3D printing may be promising to deliver all kinds of futuristic technological marvels, but most of us are just wondering where to start. So for those of you who are just beginning to explore 3D printing, here are some simple yet practical blueprints for everyday items, from the open-source 3D printing communities of Repables and Thingiverse.

Pen Holder

We're pretty sure even we could make this handy pen holder. 

Coffee mug

This is the easiest 3D coffee mug blueprint we've seen on the Web. If it looks like something we could make in an hour of beginning ceramics class, sign us up.

Coat hangers

These simple yet endlessly practical coat hangers come in three designs: single prong, dual prong, and a full rack.

Headphone holder

We like this headphone holder because it's a good way to get practice with 3D printer molds while still creating something functional and super-useful. 

Post-It holder

Same for this cool Post-It holder: easy and fun.

Adventure Time cosplay headband 

3D printed fashion like this headband is our new favorite cosplay accessory. This looks so easy to make.

Hollow pumpkin

If you're feeling ambitious and want to get a little more quirky with your beginning 3D-printing adventures, why not go for this hollow pumpkin? It's crafty and all-purpose.

Birdhouse

This birdhouse is a great example of 3-D design made easy. A few flat pieces of 3-d printed plywood glued together! Plus, Birds can live in it! Sold.

Bag clip

These minimalist bag clips come in three slightly different variations of "so simple your grandmother could make." 

Cube

Yep, that's right. Behold the wonder of the cube, the simplest design of all: four beautifully solid sides and a block of material, and the most all-purpose, yet basic 3D printing blueprint ever.  Sit on it. Use it for a table or a nightstand. Put flowers on it. Kick it when you're angry. Re-enact the classic Trek episode "The Corbomite Maneuver." 

Gif via ssk-analogmedium/Tumblr

Can you see it? That's the future.

Photo via jabella/Flickr; CC-BY-S.A. 2.0

Last week, the Dissolve issued a widely-circulated takedown of what it called the "Trinity Syndrome," specifically in relationship to the main female character in DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon 2.  According to Dissolve, the Trinity Syndrome, named after the iconic character from The Matrix series, manifests itself in Hiccup's mother Valka as follows:

She’s wise. She’s principled. She’s joyous. She’s divided. She’s damaged. She’s vulnerable. She’s something female characters so often aren’t in action/adventure films with male protagonists: She’s interesting.

Too bad the story gives her absolutely nothing to do. . . . Valka is just the latest example of the Superfluous, Flimsy Character disguised as a Strong Female Character. 

The essay goes on to allege that Valka is weak at several crucial moments in the plot. Specifically it paints her as a damsel who needs rescuing in the third act. It also goes on to give a list of other characters who fail by this standard, including the much-loved Pacific Rim character of Mako Mori. Tumblr user quigonejinn has a compelling post explaining how important Mako Mori is from a cultural perspective, written in response to the existence of the Mako Mori test.

In responding to the Dissolve essay specifically, Tumblr user apocalypsecanceled rephrased Dissolve's argument:  

how DARE this woman of color have the unmitigated gall to show vulnerability and make mistakes and be supported by other people? . . . .

how dare she not be an invincible dragon lady who nevertheless sacrifices herself to rescue her white dude savior??? 

It's important to recognize the way the Dissolve has reframed the narrative of Pacific Rim in order to recognize that that's also what it has done to the narrative of How to Train Your Dragon 2. Ironically, it's HTTYD 2's reframing and rejection of die-hard sexist Hollywood tropes—specifically the one about "fridged women" being used as fodder for manpain and male-centered violence—that makes it unique in the pantheon of children's films.

There are full spoilers for HTTYD 2 from this point on, so be warned.

Five minutes into this film, which opens with Hiccup rejecting his father's wish for him to be the new village chief, I was muttering, "Make Astrid the new chief, make Astrid the new chief," under my breath. I mean obviously that would be the best possible solution to everyone's lives, right?  

But because this is Dragon Rider, not Whale Rider, we got a standard narrative about Hiccup's expanding heroism—sort of. The unique thing about Hiccup's character in this film is that it doesn't actually undergo any, well, development. While the narrative stresses that people can change, Hiccup himself doesn't actually change all that much. But that works for this film, because How To Train Your Dragon 2 is less a traditional coming-of-age arc about a single character learning to accept responsibility and find his place, and more a collective arc about an entire community evolving and changing together.

As a character, Hiccup is, perhaps, one of the most feminist and progressive male heroes in film history. He's a character who consistently rejects, over and over again, the idea that violence is ever a solution in situations of conflict. He's a character who actively practices empathy and, of course, active conservationism. He's a disabled character who not only adapts to his disability without ever losing anything that makes him amazing, but sees it as a thing to be proud of, to celebrate as something that makes him special and gives him more in common with his best friend. 

Meanwhile, while Hiccup is going on a discovery quest, his female counterpart Astrid is busy rejecting orders and doing her own thing. After Hiccup's failed first and second attempts to try to find the villain Drago, he gets sidetracked by his encounter with his mother and lapses into inaction. Meanwhile, Astrid makes the totally independent decision to enlist the dragon trappers' help and/or follow them to Drago. Without that action, Team Peace might never have actually encountered Drago, the plot's third act might never have gotten underway, and Eret would never have switched sides to help free the dragon riders and defeat the bad guy.

Gif via dreamdorkz/Tumblr

As an aside: how much chemistry did Astrid and Hiccup have together? When was the last time you saw a romantic couple in an animated film have that much casual touching and body interaction that wasn't a deliberate setup for a meet-cute? Maybe Shrek? Maybe never. It was great. 

Gif via moonofpoosh

There's also the glorious casual onscreen display of Ruffnut's sexuality:

Gif via i-am-sher-221b-locked-in-berk

Female sexuality is never shamed or repressed in HTTYD 2. Additionally, as ladygeekgirl points out in her smart take on the film, the women of DreamWorks, unlike the women of Frozen, actually have faces that are different from one another.

The women of Frozen—mother and two supposedly non-identical daughters:

Illustration by everets via dubiousradical

And the women of HTTYD, all unrelated:

Photo via moviewalls

Not only do each of these women have individual faces, they also each get their own promotional movie poster for the film—another "when was the last time...?" moment for DreamWorks.

This brings us to the film's treatment of Hiccup's mother. 

In absolutely every other Hollywood version of the HTTYD 2 narrative, Hiccup's discovery of his mother's two-decade-long absence would have resulted in an explicit shaming of her choices and a prolonged "how could you abandon me?" confrontation that would probably have ended with her breaking down in tears and Hiccup's eventual acceptance and forgiveness of her inexplicable absence all this time. 

Instead, Hiccup instantly and immediately recognized that his mom's choices were her own choices, and that they were obviously valuable and important. At no point did the narrative shame Valka for rejecting her role as a mother and a housewife. Instead, she not only got to make the coolest entrance, but basically was presented as the most unbelievably cool character we've seen in an animated film in ages:

Additionally, the film totally validated her life choices by making her caretaker of the coolest free-range dragon park ever, and presenting the choice to rejoin her family as a choice that would validate all of her earlier choices to leave them behind.

In absolutely every other Hollywood version of the HTTYD 2 narrative, Hiccup's mother would have been briefly united with her husband and son, only to die tragically in the next big battle, thereby giving them extra manpain and creating more fuel for their ultimate avenging of her death. 

In absolutely every other Hollywood version of the HTTYD 2 narrative, it would have been Valka sacrificing her life for that of her son instead of Stoick. Let's call it the Lily Potter Syndrome.

But instead, the film actually showed how damaging the trope of killing off the dead woman for more manpain really is, by using her earlier presumed death as the catalyst for all Stoick's misplaced vengeance against dragons. We know how wasteful and wrong that misplaced anger is because the first film worked through it at length.

Additionally, instead of going on a vengeance quest after Stoick's death, we see Valka and Hiccup both rejecting the idea that such a motivation for violence would do anything but bring them and their homeland of Berk more pain. To the very last scene they're in together, Hiccup is trying to reason with Drago; every one of his actions is done from a position of non-violent communication.

That recognition is absolutely central to any kind of effective reading of How to Train Your Dragon. This is literally a franchise which has taken the most notoriously war-mongering stereotype in existence, Viking culture, and gradually transformed it until the characters not only refuse to use violence as a solution, but proudly proclaim that they are a "land of peace." That's an unbelievably radical and transformative narrative for a Hollywood film to deliver, much less a Hollywood children's film. The HTTYD franchise now joins Avatar: The Last Airbender as one of the only animated franchises to commit this deeply to such a polarizing political stance. 

Dissolve's essay seems to completely overlook this aspect of HTTYD 2. At no point are the male characters aggressors against Drago. Although they talk about it, they never actually act violently except to defend their home from capture. In fact, the only person to attack Drago first is Valka, who hits him weakly out of anger after watching her giant bewilderbeast get killed. And despite what the Dissolve essay speculates, it seems evident that Valka has never really physically fought with Drago herself. When the time comes to actually physically attack, she gets no further than poking him with her stick a few times.

Valka was never intended to be a serious physical match for Drago, nor should she have been, because the whole point of her character aligned with her son's is to personify the Viking nation's progressive anti-violence stance. Sorry that Valka was too busy working as a zoologist to become the vaunted warrior-hero-soldier that apparently makes a female character strong enough for you, Dissolve. Instead, she spends years subversively rescuing dragons from capture like a radical Greenpeace activist, and she is the one who leads the enormous dragon army into battle against Drago.

Gif by catsight

And come to that, when was the last time you saw a mother and son riding side-by-side into battle together? Another point for you, DreamWorks.

Gif via phenomenallyextraordinary123

While it's true that she gets rescued by her husband, so does everyone else in her family. They spend the movie running around trying to protect each other: Stoick saves Hiccup, Valka, and Hiccup again; Valka saves Toothless, Toothless saves Hiccup, and then Hiccup and Toothless save everyone.

Even more significantly, while it's true that she doesn't get to do much in the third act, she doesn't have to. She doesn't have to because unlike 90 percent of other Hollywood films, HTTYD is a universe with more than one woman in it. And as a result, it gets to have a variety of women who do a variety of different things. Valka doesn't have to be an all-powerful warrior-soldier, because Astrid and Ruffnut are out there dumping flaming sulfur on the enemy and generally proving that women can be badasses on the battlefield. Valka proves that women can be badasses as activists and scientists and even, yes, as moms, too.

Dissolve's reading of HTTYD 2 completely misses the multiple ways in which the film is trying to avoid the reductive trope that the only strong characters are the characters who fight. By insisting that Valka is weak because she falls down and has to be rescued by her husband, Dissolve is failing its own measurement of strength, considering she's the only character who actually is the aggressor against Drago at any point. But moreover, it's failing to consider the film's entire point, which is that violence is not the way forward, and that humans and dragons need to rescue each other. 

Ultimately, what expands in How to Train Your Dragon is not the central character's growth and understanding, but that of the entire world. Hiccup shifts from exploring and mapping out the physical world of the film to actively uniting the people who live in it. His mother, who by all narrative trope standards should have been killed off in an act of self-sacrifice at the end of act two, instead finishes the film seeing her life's work come to fruition in ways she never thought possible.

As a narrative of female empowerment, we find this pretty damn satisfying.

Photo via HTTYD/wikia

After last month's Book Expo scandal over a guest list of mostly white entertainers and an all male-only panel on Young Adult publishing, influential author John Green quietly mentioned that he'd asked Penguin months ago not to put him on male-only panels.

The concept of diversifying panels across geek media—in speculative and Young Adult publishing, gaming, comics, and other geek spaces—has been bandied about for a while. But talking and doing are two different things. At a 2012 Dragon Con panel I attended that was ironically about diversity in comics, the panel spent a good portion of the time apologizing for itself, as it was made up of white men who'd added, at the last minute, one woman who seemed unclear about why she'd been added to the panel. And while many conventions, like Geek Girl Con, state a preference for panels that are diverse, actually getting diverse expertise is difficult, to judge by the number of male-only panels that still exist.

Enter popular gaming journalist Leigh Alexander. Prompted by a piece analyzing the current state of indie gaming, Alexander began a discussion about the need to put talk into action when it came to diversifying the industry:

"people continually call for diversity and then continually stop listening when diverse voices start speaking." http://t.co/k0j5EnetOw

— Leigh Alexander (@leighalexander) June 20, 2014

I'm often aware of being invited to things in part because I create gender diversity --

— Leigh Alexander (@leighalexander) June 20, 2014

-- and then I notice my expertise is not consulted or weighed with particular attention outside of the 'being on a panel' context

— Leigh Alexander (@leighalexander) June 20, 2014

I do see 'more diversity' at events. But I want to feel ppl are invited to be listened to, not to have their presence make others feel good

— Leigh Alexander (@leighalexander) June 20, 2014

There are many male writers now being lauded for their progressive words, but many of those men have never encouraged women writers, devs

— Leigh Alexander (@leighalexander) June 20, 2014

Alexander's tweets prompted participation in the discussion from comics artist Elizabeth Simins, who spoke up about the need to diversify convention panels. 

