Whaaaaat (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Tuesday, November 06, 2018, 14:55 (2005 days ago) @ kidtsunami

Ultimately, I think the issue of "change" is where the majority of the tension comes from in these situations. The majority of fans of any game/book/movie love to have new fans join them in celebrating the thing that they love together. What they don't want is to have the thing that they love changed in order to attract new fans. And this trend is often misdiagnosed, then made worse by the fact that a significant portion of the people expressing their concerns do so poorly, or rudely, or aggressively, because they're being jerks on the internet. And that is precisely where the "gatekeeping" phenomenon comes in. Marvel comics over the past several years is a great example. Marvel looked at their readership and thought "it sure would be great if more women bought our comics... let's do something about that." Totally valid observation, and a great goal. But rather than creating new content to achieve that goal, they took a bunch of their existing franchises and characters and changed them (swapping sex or race or both). Fans complained because their favorite characters and books were suddenly being transformed, and then the whole argument between the self-described "real fans" and everyone else takes off. This is utterly predictable and understandable, and not due to widespread discrimination among comic-book fans. That's just what happens when you take something that people love and change it.

Whoa man, #ComicsGate is not just "Fans complained", it's been targeted harassment and campaigns to get people fired when they defend themselves against said bigoted harassment.

You're really minimizing some insidious behavior here.

I know you're not talking to me, but let's agree that bad behavior is bad. I have a problem with lumping in all unhappy fans with the subset who behaves badly. That's another form of behaving badly, and that's a problem, too. I'm not fond of harassment campaigns, regardless of the target. It's why I'm essentially a non-presence on twitter, which seems to me built to enable such things. It encourages the most impulsive and least thoughtful sides of ourselves.

In defense of Cruel, I read this as his mile-high view--his effort to dispassionately (and with generosity to all involved) assess what is really going on. Not a popular tact these days, I realize.

Yeah, I just have an issue with taking mile-high views because they often engage in some level of generalization. I'm not saying that anyone bothered by Marvel's direction is awful. What I AM saying is that there is a movement driven by particularly ugly beliefs that revels in this type of fan discontent. Just because somebody (and this is shaky at best) may naively feel upset that their favorite comic book character has transformed (don't comic book characters change ALL the time?) doesn't make all the damage those movements have caused go away.

"Naively upset"? That sort of preloads the narrative, doesn't it? It seems to me that Cruel is arguing against generalization, too, but I guess we all tend to pick the generalization that best conforms to our worldview. Some generalization is inevitable and necessary, and we have to choose wisely, and allow for exceptions. I prefer generalizations that give people credit.

Coming out and trying to say "overall, the majority of the tension is due to frustration with change" without acknowledging the hateful campaigns minimizes them and validates the efforts of those campaigns to paint their discontent as mere frustration with change. We KNOW that groups on 4Chan and the uglier parts of reddit organize around these things, to not reckon with that is a form of complicity or ignorance at best.

I don't agree, but I'm probably giving people credit again. You don't mention some bad behavior I'd like for you to acknowledge, but I'm not assuming you're complicit with it. Remember, Cruel is minimizing in a particular context, which was Harmonious maximizing aspects of the issue HE wanted to maximize. Everybody's working to get at what's true here.