When you need to rant...

[Drtooth]

I think there are certain people that take things way too sensitively. Mistakes can be made with characters. As long as they don't go through painful Flanderizing or derailment that completely ruin them, that is. Now, I don't want to know the criticisms because I don't want spoilers. Anyone can make mistakes or have to do something slightly unsavory for the sake of plot. You can't make a person in fiction perfect because that's perfectly unrealistic. It sucks and is a shame that stuff like this does manage to happen, but there's a difference between thoughtful criticism and overemphasized anger. Anger spreads anger, and every argument is only as strong as it's craziest/loudest/angriest commenter. Those who want to have a thoughtful conversation are usually undone (unfairly) by those who agree with them in the angriest, nastiest way possible. And as anger breads anger, you'll have militant types from the opposite side being just as jerky as well.

And like I said. This is the internet. Who knows if the angrier, stupider ones are even sincere? They could be trolls dismantling their point, or just to get a rise out of people.

It's great to know that there are women readers who hate terrible characters written by female writers as well. You just don't hear about them that much compared to this. I don't think its right to promote abuse as romance, no matter who the author is. I really wish there was more publicity against those kinds of stories. I've seen some abusive relationships in real life before (one ruined my sister, but she's in a good place now) and anything promoting them as anything but monstrous is detrimental. I just wish there was more vocal action about those things.

 

[CensoredAlso]

they suddenly take a lot of backwards steps in their character development by having being violated and shown as weak to benefit the male lead's story and character development.

The solution to that is having more male characters in vulnerable positions. But Hollywood isn't interested in doing that, and neither are many feminists. So nothing changes.

As I woman, I find the criticism of Black Widow in this film quite sad and inexplicable. She had a lot of great moments that have been bizarrely misinterpreted. I like Tumblr for photos, not for film analysis.

 

[Drtooth]

The solution to that is having more male characters in vulnerable positions. But Hollywood isn't interested in doing that, and neither are many feminists. So nothing changes.

As I woman, I find the criticism of Black Widow in this film quite sad and inexplicable. She had a lot of great moments that have been bizarrely misinterpreted. I like Tumblr for photos, not for film analysis.

That statement is entirely why creators and writers favor white male roles. Look at Homer Simpson. You could list everything offensive about the character... negative portrait of white middle American males, offensiveness to fat people that he's only 240 and somehow the fattest character in a show with Chief Wiggum and Comic Book Guy... but here's the thing. No one cares about that, nor that they should (though treating a 240 pound man like he's well over 3000 pounds is a bit much, I agree).

Thing is, you can do anything to a white guy in a TV series and, while there's a teeny tiny bit of complaint, it's ignorable. Now, change any of that to any race or gender and everything can be picked apart. You can't have Asians in martial arts movies because it's offensive that we only know that much of their culture. Yet when The Last Airbender's movie came out it was all "what the heck happened to the Asians? Why are there no Asians in a martial arts movie?!" Then Princess and the Frog. AHHHH! Tiana's too Black! AHHHH!! Tianna's too White! AAAAHH!! Let's just go see the second Chipmunks movie instead. Someone "comedically" knocking a wheelchair bound woman down the stairs is less offensive than a name that sort of sounds like "Mammy" if you've got a cold and your hearing aid doesn't work.

SNL did a brilliant skit about an Asian fashion doll and how they went through so many focus groups to make sure the doll didn't even have a name because it was considered offensive and only gave her a knife ("because everyone loves cooking, right?") and a dog (because everyone likes pets) and a little girl in the commercial points out "is she going to cook and eat the dog?" and the narrator shouts something to the extent of "That's just great! How didn't we catch that one?" They had another one I only saw the tail end of where they had a TV show keep getting letters about how certain races and gay people weren't being represented, and once they were, they kept getting letters of varying degrees of racism and homophobia. Moral of the story? You can't freaking win trying to please people, and the harder you try, the more people hate you for it.

This leads to flat characters that don't do anything because anything and everything can be picked apart by someone with too much free time on their hands that gets way too angry over something petty gets avoided like nuclear waste. Then they get complaints that the character is a token. No one wins, no one's happy. And this isn't a case of overly liberal political correctness. No. It's a case of people needing to get over themselves and focus on real injustice.

 

[D'Snowth]

Here's the thing too: the entertainment market in general is dominated by males, that's just a given, and that's always been a problem (slightly OT, but that's one of the reasons Courage wasn't merchandised, because apparently boys aren't going to want to buy products of a pink dog), so the "masses" as it were would probably rather see something involving vulnerable females in kinky situations - with or without consnet - rather than other dudes in the same kind of role.

Remember this: couple of years ago, one dude went to Kickstarter to fund publishing for his book that was essentially a handbook for men on how to rape women (okay, not literally, but practically), and he surpassed his goal by 800%, no kidding.

There's always been a lack of positive rolemodels for women, in entertainment, but there's also the problem of them trying too hard as well. BRIDESMAIDS has been praised for being the first movie to finally give women characters they can relate to . . . but the problem is none of the characters in that movie were positive characters, and were basically the kind of women people with half a brain would try to avoid in real life. Similarly, Reese Witherspoon was on Letterman the other night saying she and Sofia Vergara were doing HOT PURSUIT because of a lack of women buddy comedies out there, but Sofia Vergara is generally just loud and obnoxious in everything she does, and Reese Witherspoon hasn't done a good movie in a long time (again, there's that movie she did recently where her character has a lot of on-screen sex, and even contemplates possibly being a lesbian, and she actually wanted her own kids to watch her do all that). Then, need I go into more of the same rants against the likes of Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes, and arguable Selena Gomez (who despite claiming to be a Christian has recently posed topless in a magazine) and Demi Lovato (who I swear changes her appearance more than a chameleon)?

