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I finally watched Poe Party (yes, it was long overdue, I’m sorry), and say what you like, but it really is fantastic. It’s funny and well-written and so aesthetically pleasing. And is has Lauren Lopez. And it’s slightly less straight than I was afraid it would be, so that’s another plus.
I’m still mad that this show absolutely demolished the LIWAs, and I still think we need a better system there, but I just wanted to acknowledge that this show is realy, really good.
END of THE VOTES: 15TH OF MAY 12pm PST The Literary-Inspired Webseries Awards were created by the people behind @LBDCareCenter in 2015 to reward the best webseries and the people involved in those fantastic webshows inspired by literature and contributing to promote literature. Literary-Inspired Webseries include book adaptation webseries and webseries who were inspired by (part of) book(s) and author(s) Videos of the nominations:
Away From it All is nominated in every category of the Literary-Inspired Webseries Awards! Thank you for voting us through to the final round!
If you are enjoying the series, please take a few seconds to vote for us! Voting closes on May the 15th.
Hey, just wondering how you want nominations for BSN to work for this year's LIWAs. For example, are we supposed to nominate Meesha Rik as Puck and Dani Yourukova as Deme for best actor or best actress? Who is considered a lead role, and who is considered a supporting role? Nominations are only open for a few more days, and it would be nice to know!
Hey!
It doesn’t seem particularly appropriate to nominate Meesha or Dani for either category as they do not solely identify with male or female. Which is a shame because they both perform incredibly in BSN! Perhaps peeps can send something to the LIWAs and ask them to diversify their categories for future awards (and not just in regards to gender / actors!).All nine POV characters are “mains” with Puck being, like, a little more than that. Which is difficult to nominate specifically because they all kick ass! We do love our ensemble casts haha Thanks!
The Literary-Inspired Webseries Awards Have Some Issues
Now, I’ve been reviewing a lot of series that are up for the LIWAs this year, and I encourage everyone to go nominate and vote for all of these amazing and talented people, because they deserve credit for their work.
However, I have a lot of issues with the awards themselves, and I know that other people share them (often to the point of refusing to participate).
The main issue is the categories themselves. Costume and set design are combined into one award. There’s no music award, no directing award, no cinematography award. Then there’s the gender issue. The genre is progressive enough about gender these days that we should be able to have labels other than “actor” and “actress,” right? As it currently stands, it’s basically impossible to nominate nonbinary or genderfluid actors playing nonbinary or genderfluid characters in any category other than “best chemistry.”
Then there’s the issue of the voting. I like the idea of audience nominations, and even of audience voting, but there’s a clear bias in favor of series with larger fandoms. I don’t want to see one series win eighty percent of the awards again this year, and it’s hard to know how to prevent that and make the voting process fairer while still also keeping it democratic.
To highlight the problems a little, let’s look at how many people are actually watching what:
Bright Summer Night was the most-viewed webseries of last year, with an average of 7-8,000 views per episode, sometimes many more (this is still way below The Candle Wasters other series, which is in itself an interesting phenomenon).
The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy Season Three, while not eligible for these LIWAs, is the other massive view winner, with similar numbers (so far nothing surpassing about 9,000 views, but it’s still happening in real time and it’s been a while since Season Two).
The Cate Morland Chronicles, one of the best series this year, appears to still have a viewership of fewer than 1500 people, despite being made by the creators of Lily Evans and the Eleventh hour. Nothing Like The Sun has very similar numbers.
The Adventures of Serena Berg, although the owner of a very active fandom, actually has very few viewers – about 200 individuals.
Project Green Gables, another fan favorite that deserves many awards, is currently averaging about 800 views per episode.
Twelfth Grade (or whatever) is a few months old now, so many episodes have massive numbers of views, but the number of individual viewers seems similar to those of The Cate Morland Chronicles and Nothing Like The Sun – around 1600.
Away From It All is being hailed as one of the best literary webseries ever, but it still only gets about 800 views per episode.
(Also, just realized I should mention Poe Party, which has about 40,000 views per episode but seems to belong to a different part of the internet despite clearly being an LIW and starring a lot of the cast of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.)
Why are the numbers so wildly different? Bright Summer Night and The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy have name recognition and budgets, which helps, and that’s where a lot of their views come from. The New Peter Wendy fandom is actually considerably less active than those for a lot of the smaller webseries because so many people from outside of the community are making up the viewers.
The Candle Wasters still dominate LIW fandom world, but BSN hasn’t gotten much fan attention, and it’s really hard to know how to nominate the actors when there are so many point-of-view characters and when some characters and actors don’t conform to the gender binary.
