Two different corners of geekdom are getting a major face lift this week, thanks to the members of fandom who are fed up with the ongoing sexism and lack of representation in their fandom communities.

Comics writer and editor Rachel Edidin began the Tumblr We Are Comics as a way of combating the ongoing marginalization of women, people of color, and other marginalized groups of geeks who often get erased, ignored, or even actively ostracized in comics culture. As the Tumblr states:

We are comics: creators, publishers, retailers, readers; professionals and fans. And we are a lot more diverse than you might think.

We Are Comics is a campaign to show—and celebrate—the faces of our community, our industry, and our culture;  to promote the visibility of marginalized members of our population; and to stand in solidarity against harassment and abuse.

Though it's not explicitly stated as a reason for the Tumblr's timing, We Are Comics was made shortly after the harassment of comics writer Janelle Asselin. Asselin received rape threats and had her personal information revealed on the Internet after she criticized a sexist comic book cover.

Similarly, #WeNeedDiverseBooks, created by writer Ellen Oh, has gained traction on Twitter and Tumblr in response to controversy within the book blogosphere, after the publishing industry's largest annual conference announced an all white-male Young Adult panel followed by an all-white guest list. Although it didn't officially start until May 1, the hashtag spent the last few weeks of April gaining steam as angry book bloggers took to Twitter to voice their frustrations with what they saw as the industry's complaisance towards vital issues of representation and equal treatment.

The idea of both social media projects is the same: members of the communities take pictures of themselves, putting a face to the vastly diverse community that exists for the fandoms that seemingly exclude everyone who isn't a prized white male geek or reader. It's a tactic that's proven effective in similar campaigns in the past, like the Cosplay /= Consent campaign, which drastically simplified the debate over harassment of cosplayers at conventions.

Instead of paraphrasing the reasons that comics fans and readers are giving for their desire for more representation, we'll let them speak for themselves:

Photo via weneeddiversebooks 

Photo via wearecomics/Tumblr

Photo via weneeddiversebooks

Photo via wearecomics

My name is Jennifer de Guzman, and I am comics.

In my thirteen years in the comic book industry, I have worked in production, editorial, marketing, and comics journalism. (For much of the time, all three at once!)  I am the Director of Trade Book Sales at Image Comics.

I started reading comics in high school. Battle Angel Alita and Sandman were my first comics. When I saw that women worked as artists and editors on Sandman, I realized there was a place for me in the industry. I went to the San Diego Comic-Con (every year until last year since 1999!) and found Kabuki by David Mack and Channel Zero by Brian Wood. Comics like GloomCookie by Serena Valentino and I Feel Sick by Jhonen Vasquez followed soon after. I worked at the publisher of those two titles, SLG Publishing, for ten years, most of them as editor-in-chief. There, I worked with phenomenal creators who have gone on to be leading figures in bringing comics to wider readers, like Faith Erin Hicks and Gene Luen Yang.

I have also written comics short stories published in Image’s Put the Book Back on the Shelf and This Is a Souvenir and IDW’s Womanthology: Space. For several years I had a column at Publishers Weekly about comics and also have reviewed graphic novels for PW.

Despite this extensive experience, I still often feel like an imposter of sorts. As a very young woman, I was gawked at in comic book stores. Every time I’ve worked in a booth at a convention, someone has asked a question of a male volunteer standing next to me instead of me. I feel insecure offering my thoughts as expertise.

But I know I have to get over that. And here’s why: the industry needs to hear our voices. It needs to learn to listen to our voices. If I can change perceptions and encourage other women in comics by saying “I know what I’m doing and I know what I’m talking about,” I will do it. Because I am inspired by women who stand up for themselves every day.

So here goes:

I know what I’m doing.

I know what I’m talking about.

I am comics.

Photo via weneeddiversebooks

Photo via weneeddiversebooks

Photo via weneedcomics

She is comics. She is nine years old, and her best imaginable day included swimming, roller skating, and brunch after the comic store. She has 5 or so titles on her pull list, and opinions on all of them. She’ll read some of her parents’ titles sometimes.

Her favorite, most beat-to-death books are Dragonbreath, Liberty Meadows, and Calvin and Hobbes.

She was disappointed to learn that while sometimes we can read books in the bath, we can never read comics in the shower.

She is comics. She is nine.

'

Photo via weneeddiversebooks

Photo via wearecomics

Since the campaigns began, both have been flooded with submissions. You can follow #WeNeedDiverseBooks on Twitter and Tumblr, and follow We Are Comics on Tumblr.

Photo via wearecomics/Tumblr

Brace yourselves—it looks like URL has to die.

A recent version of Google Chrome, Google's popular web browser, has relegated the hypertext transfer protocol, better known as "http://" to a permanent redundancy in your internet experience, replacing it with that thing you always type anyway—a simple domain address.

If you can handle the change, the new feature can help you forget http:// ever existed.

The update first appeared as part of a special experimental version of the browser called Chrome Canary, a browser we presume is so dangerous you should operate it only when wearing an oxygen mask. Canary's purpose is to test and preview experimental features before implementing them into wider Chrome development. Here's what the new Chrome feature looks like for us in Canary:

As you can see, the url is now its own tab, which Google calls "the Origin Chip," while the url bar that formerly doubled as a search toolbar is now just "the Omnibar." 

To get back to the http:// view of your domain name, all you need to do is click on the domain tab. The domain will revert to the url, like so:

From there you can copy it or enter a new url, whatever you like.

While the change is simple enough, it caused such heated debate within developer communities after Canary revealed the change that Google quickly reverted away from using it as the default behavior for website domains. If you like the change, however—and we do—then tech blogger Gary Bacon has pointed out that you can still get it. And it even works on the latest version of regular Chrome.

Here's how to get the domain bar and make those pesky urls a litle less complicated.

Type chrome://flags/#origin-chip-in-omnibox into your address bar.

You'll be taken to Chrome's developer settings, where the option to turn on the Origin Chip is highlighted. It looks like this:

You'll have multiple options, from totally disabling it to enabling the ability to make it disappear when you click it.

These options will take effect once you have relaunched the browser. They can be disabled at any time by going to chrome://flags and searching for "origin chip" or following the url above.

The backlash to the change may seem surprising, especially considering how common it already is in many browsers to hide the domain url. Microsoft did something similar years ago with Internet Explorer, as did Safari. But developers clung to their love of the url and the ease of checking your location on the Internet. In a blog post that acknowledges the usability and security benefits of hiding the http://, tech blogger Alan Pike finally confesses that he'll just "miss the damn things."

So we'll we. But it won't stop us from welcoming our new Origin Chip overlord.

Illustration by josh101fm/deviantART

At first it seems like your average passive beauty shot: The woman, dressed in a Wonder Woman costume, lies prostrate on a bed, posed as if she is sleeping.

The photo's title, however, reveals the chilling context: "sexy Amazon chloroformed."

The photo gallery is one of many hidden away at deviantART which reveal disturbing fantasies that playout in photoshoots and fanart: women being attacked and chloroformed, usually by unknown male assailants.

A search for the word "chloroformed" on deviantART reveals hundreds of images of women, particularly superheroes, being chloroformed or passed out after presumably having been chloroformed.

It's a disturbing undercurrent. Sexual kinks, while forbidden, have always been readily available at deviantART. Remember the fetish around photoshopping the heads off women? But these images seem to go beyond the typical bondage kink and become out-and-out rape fantasy—particularly because of the way that the fantasy images place the viewer in the position of the assailant and would-be rapist, not the unconscious victim.

