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crack_van2011-12-02 10:01 pm
jasmasson.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2011-12-02 10:01 pm
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The Social Network (2010): Fandom Overview
The Social Network Overview
The Social Network is an award-winning 2010 film by Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher starring Jesse Eisenberg (Mark Zuckerberg), Andrew Garfield (Eduardo Saverin) and Justin Timberlake (Sean Parker)...
...about the founding of Facebook. And more...
“Up until the end, Eduardo’s hoping at some point Mark’s going to go, ‘Look, I’m really, really sorry, man. I really messed up. I love you so much, and I just was jealous of you for this. And I acted out like this. Can we be friends again? I’ll give you back as much money as you want. Let’s move in together and we’ll play basketball every day, and we’ll cuddle at night and watch reality TV.’ Part of Eduardo in those depositions is just waiting for that moment.” Andrew Garfield.
I’m not going to linger too long on the actors, because that’s a whole other (equally delightful) ballgame (you can check out a primer here), but you should probably know that Andrew Garfield has repeatedly referred to Eduardo as emotionally Mark’s jilted girlfriend, and he played it that way.
Here is the trailer for your viewing pleasure:
OK, it’s ever so slightly pleased with itself, but we let it off because it really is a great film.
Main Characters
Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg): Founder of facebook, coder, terrible boyfriend (and terrible hetero-life-partner) socially inept (arguably by choice rather than inadequacy, but we don’t really know...) and wearer of seasonally inappropriate cargo shorts and flip-flops
Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield): Mark’s best friend, provider of finance to found facebook, weather enthusiast, President of the Harvard Investor’s association, Phoenix club member and wearer of awesome suits (and occasional awful Hawaiian shirt).
Dustin Moskovitz (Joseph Mazzello) and Chris Hughes (Patrick Mapel): Mark’s roommates and the other two founders of facebook (making the fab four). Very sparsely used in the actual film (particularly Chris – well, he knows the President , you know, so maybe they were scared to have him in too much?) but much more in fandom.
Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake. Yes, you heard me.): Founder (only part founder in RL, but it’s all him in the movie) of Napster , cool dude,home-wrecker, and drugs and young (very young) lady enthusiast.
Erica Albright (Rooney Mara): Mark’s girlfriend who breaks up with him at the start and can potentially be seen as the catalyst of it all. No Real Life equivalent, and effectively is a metaphor in the film, mirroring the teenaged boy’s view of women as a reward for success and when Mark keeps trying to get her back/get her to accept his friend request it’s the spotlight for his loneliness and that he hasn’t achieved what he wanted from life. ANYWAY. Enough with the metaphors.
Christy Lee (Brenda Song): Eduardo’s crazy girlfriend. Who did this to his bed:
which I plan to do the next time I break up with someone. /crazy
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer and Josh Pence) and Divya Narenda (Max Minghella): Commission Mark to code their Harvard dating site and then sue the pants of him when he doesn’t. The Winklevii are Olympic rowers and double-dipped on the whole suing thing in Real Life (yawn). But have a great line:
Plot (spoilers)
There are effectively two timelines going on in the movie; 1) the development of facebook and 2) the subsequent lawsuit depositions a few years later. These are interspersed in the movie, moving between the two to provide a nice dramatic contrast. Here’s the plot in linear summary:
Mark Zuckerberg, Harvard student, gets dumped by his girlfriend, Erica Albright, and then creates a webpage using his hacking skills and his best friend Eduardo’s algorithm to rank female Harvard students which crashes the Harvard computer network.
This brings him to the attention of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra who want him to code their idea for a website (effectively match.com for Harvard). He doesn’t, but at the same time develops thefacebook using Eduardo’s money.
thefacebook takes off and Mark now comes to the attention of Sean Parker (in the movie apparently sole founder of napster). Also in the movie coooooool as beans...
source unknown
...and also something of an asshole. Sean suggests it becomes just facebook, and agrees with Mark’s vision of what facebook should be and not ‘monetizing’ (putting adverts) on the site. Unlike Eduardo. Eduardo stays in New York trying to get advertisers for the site while Mark and Sean et al are in California. This is the beginning of the end for Mark and Eduardo. Their differences and geographical distance cause them to fight and Eduardo to get ‘left behind’. Eduardo freezes the facebook bank account in a fit of pique, but at the same time Sean and Mark get an ‘angel investment’ from Peter Thiel for half a million dollars so they don’t really need it (or Eduardo) any more.