A lot of people don’t enjoy watching in real time, and so they’ll wait until a whole series is finished and then binge it. This is likely happening with Project Green Gables right now. The views will likely go up massively after the end of the season, just as they did after Nothing Like The Sun finished. The Emma Agenda will likely have a similar viewer situation.
There’s also the question of simply getting caught up – I only discovered The Adventures of Serena Berg three weeks ago, and then I spent several days binging before I could be caught up.
The third reason I think contributes to low viewership on good series is unfamiliarity with the source text. I haven’t watched Away From It All or Middlemarch, the Series yet because I haven’t read the books they’re based on, even though I know I’ll love both series when I do watch them. I suspect a lot of other people are doing the same thing with those two series, and possibly also with The Adventures of Serena Berg.
So what’s the solution? We can’t say that everyone who watches LIWs has to watch all of them, but perhaps voting in the LIWAs should be done by people who have seen all of the nominees, in order to ensure that voting happens on the basis of quality and not popularity. At this point in time, I’m not sure that’s possible – and I’m not sure it ever will be with the community as it stands now.
LIWAwards
This evening we found out that AFitA is nominated for all 10 categories in the LIWAwards (And twice in “Best Chemistry”)
This is something which is… still rather sinking in, but since this is absolutely down to the love and support of you guys I just wanted to quickly post something to say a mahoosive thank you to everyone who nominated us. We did not see this coming and it means so very much that you care. I’m feeling so proud of everyone in our hardworking team and every one of our fans tonight.
Thank you (Thank you thank you!!!) once again, and we’ll post details about voting once that stage of the awards comes along (Exciting!)
Marshmallows, love and best wishes,
~ Hazel Jeffs (Showrunner)
LIW Review: The Cate Morland Chronicles
I’m a sucker for Jane Austen adaptations, and I was so excited when I found out someone had done Northanger Abbey properly as a webseries (I’ll give my thoughts on Northbound at some later date). I did a whole school project on this book last year. Let’s just say it’s pretty close to my heart.
The premise:
Catherine “Cate” Morland has just finished grad school when she lands a job at the famous Persona Magazine. This real job is amazing, but at heart Cate is a fangirl – of everything, but mostly of the fictional TV show The Mysteries of Udolpho. She runs a Udolpho fan blog, and it’s popular enough that she has an automatic following when she starts blogging. And yes, that actually worked.
The plot begins when Cate goes to Comic-Con and gets to interview her celebrity crush (and the star of Udolpho), Henry Tilney. Sparks fly, magic happens, and everything continues from there.
Format:
Vlogs on Cate’s YouTube channel, with a few extras thrown in as well. Cate was also active on social media, but none of those components were necessary for the story.
Realism:
Cate’s vlogs work as vlogs because of who she is. They stretch realism by having a significant number of important video calls conveniently happen on camera, but otherwise it’s pretty strong. Also, another fun feature of this series is the existence of the fandom in-show. One character actually creates the ship name for Cate and Henry and takes to the comments section to talk about it. It’s beautiful.
The Cate M Chronicles also actually utilizes the description boxes, which is always nice to see. In this case, they’re not necessary for understanding the plot, but they are a lovely edition, as are those comments from a certain character.
Production values:
High. Everything is well-filmed, well-lit, and generally attractive. These people have good film equipment, in other words, and I’m happy they do.
Representation/diversity:
I had no idea how much I needed Dele Opeifa to play Henry Tilney. He and Eleanor (who is his assistant, not his sister) are both black, and Eleanor is a lesbian in a happy relationship with an offscreen character.
This series is also just so accepting in general. It talks about fandom (and defends if, hurray!). The characters don’t do problematic things. There’s very little strife but still plenty of meaning. It’s wonderful.
My three favorite things about The Cate Morland Chronicles:
1) Madeline Thatcher and Dele Opeifa’s chemistry. Catherine and Henry are adorable in the book, and I love this slightly older and more self-aware but still adorable version of them.
2) The fact that they created a t-shirt for their fictional show-within-a-show. WHAT! Yes, they really did.
3) Cate’s beautiful defense of fandom, which was straight out of Jane Austen while simultaneously being very in-character and very relevant to now.
Difficult things about The Cate M Chronicles:
Well, there certainly aren’t many actual obstacles in this series. It’s pretty smooth sailing, and it’s pretty self-referential and free from the troubles of the world. If you desperately need a series that addresses those troubles and puts major obstacles in the way of its characters, go look somewhere else.