One artist, LordoftheCarry, posted a typical example of a woman in the act of getting assualted by an unknown man. When he shared the art with deviantART, one of the comments in response was deeply disturbing:

nice

plz make some blows on the heads too

LordoftheCarry's deviantART gallery is full of images of unconscious women, some of whom appear to be in the process of getting raped. Though it would hardly be surprising to find such content on a porn site, it's alarming to run across the images on deviantART, where the minumum age to join is 13. Even more disturbing is the realization that "chloroforming" is apparently a whole art trend glorifying sexual assault.

It's also interesting that so much of the "chloroforming" trend done by male deviantART members is targeted towards female superheroes, as if the stronger women, the stronger the rapist fantasy of dominating and overpowering them physically.

When contacted, a representative for deviantART pointed me towards dA's Etiquette policy, which forbids any "sexually driven" material or "obscene" postings, though it doesn't exactly give guidelines as to what constitutes obscenity. Most of the images aren't pornographic, in that they don't feature women in the nude, or women engaged in sexual activity; and taken individually, many of the images wouldn't even register alarm until you read the descriptions: After all, they only show women sleeping.

But grouped together as a whole, "chloroforming" seems like a disturbing, dangerous trend—especially for women who go to fandom spaces like deviantART to feel accepted and safe.

Illustration via deviantART

The white-male dominated world of science fiction writing often tends to ignore the fact that science fiction was invented by a woman, Mary Shelley, whose Frankenstein first gave the world a taste of the thrilling and terrifying possibilities of modern science and technology. 

But the creators of the Emmy-winning Pride and Prejudice update Lizzie Bennet Diaries haven't forgotten. They've joined forces with PBS Digital Studios to bring you an updated, modernized version of Frankenstein with a twist: Frankenstein MD is the story of a modern woman struggling to deal with sexism as she pursues her career in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math)-related field.

Production studio Pemberley Digital, which also doubles as the fictional production studio connecting all of the series in its fictional universes together, announced the news Monday. They also dropped intriguing details about what viewers can expect from the transmedia series: 

[T]he series reimagines the title character as Victoria Frankenstein, an obsessive, eccentric prodigy determined to prove herself in the male-dominated fields of science and medicine.

Later this year, eight episodes will roll out each month following Victoria through her medical experiments. Viewers will follow the action on her YouTube channel and various social media platforms.

PBS Digital Studios has been reaching out increasingly to the world of  YouTube, recently tapping Sarah and John Green for their project The Art Assignment. Green's brother, Hank Green, is not only his fellow VlogBrother, but the co-executive producer and creator of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the show that started it all.

As for Pemberley Digital, the move is a surprising on a number of fronts. While Lizzie and her friends inspired similar webseries spinoffs like The Autobiography of Jane Eyre, the group has so far stuck to its ever-popular modernizations of Jane Austen for its first three outings—the Diaries, Welcome to Sanditon, and Emma Approved.

Co-producer and director Bernie Su explained in the announcement that Frankenstein MD features a whole new team of writers who developed and pitched the project to him before the Pemberley Digital project signed on. For fans who've had trouble with the awkward-at-times transition from book to YouTube that the previous series have undergone, this could be a blessing. A recurring complaint from fans has been that the conceits used to turn Austen's books into stationary-camera web series aren't believable enough. With an outside team of writers, we'll get a fresh take on how to modernize 19th-century British characters for modern-day international audiences.

But with a new team of writers comes new risks—and already, Frankenstein MD is taking a huge one by making its narrative explicitly political from the outset. Pemberley Digital has always had strong female-based casts full of women who have complicated relationships with one another. A few social issues have appeared on its radar—most notably issues of class central to Austen's novels, and a highly controversial plot arc that angered many fans because they felt it was implicitly slut-shaming and engaging in "gross" sexual politics.

Frankenstein, MD, however, is using sexism as its starting point, and a facet of sexism that hits close to home for fans and geeks: the oppression women face as they pursue geeky, male-dominated careers. If Lizzie Bennet faced these kinds of challenges as she started her career in media production and vlogging, we might have had a very different story on our hands; but even then, it would have been minor compared to the extremely well-documented sexism that women in scientific careers face. Updating Victor to Victoria Frankenstein isn't just a clever bit of genderbending. It predicates the narrative, like all the best sci-fi and horror, upon modern-day horrors that already exist.

And that's the other surprising thing about this choice for the show: For the first time, it's not a romance.

In some ways, that's the biggest gamble of all. Will Pemberley Digital be able to sustain its audience when they aren't being treated to a cadre of hunky Austenian heroes? Will fans tune in for Victoria Frankenstein's videotaped lab reports?

Already one confused commenter wants to know, "Why don't they ever do any guy leading characters?"  With any luck, Frankenstein's monster will also be a woman. Perhaps Victoria can resurrect a radical feminist protester from the '70s who burns the bras of her victims right before tearing their heads off.

It'll be the love story of our dreams.

Photo via Pemberley Digital

If Disney's new posters for Maleficent are any indication, the studio has caught the Marvel bug and it's not going to the doctor any time soon.

Disney's new favorite son Marvel has won praise from all corners for its eager embrace of geek culture, fandom, and the sci-fi and fantasy tropes that have made Marvel comics a long-lasting legend.  What does that mode of enthusiasm look like for Disney? 

These posters, for starters:

In the golden age of Disney, the thing that set its live-action films apart from its animated classics was clear and unchanging: its live-action films were squarely grounded in the real world. which made it all the more magical when Julie Andrews stepped into a pavement chalk drawing. High fantasy was something that typically only happened in Disney's animation studios, while magic was something that happened in the reality-based world in front of its cameras. 

This was a rule that largely remained unbroken until 2007, when Enchanted saw an animated princess crossover into the real world. Ever since, Disney has experimented more and more with live-action fantasy. Its new film Maleficent, which promises to do for Sleeping Beauty's evil dragon queen what Wicked did for Dorothy's evil witch, is a major step in that direction: It's unapologetic, even exuberant, high fantasy.

It's as if Disney has been paying close attention to its recent acquisitions of Marvel and the Star Wars franchise and tentatively decided that live-action fantasy is something it can do, too. In this case it helps that rooting for the villain is de rigueur, and that the villain is box-office delight Angelina Jolie. 

The change is striking. Just compare these posters to the lackluster marketing efforts for the 2012 flop John Carter. Not only did Disney change the source title from The Princess of Mars because they feared it would scare away dudes, but the posters made the film seem like a cross between Mad Max and The Last Samurai instead of an epic space fantasy from the author who brought us Tarzan:

Photo via randomthoughts/Blogspot

But oh, how times have changed in a post-Avengers world. Now, not only does Maleficent get to wear horns...

Photo via maleficent/Twitter

...have wings...

Photo via maleficent/Twitter

...and be the title of her own story, but Disney is eagerly saying, "Hey, guys. Guys. You want pixies? We got pixies!"

No, really, they do.

And they look adorable. Not only that but the new concept art and promo photos the studio just released keep getting more and more magical.

We can't wait to see how this all plays out on screen. We have high hopes that with Disney fully embracing live action fantasy, the results will be epic. 

After all, no one does magic better than Disney.

Photos via Disney, Stitch Kingdom

Monday night's annual Met Gala was the toast of the Internet, but it also demonstrated how the Web makes red carpet events into increasingly public affairs. Every step celebrities take seems to be photographed and instantly uploaded to the web for the consumption of all.

But not all of that consumption breeds negative or hyper-critical attention. When Tumblr fans got their hands on the glamorous looks their favorite celebs were sporting, many of them did more than just sing praises or criticize what they were wearing. Some of them, particularly a number of Tumblr's fashion designers and artists, responded with gorgeous fanart.