SO. They dilute Eduardo’s shares and kick him out of facebook. Sean gets busted for coke and underage girls, Eduardo sues Mark and facebook becomes... facebook.
fast forward
In the second timeline Eduardo is suing Mark for 600 million dollars and recognition of co-foundership of facebook and the Winklevii and Divya are suing him for the original idea. They think Mark stole it from them. He disagrees:
source
Mark settles with them all and is left lonely and hoping that Erica Albright will accept his friend request... (but also a super successful billionaire. So. Swings and roundabouts, I guess...?)
Fandom
Fandom pretty much resolutely ignores the real people this movie was based on. The characters in fic only rarely refer to a movie being made about them, and generally the most any reality intrudes into fandom is Chris Hughes frequently moves into politics (he joined President Obama’s campaign) and Eduardo frequently spends time in Singapore (where he moved in RL).
Fandom initially embraced the Andrew Garfield view of the movie, that it’s basically about Mark and Eduardo’s relationship which, of course, gave fandom something to a) fix or b) worry at the pain and angst of broken love and dreams like at a rotten tooth, both of which we love to do.
Fandom noticeably increased the role of Chris and Dustin (the other two of the four recognized founders IRL) and waver between whether any or all of the three main characters are misunderstood, sorry, not-sorry or simply total (pretentious) douchebags. It all makes for good fun.
In recent times fandom has developed into other pairings beyond Mark/Eduardo, ones not slapping one quite so much in the face in the source material, but a lot of fun, such as Sean/Eduardo, Mark/Dustin, Mark/Sean and Chris/Dustin (which has been bubbling along quite frequently as a side-pairing to M/E (and part of the OT4)) is now getting some love of its own. Alas, this is a movie about boys, so there’s very little lady-love.
Resources
I must declare my Mark/Eduardo bias, but there’s plenty for all.
Here’s a fabulous, well-organised rec list that I cannot recommend highly enough: http://bea-recs.dreamwidth.org/29414.html
Here’s a lovely Mark/Eduardo primer: http://mossy-garden.livejournal.com/17078.html
Here are the key LJ communities:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
mark_eduardo
tsn_kinkmeme
sean_mark
tsn_ficfinder
socialnetwrkfic
There’s fabulous Harvard fic, au fic, deposition fic, fix-it-fic (try saying that five times fast) and something for all.
Explore and enjoy!
The Social Network is an award-winning 2010 film by Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher starring Jesse Eisenberg (Mark Zuckerberg), Andrew Garfield (Eduardo Saverin) and Justin Timberlake (Sean Parker)...
...about the founding of Facebook. And more...
“Up until the end, Eduardo’s hoping at some point Mark’s going to go, ‘Look, I’m really, really sorry, man. I really messed up. I love you so much, and I just was jealous of you for this. And I acted out like this. Can we be friends again? I’ll give you back as much money as you want. Let’s move in together and we’ll play basketball every day, and we’ll cuddle at night and watch reality TV.’ Part of Eduardo in those depositions is just waiting for that moment.” Andrew Garfield.
I’m not going to linger too long on the actors, because that’s a whole other (equally delightful) ballgame (you can check out a primer here), but you should probably know that Andrew Garfield has repeatedly referred to Eduardo as emotionally Mark’s jilted girlfriend, and he played it that way.
Here is the trailer for your viewing pleasure:
OK, it’s ever so slightly pleased with itself, but we let it off because it really is a great film.
Main Characters
Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg): Founder of facebook, coder, terrible boyfriend (and terrible hetero-life-partner) socially inept (arguably by choice rather than inadequacy, but we don’t really know...) and wearer of seasonally inappropriate cargo shorts and flip-flops
Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield): Mark’s best friend, provider of finance to found facebook, weather enthusiast, President of the Harvard Investor’s association, Phoenix club member and wearer of awesome suits (and occasional awful Hawaiian shirt).
Dustin Moskovitz (Joseph Mazzello) and Chris Hughes (Patrick Mapel): Mark’s roommates and the other two founders of facebook (making the fab four). Very sparsely used in the actual film (particularly Chris – well, he knows the President , you know, so maybe they were scared to have him in too much?) but much more in fandom.
Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake. Yes, you heard me.): Founder (only part founder in RL, but it’s all him in the movie) of Napster , cool dude,
Erica Albright (Rooney Mara): Mark’s girlfriend who breaks up with him at the start and can potentially be seen as the catalyst of it all. No Real Life equivalent, and effectively is a metaphor in the film, mirroring the teenaged boy’s view of women as a reward for success and when Mark keeps trying to get her back/get her to accept his friend request it’s the spotlight for his loneliness and that he hasn’t achieved what he wanted from life. ANYWAY. Enough with the metaphors.