My only real issue with this series is that it’s too short. I watched the entire thing in one morning without being interrupted, and that never happens.
The verdict:
Adorable, relatable, true to the book, easy to watch. What’s not to like? This series is easily in my top three Jane Austen webseries, despite the stretched realism and excessive video calling. Oh, and the very silly but wonderful ending. An enthusiastic 4/5 stars.
Awards:
The Cate Morland Chronicles is up for this year’s Literary-Inspired Webseries Awards! Go nominate them in any of the following categories before April 15 (full cast list follows).
Best script
Best transmedia
Best costume and set design
Best LIW
Best lead actress: Madeline Thatcher as Cate Morland
Best lead actor: Dele Opeifa as Henry Tilney
Best chemistry: Madeline Thatcher and Dele Opeifa
Best supporting actress: Amanda Taylor as Isabella Thorpe, Erika Ovudoba as Eleanor Monk, or Charla Cochran as Leslie Allen
Best supporting actor: Rob Zimmerman as James Morland or Frankie Madril as John Thorpe
Created by Apple Juice Productions @applejuicepro
Watch the Complete Chronicles here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqOG9unl8i4qE-ECzoWlJX11BVggB3hhj
LIWA Update
I’m not planning to review anything else this week because I’ve already got webseries coming out of my ears on top of a ton of school work, so I’m just going to leave one last note about the LIWAs.
The webseries I’ve reviewed that are eligible for the LIWAs are Bright Summer Night, Nothing Like The Sun, Twelfth Grade (or whatever), and The Cate Morland Chronicles.
The other LIW that I think is deserving of awards but that I haven’t reviewed because it’s mid-season and I’m not caught up is Project Green Gables. They really deserve nominations, especially Laura Eklund Nhaga for Best Actress as Anne Shirley.
Away From It All also seems very deserving, but I haven’t seen it yet, so do your research!
Other eligible series include:
The Adventures of Serena Berg, Poe Party, Words From Wilde, School Spirit, The Attic, REX, Magic for Muggles, Project Dashwood, The Glad Game, Horizons, Charlotte’s Web Series, Nancy’s Vlog, WH Academy, Grimm Reflections (Cinderella), Lily Evans and the Eleventh Hour, Or So the Story Goes (Sweet Truth,Shakespeare Republic (Season 1), The Better Strangers, Mina Murray’s Journal, Love in Idleness, Titus and Dronicus, Pantheon University, The Grey Tarmac Road, The New Hardy Boys, All For One.
Thank you to @greatestvoyagehistoryofplastic for the lists. I could not have come up with all that on my own.
Middlemarch: The Series, The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy (Season 3), and The Emma Agenda are unfortunately not eligible for nominations because they started in 2017.
You are still welcome to ask me anything. I probably just won’t be writing any more actual reviews.
Go nominate your favorites! Hopefully next year the LIWAs will be less problematic, but in the meantime we need to work with what we have. And if anyone other than me would like to see things changed, please get out there and say so! It’s the only way we’ll be able to make change happen.
Best of luck to all the series I listed. You all did a fantastic job last year and deserve to be recognized for all your hard work.
LIW Review: Twelfth Grade (or whatever)
Twelfth Grade (or whatever) aired for much of 2016, with the first episode on January 6 (twelfth night) and the epilogue exactly one year later.
Source material/premise:
Based pretty closely on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or what you will, one of Shakespeare’s darker comedies, a story about twins, cross-dressing, and love triangles. In this version, Viola Messing disguises herself as a cis guy, Sam, in order to attend the all-boys boarding school that rejected her trans brother, Sebastian. If you’ve seen She’s the Man, you know the basic plot already.
Spoiler-free plot overview:
Viola/Sam’s roommate and best friend, Oren, has a crush on local girl Olivia “Liv” Belcik and sends “Sam” to be his wingman, which results in Liv’s developing a crush on “Sam.” Meanwhile, Viola definitely doesn’t have a crush on anyone... All sorts of adventures ensue.
Format:
Uploaded without any sort of regular pattern on three different YouTube channels: S Messing (Viola/Sam, Oren, and their other friends at school), Liv Belcik (Liv and her family and friends), and S-messing around! (Sebastian). The whole thing is available in one playlist, which I will link below. All of the videos exist in-universe, but there’s quite a lot of creativity that goes along with that: there are a couple gaming videos, one filmed entirely in the dark, and one that, in-universe, was deleted shortly after being uploaded.
