Mark Watches

[quinara]

FFS, I told myself last night that I wasn't allowed to think about this, but... I can't believe it's been ten years - ten years - and people are still demonising and threatening people who dare:

1. Read Smashed in a way that Buffy is not a victim

Comments

[shapinglight]

I'm certainly not going to tell you that.

Don't let it get to you, love. They're only foaming at the mouth 'cos they lost.

So I tell myself. I haven't looked at Mark Watches and don't intend to.

[quinara]

All very good points. I wasn't even in the thick of fandom when this went round the first time, just at the edges but it's so intensely maddening.

I hate this vein of Buffy characterisation that makes her subject to everything that happens around her. I wish it would go away. :(

[shapinglight]

I hate this vein of Buffy characterisation that makes her subject to everything that happens around her. I wish it would go away. :(

She is but a fragile butterfly blown hither and thither willy nilly.

Or something.

[quinara]

*imagines the Spuffy All Butterfly AU in which Buffy is a cabbage white and Spike is some sort of sarcastic moth, where they spend a lot of time slinging pollen at each other and having nasty!butterfly!sex that crushes all the flowers around them*

[penny_lane_42]

Thankfully I feel enough of a distance from it that my only real reaction is massive eye-rolling, but I understand the anger. Ugh, Mark.

[quinara]

There's been the question of whether he's spoilered for a while, and I thought I would be entertained if it turned out that he actually was (because at least that would explain his overreaction and management of people's opinions), but it actually turns out that I can't bear his manipulation of the situation... Framing an argument so that people who disagree with you become morally suspect is the most repugnant form of rhetoric, to my mind - and I've seen it too many times in fandom. Definitely too many times with Spuffy.

I think most of my anger comes from anticipation of the AR, which has always and will forever more be used as the trump card in every argument about why Spike is evil and Spuffy is wrong. Because the way this works is to make sure the debate's working from exactly the right principles that the moment can't be read in any other way.

[penny_lane_42]

Oh, he definitely, definitely has been spoiled at least for the AR, though I would believe he doesn't know any of the actual details. And you're right--there's something gross and immature and just flat-out stupid about pretending like he isn't. I realize that his "brand" depends on his readers' belief that they're watching him experience it in real time, but it's ridiculous that he's flat-out lying at this point.

Because the way this works is to make sure the debate's working from exactly the right principles that the moment can't be read in any other way.

Truth. I support your righteous indignation.

[quinara]

Truth. I support your righteous indignation.

:D Let's take this town for our own!

[ningloreth]

I haven't seen the episode (I just had to look it up on Wikipedia), but people's unwillingness to do this:

2. Analyse ... on its own individual basis of a relationship between two characters in a fantasy world rather than something solely contextualised by impersonal sociological narratives.

drives me spare. Nobody seems to understand the concept of fiction any more. They don't accept that a story has a value (and a meaning) greater than the sum of its parts. They don't believe that another person can read/see something that expresses a point of view they disapprove of and not be instantly converted to the dark side. It must be something to do with what they're taught at school.

Analysing fiction in terms of impersonal sociological narratives is such a slippery slope, not only because the story gets lost and characters become 'real' villains, but also because the readers/viewers who disagree become 'evil'.

'die fools' sums it up :-)

[quinara]

Nobody seems to understand the concept of fiction any more. ... It must be something to do with what they're taught at school.

It seems to me that the internet is fairly au fait with the concept that fictional narratives accrue to create a discourse around a topic, and this impacts the way we understand and interact with society. Where the internet in general then seems to fall down is the idea that fiction then responds to that discourse as part of a narrative and there are a whole bunch of other considerations and contexts to take into account as well. It's not enough to abstract one scene and then judge it by arbitrary criteria.

(The Bechdel Test is a great example of this, actually - invented as a tool to show media patterns; used by the internet to judge things once and move on, without any other analysis.)

'die fools' sums it up :-)

Baldur's Gate battle cries are so useful sometimes...

[ningloreth]

65 comments! Wow! I must read them because this business intrigues me!

I've been thinking about this, on and off, and about what I meant to say, but didn't, which was: amongst other things, fiction is the safe space in which you can experience the things you do not want to/would be stupid to/would not be allowed to experience in real life, and the 'policing' of content on the Internet too often ignores that, and treats it as though it's continuous with RL.

(I also think that a storyhas its own raison d'être that supersedes most other considerations (even though the content of an individual story might make me grit my teeth), but I don't expect anyone else to agree with me on that one).

[Why do 'critics' have to give us TMI about their relationships? I can handle the stuff he warns for, it's being forced into the role of his best mate that freaks me out.]

[quinara]

Well, I think a good chunk of the comments are about butterflies now... But have at it!

[Why do 'critics' have to give us TMI about their relationships? I can handle the stuff he warns for, it's being forced into the role of his best mate that freaks me out.]

Heh, I'm never sure about that either. I think there tends to be three sides to it, though I'm never quite sure how they should be weighted - the side where this is actually just how people engage with stories, so its part of their review inasmuch as it's explaining how their impressions form; on the other side I think a lot of people who overshare are just trying to work through their issues (of which there are often a lot) in their own (extroverted) way; and then there in the background I think there's sometimes the idea that if they can prove their interpretation has some sort of emotional 'truth' in it then that makes their point more strongly than it would be made otherwise. (And of course the nasty side of that comes out when people start using their own experience as

[eilowyn]

Mark basically uses the term rape apologist in the same way McCarthyism used Communist. It's a witch hunt over there, and if you step out of line you'll be the next accused.

[quinara]

Luckily, though, he has absolutely no power outside his own blog to crack down on people - which must frustrate him no end. :D

[readerjane]

It makes me sad that it was talking about Spuffy that brought out the big kaboom on MarkWatches.

I mean, I know spuffy fans can be just as crazy as the next group. I just wish I could see our subculture as a bastion of... something... I don't even know.

Couldn't the crazies have kaboomed over I Will Remember You first? {she cried plaintively}

[quinara]

Well, kabooming over IWRY would have required anti-Bangels acting as dickish as anti-Spike/anti-Spuffy/anti-S6-Spuffy-as-definied-a-certain-way did here... So I'm rather glad they/we didn't.

Unfortunately, history seems to have proved that S6 Spuffy seems to hit an awful lot of button's as far as dividing people goes and people taking it upon themselves to explain divergent opinions as moral degeneracy. And knowingly or not MarkWatches has decided to play into that wholeheartedly.