Simins, in conjunction with Anthony Burch, decided to create a new Tumblr, No More Men-Only Panels, to ask men to pledge not to be on any more male-only panels. The panel description makes clear that the focus of the Tumblr is specifically to promote gender diversity only:

[F]eel free to add other underrepresented groups to your call for diversity — the world needs more panels from people other than straight, white, cisgender, able bodied dudes.

There are many kinds of diversity. No More Men-Only Panels Plz seeks to focus on gender diversity, but not at the expense of other forms of intersectionality. We hope that specifically requesting more female voices doesn’t preclude list members or would-be list members from requesting other kinds of voices that have nothing to do with gender.

Also, since you won’t be a guest on any panel or podcast without women involved, feel free to explain what you will be doing instead of appearing on that panel.

It also purports to be focused only on male-only panels in the gaming industry, though it's readily apparent that the entire geek community desperately needs this kind of public call-to-arms from men across male-dominated geek spaces.

On Twitter, Simins emphasized that although the Tumblr wasn't meant to promote gender diversity "at the expense" of other marginalized identities, she also felt that the need to emphasize gender diversity trumped other intersectionality concerns:

Addressing the gender disparity in games should not and does not take away from other intersectional causes.

— Elizabeth Simins (@ElizSimins) June 21, 2014

We should be allowed to talk about gender disparity as a primary cause of one movement without threatening other equally important causes.

— Elizabeth Simins (@ElizSimins) June 21, 2014

We will address other intersectional diversity but #plzdiversifyyourpanel is not pretending to be other than first & foremost about sexism.

— Elizabeth Simins (@ElizSimins) June 21, 2014

Others pointed out that it seemed problematic for Simins, who is white, to dictate that the Tumblr should first and foremost be about promoting gender diversity—which too often can simply lead to more all-white panels:

y'all when we conflate 'diversity' with 'more women' we end up just reproducing the whiteness of our spaces

— merritt (@m_kopas) June 22, 2014

In an extended conversation with game developer Rami Ismail, Simins insisted she was "confused" about how calling for gender-only diversified panels was exclusionary. Ismail responded extensively, pointing out that limiting "diversity" to just be about gender wasn't really all that diverse:

Wow, I'm actually having a really negative reaction to the plzdiversifyyourpanel Tumblr for limiting 'diversify' to gender.

— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) June 22, 2014

I'm all for what it's doing, but I wish it was presented in a way that was actually inclusive of all other aspects of diversity.

— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) June 22, 2014

Or at least like, fucking acknowledge that. Now they might just as well use "<h1>ONLY GENDER CREATES DIVERSITY</h1>" as their header.

— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) June 22, 2014

Oh, and then they can add "<h2>And fuck non-Western/non-rich/emerging places and their problems, too</h2>", because that's what it's saying.

— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) June 22, 2014

Note: this is not to say that you cannot start something specifically aimed at dealing with sexism. That's great.

— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) June 22, 2014

I'm saying that it's good to call out people that use 'diversity' as a term for one type of diversity, foregoing other forms of diversity.

— Rami Ismail (@tha_rami) June 22, 2014

It's easy to understand Ismail's concerns. After all, the Tumblr comes less than a month after a study revealed that the current crop of playable game protagonists consists almost solely of white people.

But for her part, Simins found it troubling that other participants in the discussion were upset:

@ElizSimins@tha_rami@reverendanthony Perhaps the ultimatum-nature of the branding "won't talk on a panel w/o women" but as Rami says..

— Frank (@FraynkWash) June 22, 2014

@FraynkWash@tha_rami@reverendanthony but I'm v uncomfortable w how other ppl find it problematic to start an org explicitly against sexism

— Elizabeth Simins (@ElizSimins) June 22, 2014

On Twitter, she issued a take-it-or-leave-it stance regarding men who had issues with the Tumblr:

If you have an issue with a movement that is first and foremost about fighting sexism, feel free not to sign #plzdiversifyyourpanel

— Elizabeth Simins (@ElizSimins) June 21, 2014

So far, most people seem to feel that the Tumblr is a good idea, despite the lack of emphasis on diversity beyond combating sexism. A number of male gamers have joined the list, including acclaimed designer Oscar Barda and Davey Wreden, co-creator of the recent independent gaming hit, The Stanley Parable.

#plzdiversifyyourpanel is a really good, EASY way to make nerd spaces better. You asked, men of #1reasonwhy& #YesAllWomen, here it is.

— Cheese Princess (@lastnora) June 21, 2014

Though the Tumblr is currently geared almost solely towards gaming, it seems to have the potential for branching out—unless it becomes just one more example of the many ways in which geek culture remains predominantly a space for white people to make other white people feel comfortable.

Update:  Responding to a request for comment via email, Simins elaborated on her belief that a push for gender diversity doesn't conflict with the need for other kinds of diversity:

Though plzdiversifyyourpanel.tumblr.com encourages intersectionality, as we have stated in the top post since day 1, it is first and foremost about fighting sexism. Fighting sexism in particular should not threaten other equally important causes in general. It shouldn't be a problem to have an initiative specifically dedicated to increasing the presence of women, non-binary, and genderqueer people on panels and podcasts. Frankly, though much of the criticism of #plzdiversifyyourpanel has been legitimate and helpful (particularly the criticism having to do with language and phraseology), some of it has felt more like men being uncomfortable with a space that puts the problem of sexism front and center.

There are myriad diversity-related (and other) problems in the gaming space. Sexism is only one of them. Though the #plzdiversifyyourpanel initiative was never supposed to be "mine," and ideally will eventually be totally in the hands of the men who sign on, I feel that it is important to work specifically on the sexism problem—never at the exclusion of other problems or intersectionalities, but yes, on sexism first and foremost. Not because it's "more important" or a "worse problem," but because it's a small step I feel comfortable working to take based on my experiences being a woman in games, and a step I think is necessary.

Simins also updated Twitter to detail further attention to the subject:

My fear is that if #plzdiversifyyourpanel becomes about every single oppressed group/intersection in particular, we will end up with a—

— Elizabeth Simins (@ElizSimins) June 22, 2014

—group of people who are committed to extremely diverse panels, of men only. And that's on me because my personal experience has shown me—

— Elizabeth Simins (@ElizSimins) June 22, 2014

—how ingrained sexism is in the games community. I guess it's up to people to prove me wrong.

— Elizabeth Simins (@ElizSimins) June 22, 2014

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

We're sure Twitter user UJohnsmeyer probably meant well. But his defense of men who talk to women on the street may have sparked the weekend's most engaging social commentary hashtag.

@Feminist_Inti@Karnythia ever think that maybe a guy sees a chick he thinks is hot and just wants to try to start up a convo?

— Johnsmeyer (@UJohnsmeyer) June 22, 2014

.@UJohnsmeyer@Feminist_Inti Ever think women don't want to strike up convos with strange men?

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) June 22, 2014

@Karnythia@UJohnsmeyer@Feminist_Inti pretty sure a dude screaming "HEY BABY, HEY GIRL, HEY SEXY" doesn't qualify as striking up a convo.

— Angelica (@ReinaDeLaIsla) June 22, 2014

Karnythia and ReinaDeLaIsla were engaged in a conversation with multiple Twitter users about a subject that is increasingly familiar to Internet denizens: street harassment and how to combat it. Apparently prompted by a recurrence of conversation around writer Tariq Nasheed, who advocates a "player" lifestyle, Karnythia tweeted the following Friday night:

Also can we stop pretending street harassment is about dating? It's never that. Never. If it was you wouldn't be screaming profanity

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) June 21, 2014

We do understand that it's #NotJustHello right? That street harassment is never that calm or polite?

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) June 22, 2014

Over the weekend, Karnythia and Twitter user feminist_inti went on to elaborate their thoughts on street harassment of women:

Also can we stop pretending street harassment is about dating? It's never that. Never. If it was you wouldn't be screaming profanity

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) June 21, 2014

RE: dating "How to Give Your Number to that Cutie in the Coffeeshop" by @everyoneisgayhttp://t.co/zQL3VHjnIP OMFZLOL so cute

— Feminista Int. (@Feminist_Inti) June 21, 2014

By the time UJohnsmeyer joined in the conversation Karnythia and others on her feed were having about problems with street harassment, there were already a number of interested participants. His comments fueled an already hot topic:

.@gfrancie@Karnythia@Feminist_Inti saying hello or telling a girl she's beautiful is harassment?

— Johnsmeyer (@UJohnsmeyer) June 22, 2014

@Karnythia@UJohnsmeyer@Feminist_Inti pretty sure a dude screaming "HEY BABY, HEY GIRL, HEY SEXY" doesn't qualify as striking up a convo.

— Angelica (@ReinaDeLaIsla) June 22, 2014

.@UJohnsmeyer@Karnythia@Feminist_Inti That'd be great, dude, if "saying hi" was just that & her "no" didn't get her threatened/cussed out.

— Lensman Grey (@lensmangrey) June 22, 2014

@UJohnsmeyer@Karnythia@Feminist_Inti And you have to remember, no one owes you conversation. Including the beautiful girl.

— gfrancie (@gfrancie) June 22, 2014

Twitter user gfrancie's tweets took the conversation in a slightly new direction:

@UJohnsmeyer@Karnythia@Feminist_Inti The thing is, some people don't stop at hello. They don't stop when someone doesn't want to engage.

— gfrancie (@gfrancie) June 22, 2014

@UJohnsmeyer@Karnythia@Feminist_Inti And b/c that woman doesn't know you, she doesn't know if you know when to give up.

— gfrancie (@gfrancie) June 22, 2014

@UJohnsmeyer@greendoondoon@Feminist_Inti But again, YOU yourself may just mean hello, but that woman does not know you if you do.

— gfrancie (@gfrancie) June 22, 2014

From there, a new hashtag was born:

We do understand that it's #NotJustHello right? That street harassment is never that calm or polite?

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) June 22, 2014

The tag quickly took off, as multiple Twitter users chimed in to talk about how street harassment is rarely about simply being friendly, but almost always about establishing power over a potential victim:

The day I found out my grandmother was dying, a guy told me to smile. When I didn't he called me a stuck up bitch. #NotJustHello

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) June 22, 2014

When I was a teen, a guy tried to "teach" me how to catcall, explaining "the rules:" (1/x) #NotJustHello

— Dan Holzman-Tweed (@HolzmanTweed) June 22, 2014

He told me look for a ring, an ankle chain, something that flagged her as taken so that I wouldn't disrespect her man. (2/x) #NotJustHello

— Dan Holzman-Tweed (@HolzmanTweed) June 22, 2014

There's no pretense on the guy side that it's about anything but establishing & confirming power, a compliance check. #NotJustHello

— Dan Holzman-Tweed (@HolzmanTweed) June 22, 2014

I wear headphones & read books on the train. A guy pulled my headphones off to "discuss" my book with me. #NotJustHello

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) June 22, 2014

Says "hello" yet uses physical body of larger size or an actual car or block a door to be dominating during street harassment. #NotJustHello

— Trudy (@thetrudz) June 22, 2014

The tweets quickly trended on Twitter, a more targeted and focused version of the #YesAllWomen hashtag that transformed social media discussions about sexism and misogyny in the wake of the misogynistic motivations behind the UCSB shooting.

Street/sexual harassment is about controlling the ways femme people can exist as autonomous, especially in male spaces. #NotJustHello

— The Negress (@ericabrazelton) June 22, 2014

I used to walk alone in my neighborhood as a teen. Until a grown man with a child my age stalked me for my name and number. #NotJustHello

— Milly (@MsMillyW) June 22, 2014

Out for my girl's birthday with a group of friends. Guy got mad that we were out to dance not to meet anyone. Called us cunts. #NotJustHello

— Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) June 22, 2014

Even more alarming than the horror stories being shared on #NotJustHello is the undeniable fact that such stories are typical for women across the globe. While #YesAllWomen strove to drive home the universality of these experiences, #NotJustHello attempts to discuss the escalating quality of these interactions:

Customer once asked how many piercings I had, I said 14 atm. Then replied, "oh, 14 holes." Get the fuck away from me. #NotJustHello

— Hana Shafi (@HanaShafi) June 22, 2014

I found a lost puppy in the park, returned it to the owner. My reward was being pressed into a tree w his hand over my mouth. #NotJustHello

— Camryn J. (@RynJ21) June 22, 2014

That time I told a dude on the subway that no, I didn't want to talk to him; got up & walked away. He followed me & spat at me #notjusthello

— possibileighties (@hypatiadotca) June 22, 2014

The ones who escalate from veiled verbal threats to actually touching and grabbing, then screaming. #NotJustHello

— Cheese Princess (@lastnora) June 22, 2014

It's also highlighting the fear they induce in women because of that escalating nature:

It's #notjusthello, it's fear of retaliation for both responding and not responding.

— Lindsey Harper (@cameralinds_) June 22, 2014

It's #NotJustHello when I have a smile I created specifically to deal with street harassment. I call it, "Please don't kill me."

— Camryn J. (@RynJ21) June 22, 2014

And it seems to be getting the attention of men on Twitter:

Brothers, go read the #NotJustHello tag. If that doesn't move something in you, I'll pray for you.

— Wise Math (@wisemath) June 22, 2014

Other men (me included) need to stand up & stop being bystanders when we see an interaction that's #NotJustHello. Call out the problem.

