Thursday prompts for Meta Friday
We will all kindly ignore how many of these I've skipped. The lack of Thursday prompts has been an illusion; you just didn't see any you liked. Those were not the prompts you were looking for; scroll along.
Today's topic is Corporate Greed. (Wanna guess what inspired that?)
Canon Prompts: Do the characters you love work for a corporation? Against one? How do companies or other organizations affect your canon--and how does the desire for money affect your OTP (whether or not either one of them has any desire for money)? Is poverty an issue in your fandom? Could Kirk & Spock retire from Starfleet and sell the movie rights to their adventures, and if so, would Starfleet be able to block the release of the movies as "a danger to Federation security?" Could Sam & Dean cut a deal with the makers of Ghost Hunters and get funding for their demon-hunting--and if they did, what kinds of results would the corporate bosses insist on? There are a number of "cop" fandoms; does corporate manipulation, rather than political biases, ever determine what kind of cases they're sent on? Have you ever read or written fic where Microsoft (or your world's equivalent thereof) decides your favorite character(s) is/are the hottest new thing on the market, and tries to buy all the rights to their public appearances? How different would Mystery Men have been without the corporate sponsorship--and why don't more superheros, especially the really poor ones, seek it out (or do they have to fight off offers)? After Miles left the Dendarii, they've got a non-Barrayaran admiral; will they act more like a "normal" merc company now?
There's room here for some great Smallville fic or meta, I'm sure, but I don't know Smallville. Someone come up with an appropriate prompt or two involving Luthor Corporation and Clark.
Fandom Prompts: Do you go to conventions? Do you think someone should make a profit from them? Has your fandom gotten too corporatized recently? Does lack of corporate sponsorship (including releasing series on DVD, licensing new materials & accessories) make a fandon languish? What are some of the issues involved with licensing--when does it change from "promote the fandom and make a tidy profit" to "strip all the money possible from anyone who likes the fandom?" Does it make a difference to you, if the author/artist/creator profits, or a corporation who owns their rights profits? Have you seen fandoms suffer from corporate greed? Have you seen fandoms that were helped by it?
Meta Prompts: What do you think of the increasing corporate ownership of our common myths, legends, and lore? How about ads on the internet--they pay for a lot of our spaces, but are occasionally used to censor content--how should that be dealt with? Is it possible to set up an ad-supported adult-content-welcome site that's not overrun with sleazy porn ads? Do the corporations that control/own the spaces we post, have any rights over the content? Do some fandoms thrive in some settings because of/in spite of the sponsorship, but not others? How are the social issues fandom addresses--feminism, anti-racism activity, freedom of speech--affected by money concerns? Is it okay if some corporation you're barely aware of is making a profit from your fic, rants, and meta? Is it more or less okay if they're more actively involved? What do you see as the future of fandom in relation to corporations that own (and intend to make a lot of money from) the intellectual properties that we love?