Here are a few of our favorites.

Fashion designer and illustrater Yigit Ozcakmak shared several sketches inspired by the much-photographed looks several women were wearing at the event:

Blake Lively at the Met Gala; Illustration by yigitozcakmak

Beyoncé at the Met Gala; Illustration by yigitozcakmak

Charlize Theron at the Met Gala; Illustration by yigitozcakmak

Karolina Kurkova in Marchesa at the Met Gala; Illustration by yigitozcakmak

British illustrator and designer Hayden Williams also chronicled the evening, sharing his art with Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram: 

Rihanna; Illustration by haydenwilliams/Instagram

Sarah Jessica Parker; Illustration by haydenwilliams/Instagram

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian; Illustration by haydenwilliams/Instagram

Another artist who doubled up onTumblr and Instagram was fashion and children's book illustrator Jeanette Getrost, who captured Liu Wen's luxurious Zac Posen and Karolina Kurkova's gorgeous Marchesa in watercolor:

Illustration by jeanettegetrost/Tumblr

Illustration by jeanettegetrost/Instagram

And of course, because this was Tumblr, no one got more attention than fandom idol Benedict Cumberbatch. There were no other men at this ball. There was only Cumberbatch. Trust Tumblr on this.

Illustration by lejung054

We assume this art is because Benedict brought his foxiest looks with him to the red carpet.

Illustration by sherlawkspants/Tumblr

Illustration by amiepsychique

Illustration by amiepsychique

GIF by enerjax via enerjax/Tumblr

Clearly no one had as much fun as Benedict Cumberbatch did at the Met on Monday night—or at least, the Benedict Cumberbatch that existed in the minds of Tumblr fanartists.

Illustration by haydenwilliamsillustrations

It's no secret that lately PBS Digital has had its eye on fandom and its many possibilities. Earlier this week, the YouTube arm of the beloved public television network announced a webseries collaboration with Vlogbrother-offshoot Pemberley Digital that catered directly to Nerdfighters and fans of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

As part of a cross-network challenge to discuss the future, PBS's The Idea Channel did a special segment on what it sees as the three main possibilities for fandom. What's really interesting, though, is not the groundbreaking ideas that the show suggests, but rather their lack of novelty. All of the things that the Idea Channel posits as future possibilities are already well underway in the present.

According to host Mike Rugnetta, there are three significant possibilities for the future of fandom:

1) Fandoms could control the media they celebrate. The potential examples Rugnetta uses are fans influencing the direction of shows and creative properties. As the segment points out, we're already seeing this, from Bioware issuing a new ending for Mass Effect 3 because fans hated the initial one so much, to #sixseasonsandamovie and the Community fandom agitating for Dan Harmon to be re-hired as showrunner for his own beloved fandom property. 

But there's another more practical aspect of fans controlling properties that Rugnetta leaves out. Many fans directly gain creative control over the properties they love. Longtime fandom creator Doris Egan became an executive producer for House, Smallville, and other notable works with huge fandom followings of their own. Steven Moffat graduated from eager Doctor Who fanboy to Doctor Who showrunner. And look who just stepped into the shoes of the Doctor: Peter Capaldi, a brilliant Emmy-award-winning writer and comedian in his own right who happens to be a die-hard, obsessive fan of the franchise himself.

Creative properties are also increasingly seeing a sort of cross-pollination from fans becoming creators. John Green, Hank Green, Lev Grossman, Rainbow Rowell, and Cassandra Clare are just a few of the many Harry Potter fans who went on to have professional careers that were directly influenced by their time and their connection to the Harry Potter fandom itself, and who continue to be close to the fandom. Meanwhile, Twilight hatched an entire cottage publishing industry so Twilight fans could publish their Twilight fanfiction as original romance, inadvertently giving rise to the Fifty Shades phenomenon and an entire new genre in the process—the New Adult romances that currently line the shelves of your nearest bookstore. 

More and more, the line between fans and creators is growing thinner. In many cases, it's hard to say where influence leaves off and creation begins.

2) Fans could help challenge and even contribute to copyright law. 

Again, as Rugnetta points out, this is already happening—most notably through the legal advocacy of the Organization for Transformative Works. A non-profit fandom organization started in 2008, the goal of the OTW is to preserve and protect fanwork, which also means defending it from restrictive copyright. The OTW's legal advocacy team frequently advises the Library of Congress on copyright law, and also works to defend and give advice to fans who are facing copyright issues.

Additionally, visible fan campaigns against unfair takedown requests help raise corporate awareness and understanding of Fair Use law. One notable example is the successful campaign waged by creator Jonathan McIntosh and fans on behalf of the famous mashup 'Buffy vs Edward' after Twilight rights-holder Lionsgate repeatedly tried to have it removed from YouTube.

3) The future of fandoms could become tied to the future of politics. 

Idea Channel thinks that this could hapen one of two ways: 

a) by politics becoming more about building "fandoms," like what has essentially become the Ron Paul fandom, or

b) by fandom itself becoming more invested in politics and social movements.

Again, a) and b) are already well underway—and in fact this is a "future" explicitly predicted by noted academic Henry Jenkins in his 2006 work Convergence Culture. Jenkins noted then that fandom was steadily turning grassroots political and social efforts into cornerstones of fandom activity.  In the mid-2000s, the LiveJournal fanfic community had a long-running annual Valentine's Day fan drive for RAINN. After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Harry Potter fandom raised $115,000 for relief efforts. Supernatural star Misha Collins's massive fanbase has similarly raised thousands for his Random Acts charity campaigns,while the Vlogbrothers' Nerdfighters movement raises thousands every year for the annual YouTube charity fundraiser Project For Awesome. Then there's the explicitly political Harry Potter Alliance, which frequently joins forces with the Nerdfighters movement, most notably to get out the vote in the last presidential election.

Meanwhile, the real future of fandom and politics might be an expansion of what political activism means. On Tumblr, rather than "slacktivism," the term "social justice warrior" has become a buzzword to describe the defiantly progressive attitudes of Tumblr's largely fandom-based communities. These include members of fandom who are explicitly bringing their politics into the entertainment industry and combining their desire for more representation, social progress, and diversity with the creative properties they love.

Perhaps the best example of this is the Racebending movement, which started as a massive protest within the fanbase for Avatar: the Last Airbender against M. Night Shyamalan's inexplicably whitewashed casting calls for the film adaptation of the popular Nickelodeon animated series. While the movie flopped and received horrible reviews from critics, Racebending went on to become a noted media watchdog group that urges progressive depictions of characters and groups within media. Another example is the ongoing, pro-active war being waged over the issue of women participating in geek culture. As women, fans of color, and other minorities fight for equal treatment in the pages of their favorite comics and the graphics of their favorite gaming franchise, it's harder to see fandom itself as extricable from the political movements happening in Washington.

"Am I saying that Nerdfighteria is the future of politics?" Rugnetta asks. "I might be!" 

We think what he's really saying is that the future of politics—and the future of fandom—is already here.

Watch the whole thing below and let us know what you think.

Disclosure: The writer of this article has served on the Development and Membership Committee of the Organization for Transformative Works since 2012. The committee is responsible for outreach, promotion, and fundraising for the OTW both within fandom and outside of it.

Screengrab via YouTube

When researchers at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin discovered a new species of cockroach wasp, it reminded them of something.

The digger wasp is part of the genius Ampulex, and it has a unique way of capturing the cockroaches upon which it preys:

[The cockroach wasp makes] her prey will-less by stinging it right into one of its neural nodes. This allows the wasp to drag her pray in running mode into its nest, just like a zombie.