— Dakota Garilli (@dakoter818) June 22, 2014

For the male "not allowed to flirt" whiners, please read #NotJustHello *carefully* without feeling like the fucking victim and educate self

— Rob Scowen (@RobScowen) June 22, 2014

While it seems unlikely that the recent wave of Twitter hashtags will do much to cut down on actual street harassment, it also seems clear that the conversation is much-needed and long overdue.

Photo via FemFatality

In the early '90s, if you wanted to discuss the dangers of violent video games, all you had to do was mention Mortal Kombat. The notorious fighter game has been banned in Australia, Germany, and South Korea, and prompted the creation of ratings systems for video games upon its original release in America. Its advertising is notoriously gleeful about its own violent reputation. And it even has a signature kill move: The Fatality.

Over the years, the Fatality has become the source of countless imitations and parodies, many within the Mortal Kombat franchise. It's also changed and expanded as gaming has grown more graphic and even more violent over the years.

But what did the fatal last move that struck fear into the hearts of millions of anxious parents evolve into? And is the original version still the formidable blow it used to be?

A recent Reddit thread celebrates the move then and now—comparing the original Mortal Kombat release in 1991 to the upcoming Mortal Kombat X.

And if you thought the "Fatality" was gruesome in 1991, take a look at it now.

This GIF, courtesy of Imgur, demonstrates the Fatality as it existed then and as it will look based on a recent preview of the upcoming game at E3.  First, here's the way the Fatality used to look in the original Mortal Kombat. 

As you can see, it's nothing too intense. Just a nice slow skeleton-roast:

Now here's the modern version from Mortal Kombat. 

(Warning: The following GIF is extremely NSFW and contains graphic depictions of extreme violence and gore.)

No, really, we mean it. If you've never seen Mortal Kombat in action before, and you're sensitive to graphic depictions of gore, then you might not want to watch this on a full stomach:

Ready? OK. Here's Mortal Kombat in 2014:

Youch! As if that's not graphic enough, Reddit user Ich_Putz_Hier_Nur shared a GIF from the last update to the series, Mortal Kombat 9, that's almost more graphic, if not quite as, er, richly detailed. Again, this image is incredibly disturbing and NSFW, and features gore, vore, and gratuitous sexual objectification.

OK, yeah, and cannibalism.

If you can't get enough of the rundown of Fatalities, check out even more of MK9's Fatalities here on YouTube.

We'll just stay here waiting for our stomachs to settle.

Screengrab via GfyCat

Last week, hailing the 15th anniversary of The Sims, a game that started out as something of a cultural joke but became one of the most iconic gaming franchises in history, the New Yorker wrote about "the kiss that changed video games." That kiss, a vaunted same-sex kiss between two Sims characters during the game's E3 preview, was a revolutionary moment for representation in gaming.

It also, as a recent Reddit discussion around the New Yorker article proves, gives us insight into why representation is important to begin with.

Not only can it represent members of the geek and gaming community who feel marginalized, but it can help queer gamers see themselves before they even realize what they're seeing.

"Thinking back, it was actually the first way for me to explore my sexuality," mused the appropriately named SexyButtDaddyDom. "I could be any gender I wanted, and I could date any gender I wanted. It was perfect :) "

Commissionerofwine agreed:

I was 14 year old closeted gay boy living in rural Kentucky when I played The Sims for the first time. It's rare that a video game is a life-changing experience, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that it was. It was a safe place to experiment with social interactions that were absent from (if not illegal in) my real world. And it was a space free from the judgment, the ostracism, and the hate that was associated with homosexuality in my family and community.

Skyciril was another closeted man who used the game's popularity itself as an example of acceptance:

It made me have some flashbacks to myself as an insecure youth struggling with internalized homophobia and attractions towards men. I remember seeing stuff like this and thinking being gay can't be so bad if big companies are endorsing it.

This was part of a long road to acceptance of my sexuality. I've come a long way since then.

The idea of playable gay characters was radical for 1999, when The Sims debuted, but perhaps even more shocking is how radical it still is as a concept today. Unless a game is specifically built to facilitate dating, like The Sims or Japanese dating "sims," characters with same-sex attraction traits are extremely rare. And it's even rarer to have the playable character's gay identity not be a part of the major focus of the game. Recently acclaimed games like Gone Home and The Last of Us have had characters whose queer sexuality was a major part of the plot, though Gone Home's playable character wasn't queer. But in shooter games or action-based games, it's rare to get a playable character who also just happens to be queer. 

Redditor bearblu commented on the novelty, noting, "I appreciate companies who create an option to include Gays. Games like Dragon Age1, 2, and Skyrim are the ones I've played. I'll support these companies with my gay dollars."

There are also encouraging half-steps towards representation, like Bioware's gradual eventual expansion, in Mass Effect 3, to include two same-sex only romantic possibilities for the male and female versions of Commander Shepherd. But while a same-sex partnered relationship was a major groundbreaking moment for a blockbuster franchise like ME, we're still struggling to get playable characters who have it all: queer sexuality and cool action, or fantasy adventures and meaningful queer romantic relationships.

In the meantime, we have The Sims. The inherent open sexuality of Sims characters is a standard fact of the game at this point. Since 2009, the game has even included what many real-life queer relationships can't have: the ability for same-sex characters to get married.

While straight geeks and non-gamers may take all of this for granted, it seems that there are plenty of gay gamers who can't—along with their supporters, like redditor druggeddwarf:

The sims, by itself, was strangely how my little cousins came to terms with homosexuality. It made coming out to the younger generation of my family a hell of a lot easier than the older gen. so as much as I shit talk EA, I have them to thank for that.

Don't we all.

Screengrab via The Backlot

Grizabella, Rum Tum Tugger, Macavity—the naming of cats is a difficult matter, but now dressing like your faves from the Andrew Lloyd Webber mega-hit doesn't have to be, thanks to Japan. 

Japanese pop culture translation blog Rocket News 24 has discovered a set of hilarious-but-cool "face packs" inspired by the iconic makeup design of the campy '80s musical. Take a look:

Here's what the mask for everyone's favorite kitty Rum Tum Tugger looks like in action:

Though face packs are common in Japan, they're usually used as moisturizing beauty products. Last year, company Japan Face made a set of attractive Kabuki face masks in the style of the theater's traditional makeup design. Now it's back with a set of animal masks and, of course, the new Cats masks, apparently created for a current production of Cats at Canal City Theatre in Fukuoka, Japan.

But does simply putting on the mask confer upon you all the powers of T.S. Eliot's cats, with their mystical names and mysterious ways? Will you instantly develop the gravity-defying vocal powers that allow you to belt the High E in "Memory"?

Not quite. According to the Japan Face website, you have to follow a very specific set of instructions:

Step 1: Have a Face.

Step 2: Procure a Cats mask as shown:

Step 3:  Apply said mask to said face:

Step 4:  Make your hands into cat paws!

Step 5: Shoujou sparkles!

If the masks are like the Kabuki masks, then each thin sheet will also come with a face moisturizer so you can wear them comfortably while you're cosplaying. We're upset that we don't see more of our favorite Cats here—no Macavity! No Mungojerry or Rumpleteaser! But we also accept that you can't be too picky when you're given the rare opportunity to become a magical feline.

Each mask pack comes in a set of two for 900 yen ($8.82 U.S.) and will be available beginning June 29, online at Shiki and in person at the Canal City Theatre in Fukuoka. 

Jellicle cats come one, come all!

Photos via Rocket News 64 

If you're a live theater performer, you might think you've seen it all. But as Zach Braff proved on Jimmy Kimmel's show last night, there's always something new on Broadway.

In the case of a recent performance of the new Braff-headlined musical Bullets Over Broadway, one woman was not ready for her closeup, and the result was a combo of every actor's worst nightmare and a family's hilarious Weekend at Bernie's prank on their own relative.

On Jimmy Kimmel Live last night, Braff shared his experience of spending the whole first act of a recent performance watching a woman on the front row slumbering peacefully away, much to his chagrin. 

At intermission, Braff sent her a Red Bull and a note begging her to try to wake up. From there, it's sunglasses all the way down.

Yikes! If the new Susan Stroman musical is that hard to slog through, the audience at the St. James might want to brush up on their theater etiquette, courtesy of Broadway reviewer Chris Caggiano:

@ajaromano I dunno. I had the same reaction to BULLETS

— Chris Caggiano (@ccaggiano) June 24, 2014

Sorry, Braff.

HT The Wrap | Photo via NYWaterway

The more things change, the more they remain the same—or so it goes for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans. A recent promo campaign encouraged fans to tweet for their favorite turtle team member in order to unlock all-new posters. And it looks like our preference order for the four heroes in a halfshell apparently hasn't changed in three decades. 

Fans on #TeamLeonardo edged out fans of Michelangelo to win the earliest reveal in the competition. Big surprise. 

@TMNTMovie definitely team leanardo he is badass #TeamLeonardo

— Daniel Howitt (@Dan_How) June 24, 2014

Donatello's poster was the last to revealed:

Even as an adult it's hard to accept that your fav turtle is everyone else's least favorite. #teamdonatello#tmntpic.twitter.com/QV2sq2sFj9

— Ezequiel Gutierrez (@ezgoo) June 24, 2014

We hear you, Zeke. We're pretty bummed Raphael always seems to come in third. But we're also excited to see so much love for the gang after all these years. Even the campaign to unlock Donatello's poster seems to have moved at a ninja turtle's pace. Check out all of the four posters below. Intense, no?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lands in theatres on August 8, 2014

Update: This article was update to include the Donatello poster.

Congratulations, CERN: You've just confirmed that the Higgs Boson particle you thought you found in 2012 is, in fact, the Higgs Boson.

What are you going to do next?

Use the Large Hadron Collider to ram more particles into each other—at nearly double the previous speed.

In a new groundbreaking paper published in Nature on Monday, CERN scientists proclaimed the discovery as "heralding a new era" in physics, and speculating that the elusive particle could be the key to "possibly completing the standard model of particle physics."

In the report, scientists reveal that the particle behaves in ways long-predicted by theorists before it was discovered. Essentially, this means that the Higgs Boson breaks down, or decays, into one of two other kinds of particles, bosons and fermions. Think of these as infinitesimal bundles of energy that act upon each other to create all matter as we know it. Bosons are "force carriers," which means they can act upon fermions, i.e. "matter carriers," to hold them into place and keep them—and subsequently you—from flying apart and scattering across the universe. 

Until the report's findings, scientists hadn't been able to observe the Higgs Boson's decay into fermions, only into bosons. This is because the Higgs Boson is one of the most short-lived particles known to scientists, with a decay path that's very hard to trace. CERN scientists finally have observed the decay path for the Higgs Boson in both states, and, crucially, for two types of fermions—quark pairs and leptons.

“We now know that the Higgs particle can decay into both bosons and fermions, which means we can exclude certain theories predicting that the Higgs particle does not couple to fermions,” said Vincenzo Chiochia, a member of the CERN team from the University of Zurich’s Physics Institute.

As for what this means, Discovery points out that while the current observations uphold the Standard Model of particle physics, they also aren't particularly exciting, because they only confirmed what scientists already thought. The findings also failed to point scientists toward further study of dark matter or gravity.

But luckily for all you adventurous physicists out there, soon CERN will be slamming particles together once again, now that a 16-month-long upgrade to the LHC has been completed. CERN announced yesterday that it has commenced a very long cooldown of the LHC, with the goal of running it at almost two times its previous speed. 

"It’s effectively a new machine, poised to set us on the path to new discoveries," said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer at a press conference. CERN has also upgraded its particle detectors, which should hopefully make tracking down the decay path of the Higgs Boson even easier.

Photo by CERN via Image Editor/Flickr

When Time named John Green to its Time 100 list earlier this year, actress Shailene Woodley, who plays the lead in the recent blockbuster film adaptation of Green’s young adult anthem The Fault in Our Stars, wrote his tribute. 

“He treats every human he meets as their own planet,” Woodley wrote, “rather than simply one of his moons.”

But what you may not know about Green is just how voluminous the planet that he and his brother Hank Green have created for themselves really is. Its orbit within popular and Internet culture is vast, and it exists in the galaxies of YouTube, publishing, and mainstream Hollywood culture simultaneously. 

At its center is a message of community, grassroots evolution, and hope.

This week sees the fifth year of VidCon, the dual industry and community YouTube convention that the Green brothers created in order to help members of the YouTube vlogging community connect with one another and network within the burgeoning overlap between YouTube and Hollywood.

In its first year, VidCon hosted a sold-out crowd of 1,400. This year’s conference, which has YouTube as its official primary sponsor, will have 17,000 attendees and 10 times that many followers on Twitter. In just four short years, VidCon has become the kind of high-profile fan con and powerhouse industry convention that can attract keynote speakers like DreamWorks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg and new YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.

In the middle of it all, the Green brothers are an unlikely pair of industry insiders and power brokers. Since 2007, the Greens have steadily been riding the wave of a massive fanbase known as Nerdfighters toward national acclaim and recognition. They’ve been aided as well by their infectious—perhaps we should say viral-ready—love of YouTube, progressive politics, and communal creativity. The increasingly mainstream acceptance of both John Green’s brand of literary success and Hank Green’s brand of indie DIY-style iTunes hits hasn’t hurt, either. 

