A while ago someone on my flist linked to a cd on amazon (i think it was amazon) - it was of famous thespians reading a selection of shakespeare's sonnets - alan rickman was one of them, i know. was it for charity? i can't remember.

anyway, an amazon search was relatively fruitless, does anyone have the specific title of it or a link to it handy? eta thanks, shehasathree!

also, for your time: Seremuppety. wonderful.

with regards to the Browncoats Rise Again fundraiser (previous post i made about it here), it seems they’ve stop taking donations and are returning donations already received, due to “insurmountable odds and legal issues”. which, you know, i’m glad it didn’t get further and thus more problematic, but i’m also a little sad, because it was a lovely idea, and in an ideal world (where also, everyone was rich!) it would be a nice thing to happen.

but, here’s my suggestion to help the ‘Browncoats rise again’: if you have a spare $25 or $50 that you feel like you want to donate to this cause, go out and buy a Firefly or Serenity dvd (or several). Give them to friends/family/co-workers who haven’t been introduced to the Firefly’verse yet. this way, you’re both supporting the cause (the more dvds sold, the more likely there is to be more produced in this ‘verse), *and* doing a good deed for an individual person - cmon, introducing them to Firefly! how much love will that generate? and the repercussions of that, too (they’ll share their dvds with more people, who’ll buy more, so on and so forth...)


mmm. firefly lub.

Browncoats Rise Again: The fund-raising drive to revive Joss Whedon's Firefly.

To summarise it for you: a group of fans (or just one? it doesn't elaborate) are doing a 'fund-raising drive' to raise money to subsequently fund the creation of more episodes of Firefly. In a nutshell, they calculate that at $1million an episode, they need 500,000 people to donate $25 (US) a piece to make 12 episodes. and, of course, another 500,000 to donate the same amount to make a whole season (24 episodes) - ie. US$24,000,000. They claim that if they do not raise enough money, they will donate the funds the receive to 'Joss's charity of choice'.

I have a few things to say about this.


Firstly, ethically:

stimpson commented that Now, I would dearly love to see another season or 2 of Firefly, but donating my money to a bunch of fans with this idea isn't going to do it. I would much rather they try and raise millions of dollars for charity, and have each fan donate their 25 bucks to someone who really needs it. Fandom and television isn't all there is to life, to be honest.

And I can see where she's coming from. But I think it's also worth remembering that philanthropic funding - ie. the planned/structured/organised giving of funds to others to benefit the 'greater good' doesn't only go to those 'in need' (starving people, homeless people, disabled people, etc). A good deal of philanthropic funding goes toward the arts. individual artists, filmmakers, performers; art galleries, museums, theatre and music companies. I'm sure a whole bunch of film fans reading this would morally support the funding of struggling artists, would support and enjoy independently made and philanthropically funded films, for example.

In other words, in those cases, the common good is thought to be 'art'. Now, fandom and television might not be all there is to life, but I think that art is a pretty big and pretty important part of life. I'm also of the opinion that television lately is increasingly getting the recognition it deserves as an art form, an artist's medium just as valid as film (which is in turn just as valid an art form as painting, sculpting, composing, etc). I personally honestly think that Firefly is a work of art, one that does what I like my works of art to do - have an impact on my life, change my way of thinking, make me look at things differently. I believe it deserves funding as much as any work of art needs funding to be developed.

(The issue of how much money the people making it already have is an issue also, though... something to think about.)


Secondly, issues of fund-raising $24,000,000:

I am going to make this post public, so I'll keep it vague, but lets just say I work at a non-profit organisation that deals with a lot of issues of governance & accountability in the non-profit/charity sector. With the knowledge I have (though my knowledge is primarily Australian, not US, though the same key issues are ISSUES, i think), here are things I am mightily concerned about:

they are planning on fundraising a HUGE amount of money, and yet appear to be organised completely amateurly. If they are serious about this, they ought to set up a legally-recognised organisation whose purpose it is to seek funds (ie. all this fundraising) and also to give funds (ie. fund a specific project - ie. Firefly). This would mean they had a degree of accountability in terms of what is happening to the money and where the money is actually going. (because honestly - if they raise $800,000, for example, i'm not going to be comfortable just having a post on this anonymous website saying "yeah, we donated it to joss's fave charity!")

Setting up a proper organisation for it would mean (and feel free to clarify/correct me on this stuff, I'm going with my own knowledge of Australian & somewhat sparser knowledge of American charity law/structure etc):
- there would have to be transparency as to how the funds were being spent, invested, banked, etc
- they would have to be transparent as to who exactly is running the show/organisation
- quite possibly, there would be tax-related repercussions that come with fundraising that legally need to be taken into account also.

ie. they would be held accountable both to the law and to the supporters as to what is happening with the money that is being raised.

another benefit of setting up an organisation like this would be that if they failed to raise the $24,000,000, or if there was an 'unexpected' obstacle - eg. Fox (or Mutant Enemy, or Joss) objecting to a project such as this, the 'Browncoats Foundation' would be able to engage in effective philanthropy - donate their lump sum of money to a cause they (and their supporters) deem worthy, perhaps even invest it in order to set up a corpus and continue charitable activity further into the future, on behalf of Browncoats who want funding to be given in their name. (there are existing charities/philanthropic bodies set up with this kind of model - pooled donations being directed at certain areas/projects in order to be more effective than just the $1 you put in the tin rattled under your nose.)


