Whedonesque Fail

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If you've got your feminist bingo card ready, read the Hathor Legacy thread. You could fill the card several times over.

(I posted the Hathor and Rebecca Allen links, but never went back to the thread as it made me too angry. See the link for Girl Wonder, have a look and then Simon's pulling the same shit all over again. I'm sure that by tomorrow morning you'll be able to fill your racism bingo card as well).

ETA I pulled those quotes because they are either mods, or in the case of bix! people with a huge amount of credibility and respect at Whedonesque.

ETA 2 "Was there a discussion that the Cosby-Show had to few white characters?
Did anyone mention that the Sopranos had too many italians??"

ETA 3This post is now unlocked.

Comments

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

I actually had quite a lot of respect for them as well and the way they'd keep the board from degenerating into ship- or character-wanks.

Where I started losing respect for them was when Serenity hit movie theaters. Any movie critic, any blogger, any anyone who had the temerity to say, "I don't like the movie," or "I didn't like Firefly," were suddenly getting mobbed by outraged browncoats who read that they show had gotten dissed on Whedonesque.

That doesn't even take into account the nasty comments that got thrown at those same people that remained on Whedonesque. Some of those comments got pretty damn personal.

I'll be honest: I'm not surprised that Whedonesque has resorted to "Bingo-ing" feminist bloggers who have issues with Joss's work on the grounds of racism and sexism due to the "Joss is always God" attitude over there. It was a matter of time before shit like this happened.

Hell, a few people on my LJ were making fun of Whedonesque's attitude last week. I think we all pretty much knew there was going to be some kind of sexism- or racism- wanksplosion coming sooner rather than later from that direction.

I just didn't expect both and I certainly didn't expect them with a week of each other.

[simonf.livejournal.com]

I hardly think Whedonesque is responsible for the behaviour of idiotic Browncoats who go on a jihad elsewhere because some one said Serenity is less than wonderful. Having been on the receiving end of said idiots, I do wonder about their sanity.

And quite frankly I wonder why some people are puzzled as to why Whedonesque does not follow their train of thought. It's a pro-Joss site, it's full of Joss fans. It's not TWOP, it's not a general Buffy board or an LJ community. Yes it can get out of hand and we're not perfect but we do try to get it right most of them.

And in regards to the article, if I was so anti it , I would have deleted but I didn't.* I thought the Season 8 article was trite and badly written and if you used comments like "white mcwhiterson" that just says to me "cheap shot". I've posted far better critiques of Buffy and racism and feminism than that. Stuff that was worth reading and chewing over.

*I delete the Allecto stuff but that's just nasty material. She has some good points but her personal attacks on Joss are beyond the pale.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

I, on the other hand, thought both the Girl-Wonder Blog and the Hathor Legacy blogs were dead-on in their assessments.

And the problem is not that people disagree, but the utterly disrespectful tone that is horrendously dismissive of those opinions (which, by the by, are not exactly new or unusual opinions about Joss's work). It isn't just comments stating that people disagreed with Girl-Wonder or Hathor Legacy, but the language used. Certainly more than a little sexism and racism showed up, cloaked in "nice guy language."

And by the way, Simon, I noticed you engaging in some "Nice Guy" language in there, too, so right now I'm not inclined to by sympathetic with your annoyance over the "white mcwhiterson" remark — especially since the remark was pretty on-target as far as I can see.

And by the way: Do you honestly think that those two blogs represent the only bad reviews of Dr. Horrible or the Buffy comic? Let me say this in the kindest way possible: You would be horribly wrong to think that.

Dr. Horrible alone generated a lot of chatter on my Flist that flat-out stated: 1) Oh, look. Joss killed another normal human woman. Really not surprised; and 2) Does anyone really believe Joss when he claims to be a feminist anymore? Because we're starting to think it's a marketing thing.

Really, Simon. When you look at his pattern, you may see one thing. But there are an awful lot of people out there who are looking at his pattern and they're really starting to not like what they see. And here's the thing: If Joss himself wasn't trying to push the idea that he's a feminist and is writing "feminist entertainment," no one would call him on it. But the fact is he does make those claims, so when people start seeing the same pattern out of him be it sexism or racism, they're going to call him on it.

And finally, you may not like those opinions. You have every right to disagree with those opinions.

But I seriously suggest you take a look at the responses that flooded those two Whedonesque posts. An awful lot of your monkeys started flinging poo around, and your responses, as well as the responses of the other mods made it look like that the mods on the site not only approved of the poo being flown around, but were also encouraging people to fling poo around.

If you're wondering why Whedonesque is starting to get a reputation for not being the nicest corner of the Web to hangout in, as well as getting labeled as "the place where the batshit insane Joss fans hang out," I think you can look at the responses to those posts as Exhibits A and B, as well as the mobbing of Hathor Legacy and Girl Wonder as Exhibits C and D.