Above all, the Green brothers have succeeded thanks to a tireless work ethic and innumerable projects, both on YouTube and off. The sheer scope of their many projects and side projects and one-off projects seems to touch nearly every corner of the entertainment industry, from publishing to PBS. 

Now, in 2014, the Green brothers have played Carnegie Hall, hung out with their fanboy Barack Obama, seen The Fault in Our Stars open at No. 1 ahead of a Tom Cruise blockbuster, and turned “DFTBA” (Don’t Forget To Be Awesome) into an international catchphrase.

How did all this happen? 

Illustration by Aja Romano and Jason Reed

Accio Harry Potter fanbase

LeakyCon, a mid-sized but ever-growing Harry Potter conference named after the popular HP news site Leaky Cauldron, may seem an unlikely conference to win annual recurring appearances from a major YouTube celebrity and one of the heavyweights of YA publishing. But no story of the Green brothers is complete without it—or without the Harry Potter fandom.

Hank Green dressed as the Tenth Doctor at LeakyCon 2012

Photo via Leaky Con

In 2007, the Harry Potter fandom was waning as fans prepared for the release of the seventh and final book and the end of an iconic era of fandom history. For most of its lifetime, HP fandom had centered around discussions of the books and related fan activities: cosplay, fanfic, and real life cons focused around the books. But in later years, a new flavor of HP fandom had emerged: sub-fandoms within the fandom. Wizard rock (“wrock”) had taken off as a new genre of music requiring love for Harry first, talent second. Bands with name like Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys, The Weird Sisters, and The Remus Lupins were going on tours and amassing large crowds of fans. 

Around the same time, John Green had just taken home the prestigious Printz award for his 2005 debut YA novel, Looking For Alaska. His brother, then-27-year-old Hank Green, was putting his degrees in biochemistry and environmental studies to good use as the editor of Eco Geek and as a noted environmental science writer. In between writing to change the world, the brothers starting sending video messages to each other every day for the duration of 2007, in a project they called “Brotherhood 2.0,” on the Vlogbrothers channel. 

Brotherhood 2.0 had a small but loyal viewership that grew steadily, but it wasn’t ever really about the numbers. Rather, as John suggested after realizing that he and his brother hadn’t seen each other in person for over a year, it was an innovative new way to connect using the power of YouTube.

On July 18, just three days before the release of the seventh Harry Potter book, Hank sent his brother the usual daily message, this one about Harry Potter. In it, Hank sang a song called “Accio Deathly Hallows,” a catchy earworm that captured the excited, verklempt Harry Potter fandom on the eve of a huge milestone.

We need Harry Potter
Like a Grindylow needs water
And as the day approaches, our need grows
Oh, Accio Deathly Hallows!

For the Vlogbrothers, Hank’s little ditty would prove to be their own watershed moment. The video landed on YouTube’s front page and went viral, racking up over a million hits (currently it stands at 1.7 million). Moreover, it introduced the Greens to Harry Potter fandom, and to the growing number of fans who would morph gradually into the Vlogbrothers fandom, known simply as Nerdfighters. (At one point, they took time out to fanboy over Neil Gaiman, who would later become a close friend and a guest performer at the Greens’ sold-out evening at Carnegie Hall in 2013.) When 2007 ended, the Vlogbrothers decided to continue their vlog project, each posting once a week instead of every day. 

By 2008 Hank Green was a fixture at Harry Potter cons like Terminus, rocking out alongside Harry and the Potters and participating in the communal album Wrock for Darfur. Meanwhile, the Nerdfighters were already an established sub-fandom and YouTube community of activist fans. The movement joined frequently with the Harry Potter Alliance, a separate but closely linked fandom activist group with ties to HP con culture.

The next year, John and Hank Green were both keynote speakers at LeakyCon, and John won an Edgar Award for his third novel, Paper Towns. He had begun writing bits and pieces of a new novel which he would later recycle parts of into his first full-fledged bestselling phenomenon. At earlier LeakyCons, the Greens had met Esther Earl, a Harry Potter fan who became a popular and well-known Nerdfighter. Esther was one of the members of the Effyeahnerdfighters community on Tumblr. In 2010, John Green and the Harry Potter fandom and Nerdfighters founded Esther Day, just weeks before Esther’s death from thyroid cancer. Before she died, she encouraged John to finish the novel he was working on. The novel, loosely based on Esther’s life, became The Fault in Our Stars, which would spend more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list.

Last month, Hank Green and his solo band, Hank Green and the Perfect Strangers, debuted yet another song dedicated to JK Rowling. Seven years later, the influence of Harry Potter fandom is still omnipresent: The song mentions the HP Alliance, and Green partners with Harry and the Potters frontman Joe DeGeorge. 

He even helpfully put all his Harry Potter songs on one album—put out, of course, by the Greens' DFTBA record label.

Transforming the community

Throughout these years, the Green brothers were experimenting with new projects within their small but growing community. As the Vlogbrothers’ number of subscribers grew, the earmarks of Nerdfighteria developed: grassroots social justice, community sharing and charity, and progressive political education. 

Above all, the Greens exercised Hank’s belief that “small groups of people change the world.” They put this mantra into practice early on. In 2007, the Vlogbrothers startedProject for Awesome, a YouTube and Nerdfighter movement in which participants crowdfund donations for selected charities. Community members create vlog posts in support of their favorite charities and vote for their favorite videos. At the end of the frenzied fundraising period, the funds are divided between the charities with the most popular videos made on their behalf.

Project for Awesome was a success from the beginning. It also united the Nerdfighter community in a major way that the Green brothers would strive to repeat with the YouTube sphere in general.

In August 2008, the Green brothers held a Nerdfighter event in Chicago. Although it was a simple meeting of fans and friends, the day would prove to be a turning point for the duo. 

“This is … where I realized I could sell my music and people would buy it, which … morphed into DFTBA Records,” Hank later recalled. “It was a big day for me.” His brother concurred:

This was also the first time … we really understood the power of nerdfighter gatherings, and it happened at the Chicago Public Library, one of the first places to get behind my novels in a big institution-wide way, and wow, what an important day in our lives.

Photo via fishingboatproceeds/Tumblr

This realization marked a point in the Greens' career trajectory when it officially turned toward what might best be described as a living embodiment of convergence culture—the term coined by media professor Henry Jenkins for a cross-platform, cross-genre way of engaging with Internet culture and using it to build community online and off-. The Green brothers began to actively branch out in multiple mediums: music, comedy, video and YouTube technology, in addition to their writing and charity work. 

By May 2009, Hank had created DFTBA Records and released his first album, So Jokes. It landed in the Billboard Top 25.  DFTBA Records quickly established itself as a burgeoning record label for YouTube artists hungry to expand their audience and take their careers to the next level. The DFTBA artist lineup swelled with major YouTube celebrities like Charlie McDonnell and Alex Day signing up, along with outlying members of the Green community like the Harry Potter Alliance. The more well-connected the Vlogbrothers brothers became within YouTube culture, the more DFTBA’s list of artists grew. 

Expanding and evolving

The Greens, Hank in particular, were well-equipped and keen to network within YouTube, with the combined goals of boosting their Internet neighbors and uniting the community to do cool stuff. Over the course of 2009, the Greens developed the idea of an offline YouTube event that would bring members of the community together. As Hank described it in his December 2009 announcement, it was “news that will change Nerdfighteria, possibly all of YouTube, and maybe the entire world."

What this video reveals is Hank Green’s commitment to taking the principles of Nerdfighteria and spreading them throughout the YouTube community: Not only was YouTube his new vehicle through which to engage audiences; it was a way of expanding his mantra that change begins with small groups: After all, if the Nerdfighter movement had proven that one YouTube channel could promote grass-roots activism, then what could a whole host of YouTube channels coming together do?

The first VidCon was a roaring success, promptly selling out its 1,400 available tickets and promoting a constant expansion that saw the con move to Anaheim in 2013 and expand to 12,000, then 17,000 attendees. VidCon also seems to have had a direct impact on the Vlogbrothers’ ability to do things outside of their main YouTube channel: surrounded by a fully connected network of YouTubers, the Greens’ side projects exploded, improved in quality, and earned massive subscriber numbers.

Vlogbrothers YouTube projects: A timeline

2007:Project For Awesome
2008:DFTBA Records (YouTube performing artist label co-created by Hank Green)
2009:Truth or Fail/The Universe Is Pretty Cool
2010:Hank Games (Side-channel where Hank and John play a variety of real and simulated games)
2011:Crash Course (A co-hosted Green brothers channel initially funded by Google and YouTube)
2012:SciShow (Hosted by Hank Green; SciShowSpace launched 2014)
2012: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries/Pemberley Digital (Hank Green created and co-produced with Bernie Su)
2012:BrainScoop (Hosted by Emily Graslie of the Field Museum of Chicago)
2012:Decrease Worldsuck (Nerdfighter nonprofit connected to Project for Awesome)
2013:Mental Floss Video (John Green becomes host)
2013:Healthcare Triage (John co-hosted with Dr. Aaron Carroll)
2013:Sexplanations (Hosted by Dr. Lindsay Doe)
2013:Subbable (The Green brothers' subscription-based crowdfunding service for YouTube channels)
2014:The Art Assignment (PBS Digital Studios project hosted by Sarah Green and co-hosted by John Green)
2014:How to Adult (A Green brothers-produced life skills channel for Nerdfighters)

In 2011, Google unveiled its ambitious $100 million slate of specially curated YouTube channels. Among them was the Green brothers series Crash Course. Despite quickly gaining over a million subscribers and racking up a hundred million views, the funding eventually ran out, and the Greens, who had long-critiqued YouTube’s ad-based revenue system, began to seek other ways of funding.  In 2013, this led to the creation of Subbable, a crowdfunded subscription service designed to help worthy YouTube channels succeed through the kindness and direct donations of YouTube audiences. 

“[Subbable is] easily 10 times bigger (in terms of startup capital) than anything else we've ever funded,” Hank Green told the Daily Dot last year, “So it's scary and exciting, and I really hope it can sustain not just itself but a lot of amazing content.”

Ten months after its launch, Subbable remains a risky venture. Of the 22 current channels who’ve successfully applied to be hosted on the website, only eight are within 50 percent of their monthly goal, and only three are within 80 percent. Only one, popular YouTube channel C.G.P. Grey, is at 100 percent. And about those three with 80 percent funding? All of them—Crash Course, SciShow, and Sexplanations—are channels produced by the Green brothers.

Another recent project may have proven more profitable: Pemberley Digital, the transmedia webseries production company which sprang out of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a co-creation between Hank Green and writer/director Bernie Su. Not only was Lizzie Bennet so popular it spawned a series of similar Austen remakes, including the current Emma Approved, but it Kickstarted nearly half a million dollars from the fandom for a full DVD release, and encouraged PBS to partner with Pemberley in a digital adaptation of Frankenstein.

Oh, yeah, and it won an Emmy.

Too much influence?

In recent years, the Vlogbrothers seem to be into every corner of geek culture. Hank was a noted guest at W00tstock, the geek revue and variety show; John made pizza with Hannah Hart on My Drunk Kitchen.  Hank did recaps of the Guild; John inspired the creation of an entire card game. Hank made Tumblr: The Musical; John made a special appearance at Tumblr headquarters for the premiere of TFIOS.

Although John Green’s success overshadows his brother’s, they both occupy cornerstone positions within two different sides of Internet culture. Hank Green is more actively involved in harnessing YouTube’s culture and translating communal energy into social action. John Green is a passionate, powerful voice for the Nerdfighter generation, and increasingly the voice of millions of YA readers. Hank is the scientist; John the historian. Hank is the musician; Hank is the writer. Hank appears to be, slightly, the more outgoing of the two; John sometimes seems to be struggling to accept his own rising level of fame and influence.  Earlier this week, he stopped by a Reddit thread to assure a heartbroken fan that she had not had a disastrous and offensive interaction with him. Of the fan/creator relationship, he wrote:

[I]t's an inherently heightened and unnatural dynamic in which it's very difficult for either of us to imagine the other as a complicated human being going through all the things that complicated humans go through. … So you never really know someone else's experience, is I guess what I'm saying, but we're all doing our best.

At this year’s Book Expo, the publishing industry’s largest convention, John Green was a keynote speaker. The New York Times has even coined a term for his brand of emotional contemporary YA: GreenLit. But the concept has sparked controversy: Many within the YA blogosphere feel that the literary establishment has a tendency to elevate Green’s work above that of his female peers in the YA writer community. The pattern has been labeled “the John Green Effect.” John himself has said, responding to a Daily Dot article on the issue, that:

The idea that I'm responsible for female writers' success is INFURIATING... The gender issues in publishing don't come from temporary trends (like my books being popular)... and they aren't caused by individuals. They're systemic. So what I can do (and correct me if this seems wrong) is *not* run from labels "romance" or "YA" like some male authors who wish to be taken seriously, and then also celebrate fiction by women as good and valuable and try to spread the word about the stuff I like.