Thirdly, but not un-importantly, they're using PayPal:

no. no, no, NO, they should NOT use PayPal. If anyone reading this is considering ever doing charity work through PayPal, read this first. If you don't want to click the link, let me summarise again: somethingawful.com held a fundraiser to generate money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It was a giant success, and raised over $30,000 in 9 hours. PayPal, deciding this was suspicious, locked the account, without warning or contact with the account's owner. During a whole lot of non-existent customer service and inefficient paper-work, PayPal was charging interest on the account - which ended up being almost $4000 of the original $30,000. In the end, the owner of the account had all the donations refunded, as PayPal refused to donate the money to the charity of choice, let alone unlock the account.

If you need/want more info on why you shouldn't use PayPal, visit paypalsucks.com.


So, personally, although I support art funding and would love to see more Firefly made; I am unwilling to donate money to an anonymous website, using paypal, with no transparency or accountability evident as to who is running the show and what is happening with the money.

I do not believe that they'll make even $1m; however I think they might have a chance if they took into account the things I've talked about above, and set up a proper organisation (one that had the approval of Joss, etc!).


I'd like to raise all of the above with the people who are running this site/drive, so if you have any input/corrections on what I've said up there, I'd greatly appreciate your comments.

Prodigal
firefly (post-serenity); written for magistera in the mal/simon ficathon. PG-13.

about 10 days late. my bad!

jayne/simon fics:
Time to Dream by scribewraith
It's Just A Diary, It Doesn't Mean What You Think by claireweasley
I Told You So by linaelyn
What About Tomorrow by simmysim
Wake by monkeycrackmary
Sometimes, things just go down smooth by ana_grrl
Error by claireweasley
Lifeless by ana_grrl
Euphemisms of the Rich and Fancible Exhibitionist by ana_grrl
Tacky by ana_grrl

and I’m sure there are more of those, but gah, too many to keep track of. other links:

Serenity gag reel
What Would Jayne Do? teeshirt (omgwant)
Serenity wallpapers in the same style as the promo poster (aus), but with more characters: here and here (and, of course, my shameless ‘ship-‘manip’ in that style is here).


Anyhoo.

So, not that long ago I made an alternative poster that I thought illustrated Serenity better than the proposed DVD cover art did.

Well, tonight I got inspired and decided to make another. I have monkeycrackmary to thank for the wonderfully inspired text. Be wary, fellow viewers, for there are Serenity spoilers behind the cut.

( here's the poster )

oh joss! i heart you so.

i also wish i was a buffy fan, because boy howdy, i would be peeing my pants right now if that kinda stuff was on the horizon for my fandom.

woops, running late.

fic for today:

at monkeycrackmary’s suggestion, a Red Dwarf-verse pleasure gelf in the Firefly ‘verse: Smitten

also, cracktastically with mary today, a Firefly morning after fic to go with her clubfic; and a very silly firefly/scrubs (and very vague /21 jump street) crossover, paper cut.

holy shit, it’s 12.30am already?

you may or may not have seen the proposed Serenity DVD cover. I will be the first to admit that I find it a bit frightening. has the person who designed it even SEEN the movie? it looks like zoe and mal are leading the last alliance of men and elves against the reaver hoards.

so, in response, i decided to lend my l33t design skillz to making a cover. by the fans, for the fans.

( it’s behind the cut. )

I am proud to admit that I spent a lot of time, effort and talent on this. Should I send it on to Universal?

n'awww i could just EAT THEM ALL UP.


CYOOT.

dear claireweasley,

Your favourite is the background in this picture:



LOVE, ME.

Wow.

*clutches*

I LOVE BROWNCOATS!

Seeing as it took me longer than I'd like to admit to (relatively) seamlessly tweak these three images together, I'll post it here:

( River - Simon - Jayne graphic from promo images - warning: large )

original images from here.

First 9 minutes of Serenity online, for people who have want to make up their own minds as to whether they want to see it - watch this clip, and if you want to figuratively walk out of the cinema instead of seeing the rest, consider your ticket price not-wasted :)

To those of you out there (and I KNOW you’re out there, some of you were in my living room this weekend) who go all bibbledy over ( Serenity spoiler... )

I debated a bit with myself about posting about this, but heck, I've already humiliated myself/been defriended/been the target of vitriol/scorn/mocking enough over this that hell, why should I care any more? Just knowing there is at least one person out there who's watching Firefly and/or Serenity since I started talking about it is enough to outweigh all the negative.


But anyway, what I'm posting about: Serenity's second weekend. I don't want to let it fall behind. If you saw it on the first weekend, see it again this weekend. If you haven't seen it at all yet, what in tarnation are you waiting for? Go see it this weekend.

And if you can't make it to the theatre? Well, I've had a busy freaking week and I don't know if I'm up for another visit to the theatre in the next few days. But I'm not going to let that stop me, and as much as people might roll their eyes when I say this, I don't care - imma go ahead and buy myself a bunch of tickets anyway, even if I'm not going to fill up the seats in person.

So if you can afford the tickets but not the time, I encourage those with the inclination to do the same, and support Serenity with your wallet (or in my case, my credit card, hah) even if you can't make it to a theatre (if you have other responsibilities, or it's not showing in your town, or whatever).

And I hope she doesn't mind, but the prompt for this blatantly stolen from bunniewabbit, who bought tickets to support a movie not even showing in her state in order to encourage its wider distribution. Box office support, folks! It's what really counts, and every little bit does.


And, in Australian-specific Firefly news, JB HiFi is giving out free double passes to Serenity if you buy the Firefly complete series DVD from them, which they are currently selling at a reduced price - $38. It's worth it :D

This is in no way comprehensive or representational of the entirety of what I love about Serenity. But, after 6 viewings, there are a few things that just make me feel like someone’s electrocuted my heart every time. And a few other things that just feel like someone’s punched me in the heart. And a few things that merely make me come a little.

( Serenity spoilers )

Serenity #6 tonight.

ohhowiloveit.

who wants to join me for #7 on Wednesday night?