Realism:
Fairly strong. A few things stretch belief, but those issues ended up actually being dealt with (like why people weren’t watching each other’s videos and what happened when they found them) and actually became part of the plot. Though the lack of communication between Viola and Sebastian was a little hard to believe. The different types of videos also helped improve the realism factor, but something else that took away from it was the fact that many of the actors seemed to be looking at the script in several episodes. The characters themselves, however, are very realistic as both high school students and Shakespeare characters, and all of the casting and acting was great.
Representation/diversity:
So, so good. So many characters are played by minority actors, and race is just a total non-issue. Liv has agoraphobia (Confirmed! They use the word!).
LGBTQ+ representation is almost at an all-time high here. The series starts out with everyone being straight and ends with no one being straight (also no endgame heterosexual relationships whatsoever, which meant that both my ship and Shakespeare’s were wrecked, but I was still happy with the ending).
Sebastian is trans and interested in men. Viola is bisexual and demiromantic and probably a demigirl, though she doesn’t end up finding the right label for her gender before the end of the series. Liv is also bi. Oren is eventually questioning/(spoilers). Drew is gay. Vic and Curt are assumed to be gay. Tammi is a lesbian. Maria is pansexual. Foster uses they/them pronouns but I am unsure of their official gender label and so won’t use one here. Viola and Sebastian also have two moms (named Hermia and Helena because this is a Shakespeare webseries after all). Malcolm might be straight but we don’t care about him.
Film quality:
Not great. They only had one camera, and it wasn’t a very good one, but it was pretty realistic to what the characters would have realistically had, and it’s hard to make visually high-quality content without a budget.
However, what they lacked in camera, they made up for by having very creative episode titles (lots of references to SO MANY THINGS) and actually utilizing the description boxes, which is still not done nearly often enough. Sebastian’s titles are very in-character. The others are relevant and could potentially have come out of the heads of the characters, though it’s nothing on the level of NMTD/LLL episode titling.
My three favorite things about 12gw:
1) The first episode. Everything about it is perfect and sets the tone so well for everything to follow.
2) All of the internal shipping that happens in this series. These people come up with occasionally intentional, occasional accidental ship names for themselves, they talk about ships in ways that torture the audience to extremes, there’s an episode called “Ship Steer” – need I say more?
3) Oren Douglas. The acting, the character development, Julian Hermano’s face (sometimes I’m shallow). I love the man so much.
Less great things about 12gw:
The low film quality and the actors’ occasional script glancing are definitely the big ones here. Another negative aspect is that the actor who played Sebastian couldn’t be in the same location as the rest of the cast, so he isn’t in any group scenes, which is extremely disappointing. I personally am also sad that they changed Shakespeare’s endgame so much in this particular series, just because I came into this with a ship already formed, but regardless you will ship everything and be disappointed by something, because they can’t all be endgame.
Viewing time: about three hours, easily bingeable in a day.
Verdict:
3.5/5 stars, edging toward 4. I highly recommend this series to lovers of bisexuality, crushing the patriarchy, extreme sassiness, and shipping absolutely everything with absolutely everything else.
AWARDS!
Twelfth Grade (or whatever) is up for the Literary-Inspired Webseries Awards this year! Go nominate them by April 15th and then vote for them afterwards! Eligible categories (plus the full cast list) below:
Best Actress: Sarah Taylor as Viola Messing and Kristen Vagahos as Liv Belcik
Best Actor: Julian Hermano as Oren Douglass
Best Supporting Actor: Jon Steiger as Drew Aguecheek, Andres Cordoba as Vic Caius, and Eliot Barnhardt as Sebastian Messing (you may also recognize him from The Adventures of Jamie Watson and Sherlock Holmes).
Best Chemistry: Sarah Taylor and Julian Hermano or Sarah Taylor and Kristen Vagahos
Best Script
Best Ensemble Cast
Best Set and Costume Design
Best LIW
The rest of the cast:
Justin Linville as Curt Slender
Derya Celikkol and Michelle Persoff as Tammi Belcik
Adriana Figueroa as Maria Waites
Evan Neiden as Malcolm Volinsky
Jeremy Stewart as Anthony Capozzoli (this beautiful man also played Henry Tilney in Northbound)
Daniel Golden as Foster Page
Cathie Boruch as Hermia Messing
Created by Quip Modest Productions @quipmodestproductions
Mainly the brainchild of Jules Piggott @threeminutesfast
Watch the whole thing here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Aos6cZ-mUxgWreHGvC1S5dY5IHq3Am6