Yikes. What fictional character do we know that leaves its victims an empty, mindless husk?

Photo via saeru/Flickr

You guessed it—the Dementor, the creepy, ghoul-like monster from Harry Potter that will steal your soul unless you happen to have a strong Patronus handy, and a piece of chocolate to ward off the depressive after-effects of the encounter.

Meet your new real-live Harry Potter villain—the insect newly named the Ampulex Dementor.

“The Dementor’s fictional behavior and effects reminded us of the effect of the stinging behavior of Ampulex on the behavior of its cockroach prey," the researchers wrote in their article on how they crowdsourced the name from 300 of the Museum's attending visitors.

The researchers named the wasp as part of a taxonomy experiment, in which they picked an "attractive" wasp—no, really— from the hundreds of "undescribed" insect species that entomologists apparently just have lying around their natural history museum collections:

"Out of the enormous number of undescribed (but already recognized) species in natural history museum collections, we selected an attractive example of a wasp, which was presented to museum visitors at a special museum event." 

While the wasp comes from Thailand, not Harry's native Britain, the other proposed suggestions for the wasp's name  were all pretty boring compared to the clear winning choice of a demonic supernatural soul-draining hooded figure. After all, no matter how attractive the wasp might be, no one's really going to pay attention to Ambulex Plagiator, suggested because of the wasp's ability to mimic, or plagiarize ants.

Apart from children's literature, and a wasp that finally knows what its name is after thousands of millennia of doubt and confusion, the other clear winner in the experiment is the science-interested public:

"In this example, public voting on a scientific name has been shown to be an appropriate way to link museum visitors emotionally to biodiversity and its discovery."

It's totally true. Now every time we see a wasp we'll be wondering: Is it a regular wasp or a Harry Potter wasp? 

There's only one way to find out. BRB, getting my wand.

Photo via plosone.org

"What superhero or villain do you identify with?"

"Flash because I love to flash people hahahaha"

Just when we thought we'd seen everything in terms of geek and tech culture alternately sexualizing women, ostracizing them, or harassing them, a new magazine has come along to put the entire concept of the "fake geek girl" to the test... by dressing up lad magazine models and handing them game controllers.

Gamer Girls is a new offshoot from Cred Magazine, a small online magazine run by a one-man show, photographer and editor Ray 360. Ray's other claim to fame is the creation of a D.C.-based modeling network, which he draws on to fill Cred's many sexy pages. 

Each of the five models featured in Gamer Girls' first issue are supposed to represent one of "five gaming essentials," namely technique, coordination, control, styling (?), and playtime.

We have no idea what these random adjectives have to do with gaming, and we're not sure Ray 360 knows either, especially because he spends most of his interviews with the models asking them about their careers as models. At the end, he tosses in a few questions about their favorite games and what their favorite superhero is.

One model tells the interviewer that given the choice between handheld and console games (PCs aren't an option), she prefers an iPhone.

One model using the name Chyna Doll is hailed as "exotic." The woman's "stats" are all included—but instead of player stats, they're the women's body measurements.

Copies of the magazine have already found their way to Imgur and Reddit, where the reaction has mostly been eye-rolling. But it's hard to eyeroll at a trend that's gotten so much traction lately, from the presence of "booth babes" hired by corporations to entice gamers to sample their wares at cons to the blatant lad-mag exploits of the app-based magazine Hot Tech Today.  

Sure, this magazine and Rod 360 seem to exist separately from the embattled sexism of geek culture that they're commenting on; but that almost makes it worse, because as a representation of how those outside the culture see women who game, it's a pretty telling, if appalling, picture.

But what's really saddening is that by the magazine's choice to pose and style these women so ostentatiously as nerd fantasies, we miss the opportunity to see them as people, and as real geek girls. So one girl doesn't know an iPhone from a Gameboy. But maybe she really likes to read. Maybe the girl in the Star Wars t-shirt has strong opinions on who shot first.

We don't get to know these kinds of things. Instead, all we learn from them are things like how long they've been modeling and what they look for in a guy—questions related to the only two things that really matter: their looks and their roles as sex objects.

Meanwhile, in an ironic twist, Gamer Girl's parent magazine Cred put out another issue of another magazine today, devoted to profiling members of the indie hip-hop music scene.

This one is called Respect.

Photo via Cred

It looks as if the Star Trek franchise has a new commander, and it's not the one fans were hoping for.

Instead, if Star Trek reboot screenwriter Roberto Orci is indeed the rumored choice to take over the Paramount holodeck from J.J. Abrams, then fans seem to think the franchise will be boldly going off the rails as no franchise has gone before.

If you don't see me that much this weekend it's because I read the news on Deadline and killed myself.

— Devin Faraci (@devincf) May 9, 2014

NNNNNOOOOOOOooooooOOooOooooOOOOOooooooooooO RT @TrekMovie: NEW ARTICLE: Roberto Orci in talks to direct “Star Trek 3″ http://t.co/3TvBvOg6Tk

— wook (@wook77) May 10, 2014

@devincf I don't hate STID as much as most but this is back breaking for that franchise. It's a shame, I really love that cast.

— Dan D'Amico (@dannomico) May 9, 2014

Bob Orci is like the annoying kid who showed up at the pool party uninvited. No one wants him there, but all the parents tell their kids to play nice and be friendly because his Mom is friends with other kids' Moms. Then Bob Orci takes a piss and shit in the pool and all the kids jump out screaming in disgust. Then Bob Orci starts crying like a baby and all the parents scold their kids to again play nice. But its hard for any kid to play at all when there's Bob Orci's piss and shit floating in the pool. Go home Bob Orci!!!

— Captain Panaka, commenter, Ain't It Cool News

The sharply negative fan reaction isn't really about the fact that Orci, who co-wrote the screenplay for the first two films in the series' revival, has never directed before—though after Abrams graduated from helming Star Trek to leading its rival sci-fi behemoth Star Wars, it would have been nice to see a director with equal cache take over the reins.

It's also not about the fact that Orci recently split from his long-time writing partner Alex Kurtzman. With Kurtzman, Orci has co-written some of the biggest-budget bouts of incoherent gibberish ever to rake in millions at the box office: Transformers, current critical washout The Amazing Spider-Man 2, incomprehensible heist thriller Now You See Me, and Star Trek Into Darkness. Now that both partners are leaving to pursue directorial debuts, we might actually get a chance to dodge some of the bad writing decisions that led to offenses like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a movie where significant attention is given to two dogs humping.

It's not even about Orci's known status as a 9/11 Truther, a stance he cemented during his short-lived time on Twitter by frequently sharing conspiracy theories about the U.S. government's "real" role in the attack. Badass Digest's Devin Faraci has tried to make sense of the incoherent mess of a plot that was Star Trek Into Darkness by pointing out its similarities to Orci's Truther take on what happened to the World Trade Center. But even those theories, wacky as they are, might have made for a convincing plot, if other aspects of Star Trek Into Darkness had managed to meander their way into a cohesive whole.

No, fans' displeasure at Orci stems from something much more basic: His unwillingness to acknowledge the reason Star Trek fans love classic Trek to begin with.

Orci himself comes from a storied tradition of television fantasy and sci-fi with cult followings: He got his start writing for Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess, and co-wrote the pilot for the hit show Sleepy Hollow as well as the acclaimed sci-fi thriller Fringe. But when he writes for the big screen, he seems to leave the core principles that every good fantasy needs—worldbuilding and character development—on the doorstep of Michael Bay's house of explosions. Faraci has argued that Orci's problem is a willingness to cram in everything studio executives want at the expense of plot and, well, sense. But in the case of STID, Orci's problem wasn't one of too many cooks in the kitchen, but rather the wrong recipe altogether.   