Meanwhile, DFTBA Records has recently come under fire for a much different reason: A string of YouTube stars have admitted to or been accused of engaging in underage relationships or inappropriate or predatory behavior. In 2012, Hank Green banned the YouTube artist Onision from VidCon after he made misogynistic comments toward his exes on his channel. That same year, one of DFTBA’s earliest artists, Mike Lombardo, was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of child pornography. DFTBA pulled all of his records. The following year, YouTuber Eddplant admitted to coercing one of his fans into a sexual relationship and abusing her emotionally. Eddplant deleted his Tumblr, and once again DFTBA pulled his records.

Then, this year, Tumblr saw a string of explosive accusations over various DFTBA artists and their friends. Though not all of the allegations were substantiated, many were, and some led to confessions on the parts of the accused. Over the month of March, at least four DFTBA artists were accused and admitted to some level of inappropriate behavior. An underage fan accused popular performer Tom Milsom of pressuring her into a sexual relationship, a claim confirmed by multiple members of the community, including Hank Green himself, before the DFTBA label pulled Milsom’s records. Among the allegations that swirled in the wake of the Milsom scandal, bestselling YouTube phenomenon Alex Day also got hit with allegations. Day admitted to inappropriate behavior and acted himself to pull his records from the DFTBA label. 

Speaking about the scandals in March, Hank Green wrote:

My only consolation is that I honestly believe these issues are coming to light in this community not because they are more common, but because we are more empowered to speak out and not hide from or cover them up.

And that’s excellent, because you cannot fix a problem if you do not face a problem.

But many people, including Day, criticized the interactive spaces of vloggers and their fans for encouraging inappropriate behavior and blurred lines between content creators and fans. This inevitably includes VidCon, which, despite having seen harassment occur in its history, had no actual harassment policy until after a public outcry over the issue last month. The convention's code of conduct was eventually updated to include a harassment policy. 

However detrimental these scandals might be to the YouTubers whose names are attached, though, it seems that very little if anything can tarnish the Vlogbrothers’ reputations. DFTBA’s zero-tolerance policy toward its artists leaves Hank Green untouched. Even the John Green Effect isn’t actually about John Green. And while Green recently made a major flub by gushing, woefully inaccurately, that TFIOS had the first female-initiated kiss, he apologized, and the Internet moved on.

Meanwhile, the Green brothers’ influence continues to grow, and their progressive communal sunbeams continue to expand into new corners of the Internet. But if John and Hank now have dominion over everything the light touches, the need to acknowledge and be aware of that power is also important. 

After all, while the Vlogbrothers may be a perfect counterpart to each other, when it comes to the rest of us, they’re twice as difficult to resist.

Photo via fishingboatproceeds/Tumblr

At Thursday's afternoon keynote at VidCon, popular YouTube comedian Grace Helbig revealed the trailer for a brand-new transmedia webseries, #HeyUSA.

The show features Helbig and her Camp Takota costar and best friend, fellow YouTube comedian Mamrie Hart.  Designed as a summer road trip for fans of the duo, #HeyUSA will allow fans to determine where Helbig and Hart go and what they go next ​as they visit various cities and towns across America. The series will premiere July 1.

In a press release, Helbig called the show "a modern-day, choose-your-own-adventure travel series." She added:

This show is so exciting and innovative. Not only do I get to travel the US with my best friend, I get to experience places and things I wouldn't have seen had it not been for the help of our audience. ... It's completely interactive so if it sucks it's not our fault! Perfect scenario!

The series will last eight weeks and rely heavily, as most transmedia series do, on multiple social platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. The first half of the series will essentially be short "near-real-time" clips of the duo broadcasting from their road trips. The second half will tell a more overarching narrative of the trip.

"On YouTube," Hart explained, "we're used to putting out content and then getting feedback from our audience. #HeyUSA will bridge that gap. We will be able to gear our trip to what the audience wants and when they want it."

#HeyUSA will air on the YouTube channel Astronauts Wanted, a transmedia youth content brand that seeks to enrich engagement between fans and creators. The series was created by Billy Parks and Nick Shore, who are executive producing with Ken Treusch of Bleecker Street Entertainment.

Helbig and Hart will also be continuing to update their respective channels. Helbig's channel currently has 1.8 million subscribers since she ended her longtime partnership with YouTube network My Damn Channel last year. Hart's channel, You Deserve A Drink, recently won her a book deal and currently has over half a million subscribers.

Photo by Maddie Cordoba courtesy of Astronauts Wanted

The first day of a convention is traditionally its slowest. If this is what VidCon calls "slow," we're in for a crazy ride.

Fans, members of the YouTube community, and industry insiders all converged on Anaheim, Calif., yesterday for the first day of VidCon, the annual YouTube conference that's ballooned over the last five years to the tune of 17,000 attendees.

The first day of the conference saw an exciting mix of industry news, celebrity/fan interactions, and surprises from YouTube favorites. One recurring theme that emerged was that of the need to build community even while the growth of YouTube inevitably places an emphasis on dollars over inspiration. It's a theme prized by Vlogbrothers and VidCon cofounders John and Hank Green.

Here are the highlights.

1) Sharing is caring

"Shoutout to YouTube for sharing the money," Hank Green said this morning in his keynote, which looked at the growth of YouTube culture. "How much money does Twitter take? All of it." Green went on to praise YouTube for helping to fund channels and community growth.

2) DreamWorks dream team

In an early morning fireside chat, Dreamworks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg sat down with VidCon cofounder Hank Green to discuss the state of YouTube and the success of DreamWorks' 2013 acquisition of the YouTube channel AwesomenessTV. Katzenberg called Awesomeness, a sketch comedy group for kids and teens, "our biggest ... and our most exciting bet on the platform."

Watching Jeffrey Katzenberg talk with @hankgreen about YouTube. I think I'm in the right place. pic.twitter.com/4IYSYERY8P

— Nick Scarpino (@Nick_Scarpino) June 26, 2014

 3) Epic Lip Sync Battles of history 

NBC's Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon announced a special fan challenge to compete to be on a montage for Fallon's popular Lip Sync Battles. The NBC VidCon booth features an interactive space where fans can take their best shot at lip syncing one of five songs selected by Fallon, including Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" and DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win," best remembered as the one Emma Stonecompletely dominated on the show in April.

4) Fullscreen digs deep

George Strompolos, the CEO of management company Fullscreen, spoke at the afternoon keynote. He announced that Fullscreen, which represents a wide variety of YouTube entertainers including the Fine Brothers and Shane Dawson, would be investing up to $10 million in original YouTube programming to locate and cultivate the stars of tomorrow.

5) Go Green

A keynote speech by John Green focused on the importance of building community on YouTube. "The most interesting stuff we've done have always been community projects. Project For Awesome has always been our least-popular videos."

Green also talked about The Art Assignment, the project his wife Sarah Green hosts with PBS Digital Media. Green spoke of the importance of allowing projects like The Art Assignment and creators like famed PBS artist Bob Ross to flourish in order to engage audiences with contemporary access to art.  "They're good for the community even if they lose money," he said about such projects. "The [community] will want to be part of your journey... the economic incentive of YouTube runs completely counter to building community."

If all that wasn't enough to catch your attention, there were also big announcements from Grace Helbig, Jenna Marbles, and Troye Sivan. We can't wait to see what Friday and Saturday will bring. You can watch the livestream from the conference main stage here.

Photo courtesy of NBC

101 Dalmatians is ostensibly about cute little animals and quaint 1950s London, but many of us remember it most for one thing: the image of Cruella de Vil's bloodshot eyes as she tears into the night looking for dogs to skin.

Few characters in the Disney pantheon are more iconic. She even has her own much-loved theme song. What gives?

Gif via fuckyeahdisneyvillains

Throughout the years, our love for villains has flourished nowhere more noticably than in the popular animated tales of our childhood. Disney's recent Maleficent may be the first time the studio has been so open about catering to the massive fanbase for its many memorable evil-doers. 

But it doesn't stop there. Disney has actually been catering to that love in a number of recent films. You just might not have noticed.

Cheering for the Away Team

Earlier this month, Disney released special U.K. editions of dozens of its beloved animated classics, all with one major thematic element:

Illustration via London Mums

The message couldn't be clearer, or more perfectly timed to coincide with the release of Maleficent. Disney's marketing branch knows that you love rooting for the bad guys. 

Jafar; Illustration by floorsteinz/deviantART

Beginning with the opening of its popular Villains in Vogue superstore on Sunset Boulevard in 1992, Disney has been increasingly willing over the years to embrace its more cynical fanbase. Disney maintains an entire Disney Villains sub-franchise for the express purpose of marketing its villains to an eager public. In 2012, it released a glamorous doll collection of female Disney Villains, complete with a slimmed-down Ursula and some modern-day tweaks to one character that left her looking unrecognizable:

Photo via Disney Store

Believe it or not, you're looking at the once-frumpy Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.  But she wasn't the only one to get the glam treatment. Here's what the Disney Store blog had to say about the doll version of Cruella de Vil, already a fashion maven: 

Cruella is all about sparkle, from the jade green stones in her earrings and ring to the diamond-shaped stone in her plunging neckline. Cruella's sparkling jewels and dress give her a modern, flashy look, while her trademark fur coat and hairstyle pay homage to her classic look.

Plunging neckline? Sparkle and flash? Isn't this taking too much villain out of the villainness? 

Not exactly. Disney villains have always been, well, of a type. 

Illustration via intoasylum/Tumblr

High Ambitions and Even Higher Cheekbones

Can you tell a Disney villain just by looking at them? Actually, yes. The villains of Disney films tend to be upper-class and elegant, with specific fictional characteristics that mark them as evil:

Photo by Aja Romano

Sharp, angular features, high cheekbones, arching eyebrows, hooked noses, and jutting chins are all physical staples of Disney villains. This even applies to the non-human variety:

Photo by Aja Romano

High cheekbones and arched eyebrows are still present, and long snouts have replaced the jutting nose/chin combo. Unfortunately, these characteristics are all continuations of centuries of storytelling signifiers which have their roots in anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes. And that's not even touching this:

Gif via dolewhipdreamer

Yeahhhhhhhh. How we'd all like to forget that this actually happened. Note that the recent cover edition removes the destinctly racist overtones of the Siamese cat design, particularly the cross-eyed appearance and the two front teeth typical of vintage Eastern stereotypes.

You might hope that in recent years Disney has started to question and move away from these tropes—and you'd be right. Check out the appearance of King Candy, the archvillain in Wreck-It Ralph.

:

King Candy's roly-poly appearance is significant on numerous levels. He represents the kind of physical archetype that's usually indicative in animated films of the bumbling but well-meaning old man.

Unfortunately, there's another glaring issue here: With his pink bow tie and slipper bells, purple suit jacket, stylized pose, and dandy-ish appearance, King Candy illustrates another problem that plagues male Disney villains: sissification. 

Gif via fyeahdisneymisfits

Gif via Fanpop

Gif via Monica's Microblog

Gif via megamind-movie

Gif via Wifflegif

Male characters who display "effeminate" characteristics in films may be code for multiple things: upper class status and prudishness are common. But by far the most common is the association of effeminacy with homosexuality. A character who preens, prances, and wears purples, reds, and pinks is not to be trusted in the Disney kingdom. 

The longstanding coded representations of queer sexuality that dictate how we read certain characters on screen is still alive and well in Disney's animated film tropes. At one point during his villain song, the pink-bedecked Governor Ratcliffe from Pocohontas sings:  “It's not that I'm bitter / But think how they'll squirm / When they see how I glitter!”  In other words, the male Disney villain's queerness is inextricably linked to his evilness. In some cases, he's quite literally flaming with it:

Gif via dolewhipdreamer

Gif via skunkandburningtires

The language of othering queerness by shaming male effiminacy necessarily involves shaming feminity itself. But women who eschew traditional feminity in Disney films often wind up villains anyway:

With the exception of the wicked stepmothers from Snow White and Cinderella, and Rapunzel's evil surrogate mother in Tangled, most of the female villains in Disney films have rejected traditional social roles as wife and mother. The wicked stepmother is itself a holdover from traditional fairy tale tropes that paint surrogate or non-biological family bonds as false, evil, or superficial. Tangled's Mother Gothel just sees mothering Rapunzel as a means to an end.  

Likewise, any woman who hasn't gotten married or settled down (or is at least working on it) in a Disney film is a woman whose motives are suspicious and whose real goals are often dangerous. Occasionally the way these women do feminity is mocked as well—though this seems to be one of the aspects of their personalities we love the best:

Gif via fuckyeahdisneyvillains

Gif via matamimmimi

In fact, just looking at Disney's "old hags" reveals a fun and a playfulness that brings out the admiration in all of us.

So why do we love them?

Illustration by Justin McTwisp/deviantART

Let's face it. We all have a wild child inside, and nothing brings out the evil in all of us like the delightful fiendish glee of a Disney villain. Sure, there may be some problematic elements involved in the way these tropes play out over the years, but when you come right down to it, does any of that matter in the face of how awesome these bad guys are?

Gifset via detectivelindsay

I mean, who among us hasn't wanted to skin the neighbor's ugly little yippie dog and turn it into a fur coat, or skewer that stupid cute singing fish?

Illustration by Justin McTwisp/deviantART

Just to be clear we're not advocating animal cruelty (leave those puppies alone), but there's a wonderful sense of abandon that comes from giving into your darkest inner impulses—even if it's just for a day at a con:

Photo via skylie-wilde/Tumblr

After all, it's the villains who bring us many of the most memorable moments in all of the Disney classics. What's the thing you remember most from Bambi, again? That's right: Man, the ultimate evil.

