want to hold the show to a high standard of transmedia believability. They want lots of ad views. They want to sell clothes to young women — and not the kind of young women Emma is supposed to represent, but the larger pool of young women who are likely to be targeted by companies interested in promoting their products on a YouTube series.

I think there are exciting possibilities for believable storytelling that goes beyond what LBD did with transmedia. But it doesn’t look like Emma Approved is going to do it. 

The early story departures from canon seem consistent with that, too. They’re going for a broader version of the character, giving Emma room to change, making her unlikeable now as part of trying to tell a bigger, campier story. And to give them credit, it really does remind me of the first few weeks of LBD, when Lizzie was coming off the same way. I’m willing to give them time, and enjoy the show for what it is. But yeah, I wish it was willing to be more ambitious, and not just for the kind of success we’ve already seen elsewhere.

There was a moment about halfway through LBD, around Darcy Day, when my expectations for the show were at their peak. They’d done so many things that felt so new, and that worked so well, that I thought it was just going to keep amazing me all the way to the end. And then, probably inevitably, it didn’t. Story choices fell short of my expectations. Some jarring emotional notes brought me back to earth. I still loved it, but it was more the love you feel for someone because of your shared history, and because you remember what it was like in the first flush of infatuation, when the wonderful things were all you could see and you didn’t notice any flaws.

The flaws people are pointing out in EA are real. So are the good parts. Which I choose to focus on is more about me than about the people making the show, who are, I’m convinced, talented, thoughtful people whose hearts are in the right place.

I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do. I wish the transmedia elements were more believable, because I happen to find that stuff really compelling. Someone will do that; I think the possibilities are too rich not to be pursued. Just not by these people, apparently. Which is fine. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/64317027498.

lies:

leslielikesthings:

lies:

stefanhayden:

here is the first post from the new site that is here for Emma Approved.

Which is weird, right? The post has verbatim Austen from P&P (I think, though I haven’t confirmed that). But isn’t Emma supposed to exist in the LBD universe? In which case, Austen’s P&P should not exist.

Possible explanations:

• The post itself is not in-universe. The Emma Approved WordPress blog is not part of the in-universe show, or the post was a placeholder meant not to be made public, or something else along those lines.
• Emma Approved does not exist in the LBD universe. Hence no need to pine for Lizzie/Darcy cameos, and Austen’s P&P can exist (though presumably Austen’s Emma can’t).

Meta-observation: It’s nice to be be back in the meta-business. :-)

I was just looking at the website, and then I clicked on one of its links and all of a sudden it just says “Emma Approved, Coming Soon.” I think it wasn’t actually ready to be up, must have been a glitch or something. Because that’s just a random collection of nonconsecutive sentences from P&P, which wouldn’t make any sense at all even if P&P was allowed to exist in Emma’s universe. And when I clicked on “About Emma” it took me to a form for sending her a message. I think somebody jumped the gun on letting the website go live.

I’m leaning that way myself, yeah. I checked the HTML source on the (mostly blank, without navigation) home page when I first saw it, and saw that it was a WordPress blog (or at least was based on a WordPress theme), though I didn’t go as far as Stefan apparently did, and start poking around at likely URLs where a WordPress blog would display its actual content.

If that post suddenly vanishes in the next hour or two I think we can take that as confirmation of the “oops” theory. :-)

And the legend of the LBD fandom as 733t hax0rs obsessive sleuths who don’t miss anything continues…

As of this morning the page is gone. “Oops” theory confirmed.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/57250832281.

giddinesswithabandon:

So my little guy just asked me, “Are they gonna call this one the EBD?”

and of course I told him the truth which is: “you know, it’s more likely people will just start out calling it ‘Where the heck is Mr. Knightley…we wanna see Mr. Knightley!’ even though that takes forever to say” 

Ooh, I like that acronym. It’s fun because EBD isn’t actually an acronym of anything sensible. But it’s immediately obvious to an obsessive.

We fans are all about the complex backstory.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/57203570541.

leslielikesthings:

lies:

stefanhayden:

here is the first post from the new site that is here for Emma Approved.

Which is weird, right? The post has verbatim Austen from P&P (I think, though I haven’t confirmed that). But isn’t Emma supposed to exist in the LBD universe? In which case, Austen’s P&P should not exist.

Possible explanations:

• The post itself is not in-universe. The Emma Approved WordPress blog is not part of the in-universe show, or the post was a placeholder meant not to be made public, or something else along those lines.
• Emma Approved does not exist in the LBD universe. Hence no need to pine for Lizzie/Darcy cameos, and Austen’s P&P can exist (though presumably Austen’s Emma can’t).

Meta-observation: It’s nice to be be back in the meta-business. :-)

I was just looking at the website, and then I clicked on one of its links and all of a sudden it just says “Emma Approved, Coming Soon.” I think it wasn’t actually ready to be up, must have been a glitch or something. Because that’s just a random collection of nonconsecutive sentences from P&P, which wouldn’t make any sense at all even if P&P was allowed to exist in Emma’s universe. And when I clicked on “About Emma” it took me to a form for sending her a message. I think somebody jumped the gun on letting the website go live.

I’m leaning that way myself, yeah. I checked the HTML source on the (mostly blank, without navigation) home page when I first saw it, and saw that it was a WordPress blog (or at least was based on a WordPress theme), though I didn’t go as far as Stefan apparently did, and start poking around at likely URLs where a WordPress blog would display its actual content.

If that post suddenly vanishes in the next hour or two I think we can take that as confirmation of the “oops” theory. :-)

And the legend of the LBD fandom as 733t hax0rs obsessive sleuths who don’t miss anything continues…

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/57202399044.

stefanhayden:

here is the first post from the new site that is here for Emma Approved.

Which is weird, right? The post has verbatim Austen from P&P (I think, though I haven’t confirmed that). But isn’t Emma supposed to exist in the LBD universe? In which case, Austen’s P&P should not exist.

Possible explanations:

• The post itself is not in-universe. The Emma Approved WordPress blog is not part of the in-universe show, or the post was a placeholder meant not to be made public, or something else along those lines.
• Emma Approved does not exist in the LBD universe. Hence no need to pine for Lizzie/Darcy cameos, and Austen’s P&P can exist (though presumably Austen’s Emma can’t).

Meta-observation: It’s nice to be be back in the meta-business. :-)

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/57201101305.