As Joseph Dickerson pointed out in his post-STID editorial for TrekMovie.com last year, the new Star Trek film series has had very little to do with classic Trek's mission statement—to explore "the final frontier"—and more to do with finding creative ways to blow things up in space. Even more than J.J. Abrams, who readily admitted that he didn't even like the original series, Orci has shown a willingness to pursue his own agenda through Star Trek. If Faraci's right, and the only way to derive any coherence from the plot of Star Trek Into Darkness is to view it through Orci's 9/11 conspiracy lens, then it suggests that Orci's own cynicism has trumped the very defined politics of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's original vision.

The intergalactic future in Roddenberry's hands was an oft-cheesy but always optimistic one that showed humanity triumphing over its worst impulses time and again in order to spread enlightenment and peace throughout the universe. More specifically, progressive politics always won out against totalitarianism and isolationism. While numerous franchise iterations since have deconstructed this theme, it's also a core principle of the original series, and one to which fans hoped the reboot would remain true.

Instead, Orci seems to have missed the point. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last year, he said:

'Star Trek' has always been great because it mirrored what was happening. The original 'Star Trek' mirrored the Civil Rights movement. It mirrored some progressive ideas that were not exactly popular at the time, like relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War as represented by having a Russian officer. We felt that 'Star Trek' was always embedded in its best forms in the world that we live in. The world that we happen to currently live in involves issues of terrorism and of war and of sovereignty. So surely recent events and the things happening in the century were part of our calculus. 

But what Orci misses is that Roddenberry's Star Trek always mirrored progressive politics by portraying them as antiquated concerns that appear outdated and quaint to Kirk and his more evolved crew. Now, in the reboot, Orci suggests instead that humanity is spreading its own poisonous corruption, not peace, throughout the galaxy.

In the original series, the worst punishment the crew of the Enterprise could devise for their enemies, the Klingons, was inflicting them with a ship full of tribbles. In the new franchise, the Federation government is so corrupt and evil that it's willing to sabotage its own ships in order to fabricate a reason for war against the Klingons. This is not your father's Star Trek.

Nor is it your mother's, which is another part of the problem. In STID the few women who appeared in the film, even Uhura, were all overtly sexualized tokens who appeared at various points in their underwear. Despite the rage of many fans, Orci completely sidestepped any responsibility for the gratuitous shots of nearly naked women, instead pointing out in one interview that it was okay because "you can see Kirk half-naked as well."

That's not the point, and despite Orci's gratuitous potests that he is "confused about the state of feminism" in modern society, he should know it. Combined with the backlash over the decision to erase Khan's ethnic and cultural history by having him played by a white man in the last movie, fans have made it clear that they don't want another Enterprise outing dominated by a white male crew with little to no equitable treatment for women and cast members of color. STID's whitewashed Cumber-Khan seemed to forsake everything the franchise had done with his character up to that point, both culturally and individually. Few fans want this trend to continue, but it seems unlikely to change if the guy who wrote it gets promoted to director.

In his editorial, Dickerson suggested that the franchise could easily fix itself by a return to what classic Trek was best at: developing onscreen friendships and exploring cool, often profound, new worlds. But Orci's response to Dickerson's editorial revealed how far removed he is from the fandom that has given Star Trek such a legion of followers over time. Calling Dickerson the equivalent of "a child acting out against his parents," he went on to imply superior knowledge of how to craft the film ("there's a reason I write the films and you don't") and got into heated arguments with other Star Trek fans and commenters, calling them rude, challenging their tones, and swearing at them.

Engaging with fans this way is never a good idea, but Star Trek fans in particular have been their franchise's lifeline at numerous points over the years. Comparing a man who's written two scripts to a die-hard fan of a 50-year-old show doesn't exactly yield a parent-child relationship—or if it does, it's not structured the way Orci seems to think it is.

And that's the core problem of Orci as the potential director of the new film. Fans, perhaps, might question whether a man who engages with Trekkies as if they're unevolved life forms is the best person to direct a movie that needs to appeal to Trekkies.

They might also question whether a man dedicated to promoting unfounded imperialist conspiracies is the best person to update a series in which a more highly evolved life form steps in at one point and stops Kirk and his Klingon rival from going to war.

Fans might also question whether a man who's writing for one of the most temporally progressive science-fiction franchises in this or any galaxy is qualified to do so when he purports not to understand feminism, one of humanity's most progressive political philosophies and one that affects over half the planet. After all, if Orci can demand that audiences swallow two hours of character assassination upon Khan Noonien Singh, the least he can do in return is a cursory Google search for "third-wave feminism."

Faraci argues that Orci has gotten where he is by making Hollywood studio executives feel listened to. But as successful reboots of cult favorites like Marvel have taught us, no one responds better to being listened to than the fans of those series. Star Trek fandom seems to have abandoned hope that Orci is listening to them.

 If Orci is indeed tapped for the third Star Trek reboot, it might be the fandom's turn to tune him out.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-S.A. 3.0)

Today, Cory Monteith would have been 32 years old. The Glee actor's tragic death last July left the fandom in mourning, but since then, a busy fifth season for the show has been hard at work injecting love wherever it can—first with the storybook wedding of Blaine and Kurt last fall, and most recently with Rachel's poignant Broadway debut, which saw her struggling to cope with Finn's death.

But one development in Glee fandom is as unexpected as it is happy-making—the revival of the interracial relationship between Sam and Mercedes. 

Now, as fans gear up for this week's season finale, all eyes are on Samcedes, and—wait, Sam, is that a box in your hand?

Photo via lovesamcedes/Tumblr

Since Glee dropped this tantalizing still from next week's season 6 finale, the fandom has been driving themselves crazy trying to figure out if that's a box—possibly a ring box—in Sam's hand.

I can’t with this box vs. no box thing y’all have officially lost your minds. 

— mottsapplesauce

The Mercedes/Sam shippers have been analyzing the photo above from every possible angle and photo edit to see whether Sam is actually getting ready to pop the question to Mercede. "I want this to lead to so much more than a kiss," wrote sweet1986 on Tumblr as she posted one of hundreds of attempts to edit the photo on behalf of what's rapidly become known as "Team Box."

Photo via sweet1986

Despite Mercedes' actor Amber Riley being an intermittent appearances on the show this year thanks to her contest-winning turn on Dancing With the Stars, her character managed to rekindle her old romance with Sam, played by actor Chord Overstreet. As for Sam, this would basically be the third time he's proposed to a girl on the show—but the first two times were mostly practice runs, and we all know the third time's the charm.

Tthe normally tempestuous Glee fandom has had a relatively quiet season, perhaps settled a bit by the mutual experience of the low of Monteith's death and the high of the Klaine wedding. Still, there's plenty of excitement for Glee fans. As teamsamcedes put it yesterday:

I still can’t believe it! After two years of having nothing we are here again, and they are loving each other. 

And while it's undoubtedly been a rough year for anyone who ships Sam/Kurt, a pairing the show briefly teased early on, it's nice to see a pairing that is both racially diverse and unconventional getting so much love from fans.

Gif via klainemakesmefeelyoung

Meanwhile, it seems fitting that the week of the Glee season finale is also the week of Monteith's birthday, as Season 5 will forever be overshadowed and inextricably tied to the actor's death. At press time, #HappyBirthdayCoryMonteith has been a steady worldwide Twitter trend for most of the morning. 