Villains also have more fun than their angsty, conflict-ridden counterparts. Just look at Gaston. He fights like a wrestler, chows down like a lumberjack, and still gets all the ladies—well, most of them:

Illustration by Justin McTwisp/deviantART

One of the things villains allow us to do is not only root against the bad guy, but occasionally for the bad guy.

Recently, Tumblr user aladdin-s attempted a rundown of major Disney villains in the time-honored tradition of Tumblr—that is, with a hilariously over-simplified power point presentation. Although the point is to laugh with the presentations and not at them, this one also shows us how much there is to enjoy about our favorite bad guys. The whole Tumblr post, which currently has over 30,000 notes, is here in its entirety. Excerpted are a few slides that get the point across:

Photos via aladdin-s

Clearly there's more going on here than just a wish to turn the tables. It's actually easy to admire many of the Disney villains, even at their absolute worst—some for just how much style they bring to the business of evil-doing, and others for just how committed they are to their dastardly ways.

So what happens when you have a villain who's not just a shallow one-dimensional bad guy?

For this reason and more, the character of Regina from Disney and ABC's Once Upon a Time is an especially interesting figure in the pantheon of Disney villains. 

Illustration by elenoriel

On the surface, Regina is meant to be an amalgamation of a number of different Disney villain tropes: the evil queen, the wicked stepmother, the power-hungry ruler. In reality, while she does commit murder and other cold acts, she's also shown to be a complicated and ultimately loving surrogate mother for her adopted son Henry. 

"Have you ever considered that, perhaps, maybe, I am good?" Regina tells the character of Snow White at one point. "I was always the Queen, it was you who added "Evil" to my name."

Once Upon a Time enjoys a rabid cult fandom in part because of the popularity of Regina as a character, and the large section of the fandom that ships Swanqueen, or the potential lesbian relationship developing between Regina and main character Emma Swan.

Gif via the-regina-mills-network

Gif via fuckyeahswanqueen

But Once Upon a Time's popularity also reveals the growing interest in a new kind of Disney fairy tale: postmodern, revisionist revisitations of beloved Disney classics.

Reviewing the Situation

Illustration by thedreamthatyouwish

Since the revisionist fanfic-turned-blockbuster musical Wicked rewrote the story of the Wizard of Oz from the Wicked Witch's point of view, sympathetic looks at villains have been all the rage. The year after Wicked became a smash hit on Broadway, Disney released a series of children's books called "My Side of the Story." The series ran for a year and included new takes on stories from Cinderella to Beauty and the Beast, from the point of view of their respective villains. Tumblr user shewaseliaofdorne recently shared a look at My Side of the Story: Sleeping Beauty:

While this kind of take on the villain's POV is facetious, it set the stage for the further examination of Disney's classic texts to come. Recent Disney films have been textbook cases in deconstructing and remixing the timeless tropes that Disney's animated films spent decades firming up to begin with. 2012's Wreck-It Ralph, which is all about breaking down the concept of the good guy/bad guy dichotomy, follows in the footsteps of Pixar's The Incredibles in its exploration of what it means to be a hero. The recently announced Disney Channel movie Descendents seems to be a Disney villains fanfic musical, with pixie-sized Broadway star Kristen Chenoweth, of all people, playing Maleficent.

Enchanted (2007) deserves mention as a kind of stepping stone toward what seems to be the new era of Disney deconstruction. A partially animated, live-action satire of the princess narrative, Enchanted utilizes wacky sendups of familiar Disney tropes, like princesses warbling their way through housework. In the end, while it still delivers a cheesy and tidy fairy tale ending, it takes an axe to love at first sight, an idea further dismantled in 2013's blockbuster hit Frozen. And 2010's Tangled continued the trend by tackling the idea of damsels in distress: Rapunzel doesn't wait around to be rescued from her surrogate mother's tower.

In retrospect, all of these tales seem like practice runs for Disney's most recent offerings. Frozen originally had icy Queen Elsa as the movie's true villain. What changed? When the film's writers heard Elsa's centerpiece song "Let It Go," they realized they couldn't simply let Elsa go unredeemed. Instead, while her sister Anna remains the true heroine of the fairy tale, Elsa has proven incredibly popular with Disney fans, who have churned out endless amounts of fanart and YouTube covers of her signature song, as well as an entire sub-fandom devoted to shipping her with Rise of the Guardian's Jack Frost.

Photo by Lento via llento.woobi.co.kr

Similarly, the new Maleficent doesn't try to villainize its titular character, even though as the villain from Sleeping Beauty she is often considered the most fearsome and powerful of any Disney villain.

Gif via Hollyscoop

Instead, the work of the film is to humanize her, giving her a complex backstory and creating a deep bond between her and princess Aurora. Ultimately, the film jettisons the original ending of Sleeping Beauty altogether, in order to allow Maleficent to write her own version of the ending.

Gif via alessiavermillion

Finally, there's the upcoming highly-anticipated Christmas release of the classic Sondheim musical Into the Woods, which literally wrote the book—OK, the libretto—on the kind of hybrid, chaotic fairy-tale crossover drama that Once Upon a Time has more or less turned into character soup at this point. While Disney's adaptation of the film is inducing literal cries of alarm from fans horrified over the studio's plans to simplify and censor many of the musical's darker themes, Into the Woods is still a story in which the "villains" work with the good guys, and the story's narration can be thrown away altogether in favor of something new. For Disney to align itself with that kind of message is a clear a meta-statement about the studio's own evolutionary path.

Ultimately, Disney's increasingly sympathetic take on villains seems to be a combined product of marketing, revitalizing old titles, and responding to a changing fandom that thoroughly critiques Disney properties. While revisionist fairy tales like Maleficent may seem like an attempt to soften the edges of the villains we love, it's really just a way of expanding what we love about them.

And, of course, for those fans who like their villains to remain bad to the bone, there's still plenty of evil left in the Disney pantheon.

It's just updated its wardrobe.

Screencap via author-quest

In 2010, in the middle of the FIFA World Cup, the Guardian wrote an article so polarizing that it caused a three-day onslaught of fan reactions so heated that the news outlet had to shut down commenting altogether.

What on earth were soccer fans so passionate about? 

It was, of course, the vuvuzela, the noisemaker that exploded to international attention when South Africans brought them to the 2010 tournament. Though the instruments were a core part of soccer culture in southern African nations and other parts of the world, they were largely reviled by international fans. The long conical horns were blamed for everything from audience hearing loss to poor player performances to germ-spreading. And, of course, they sparked debate across the Internet.

But before the Guardian killed its comment boards, one professor studied them to see what information he could glean from the opinions of Britain's irate soccer fans. Now, Arizona State University communication professor Jeffrey Kassing is sharing what he's learned with the world in a new book called African soccer, Identity Politics and Global Media Narratives: The Legacy of the FIFA 2010 World Cup.

Kassing has authored a chapter for the book, "Noisemaker or Cultural Symbol: The Vuvuzela Controversy and Expressions of soccer Fandom." In the chapter, he discusses what he learned from the Guardian's comment war over the vuvuzela in 2010—and what we can all learn as a result.

Kassing took a look at all of the negative opinions on an article the Guardian published about FIFA considering whether or not to ban the vuvuzela from stadiums during competitions. Kassing drew themes from reader responses—and unsurprisingly, they revealed a distinctly Eurocentric viewpoint.

"People felt very strongly that the vuvuzela disrupted the experience of fans and viewers because it conflicted with their expectations of how fandom should be performed," Kassing told Phys Org. "In particular, fans felt the vuvuzela interrupted a prescribed soundscape for matches—one characterized by singing, applauding, and cheering at very specific moments."

It's no secret that European culture has a way of asserting itself where it doesn't belong. 

But is this...

...really more jarring and out of place than, say, this?

As Kassing points out, appropriate forms of celebration vary from culture to culture. Noisemakers at soccer matches are also popular in Brazil, though the Brazilian equivalent of the vuvuzula, the caxirola, has been banned for this year's World Cup. But fans unused to the sporting experience of other cultures might not be able to tolerate the tradition.

Kassing said the Guardian's commenting fans identified the vuvuzula as a "fundamental threat" to their cultural traditions, and therefore couldn't accept the horn "as a legitimate or alternative fan tradition." At the same time, he pointed out that dissenters from the majority, the ones who supported the right of the South African fans to celebrate in any way they wished, often exemplified cracks in the structure of English soccer fandom.

"Complain about the vuvuzelas if you want but please don't pretend [the vuvuzelas] drown out anything more imaginative," read one such comment.

In the end, as is often the way of a majority viewpoint, the anti-vuvuzela comments said more about the mentality of U.K. soccer than the South African fans who just wanted to have fun.

H/T Phys Org; Photo via Wikimedia Commons

This year at VidCon, one topic on the minds of vloggers seemed to be whether, and how, to transition from YouTube to other mediums like television or Hollywood. But filmographers in YouTube have similar concerns: Can YouTube's community provide support for an indie filmmaker's artistic vision? Can a film look as good on YouTube as it does on Vimeo, which offers faster frame rates (though this is finally changing) and a higher default playback resolution?

The hosts of VidCon's Intermix panel, well-known YouTubers Emily Diana Ruth and Charlie McDonnell, argued "yes" to both questions on Saturday. We joined them for a look at some of the best films the YouTube community has to offer, from experimental art films to deeply personal explorations of identity.

"The only thing these films have in common," McDonnell explained to the packed room, "is that they're short and they're on YouTube." 

We'd add one more thing: The 10 films featured below provide an interesting and entertaining look at the varied and diverse talents of YouTube filmmakers. We present them in the order in which they were presented at VidCon.

1) Once Upon a Time

Director: Bethany Jeffries (bethshake)

What: A gorgeous stop-motion-style animated film done for a final exam in Jeffries' animation class. We're assuming she passed.

2) Shelter From the Storm

Directors: Former Europop singers Rebekka Matthew and Rannva Joensen (Rebekka Rannva, Creamydk)

What:  A moving short documentary film about an East Los Angeles elementary teacher, Mrs. Reifler, and the students whose lives she is changing.

3) Reflective in Perspective

Director: Tim Hautekiet (Tim H)

What: A wry comedic short starring Hautekiet, better known as "TimH," on the subject of breakups.

4) Rickshaw Run

Director: JacksGap

What: The trailer for a short YouTube series by the same name that features the gorgeous cinematography and merry adventures of a seven-member team of British guys who spent a month traveling across India in rickshaws.

5) everything you eat is poison

Director: Ed Stockham (ed stockham..)

What: A mind-bending, poignant short from comic artist and animator Stockham, exploring connection, beauty, and things that taste good.

6) The Raven Boy

Director: Harvey Walton

What: A fun dark fantasy short that received several nominations at this year's Rode Reel short film competition, winning Best Soundtrack.

7) Talking Pictures

Director: Ransom Riggs (ransriggs), perhaps better known as the author of the best-selling, photo-rich Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

What: This short film about the director's love of old photos went viral in 2011.

8) Resolution of Two

Director: Rylee Jean Ebsen

What: The up-and-coming director Ebsen made this moment of brief connection between a jilted prom date and a prostitute as part of Tisch School of the Arts' annual Campus MovieFest.

9) Irene Lee, Girl Detective

Director: Yulin Kuang

What: This crowd favorite by Yulin Kuang is a Wes Anderson-flavored look at plucky young detective Irene as she faces a mysterious lack of mysteries.

10) Tick Where It Hurts

Director: Bertie Gilbert

What: This powerful film, by far the longest short shown at the fest, has already received nearly 60,000 views since it debuted on YouTube a week ago—and for good reason. Gilbert's filmmaking is a claustrophobic and incredibly intimate portrait of the process of grief and anger following the suicide of a loved one. This isn't an easy film to watch, but it's also a powerful viewing experience, and one that proves that the visions of YouTube filmmakers are well worth watching.

Screengrab via Bertie Gilbert/YouTube

Earth to Echo is a film that knows its audience. The problem is that its audience, increasingly, needs a special reason to get off the Internet and come to the theater.

Much like VidCon, the half-industry, half-fandom convention celebrating YouTube culture where it got a special advance screening Friday night, Earth to Echo argues that the reason is pure and simple navel-gazing: You should watch Earth to Echo to celebrate yourself.

This is the same impulse that drew 18,000 attendees to VidCon: to celebrate the DIY group culture and community that has spawned a full-fledged generation of vloggers, entertainers, and online activists who express their voices through their cameras and their passions through their "likes." As hundreds of teens and a few parents lined up Friday night for the screening, it was clear that the risks this quirky little film was taking in appealing directly to an audience of tweens and teenagers might well pay off.

Earth to Echo has a premise that's superficially very similar to J.J. Abrams' sleeper hit Super 8: kids with cameras, strange occurrences in the desert, mysterious government conspiracies involving an alien with whom one of the kids soon forms a close connection. Both films wear their Spielberg homages on their sleeves, and both films weave their coming-of-age narratives into their depiction of the emerging filmmaker.

But where Super 8 concerns the individual growth of a single would-be independent filmmaker, Earth to Echo takes the fairly unusual tack of grounding itself in a community of friends who each have grown up with the Internet, specifically YouTube, as the backdrop to their somewhat isolated lives. 

