no one ever reads the terms and conditions

@jaybushman

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personalspaceshow:

thecosmosmadeconscious:

This kid is going places.

Gail Gartner, age 6, 1961

#well not literally#but it definitely sounds just like her#gail gartner#second shift#personal space (via @personalspaceshow)

So, things I know or suspect based on the character summaries at the cast page:

• There are four crewmembers per shift. Each shift lasts 25 years, after which the crew wakes up their replacements and goes to sleep. I wonder how many more shifts there are (that is, how many more sleeping crew there are), if any, after second shift.
• Second shift has two men and two women. Is there an assumption that they’ll pair off romantically? Are they already pairs when they’re selected?
• I’m guessing that if that’s the case, Blasto is (or will be) paired with Li. (They did photograph them together.) So presumably Gartner is paired with Freeman? That sounds like it could make sense in terms of their (minimal) character profiles.
• We only know of two crewmembers from first shift, the commander and the flight engineer, both men. Were there two women on first shift as well? If so it looks like we won’t be seeing them in the show. Since at least some of the drama appears to hinge on the first-shift commander having issues with relinquishing command, maybe the two first-shift women are already in cryosleep when we join the action.
• I’m quietly (well, maybe not so quietly) excited about some of the transmedia ideas they’ve hinted at. The show takes place in an AU where Werner von Braun defected to the US before World War II, putting the US space program 10 years ahead of our timeline. But it sounds like the Internet and social media is very much that of today, with things like Buzzfeed, viral reality shows, and Twitter. 
• So they could have a transmedia component playing out via real-world Twitter and online video in which Actaeon, the profit-oriented company that took over the mission a few months ago from the US space program, and which only gives token nods to the mission’s science goals, repurposes the crew’s AI therapy program Ami 2.0 to manufacture drama in pursuit of ratings, then airs the resulting crew vlogs without their knowledge.
• Given how vlog-based fictional webseries always have a steep believability hill to climb with this issue (these characters are sharing this content with the world why, exactly?), this sounds really clever, and makes me hope the transmedia will be really immersive and mind-bending (in the best sense).
• So, in conclusion: I am excite.

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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.

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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.

What Lydia deserves

I was an early member of the “please don’t let Lydia end up with Wickham” club. As I explained at the time, I was unwilling to see this character I’d fallen in love with subjected to an unhappy ending just because that’s what Austen did. There have been enough comments from people connected with the show, especially since the sex tape reveal, that I’m pretty sure Lydia won’t end up with Wickham. So that’s great.

But it’s no longer enough.

It’s not enough that Lydia not end up with Wickham. The narrative has subjected her to so much that not being with Wickham won’t be enough for her to be happy. And I want her to be happy. I want to see the madcap party Lydia from the beginning of the show. I realize that was partly an act for Lizzie’s benefit, an act that masked Lydia’s insecurities. But there was an element of truth to it, too, a side of her personality that hasn’t been visible for a very long time.

The most I can hope is that by the end of the show she’ll be like the girl in the market from Poe’s first verse: Able to construct a place where she can go and hear the sound of violins and shut out the wickedness of the world. With the love of her family and the realization of Wickham’s true nature she’ll be able to start rebuilding her life and rediscovering her true worth. She’ll never be as naive and trusting as she was pre-Wickham, but she’ll be stronger.

But not yet happy. It’s too soon for that. But it could happen in the post-show transmedia. A few dozen tweets and Instragram photos, spread out over time, could show us her journey.

I want pig piles. I want double-jointed “Whaaaaaaaats”. I want Poe’s last verse, where the girl in the market meets a soulmate, someone whose damage reflects her own, and they have the chance to heal and restore each other.

Because Lydia deserves to be happy.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/42952383502.