Christy Lee (Brenda Song): Eduardo’s crazy girlfriend. Who did this to his bed:
which I plan to do the next time I break up with someone. /crazy
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (Armie Hammer and Josh Pence) and Divya Narenda (Max Minghella): Commission Mark to code their Harvard dating site and then sue the pants of him when he doesn’t. The Winklevii are Olympic rowers and double-dipped on the whole suing thing in Real Life (yawn). But have a great line:
Plot (spoilers)
There are effectively two timelines going on in the movie; 1) the development of facebook and 2) the subsequent lawsuit depositions a few years later. These are interspersed in the movie, moving between the two to provide a nice dramatic contrast. Here’s the plot in linear summary:
Mark Zuckerberg, Harvard student, gets dumped by his girlfriend, Erica Albright, and then creates a webpage using his hacking skills and his best friend Eduardo’s algorithm to rank female Harvard students which crashes the Harvard computer network.
This brings him to the attention of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendra who want him to code their idea for a website (effectively match.com for Harvard). He doesn’t, but at the same time develops thefacebook using Eduardo’s money.
thefacebook takes off and Mark now comes to the attention of Sean Parker (in the movie apparently sole founder of napster). Also in the movie coooooool as beans...
source unknown
...and also something of an asshole. Sean suggests it becomes just facebook, and agrees with Mark’s vision of what facebook should be and not ‘monetizing’ (putting adverts) on the site. Unlike Eduardo. Eduardo stays in New York trying to get advertisers for the site while Mark and Sean et al are in California. This is the beginning of the end for Mark and Eduardo. Their differences and geographical distance cause them to fight and Eduardo to get ‘left behind’. Eduardo freezes the facebook bank account in a fit of pique, but at the same time Sean and Mark get an ‘angel investment’ from Peter Thiel for half a million dollars so they don’t really need it (or Eduardo) any more.
SO. They dilute Eduardo’s shares and kick him out of facebook. Sean gets busted for coke and underage girls, Eduardo sues Mark and facebook becomes... facebook.
fast forward
In the second timeline Eduardo is suing Mark for 600 million dollars and recognition of co-foundership of facebook and the Winklevii and Divya are suing him for the original idea. They think Mark stole it from them. He disagrees:
source
Mark settles with them all and is left lonely and hoping that Erica Albright will accept his friend request... (but also a super successful billionaire. So. Swings and roundabouts, I guess...?)
Fandom
Fandom pretty much resolutely ignores the real people this movie was based on. The characters in fic only rarely refer to a movie being made about them, and generally the most any reality intrudes into fandom is Chris Hughes frequently moves into politics (he joined President Obama’s campaign) and Eduardo frequently spends time in Singapore (where he moved in RL).
Fandom initially embraced the Andrew Garfield view of the movie, that it’s basically about Mark and Eduardo’s relationship which, of course, gave fandom something to a) fix or b) worry at the pain and angst of broken love and dreams like at a rotten tooth, both of which we love to do.
Fandom noticeably increased the role of Chris and Dustin (the other two of the four recognized founders IRL) and waver between whether any or all of the three main characters are misunderstood, sorry, not-sorry or simply total (pretentious) douchebags. It all makes for good fun.
In recent times fandom has developed into other pairings beyond Mark/Eduardo, ones not slapping one quite so much in the face in the source material, but a lot of fun, such as Sean/Eduardo, Mark/Dustin, Mark/Sean and Chris/Dustin (which has been bubbling along quite frequently as a side-pairing to M/E (and part of the OT4)) is now getting some love of its own. Alas, this is a movie about boys, so there’s very little lady-love.
Resources
I must declare my Mark/Eduardo bias, but there’s plenty for all.
Here’s a fabulous, well-organised rec list that I cannot recommend highly enough: http://bea-recs.dreamwidth.org/29414.html
Here’s a lovely Mark/Eduardo primer: http://mossy-garden.livejournal.com/17078.html
Here are the key LJ communities:
mark_eduardotsn_kinkmemesean_marktsn_ficfindersocialnetwrkficThere’s fabulous Harvard fic, au fic, deposition fic, fix-it-fic (try saying that five times fast) and something for all.
Explore and enjoy!