The boy who would be king of YouTube is Tuck, played with a subtle, quiet cynicism by Astro. At the VidCon premiere, when asked his favorite thing about his character, Astro replied, "My favorite thing is that Tuck is black." The film doesn't comment on the unfortunate novelty of a black character being the one behind the camera, but then it doesn't have to: Earth to Echo treads on familiar turf with its eclectic mix of misfits and social outcasts. Alex (Teo Halm) is a foster kid who is leaving shortly to go to a new neighborhood and a new family. Munch (Reese Hartwig) is an awkward kid with OCD, a chubby-cheeked everyman who has more than a bit of trouble accepting the whole alien deal. They each gain a measure of control over their lives through their participation in Tuck's YouTube filmography, alternately filming and being filmed, as casual onscreen as off. When they stumble across a mysterious-looking space canister, they set off, camera in hand, to help its inhabitant, dubbed Echo, make his way back home.

Over the course of one eventful night, the boys journey through various sleepy Nevada towns, guided by the bubbly Echo, who delivers cuteness despite being slightly less charismatic than a Wall-E or an E.T. The goal, which requires going to various iconoclastic places and getting random pieces of hardware so that Echo can repair its spaceship, involves an entertaining amount of public vandalism and casual mayhem.

In this and other criminal acts, the boys are sometimes aided by a winsome Emma (Ella Wahlestedt), who appears in the second act to be Awesome and Do Cool Things, only to be totally sidelined and ignored until it's time for her to be the default love interest. Far more successful is the complicated nature of Alex and Tuck's friendship, including the tacit presence of racism and classism in their respective realities. Occasionally this erupts into moments of tension, but the foundations of the friendship are never really in question. After all, we've captured it on camera. 

But by far the standout of Earth to Echo is Hartwig's frenetic, nervous Munch. Hartwig transcends his character's status as Goonies riff and comic relief, imbuing energy and emotion into every line to become the film's true hero. The moment when Munch rises above his fear and establishes himself as this film's Book 7 Neville Longbottom drew a resounding cheer from VidCon's teen audience.

In addition to the Goonies-style nature of the boys' friendship, Earth to Echo trades on other kinds of familiarity: Halm, with only four film credits to his name, is a minor Vine star with 30,000 followers. Like his character, he comes across as a likable, if taciturn, kid who'd rather film what he feels than talk about it. Throughout the film there's a sense that the Internet is the fourth of this ring of best friends. At one point they Google "how to drive a car," because, well, what else is Google for?  

Where most films treat modern Internet culture as either something to poke mawkish fun at or hold up in reverence as new tech that will be hopelessly dated five years from now, Earth to Echo offers the Internet as the echo of our own culture. It also, interestingly, takes an almost punk derivative approach to the mingling of new tech and old, clunky, loud tech—from brass gadgets at a pawn shop to thingamabobs from a creaky jukebox. It's not quite dieselpunk, but let's call it at least hardwarepunk.

All in all, Earth to Echo will appeal to the nostalgia of older kids who appreciate a good coming-of-age romp, parents looking for movies that eschew most of the usual stereotypes of teens on film, and the average YouTuber and tween who knows what it means to "do it for the Vine." By the end of the film, the baseline theme of "E.T. phone home" has become even more universal: The Internet is the way we phone home these days, and the aliens, after all, are right here.

Earth to Echo opens nationwide today.

Photos via Call Him Echo

If you've ever read Neil Gaiman's creepy children's book Coraline, you suspected the author is actually a lurking creature. Now, a British museum has provided us with confirmation. As reported by the BBC, the Story Museum in Oxford has partnered with photographer Cambridge Jones and a host of acclaimed British children's authors to capture their favorite literary heroes through cosplay.

And of course Gaiman's surprising choice has teeth and a tail.

26 Characters is an interactive story exhibit running at the Story Museum through Nov. 2. It involves a number of elements of storytelling and world-building, and features designs from Harry Potter's Michael Pickwoad and Doctor Who's Alix Harwood, along with costumes donated from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The museum teamed up with Jones and the group of British authors to bring a number of literary classics to life.

Here's current Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman as an iconic hero—or should we say villain:

Malorie Blackman as the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz; Photo via Story Museum

Gaiman went for a surprising choice—the badger from Kenneth Grahame's children's classic The Wind in the Willows.

Neil Gaiman as the Badger from The Wind and the Willows; Photo via BBC News

Jones shared his thoughts on Gaiman's unexpected transformation for the BBC website: 

It never struck me as one of the best ideas - Neil Gaiman as Badger. A medieval swashbuckling hero maybe, or as a dark overlord from another time zone, perhaps. Or even the lead singer in a very cool band....but Badger from Wind In The Willows?!

And then an odd thing happened: he just started to become Badger - literally in front of my eyes. With wonderfully simple make-up and exquisite robes, he started to move like Badger, he started to smile like Badger, he even started to talk as I imagine Badger talks. When we finally went on set and gave him his chair and book, he just WAS Badger.

One thing not even the cosplay photoshoots can convey is how immersive and detailed the experience of the 26 Characters exhibit is. U.K. blogger Helen Barker describes it on the website Geekmom:

I had expected perhaps a few photographs and maybe some explanation about the books, but what we found there absolutely blew me away. The exhibition is built around Cambridge Jones’ wonderful portraits, but these work alongside an immersive experience which brings each story to life by using a range of multimedia techniques. They’ve used the slightly dilapidated buildings wonderfully, using small rooms and kitchens, and in one funny instance, the toilets, to build world after world. You peer through pots and pans to spy The Borrowers’ home, search for The Scarlet Pimpernel, push through fur coats to enter Narnia, clap to hear Tinker Bell, and swab the deck of a pirate ship. It’s quite simply breathtaking.

Kevin Crossley-Holland as Merlin, originally photographed by Cambridge Jones. Photograph by Alex Coke via Geekmom

The authors aren't the only ones who get to play in this fairy tale land, however. A special room in the exhibit lets kids of all ages create and dress up as characters of all sorts, then take their place on a throne to receive their just acclaim:

Photo by Duncan Saunders via Geekmom

In addition, children can contribute to an online gallery of cosplay and fanart of their favorite characters.

You can also hear the authors talk about why they chose their favorite characters on Bandcamp, where all 26 stories have been assembled. Among them is acclaimed children's author Frances Hardinge, who talks about choosing her character, The Scarlet Pimpernel, because "I've always had a thing for tricksters." Clearly, the adult authors have a few tricks of their own at the ready.

Frances Hardinge as the Scarlet Pimpernel; Photo via Bandcamp 

Julia Donaldson as the Pussycat from Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat"; Photo via The Story Museum

Benjamin Zephania as Anansi the Spider; Photo via BBC News

You can see more of the photos on the BBC Website, and on Bandcamp. 26 Characters runs through November 2.

H/T io9; Photo via The Story Museum

House of Cards may be the toast of Netflix, but it hasn't exactly won over the Russian government. 

Foreign Policyreports that the Russian delegation to the United Nations won't allow David Fincher's hit political drama to film two episodes on location within the U.N. Security Council Chamber. 

Despite an assist from the U.N. Secretary-General's office and the British delegation to the U.N., Vladimir Putin's government couldn't be persuaded to open the doors of the Security Council to the production. According to emails obtained by Foreign Policy, the Russian delegation was the most vocal holdout among the members of the various U.N. delegations Tuesday night as the deadline drew near to reject or approve House of Cards' request to film in the chamber room.

"Upon thorough reflection, we are objecting to the proposed filming in the Security Council," Russian delegate Mikael Agasandyan wrote in an email to council members late Tuesday afternoon.

"We are of [the] opinion that the Security Council premises should be available at any time and on short notice. Besides that, we consistently insist that the Security Council premises are not an appropriate place for filming, staging, etc."

In other words, although the production team was planning to film after normal business hours, world security has no regular operating hours, as far as Russia is concerned.

The U.N. has recently been courting Hollywood to help shape its image by featuring notable U.N. spots in their films, such as the one they originally denied to Alfred Hitchcock when he approached them to film North by Northwest in 1959. Hitchcock wanted to film a murder in the U.N.'s North Delegates Lounge; the U.N. said no. Despite the relative merits of allowing its chambers to be featured in an iconic film masterpiece, the U.N. is apparently still wary about associating with less-than-positive portrayals of government and politics.

Bo Shen, a member of the Chinese delegation, replied to concur with Agasandyan and the wisdom of the Russian delegation. 

"I think Mikael's argument is reasonable," he wrote, citing the need for an advanced look at the script before the U.N. gets in over its head:

"[The Chinese delegates] think council members should have a rough idea on scripts for those episodes which are relating to our work. DPI [The U.N. Department of Public Information] judged them to be appropriate but could not represent views of council members. Based on that, we regard the current information are insufficient before making a decision by the council."

In the past the U.N. has opened its chamber doors to various entertainers and photographers. Annie Liebowitz did a photoshoot of former U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice for Vogue. But the grittier, darker House of Cards may not be the easiest sell for the General Assembly, which is, let's face it, probably more a house of diplomats and face-savers than a house of machiavellian international intrigue.

Still, we do have two reasons to be grateful for the stalled production kerfuffle: We now have an exciting glimpse into what the next season of House of Cards will hold. Who doesn't love the image of Kevin Spacey sharply rapping his knuckles on a U.N. podium?

And even better, we now know that the U.N. Security Council chats to each other about TV shows over email, just like the rest of us. Let the fanfiction commence.

H/T Deadline | Photo via Wikimedia Commons (S.A. BY-3.0)

Brent Bailey is annoyed. “I’d love to get away with that kind of thing,” he says, speaking of actor Stephen Chang, who plays Frank Churchill, the rival to Bailey’s Mr. Knightley, on the popular webseries Emma Approved. Chang playfully chewed the scenery in a recent entrance on set.

“I wish I could do that kind of physical comedy,” Bailey laughs, “But if I tried it, it’d just look ridiculous.”

Do we detect a little jealousy, Mr. Knightley? It’s one of many moments during a recent sit-down with the leads of the hit Jane Austen reboot in which cast members Bailey and Joanna Sotomura seemed to be fully inhabiting their roles as Alex Knightley and Emma Woodhouse.

It’s hard to believe that Sotomura, who confidently faces the camera twice weekly for the series’ avid viewers, is the same actress who declares that she was “nervous and shy” for her initial audition. Although she says that she started out feeling as if she had nothing in common with her character, the 27-year-old actress, whose career has included everything from performing Shakespearean comedy in Honolulu to being dismembered in the woods in Arkansas, is nothing if not adaptable.

“It’s definitely different!” she says of her role as the confident young life coach who discovers over the course of the series that she’s the last person to be dishing out advice.

“I think it was a couple of episodes in when we actually were filming, and we really let ourselves play with each other that we realized, oh... these characters were kind of meant for us.”

Emma Approved is one of the major YouTube webseries launched from the fictional digital media enterprise turned real enterprise, Pemberley Digital. Creators Hank Green and Bernie Su launched Emma as a much-anticipated follow-up to the highly popular Lizzie Bennet Diaries, itself a reboot of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, set in the same modern-day universe as Emma.

Although much of the action has been on the series’ YouTube channel, Emma has also had a strong transmedia and social media component like its predecessors Lizzie Bennet and Welcome to Sanditon. With Lizzie Bennet’s Emmy-winning transmedia team at the reins once again, the world of Emma Approved has expanded to Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Google+, and Pinterest. They’ve launched a real-life charity drive to tie in to the fictional world of the show. They’ve even taken their act on the road to VidCon; they'll hit Leaky Con later this summer.

Though the world of the three Austen tales has expanded, the cast of Emma has stayed tight-knit. As the series heads steadily toward its final quarter, all eyes are on the future and each other. “We’ve been together so long as a group,” Bailey notes.

Ten or 11 months we’ve been together, and we don’t know what’s happening after the book, if it’s going to continue further or what. So there’s that aspect where it could be coming to an end, and there’s that aspect of it where as you’re saying the lines on set it’s crossing over into reality.

But don’t think that sentiment has let them skimp on the hard truths Emma offers its protagonist, the confident 20-something who thinks she knows her own mind. Through the course of Austen’s Emma, she learns that things aren’t always what they seem, and that vanity mixed with too much self-assurance isn’t always the best route to wisdom. So far, the path of Emma Approved has followed a very faithful trajectory to the plot of Emma, despite the very different trappings. The small British village of Highbury has been replaced with suburban California, and Emma’s domain is now the all-too-fitting life coach business she runs with the help of lifelong friend Alex Knightley. Now, as the plot gets ever-more tricky, they’re playing it strictly by the book.

“We didn’t pull any punches,” Sotomura says when I ask about the climactic scenes in store for Emma. “This last round we shot’s going to get intense,” Bailey says. “Be prepared. There were tissues on set. It’s a hard story to tell. There’s hard lessons to be learned.”

Unlike her predecessor Lizzie, Emma isn’t always an easy character, but Sotomura says she’s been blown away by “how loving and supportive the fans are.”

“It’s been such an incredible year for both of us,” she says.

We talked to the two about their first meetings on set, the challenges of following up an Emmy-winning hit, and the fascinating paths their characters are taking to discover exactly how much they don’t know about themselves.