We miss you so much Cory. You'll live on through our hearts forever. #HappyBirthdayCoryMonteith pic.twitter.com/mVpWosZh9n

— Nicole (@ibeIieveinjdb) May 11, 2014

The Glee fandom has rallied hard behind its show this and its actors in the ten months since Monteith's death. And while there's no guarantee, especially given Riley's non-regular status on the show, that Sam and Mercedes will end up together after Tuesday's season finale, it's a sweet moment in a fandom that deserves all the happiness it can get.

Photo via roojieq/Tumblr

It's not often that the world is changed with a single phone call—and it's even rarer that we get to watch it happen.

But when Michael Sam was drafted into the NFL Saturday, the cameras were rolling—and the result is a moving reminder that the political is always personal.

Sam, who is arguably one of the toughest players leaving the Southeastern Conference, wept openly and then shared a kiss with his boyfriend upon being told he was being picked up by the St. Louis Rams in the final round of yesterday's NFL draft. With an All-American track record and the SEC award for defensive player of the year at the University of Missouri, many believe Sam should logically have gone much, much higher in the draft.

So why didn't he? After a Buzzfeed article in February that claimed that the NFL locker room closet wasn't "just closed; it's locked,"  Sam took the career gamble of officially outing himself to the New York Times and ESPN. Sam told the press that in anticipation of the media blitz he would receive given that he'd already unofficially come out to his team, he wanted to control how and when the news got out. He also risked not getting drafted at all in the notoriously homophobic sports league.  

Instead, on Saturday, the St. Louis Rams announced the historic pick, the second-to-last choice of the entire draft, to massive cheers from the local audience and tears from Sam and supporters in San Diego. St. Louis won one of the best defensive ends of the year, Sam made history as the first openly gay football player in the NFL, and we got to celebrate a huge step for American equality.

Screengrab via YouTube

Over the years, SNL has taken on politics and celebrities, skewering all in its wake. Fortunately for the rest of us today, it's turned its skewer on moms everywhere in honor of Mother's Day.

In this skit, Joanne Pendak's Everymom challenges her kids to prove how well they know her in a lovingly awkward parody game show.

As anyone who's ever been subjected to the Ways of the Mom can tell you, moms can attack at any time, be it through embarrassing Facebook updates, sudden onset white panic, or regular email forwards about how WD-40 can protect you from the zombie apocalypse. 

So of course, the kids know their mom all too well.

It's okay, mom, we laugh with you, not at you—at least until you share this on your Facebook. 

Screengrab via Hulu; HT Digg

James Franco's career has been steadily devolving into hipster meta-parody for a while now, but we've no one to blame but ourselves for letting him bottom out this way.

The 36 year old Franco has rapidly been augmenting his film career with what seems to be an ever-worsening career as a hipster: a pretentious, insufferable character constantly engaged in performance art. Now he's topped it all off by taking a selfie composed of himself wearing a shirt printed with hundreds of James Franco selfies.

We hate ourselves so much for showing you this.

Photo via Instagram

Over the last several years, Franco has cut back on his admittedly hugely prolific career in order to play... himself. He's played himself in movies, including This Is the End with Jonah Hill and a cameo as himself in Veronica Mars. His Instagram account is home to hundreds of selfies. When he's not taking selfies, he's writing poems to himself, and then writing letters to himself about the poems he's already written.

Then he uses his reported $20 million net worth to go on talk shows and complain about how people can't stop looking at him:

Ostensibly, Instagram is for my fans. But, you know, now all the bloggers are following me on there, so they’ll just take it and use my images for whatever they want. I didn’t ask you [Letterman] to look at it. It’s what the people want.

Is it, James Franco? Is it really?

As I gaze upon the abject misery in your expression, James Franco, I know you're wondering where you went wrong. Fortunately for you, it's not too late. We can fix this.

I know that with your PhD candidacy in English and your simultaneous post-grad studies in filmmaking, writing, poetry, and design, you might not have learned this, but your Instagram is still part of your public persona—and that has implications beyond your desire to have fun goofing around on the Internet.  Although you've studiously devoted your time to writing, directing, and starring in films about white men like yourself, if you turned the camera around and pointed it at other people, you might discover there is a diverse, vast, and interesting world outside of Franco.

But, I hear defenders saying, James Franco frequently does tireless charity work and shines a light on the queer community, especially through his portrayal of gay men like Hart Crane, Sal Mineo, and Allen Ginsberg!

Well, yes. But let's be real, here: Charity work is only one way to offset Hollywood's eagerness to hand him a microphone and boost his film career. Meanwhile, actual openly gay men have trouble achieving careers of his stature. And let's not talk about how his portrayal of Ginsberg conveniently left out the little-known but appallingly well-documented issue that Ginsberg was an aggressive pedophile.  

Increasingly, audiences want diversity. Theoretically, Franco is primed to give it to them. He's a hipster's hipster: liberal, progressive, a champion of indie art projects and a passionate supporter of gay rights. But on paper, Franco's efforts wind up looking like his Instagram: an endless array of vanity projects in which he surrounds himself with other white dudes filming narratives talking about white dudes. It's all done with a surprising lack of self-awareness for someone who once wrote, " I get paid to pretend to be a person like those people with no empathy for others." Ugh, see, this is why we didn't fund your Indiegogo campaign.

James Franco supporters, look at your life, look at your choices. Only you can prevent James Franco from thinking his playful ego indulgence isn't tied to his creative output, or that the two don't combine to drown out the voices of other people we want to hear more from. I'm looking at you, all 117,000 people who "liked" this ridiculous collective selfie-gasm. 

Someone actually sewed that shirt together, someone actually wove Franco's silk-screened faces into a coherent whole, then handed James Franco the shirt. Someone gave James Franco a camera. We all told him this was OK.

It's not okay, James Franco. Stop taking selfies. Stop soaking up liberal arts education and go write a starring role for Lucy Liu. Go adapt the works of Randall Kenan instead of William Faulkner. Be the change.

Point your camera in the opposite direction.

Photo via Instagram

Former NFL running back Derrick Ward wants gay men in loving relationships to know exactly what he thinks of them—or at least the one gay man now sharing a place in league history with him. Ward took to Twitter last night and today to blast newly inducted Michael Sam for kissing his boyfriend after the St. Louis Rams drafted him into their team, making Sam the first openly gay man in NFL history

I'm sorry but that Michael Sam is no bueno for doing that on national tv. I'm fine with it being a new day in age but for him to do that on

— Derrick Ward (@derrickward32) May 10, 2014

National tv is disgusting. Gay or not.

— Derrick Ward (@derrickward32) May 10, 2014

Wow, he's right, we've never seen anything as immoral on our computers before as this 27-second-long hug:

Ward, who was a last-round draft pick himself, immediately tried to say that he wasn't homophobic, just grossed out by Sam's use of tongue.

You know, he's right. There was so much tongue here, we needed medical assistance after watching this. In fact, if you look closely, you can see Michael Sam's tongue actually become sentient and roll over San Diego like The Blob:

Okay, Ward, sure. For some reason, on this particular day, this particular couple doing what every couple does when faced with a giant white cake on a momentous occasion just happened to rub you the wrong way. It's just about PDA. Fine.

Except Ward then went on to prove that, nope, he really was being homophobic, first by  telling us all to read the Bible, then retweeting the homophobic statements of his supporters. (Warning, they aren't pretty.)