Again, the problem is with the male demographic dominating the world of entertainment, we're going to eb hard-pressed to get female characters and role models that aren't depicted as socially repressed and sexually depraved objects whose sole goal in life is to get inside a man's pants to feel more like a mature woman.

 

[CensoredAlso]

Anyone else pay attention to the news story that a completely inappropriate "Draw Mohammad Offensively" contest in Texas that got shot up?

And if it had been a "Draw Jesus Offensively" contest, MSNBC would be hailing it as a triumph of free speech and tolerance.

Basically, conservatives and liberals only defend the speech they care about. When it comes to free speech that encompasses all speech, they both lose their nerve.

And just to point out one more thing: When Life of Brian was in theaters, people boycotted. When this drawing contest came out, people showed up with guns.

 

[CensoredAlso]

You can't freaking win trying to please people, and the harder you try, the more people hate you for it.

Very true. Like those stories you hear about women's groups coming to the set of Sesame Street in the '70s to "report" on how Susan's character was marginalized. On the one hand, the group probably did motivate the show's writers to give Susan and career and more to do, and that's a good thing. But on the other hand, groups like that will never be satisfied. Not just women's groups, any ideological group. You can pander to them all day long, they will still find something wrong. Plus, groups like that rarely create anything themselves. They just storm in and pick on the ones who do. Not much better than the network censors really, hehe.

 

[Drtooth]

And if it had been a "Draw Jesus Offensively" contest, MSNBC would be hailing it as a triumph of free speech and tolerance.

Funny thing is, if anyone actually did the research, Islam doesn't allow the portrayal of any profit. Jesus totally included.

And just to point out one more thing: When Life of Brian was in theaters, people boycotted. When this drawing contest came out, people showed up with guns.

When discussed about this on Larry Wilmore's show, one of the guests said that most Muslims ignored it. Probably better than most Christians do after a bad Family Guy cutaway. There's an underlying part of this case that makes me suspicious.

The woman who organized this was a full bore looney that personally waged a war on Islam. Not like the fakey Christianity culture wars started by Fox News to divide the country. An actual, passive aggressive hate war. She wrote books on the subject (well, crayon scribbled manifestos) and went on cable news outlets to not so eloquently explain her warped point of view. This event was carefully orchestrated as a hate speech rally, not satire or free speech. It was thrown in the reddest of red states, so you know the satire is not "you're ignoring your own teachings for Machiavellian purposes" but rather "Dem Muslins is all evil cuz 9/11 an' Sharia Law, even though we want to impose the same exact Unconstitutional religious control but with a white guy God." This woman knew full well these were bigots attending, this woman knew full well she was trolling a violent extremist group, so yeah. But here's where it gets suspicious.

The security guards weren't armed. In an age of police militarization, it comes off as a little odd that an event that would draw out violent repercussion that the security guard in red state "it is illegal to not own a gun and carry it everywhere" Texas didn't have any fire arms, even small ones. Now, I'm no "inside job" conspiracy theorist, but this women knew full well that there would be violence. It's clear she had knowledge that Charlie Hebdo's massacre happened, cuz, you know, most everyone did. Seems that she staged a hateful event to troll violent militants because she knew there would be violent retaliation of some sort just to come out and say "I think I made my point" to justify her warped thinking. So yeah. I'm all for free speech and letting the KKK and PETA make complete butts of themselves. But this was an event made of suspicious that lead to violence so predictable you could say it was premeditated. This was disgusting and dangerous. You know the defense that "You can't say fire in a crowded theater?" Well, this was shouting fire in a crowded theater in hopes someone would set one.

 

[D'Snowth]

I can't believe Adobe Premiere crashes all the time now! What did they do? Decide they wanted to screw with us like Microsoft did with Movie Maker?

 

[Drtooth]

Adobe Flash crashed all the time too. Never liked them. They charge too much for their crap and their Flash Player is as stable as a table with one leg on the edge of a cliff in an earthquake.

You know that dumb Mario is Missing meme about how "You can't find Adobe here in Nairobi?" If that were freaking true in that sense, I'd almost move there.

 

[CensoredAlso]

Funny thing is, if anyone actually did the research, Islam doesn't allow the portrayal of any profit. Jesus totally included.

So? As a Christian, I don't consider that a compliment. At all. I consider that superstitious, old fashioned, and needlessly fearful. I'm a big girl and can handle a cartoon of Jesus, thank you, lol.

Seems that she staged a hateful event to troll violent militants

Probably. If she staged an event to troll bigoted conservatives would you be so against it? It was also dangerous to troll the Nazis, yet I'm glad people did it. Furthermore, people troll each other in hateful ways on the Internet every day. It is not a crime and if we actually want free speech, it can't be.

Free speech doesn't only protect the nicey nice speech that makes everybody feel safe and cuddly. It does, and has to, include hateful speech too. If I demanded someone else's speech to be censored, tomorrow I could be the next target. Policing speech, even with good intentions, just doesn't work. 8 year olds demand a teacher stop another kid from saying mean things. Adults learn to walk away.

The solution is not to sit quietly and obediently so no one ever gets "offended." Violent militants are against many things. What if we have a Jewish candidate for the Presidency and some violent militants don't like that? Or what if we had a candidate who was gay? Are we going to tell that candidate not to mention his or her faith or orientation at all because we're so terrified of "offending"? Would we ask the candidates to step down if he or she doesn't comply? That is not tolerance, that is reactionary fear leading to oppression. It's that mentality that is currently destroying innocent people in the Middle East. I don't want it here. And it's also insulting to Muslims because it implies we think they're unable to control their emotions without acting out.