My Obsessions

Amazon is readying the launch of a new publishing platform called Kindle Worlds where writers will be able to publish and earn royalties from their fanfiction.

For now, fanfic writers are limited to submitting stories about only three TV shows: ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars, the CW’s Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl, which aired its series finale on the CW last December. Amazon Publishing has secured licenses for those three properties (all owned by Warner Bros.), though it expects to announce more licenses soon.

A north Texas judge has forbid a lesbian couple from living together, citing a “morality clause” in one of the women’s divorce papers. The clause—ubiquitous in divorce cases—is intended to stop a divorced parent from having a different love interest sleep over while children are in the home. If the lesbian couple was heterosexual instead, they could simply get married to make the clause null. But in Texas, where same-sex marriage isn’t recognized, they’re stuck. As a result of a judge’s ruling Tuesday, Carolyn Compton’s partner, Page Price, will be forced to move out of the home where they currently live with Compton’s two daughters.

“Our age is lousy with celebrities. They can be found in every sector of society, including ones that seem less than glamorous. We have celebrity bankers (Jamie Dimon), computer engineers (Sergey Brin), real estate developers/conspiracy theorists (Donald J. Trump), media executives (Arianna Huffington), journalists (Anderson Cooper), mayors (Cory A. Booker), economists (Jeffrey D. Sachs), biologists (J. Craig Venter) and chefs (Mario Batali). There is a quality of self-invention to their rise; the person evolves into a persona, then a brand, then an empire, with the business imperative of grow or die — a process of expansion and commodification that transgresses boundaries by substituting celebrity for institutions…[and] if you are the institution, you don’t need to play by its rules. These new celebrities are all more or less start-up entrepreneurs, and they live by the hacker’s code: ask forgiveness, not permission.”

Retired Supreme Court justice G.P. Marthur told a crowd in January that it can be appropriate for women to marry their rapists, provided the marriage wasn’t coerced.