So, so disgusting:

@derrickward32 @gina mulcahy it looked planned and a little overboard with the tongues that shit stupid #I'm not against gay people

— SHILOH4Life (@SHILOH18001) May 11, 2014

Yup. So scripted. So planned:

Fortunately for all you gay NFL players out there, we consulted our New Testament to see what the Bible has to say about gay kisses on draft day.

There you have it, folks. It's good to know that on a historic occasion for civil rights around the world, some members of the NFL community are taking a stand for what really matters—their right to be insulated from the fact that gay people exist, and sometimes, gasp!, even exist in their own profession.

Screengrab via YouTube; GIFs by Aja Romano

In the pantheon of beloved geek cultural properties, you might think that Star Wars and Game of Thrones exist at opposite ends of the wide spectrum. After all, one is a futuristic sci-fi series in space, the other a high fantasy in a vaguely Europe-y medieval kingdom. These aren't exactly the kinds of fandoms that yield great crossovers, if you get our drift.

But Tumblr has discovered a secret connection that we think even the purists can get behind.

The new meme comes by way of Tumblr user maisiewilliams—not belonging to the actress, but to a Game of Thrones fan named Ryann. Ryann started the chain last week by asking a very simple question: 

on a scale of luke skywalker to jaime lannister how well would you deal with losing your right hand

That alone would be enough to make us stop and do our best Keanu "woah" voice. Holy shit! They are both sandy-haired would-be heroes who lose their right hands mid-way through the series!

But then she went even further:

or, on a scale of luke skywalker to jaime lannister how well do you deal with latent sexual feelings for your sister

Photo via Giphy

From there, nonsensicles chimed in, as the post climbed to thousands of notes and reblogs:

On a scale of Luke Skywalker to Jaime Lannister, how well do you deal with your father being one of the coldest, most evil men alive and power behind the throne of a malevolently capricious jerk?

In another corner of the thread, admiralackbutt contributed:

On a s[c]ale of luke skywalker to jamie lannister how much does your dad want to simultaneously murder you and conquer the world with you

But it was Tumblr user expostninja who delivered the insta-meme's pièce de résistance:

On a scale of Luke Skywalker to Jamie Lannister, how respectful are you to people shorter than you.

Running with this theme, Daily Dot contributor and resident Jaime Lannister fan Michelle Jaworski contributed a few more for our benefit:

On a scale of Luke Skywalker to Jaime Lannister, how much of a disappointment are you to your father? (Little more difficult to do that one since Luke and Darth evolve.)

On a scale of Luke Skywalker to Jaime Lannister, how do you deal with your sibling's life being threatened?

On a scale of Luke Skywalker to Jaime Lannister, how well do you handle imprisonment?

Obviously this revelation could change how we view both Game of Thrones and the much-touted upcoming new Star Wars reboot. After all, look how easily the meme shifts:

On a scale of Luke Skywalker to Arya Stark, how do you deal with the murder of your entire family while you were out chasing a sword?

Does George Lucas hold the key to unraveling the mysteries of Game of Thrones?

When we say Winter is Coming, do we really mean the revival of Mark Hamill's career?

Look for answers to these and many more questions in a galaxy near you—a.k.a. Tumblr fandom.

Photo by Aja Romano

Fandom has been thorough in exploring the edges of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that we've come to know since 2008's Iron Man. It's the modern world reimagined to include the fictional Marvel comics heroes of yester-year. While Marvel has been pretty meticulous in revamping our world to fit Captain America's World War II-era backstory, there's one thing the franchise overlooked:

If Steve Rogers really had existed, then after his presumed "death" in the 1940s as depicted in Captain America, he would have been the subject of countless ill-advised movies depicting his life story, from Hollywood blockbusters to indie arthouse efforts. 

Fortunately, fandom has come along to do what it does so well, and set the historical record straight with a hilarious and touching look at all the films we could have had if Captain America really had been a celebrity war hero.

Tumblr artist neenya has created a series of posters that imagine what these fake Captain America movies would look like. The posters were done as illustrations for a collaborative fanfiction effort written by five writers in the Avengers/Marvel-verse fandom—including the Daily Dot contributor Gavia Baker-Whitelaw writing under her fandom pen name. The work, "Steve Rogers at 100: Celebrating Captain America on Film," is less fic than a meta-commentary made up of fake screenplay excerpts, movie reviews, and academic writing on the half-century of films that Steve Rogers bequeathed to the fictional America he left behind.

The posters not only capture the ridiculous (and yet all-too-believable) kinds of movies we could expect from the fake Captain America film canon, but they also chronicle a century of real-world film aesthetics. Take a look:

From the vintage '50s and the dizzying possibility of an Antonioni-directed Love Story-esque film starring Farrah Fawcett, we move on to the '80s, and an epic portrayal of Captain America that seems inspired by... well, the '80s:

This hypothetical Captain American seems drawn from everything from Big Trouble in Little China to Reb Brown's enlarged supersoldier in Space-Mutiny. (If this is just a coincidence, it's even more impressive since Reb Brown actually played a made-for-TV Captain America in our reality.) Fortunately, not to be outdone, the '90s called, and they're sending in their best weapons: thinly veiled Christian allegories from Mel Gibson...

and this...

We'll pause while you wrap your head around a star vehicle in which Chris O'Donnell plays a dim-witted Bucky Barnes as Rambo battles a team of velociraptors. We're guessing the velociraptors work together more smoothly than this duo. (What is Bruce Willis doing in this movie? Being Bruce Willis, probs.)

This one needs a little explaining. The fandom's overwhelming love for Bucky/Steve slash ramped up x10,000 after Captain America: Winter Soldier. This poster imagines a young Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan pairing up for a groundbreaking indie French film that explores Steve Rogers' homosexuality. In the fic, Enfants de la patrie (Children of the Fatherland) is envisioned as an outre, scandalous film that's still too shocking for the Hollywood establishment to go near:

So controversial upon its first release that it couldn’t find a US distributor, Enfants de la patrie has come to be seen as a groundbreaking piece of historical filmmaking, especially notable for its unapologetic representation of queer desire between two men who happen to be soldiers during wartimer. It’s the kind of radical filmmaking that you still wouldn’t find in the US today—at least, not with any amount of studio money behind it.

This is why we can't stop talking about how fandom is a transformative, creatively fueled and intelligent playground: because when it's at its best, it not only re-imagines and augments existing canons, but serves as a powerful vehicle for social commentary.

No study in retospective war films would be complete without Steven Spielberg's Band of Brothers Saving Private Barnes. 

And what would Captain America be in the current decade, without Channing Tatum in something probably produced by Michael Bay:

But wait, there's more! The inevitable porn parody. This is the American way, after all:

As with all Axel Braun porn parodies, this one still looks more realistic and compelling than its earnest superhero counterparts—looking at you, new trailer for Constantine.

Since "Steve Rogers at 100" debuted last night on the Archive of Our Own it has had an impressive reponse, a testament both to how active the Avengers fandom remains on AO3 and how much fandom loves its meta-commentary.

As for neenya, a professional graphic designer by day, she says she only gave herself about a week to create all nine posters.

Disclosure: Daily Dot contributor Gavia Baker-Whitelaw contributed to the work of fanfiction discussed in this article. Additionally, both Baker-Whitelaw and this reporter have worked professionally with three of the other fans who contributed to the work, whose contributions are not discussed in the article.

Illustrations by neenya via the Archive of Our Own

After movie-mocking comedy troupe Rifftrax achieved a milestone last year with its successful Kickstarter campaign to license a high-budget movie—originally billed as Twilight but ultimately the cult favorite Starship Troopers—it was just a question of time before they did the whole process again.

