#lets boogie

so. remember ep90, “if you’re hungry and you know it”? it’s the one where maggie calls in to apply and gets treated like shit by our protagonists for 15 minutes. comments are made about her breasts. they try to dissuade her from applying for the job posting they’ve been advertising because chet would sexually harass her and rather than address that they’d rather just.... warn off every female applicant? maggie through the conversation is trying to make amends for her wrongs (i.e. high school drama and attacking a guy who sexually harassed her so badly for years she quit her job) and talk about her efforts at recovery, and she is mocked, both in the way she is written and in the way sammy and ben talk to and about her.

it was bad. it was very sexist and bad, and nothing was said about it for a month (7/15-8/15), at which point ep92, “words: greater than pen, greater than sword” aired, which contained lily tearing sammy to shreds over it. ben wasn’t there, which was interesting, because it did create a dynamic where our resident socially aware lesbian (who solely bears the burden of educating people when they are being shitheads and is richly rewarded by being widely regarded as an unlikeable bitch by the fandom and many of the characters) rightfully confronts and gets an apology from a gay man for being half of an extremely misogynist shutdown of a woman. meanwhile, his hetero counterpart and unassailable purehearted fandom darling is not yelled at for his misogyny, and gets to have this Very Important Lesson relegated to him offscreen later. i mean, presumably? i’m pretty sure we never hear whether that actually happens.

still, it was a pretty thorough discussion of how gross that conversation had been, and it was addressed and apologized for in the show itself by the characters (or one of them), which was more than i expected. it regained some lost trust. it was clear to me that the kfam team had received the same sort of outcry from the fandom that i had seen in more private servers, and these were their amends. i decided to tweet at them applauding the effort. this is how that worked out:

[ID: a tweet by me that reads: “@ KingFallsAM hey.... today's episode was good. this was a good way to respond to fan criticism and the apology is appreciated. thanks.”

the official kfam account quote tweeted this to respond: “This was an intended storyline, we don’t course correct. We have ALWAYS had imperfect characters that learn and grow and will continue to. Also... we only saw one tweet even mention it. But thanks?“

a fellow fan, whose username and icon have been redacted, replied to the official kfam account’s response with: “I feel like there’s a less sarcastic way to respond to this tweet. I’m a diehard fan, however I saw quite a bit of criticism about thesexism[sic] in the recent episodes. I too was under the impression that it was a course correction, regardless I am glad that there is character growth“]

so. that was a cool thing. like, i do owe that other fan my life and will show up for them in their hour of need for being the only one to publically stick up for me despite being a stranger, but that sure was a quote tweet that a multi-thousand-followers account used to dunk on my under-100-followers account for trying to pay them a compliment!

i mean, really. the passive-aggressive ‘but thanks?’ at the end? and them saying not that they didnt course correct in this case where followup (a month later) was planned, but that they don’t course-correct, as in they never do that--was a clear statement of ‘we don’t accept fan criticism or feedback on writing OR representation and take it into account, ever’. hey kfam, pro tip: when you say 'thanks for accepting our apology i guess' it really sounds like you didnt feel like you needed to apologize in the first place. which is a pretty bold attitude to take about an episode where a character apologizes for being sexist.

like no wonder you only saw one tweet about it if that’s the attitude you present toward criticism (and, as @kfam-tea​‘s blog thoroughly proves, it is and has been, consistently). i know the risk of backlash is definitely why i hadn’t said anything about 90 in public up to that point. but yeah, 'nobody told us that episode was disgusting in our samebrain discord server that contains the literal creators who have a history of backlash, so can you really say there was fan criticism at all? maybe it was just in your head. after all, if we did something wrong with the intention to correct it a month later, did we really do anything wrong in the first place? checkmate'

tl;dr im not surprised by the new developments. my hearts go out to the MINORS, who are specifically cultivated as an audience by the sfw policy of the official server, who were publically chewed out by the grown ass author on twitter for requesting tags, warnings, or really any sort of discretion or consideration at all on nsfw content.

p.s.: here’s something kyle said on the discord in response to a conversation in which i criticized ben’s behavior during an episode (i.e. said he should apologize and take responsibility for a hurtful thing he did even though he did it by accident, or at least have it acknowledged in the show or the fandom that he did a hurtful thing--another post, perhaps) and the rest of the discord dogpiled me until i cried and shut down and stopped defending myself or speaking at all because i couldn’t deal with inviting any more argument:

[ID: a discord message from kyle that reads: “Thank you all for talking about this maturely and with your words. I’ve personally never seen that heard[sic???] of this scene with that POV attached but that’s the beautiful thing about this show and shows like it, is[sic] that we all kinda copy & paste ourselves on these characters and situations at times. Everybody’s opinions on the situation is[sic] valid with their own personal context of the scene.” two people have reacted with blue heart emojis.]