Just sayin' dude.

[havocthecat]

Liz? You're completely awesome. Just so you know.

Times like this are when I regret swapping out most of my Jossverse icons for Gateverse. Not that I don't still have plenty of Jossverse.

[revena.livejournal.com]

And the problem is not that people disagree, but the utterly disrespectful tone that is horrendously dismissive of those opinions (which, by the by, are not exactly new or unusual opinions about Joss's work). It isn't just comments stating that people disagreed with Girl-Wonder or Hathor Legacy, but the language used. Certainly more than a little sexism and racism showed up, cloaked in "nice guy language."

You should see some of the comments we've been moderating out! ;-)

ETA: I should say, that we've been moderating out at Hathor. I just realized that could be a little confusing, since I'm not talking about the comments at Whedonesque, but rather about the inevitable, more-obviously-offensive manifestations elsewhere.

[simonf.livejournal.com]

I'm well aware of the repututation(s) Whedonesque has got over the past 6 years.

We've been labelled as

Browncoat Central
Firefly haters
Spuffies
Bangels
Anti-shipping (there's truth there)
Being blindly devoted to Joss
Not being devoted to Joss enough
Anti Spike/pro Spike (and by extension the actor James Marsters as well)
SMG haters/SMG lovers
UnAmerican
Left Wing
Pro-Muslim and anti Christian
anti-Mormon (not our finest hour I will admit)
Homophobic
Pro-Slash
Fanboyish
Fangirlish
Feminist
Sexist

I could go on but those are the main accusations. It's got to the point where I think some fans will see what they want to see at Whedonesque. You see coded sexist and racist terms at Whedonesque, others will see open and honest debate. If I thought it had become somekin to an AICN talkbalk session, there's would have been blood on the carpet spilt by me. I'll not put up with damn silly fanboy nonsense.

As for Joss' pattern, well we did actually notice that and he was called out on it by several people in the Act 3 discussion. Killing people seems to be his raison d'etre and if he does it well then fair play to him. Others might perceive it as a one-trick pony thing.

There also seems to be a weird belief that all Joss fans collectively live in cloud cuckoo land and we all think that's there never been any valid criticism of his works and never will be. This is patently just nonsense. If the argument is well written, I'll read it. Now I'll stick my hand up and freely admit I'm not a huge fan of ideologically driven critiques. It's starting to be come a bug bear with me. I'd much rather read critiques of Joss' perceived failings as a writer, director etc.

And by the way while I do take your concerns on board (it makes a nice change), calling my fellow posters 'monkeys' does somewhat detract from your argument.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

See, even now you're not quite getting it. Killing people is not the problem. It's killing more POC and women than anyone else that is the problem. It's a pattern, and it's a bad pattern. By my count, there's one black character beyond 'guest appearance' that's made it out alive, and that could have changed in more recent Buffy comics. That's...a really shitty record.

[simonf.livejournal.com]

I do get why people have a problem with his record on killing off characters on Buffy. But I genuinely think he doesn't look at their sex or skin colour. He just kills people so it can add to the drama. I can understand why it looks bad when you look at the pattern but I don't think there's any wilful malice or ignorance behind it. Though I would be interested to see what the artist Georges Jeanty thought of it all. I would imagine his input matters as well.

And one minor problem I have with a lot of critiques of Joss' track record on killing people is that they tend to focus on Buffy and ignore what happened on Angel and Firefly where there were PoC in the core cast.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Actually, I am factoring in what happened on Angel. (See: Gunn, Gavin, etc.) Firefly is a different case, as it's a different universe; but there, yet again, the sole black male dies, and for all the Chinese spoken there was a decided lack of visible Chinese characters. The whole point is that things can reflect prejudice without the author being aware of either their prejudices or the way they're being expressed in the work.

Everyone has a set of assumptions they're working with that they're not necessarily aware of, and that's okay. It doesn't mean we think (or I do, at least) that Joss is a bad person. But it does mean I want him to learn, and grow, and do fewer problematic things in the future (I'm a bit heartened, in fact, but the slightly more diverse-looking cast of Dollhouse).

[simonf.livejournal.com]

The lack of Chinese people on Firefly was a bit of odd. But I gather Simon and River Tam were to be viewed as being from Chinese as well as Caucasian descent. And I think that the Chinese in the 'Verse did have their own planet, we just never got to see it. Did they become isolationist? We'll never know. The short run of Firefly did limit the back story so a lot of it is presumption and vague memories tweaked from writers' brains.

but there, yet again, the sole black male dies

And the sole married man dies as well. Joss will kill anyone to further the plot.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Because we all know there's a great lack of married male characters in current popular culture. Good lord.