On auditioning:

Sotomura: I went in and they didn’t say what I was auditioning for. I think the character was disguised as like Millie Tollhouse, and I was like, "What the heck is this? But all right." And I had a lot of fun. And then, "by the way, it’s Emma Woodhouse and you’re auditioning for the lead."

And I got super-nervous and scared because I didn’t feel like I had anything in common with her, and I was like, how do I do this? So I just channeled whatever confidence I had stored deep-down, and I ended up booking it, thankfully.

Bailey: I think I was auditioning at the same time you were, but then I had like a really long break. I think they were casting Emma and then going back—I think they went through a first round of Alex.

Sotomura: And then I read for Knightley’s [audition], Annie’s, and Harriet’s, and I read opposite them for chemistry reads all in the same day. So I’d never done a chemistry [read] before, and he was the first one to walk in, of all the Knightleys, and I was just like, “Hi, OK, so what are you reading?” and just like stumbled everything and made a fool out of myself and was all embarrassed and bright red, and he was all professional and very Knightley. So, needless to say it was a fun day.

Was there a moment during the audition when you each just knew that you were reading with someone who was perfect for the part?

Sotomura: Well, I didn’t even feel like I was Emma… because like I said, I was nervous and shy and of course he walks in and he shakes my hand and I was like "blaaaghh."

Bailey: Well, ‘cause I wasn’t sure, because when I auditioned for The Lizzie Bennet Diaries I would just read with whoever was the reader there. One time it was Mary Kate [Wiles], one time it was Ashley [Clements], so I had no idea if she actually was Emma or if she was just in the Pemberley family.

Sotomura: The true reason why is because I screwed up a lot and he made me all nervous. But I feel like he was Knightley during the chemistry reads, when we had a fun banter going on… but I think it was a couple episodes in when we actually were filming and we really let ourselves play with each other that we realized, oh… these characters were kind of meant for us.

On Mr. Knightley and drama:

Much is made of how Emma is "clueless," but I think it's equally important to note that Knightley is oblivious as well throughout most of the book. I think in Emma Approved, we see him content to sit in his office and ignore the drama swirling around him.

Bailey: I think he’s just the kind of the type of person who just doesn’t care about [drama]. He doesn’t care about what Frank is really up to, if he got a present for [Jane] or didn’t. I don’t think at the end of the day he cares—he’s just glad she got a new laptop so she can work faster.

He just wants to make sure on the general level that everybody’s taken care of and happy. If there’s a problem, he will address it. But I think beyond that, I don’t really see him going home and talking about the gossip of the day; I see him going home and still balancing worksheets or toying with Excel. I don’t think he’s that type of guy.

I think he does a really good job—or maybe it’s not a really good job—at masking his feelings and staying even-keel and focused on one thing at a time so that he’s not overwhelmed with life. It’s toward the end of the book that he actually lets his guard down for a second and then realizes his feelings for Emma, and then comes back and tells her.

I think that’s really the first time where he actually lets his emotional guard down and steps out of work mode for a second, and he’s almost so selfless that he doesn’t ever look out for himself. He’s always trying to make everyone else happy, so there’s no reason for him to ever have the time to gossip. Because he’s always happy, unless somebody else is unhappy, and then it’s not that he’s now unhappy, he’s just not happy that you’re [un]happy so he’s going to try to figure out how he can change things.

In the original story, Knightley is landed gentry and a squire who oversees a number of tenants. I was wondering how that translated into the current series for you.

Bailey: I could see Knightley owning properties and still having an entire side-business that’s completely separate from this, but he just has other people who are delegated out to run those tasks. I don’t doubt that Knightley has multiple avenues of different revenue streams and people who work for him. I mean Knightley in the original book and some of the adaptations I’ve seen has seemed much more reserved and with a straight posture and very business man and very—I don’t want to say boring, but he’s just very…

Sotomura: Composed?

Bailey: Yeah, I think my version and then Paul Rudd’s version [from Clueless] is a much more playful, mellow version of Knightley, whereas the book and then the earlier adaptations is definitely more conservative Knightley, which I think makes him more relatable for our series because modern-day audiences relate more with the fun, everyday guy. Almost the way that Daniel [Gordh] played Darcy [in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries] is how I see how Knightley would have been. I love the way that Daniel did that, but for someone who’s on camera all the time with Emma, I don’t know if that would have translated as well for our show, to not have the kind of, like, fun with bantering.

Sotomura: I think Knightley in our show needs to have a little bit of give with Emma’s push.

Bailey: Right.

Sotomura: I feel like if he were exactly like the book he’d have been a wall that she’s constantly hitting. He needs to have a little bit of sway.

Bailey: Instead of bantering I could picture him just literally staring at her and then leaving the room!

On fans who aren’t familiar with the story of Emma:

What has their reaction been like so far?

Sotomura: Well, I know at the beginning I think they were kind of shocked, because, you know, you had this super-relatable character of Lizzie Bennet, who you love instantly because you’re like, "Oh, I absolutely have been that girl." And then you have Emma, and you’re like, woah, because she’s so confident and vain and a little bit on her own high horse. So I know in the beginning, it was hard for them, especially if they hadn’t read the books, to understand where we were going with this character and what her evolution was going to be.

But recently, from what I’ve seen, they seem to be really on-board and support the show and like her growth, especially after we had the scene with Emma and Elton, where she really gets put in her place and she gets fired from her first job, and has failed essentially for the first time. I think that was really nice for a lot of new fans to see that, oh, wait a minute, this isn’t a robot, this is a human person who is trying, and failing, and picking herself back up. They’ve been really supportive from what I’ve seen.

Bailey: It’s interesting to see fans who haven’t read the books—as the series has progressed, they’ve definitely caught on. It’s funny, because you can see from their comments that they pretty much know what’s about to happen, even without having read the books. Like when that whole laptop thing came, I saw so many comments from people who read the book, and they were like, they knew exactly who it was from. They were just like, "No, it’s obvious, I can see it." I think the story is being told so well that even if you haven’t read it, you can kind of see what’s coming.

And it’s kind of 50/50 on both sides. You get some people who’ve read the books who absolutely love the way we’re adapting it, and then you get some people who aren’t as thrilled. But I think it’s definitely more positive than negative, which has been wonderful.

Has the success of Lizzie Bennet given you guys the ability to take more risks?

Sotomura: I know that’s a big reason why Bernie Su set Emma up the way he did. It could have been just like Lizzie Bennet where it was more realistic. But Emma’s is more sitcom-y and procedural, definitely very colorful and stylistic. I think that’s the risk they took. They went, "We could do another Lizzie Bennet Diaries but with Emma, or we could try something different."

Bailey: Bernie said he wanted to try something new and see if he could push the boundaries more, which is I think what he’s been doing, not only with the show, but also with the transmedia aspects of it. And then now getting into Emma having a real-life fundraiser that’s tying into the show. I think the biggest luxury we got from the Lizzie Bennet Diaries was having a giant fanbase that loved Jane Austen, which then was like, "Cool, we’re already on board." And then we got to take those fans onto the next show for us. And we’ve also had them have people go back and watch their show, so I think it’s been very mutually beneficial.

On friends and frenemies

One thing I love is how much Harriet has grown. Is that something that Dayeanne Hutton brought to the role or is that something that has been scripted along the way?

Sotomura: I would definitely say both. I think the writers really wanted to see Harriet become her own character, not just Emma’s side project. That way it’s kind of a trifecta, with Emma, Knightley, and Harriet running [Emma’s business]. And then I think also Dayeanne has grown and evolved as her own person and her own actress, and just like me, as the series goes on, finding fun ways to play with the character you’ve been given. So I’d say it’s a nice combination of both.

And like it sounds silly, but a big part of Emma Approved is actually the wardrobe as well. I know Bernie wanted to have it so that you could actually purchase the different items that the girls wear. Our stylist Jessica Snyder had it so that Harriet’s wardrobe also grew with the characters, so now she’s evolved and become her own stylist, but in a very Harriet Smith kind of way.

Bailey: The writing, the styling, her hair and makeup, as well as her confidence that’s built throughout the series—the combination of all of them has had the most impact on the series in terms of visible growth. If you go back and watch the first episode she’s completely different than she is on the most recent one. I think it’s a perfect little combination of everybody’s hard work.

In the original version, we had Mrs. Elton harping on Jane all the time and really being the social pressure that Jane has to react to. Without that, now it’s Emma that’s basically become that social pressure, and I think a lot of that facet of Mrs. Elton’s character has been put on Emma and their dynamic. How do you think that’s affecting their relationship and how you play Emma?

Sotomura: It’s definitely true. It’s hard because you have to try to play that relationship where Emma’s putting that social pressure onto Jane, but also trying to find a genuine connection with her, which is two very polar opposite intentions. So it’s been difficult, but also fun to explore. It’s interesting, because you can tell Emma maintains that tiny bit of jealousy of Jane, because she sees Jane as that perfect model of a human without trying. And Emma’s like, "Well, I am, too, but just a little bit better!" So it’s definitely an interesting relationship.

Bailey: I think it makes it interesting, too, because it keeps the relationship slightly friendly, but then also extremely competitive, which it’s fun to watch that go back and forth.

Sotomura: Frenemies, would you say?

Bailey: Frenemies.

Sotomura: But only from Emma’s standpoint, because Jane I don’t think has any idea.

Bailey: Jane’s kind of like Knightley.

What, at this point in the series, are Alex’s thoughts on Frank Churchill?

Bailey: Blehhhhh. I think Alex just thinks Frank Churchill in one word, would be ridiculous. He does look up to him from a business sense, that Frank is smart with his investments, his money, and he respects him on a work level. But I think that the way he holds himself and the way he acts around Emma is so completely unprofessional.

Which I think is where some of his jealousy stems from, because in a way I think he kinds of envies him, that he can be so carefree. Because he’s just like, “No, you can’t act like that in a place of business!” So I think it’s like a healthy combination of jealousy mixed with respect.

Sotomura: Like Jane and Emma!

Bailey: It’s pretty similar to Jane and Emma. I think Knightley’s definitely more jealous of Frank. Just because he’s got way better style. His hair is beautiful. And he can just get away with anything and everybody always laughs. I can see Knightley trying to do that thing where he pokes his head in, and everyone would just be like, “...You’re weird.”

There’s a healthy amount of jealousy there. But it’s good, because even for me personally, seeing how crazy Stephen will play Frank, it forces me to break out a little bit more to try to compete with that, and so I think that Knightley would do that from the same aspect: "All right, I’m going to be a little bit filthier, just so you still think I’m interesting, Emma."

Sotomura: Aww.

You guys have said in the past that you’re looking forward to the romantic elements. Why do you think they’ve never considered each other romantically before now, or have they?

Bailey: I think they’ve been friends for so long they’ve just kind of formed that bond. Even if you had considered it, it wouldn’t be worth messing up the friendship, and now you have a business on top of it. I think Knightley’s logical mind is like, "All right, now we’ve got a friendship and a business, going into a relationship would just be an awful idea." I think it really takes that moment—obviously the pivotal point in the book—to break them out of their routines and make them take a hard look at what they really want out of life and each other, which makes them eventually do what they do. I would say spoiler alert, but you know exactly what happens. So I think it’s one of those things where they’ve shut off that emotion completely towards each other. They still have that flirty, good chemistry, but it’s always like, well, she’s my best friend. So it’s when they decide to change from being best friends to embracing that they’re best friends and using that as a beneficial point of their relationship.

Sotomura: And I think, for Emma, too, she’s not used to losing things. She’s used to getting everything she wants and then keeping it and having it and just dictating a lot of aspects of her life. I think Knightley falls into that category. I think she’s so used to having him there, as a brother figure, as a friend, as a business partner, that she doesn’t realize how much she really cares about him until there’s a possibility that he could be gone.

Bailey: You don’t realize what you have ’til it’s gone.

Sotomura: I mean, it’s exactly that, but and especially for a girl like Emma, you don’t have to just realize it, you almost have to take it away in order for her to be like, “Wait a minute!” and then realize this entire time that it’s something she not only loves but desperately needs in her life. “It” being Knightley. So I think she just never considered the possibility of not having him there.

Bailey: I think that’s why Emma’s so good at being alone. It’s because she’s never actually alone. She’s always got those qualities you want in a relationship within Knightley. Which I think helps with her confidence, because then, she’s not even technically single. She has a business partner and such a strong relationship with Alex that it fills a lot of things that everybody wants to feel, having that closeness.

Do you think Alex has ever thought of that in that specific way? Why would I need to get married?

Bailey: He’s got kind of a great setup, but he’s got this perfect best friend there, and they have their own drama for their own reasons, but they don’t have relationship problems. They just have the really great parts of the friendship. So he’s like, “Why would we mess this up? If we’ve got something really great going, why would we complicate it?”

Sotomura: But after awhile you realize you need love in your life. I think they both kind of break eventually and realize that friendship can only go so far.

Bailey: I think you can only get so much fulfillment from a friendship and from a relationship you can get so much more. And I don’t think at the time Knightley or Emma really feels like they need that, and then when they lose each other, they realize they do.

Emma Approved updates twice a week on YouTube. Start watching here.

Screengrabs by Aja Romano