Women didn't Abandon Rom-Coms, Rom-Coms abandoned Women

The Jezebel takes on the question of "What happened to the Rom-Com?

"1986 to 1988, the dawn of a Golden Age for Rom-Coms. Moonstruck and Working Girl were both major hits, and the genre sold $1.6 billion in tickets over three years (adjusted to 2012 dollars, as are all figures in this article). This was followed by When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), all of which topped $170 million. In two of these films, the sole protagonist is a woman. Two more were written and directed by Nora Ephron. That leaves Pretty Woman, where Julia Roberts stole the fucking show. Plenty of men saw these movies–you can't win the box office by excluding an entire gender–but these films were undeniably aimed at a female audience."

 -Jezebel

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and the Power of Transmedia

"The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a modernized transmedia adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, told in the form of a video blog kept by 24 year-old grad student Lizzie Bennet. Lizzie’s vlog sets out to document the ups and downs of a young woman struggling to figure out where she fits in the world, along with her best friend Charlotte Lu and her two sisters, excessively nice Jane and wild child Lydia. And shortly after the videos begin, a young handsome medical student named Bing Lee moves to town. The show began in April of 2012 with two videos a week posted at Lizzie’s YouTube channel. The characters also had their own Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts where they would talk to each other, and the fans."

Link: Why It's Time to Retire the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

"As long as men have written female characters, entertainment has been packed with girls whose individuality is just a means for some tiresome hero to work out his own ennui. From William Shakespeare's Juliet Capulet to Truman Capote's Holly Golightly, the characters' uniqueness was like an ideological rib-eye that the down-on-his-luck hero could feast on to thrive and prosper in his own life. These idiosyncratic muses were finally given a common name in 2007: The "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" — and now, in 2013, it's time to put the term to rest." 

The Sage Dowager

 Lady Olenna and The Dowager Countess the Sage voices of reason in our favorite shows.

It's great to see some serious screentime given to women who fit into the sage archetype, like Yoda or Gandolf but in corsets (ok, maybe we could all do without corsets). But there's a whole chapter on that to write, oh wait! it IS a chapter I'm writing...

Context Artist: Createasphere's Transmedia Coalition

Remember my column over at Createasphere's Transmedia Coalition? Well, It exists!

Check out my new article:

The Producer as Serial Entrepreneur

An AI Feels More Human than I Do: Kotaku on Bioshock Infinite

Kotaku's Commentary on BioShock Infinite (which includes spoilers) talks about the dehumanization of players in games, and how play parameters reveal and reenforce inhumanity in the FPS world. 

"I'm supposed to run after her. That's not what I do. Instead, I look around me and loot what I can—Elizabeth will wait. What if I miss something by running after her right away? Sure enough, I would have...

The design, which rewards exploration, is at odds with the narrative, which makes you care about Elizabeth. Worse, the design makes me feel ashamed for being unable to resemble a normal human being in a game—because if it was real life, there's no way I'd stop and ransack everything before running after Elizabeth!"

Nostalgia Critic – What's With The Princess Hate?

This guy has some fairly interesting points.