Now, as they prepare for their next Rifftrax live showing of the Internet favorite Sharknado, the team is turning to Kickstarter once more. And the stakes are bigger than ever. You could even say they're monstrous.

Last night, the Rifftrax team announced a new Kickstarter campaign to do a live riffing of the 1998 Godzilla, a bad-movie behemoth currently sitting pretty on a 25% Tomato Meter rating. Godzilla is Rifftrax's most-requested movie ever, which means, given that this is a community where awfulness is cherished, that it's basically the Godzilla of terrible films. For the Rifftrax comedic team of Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy, who together helmed the twilight years of beloved bad-movie series Mystery Science Theatre 3000, this can only be a good thing.

Their fanbase obviously agrees. Within three hours of the campaign's launch, the push had already received over $70,000 of its $100,000 goal thanks to the website's devoted fans, who pushed the last Kickstarter to more than five times its original goal. At press time, that number had jumped to above $80,000, priming the project to reach its goal in its first 24 hours.

Rifftrax noted that the initial goal is just a baseline based on the high licensing fee for the movie. Additionally, this Kickstarter has one other significant change from the last attempt: there's no risk of having to substitute another movie. Last time around, New Line Cinema wasn't quite ready to place its most riffable property, Twilight, in the hands of the series' sizeable, shall we say, ironic fandom. Godzilla studio TriStar has already agreed to let Rifftrax license the film provided it raises the money for the fee.

With the new 'zilla reboot drumming up a revival of interest in the classic franchise, the timing is perfect to revisit this cheesy Roland Emmerich monster flick, which features over-the-top action sequences, the best of '90s CGI, hammy performances from Matthew Broderick and Hank Azaria, and a giant T-Rex who cleverly plots to destroy the Chrysler Building.

Should the Rifftrax Kickstarter exceed its goal, everything above the initial $100,000 will go towards the production of the event itself. While Rifftrax can't offer tickets as a reward, one of the rewards they are offering might be even better to die-hard fans: a re-riff of the classic MST3K short A Case of Spring Fever, which made the phrase "No springs!" into a cult fandom watchword.

If the Rifftrax funds, Godzilla will be the company's twelfth live show. There's no word on what the next show after that might be, but a glance at the top vote-getters from the Rifftrax community shows that Godzilla, Gojira, and giant dinosaur movies are all high on the list. Still, we can't help but notice that Sony, the studio that owns TriStar Pictures, also owns the right to everything from Lawrence of Arabia to One Direction: This Is Us.

According to Rifftrax star Mike Nelson in a recent interview with the Daily Dot, Sony is amenable to donating more of its films to the Rifftrax treatment. "I think they saw that the sky didn't fall and everything is fine."

With the team's second Kickstarter poised to reach its goal in under a day, it seems more like the sky's the limit.

Screengrab via YouTube

The Chateau St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, might seem like an unusual pit stop along the path of geek culture history, until you step inside and get a glimpse of the horrors that lie within:

Photo via edsel/Flickr

This is the Giger Bar, the legacy of the famed Alien designer and sculptor H.R. Giger, who passed away on Monday at the age of 74. 

If the sight of the cathedral-like architecture of this coffee bar fills you with dread, you're not alone: Giger's depictions of Ridley Scott's Alien race as something both ancient and horrific seemed to spring right out of our collective Ids and onto the screen. In reality, they began with this famous work, the Necronom IV, a fantasy horror concept which Giger created in 1976, three years before the first Alien movie.

Photo via horrorhouse/Wikia

"I had never seen anything that was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work," Alien writer Dan Bannon later said. Bannon showed Giger's art compendium—probably one of the few works to ever justifiably bear the title of Necronomicon—to Scott, who was instantly as mesmerized and creeped out by Giger's designs as the rest of us are today.

And transformed into live action, who can blame us?

Photo via It/Wikimedia Commons 

Born Hans Rudolph Giger, "Ruedi" leaves behind more than just his work on the Alien franchise. The Chateau St. Germain also doubles as the H.R. Giger Museum, where visitors can glimpse his other unique and distinctive artwork.

Photo via Cs/Wikimedia Commons

Here's a sculpture titled the Birth Machine, which shows how, as late as 2010, Giger was taking current art trends like Dieselpunk and turning them into something just a little freakier than the rest of us could ever envision:

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Clearly, Giger didn't find his apotheosis in Alien, but the other way around.

Still, Giger left an indelible mark upon geek culture, influencing science-fiction and horror writers as well as fanfic writers, cosplayers, and the rest of us.

Photo by Aja Romano

Around the geeky corners of the Internet today, fans mourned Giger's passing.

Screengrab via Imgur

H.R. Giger, a true legend, his talent and creativity will be missed. pic.twitter.com/epWROpbPR2

— Robert Rodriguez (@Rodriguez) May 13, 2014

In truth, Giger would probably scoff at the mourning rituals fans are celebrating today—he was frustrated with the Hollywoodization of many of his designs for the Alien franchise and his other work on sci-fi and horror sets like Dune and Species. But his designs are still influencing the film world today, including the most recent Alien outing, Prometheus, which returned to several of his original artistic designs for inspiration.

"If they like my work they are creative ... or they are crazy," Giger once said about his fandom following.

Call us crazy, but we'll be seeing you, Ruedi... in our nightmares.

Photo via edsel/Flickr; CC-BY-2.0

Despite predictions that the recent boom in film adaptations of Young Adult novels is on the wane, there's one major contributor to the recent YA film pantheon that's yet to come. 

And according to its fans on YouTube, it's already the most popular of them all.

The upcoming film adaptation of Vlogbrother and YA star John Green's acclaimed bestseller The Fault In Our Stars has been burning up the Internet. Its trailers and teasers have spawned instant Tumblr memes and racked up huge hit counts.

Now,  the official trailer has become the most-liked YouTube video of all time.

With over 273,000 likes and 18 million views, TubeFilter notes the YouTube trailer, which premiered in January, has one like for every 63 views. That's well over the previous record set by the trailer for One Direction: This Is Us. 

Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox has been promoting Amsterdam, a city that features prominently in the novel, teasing fans with images of the movie's two stars, Shailene Woodley and Theo James, on the town. 

Not to be outdone, fans have begun to create their own personalized book tours of the city, complete with tourist stops for the places described in the book.

Despite modern YA being considered a "golden age" for the genre, the recent glut of films targeted at Young Adult readers in the post-Twilight, post-Harry Potter era has made some industry watchers skeptical that the trend will remain profitable for Hollywood. But while last year's Beautiful Creatures, The Host, and The Mortal Instruments were all flops, The Hunger Games continued to soar at the box office, and the dystopian Divergent (which also stars Woodley and, weirdly, James as her brother) had a successful performance and has been extended to four more films. Meanwhile, the upcoming Maze Runner, another dystopic hit, has a box office draw that should bring all the Teen Wolf fans to the yard: heartthrob Dylan O'Brien.

But of them all, Green's novel has gotten boosts from two unexpected places: the YouTube community, where his fandom of Nerdfighters guarantees the success of his and brother Hank Green's many, many projects; and among the literary establishment, where Green is often hailed, albeit erroneously, as the crown jewel of realistic Young Adult fiction.

While not everyone loves TFIOS, it's hard to deny that it's one of the most notable bestsellers in recent memory. Between its popularity with its core audience of teens and its ability to extend its reach into adult reading and Internet communities, TFIOS could be one of the few must-see movies of the year. That's not something you normally hear about a YA property—but then again, between hits like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and TFIOS, we might be on the path to acknowledging what we should have known long ago:

YA fans have great taste.

Screengrab via YouTube