discourse – The Creative Life of Liz

I mentioned in my review of 9-1-1 5×16 that I had more to talk about when it came to my feeling regarding the unintentional release of the 5×18 stills early. But this doesn’t really focus too much on the show.

No, this is about the Discord I was on.

Now, I normally wouldn’t talk about this at all, especially since the situation is over and done with (as you will see soon). However, as I have publicly supported this Discord server and talked about it here on my blog, I feel the need to bookend that. I won’t be naming or shaming anyone, just saying “the server” when referring to the server, and vague terms when referring to someone as necessary.

This is be the only time I bring up this topic in such a manner. Following today, if I have any reason to talk about the server, I will be brief and just barely mention it. I just feel it’s important to explain why I’ve been pretty late on posting things for the last couple of weeks. It all directly comes back to this issue.

Before we get to the fateful May 4th, we need to start the story back a bit further.

I haven’t felt comfortable on the server for a while now. Just something felt off. I was noticing that my comments and headcanons were being ignored or cut down. I wasn’t able to bring up an opposing point in a conversation, though others were allowed to push forward their own and those were taken as fact. In particular, I felt like I couldn’t be critical of two characters, both of which I felt were poorly written. But if I said something, I was given all sorts of hell. Or, it was implied that my personal feelings for a character impacted someone else’s headcanon of that character, and that the other person’s headcanon was more important. (Ignoring the fact that as a headcanon, it’s not canon. And at this point, this headcanon won’t be proven as fact anyway, because it seems this character’s time on the show is going to be done as of the finale.)

But I never really said anything about all this. For one, I honestly thought it was all in my head. There’s no way that a bunch of adults would do this, and I didn’t want to whine about it like a child not getting their way. But this had been going from the moment I stepped up into a moderation role, and seemed to kick up when I stepped back. (Which… I never mentioned on here, but my decision to accept the role led me to be gaslit to hell by someone I’d considered a friend, and me stepping away was seen as a betrayal to that person’s friends. It was all around a bad situation.)

Around the time I got good news for my job search, I decided that at the end of the season, I would be leaving the server. Yes, that would end up being a six week wait, but I figured that was the smartest thing to do. I wanted to see the season out. I was also trying to break my longest instance of writer’s block that I’ve had for a while, and I was hoping with the support of these people, I would be able to do so.

Things continued downhill pretty rapidly. My comments on episodes would be ignored, but then brought up verbatim by others and enjoyed. When I posted about the job search, that was ignored, until someone two hours later would bring up the same subject, and conversation would ensue. When I had a personal thing happen with my family (referenced on this blog, I’m not going into it), I got a “that sucks” message, then the conversation immediately shifted away to something complete different. (And just so it’s known, I always would make sure to post my comments or whatnot in the correct locations on the server. This wasn’t a case of me getting things wrong.)

It was becoming very clear that I was on the outside of the group, and the people I had considered to be acquaintances, perhaps even friends, just didn’t care. So, I firmly decided that I would leave on May 16th, or 17th if the conversation regarding the finale was decent.

And then, there were two instances that rapidly changed my mind.

First, immediately following the end of 5×16, everyone was talking about how great the Jonah twist was, and how it was so surprising, and no one could hate it. Well, me being me, viewed the storyline from a different point of view. As I’ve stated elsewhere, I found the storyline to be boring and formulaic, something done many times before. And so I said as such, but I tried to be polite about it. I was immediately and pretty viciously cut down, and flat out told that my wish for a “red herring” storyline was idiotic. Basically, no difference of opinion to the majority.

That was annoying. But like always, I tried to brush it off. I was still just going to deal with it and wait out the rest of the season, but then… May 4th happened.

As I mentioned in my review of 5×16, on May 4th, the marketing team accidentally released the stills for episode 5×18. These stills revealed that the characters featured in danger during 5×17 (confirmed in the promo) would be absolutely fine, or that there is a large time skip between 5×17 and 5×18. While the reveal of these stills already suck, it’s the fact that they were released instead of the 5×17 stills that was truly surprising.

While everyone on the server was cheering over the fact that we got the stills early, I thought of the marketing person who might actually get in trouble for this mistake, and for the casual fans on Twitter who perhaps don’t like to dive deeply into episodes, or pick apart every scene until the meaning of the episode is lost to wild speculation. They might happen upon the stills and have the suspense spoiled. (And it was spoiled, now that I’ve seen 5×17.) When I brought up the Fox employee and the casual fans, I was flat out told to can it. No one cared. I was wrong. And besides, the synopsis had already been released so my comments were “just there to bring the group down, and that wasn’t cool.”

I tried to defend my point, but it was clear that while I actually cared for people, the majority just cared for the show. Nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter that someone could have been reprimanded for once again releasing something relating to 9-1-1 early. It didn’t matter that there were already people making the same comments over on Twitter. Nope. Sucks for them, they should learn to be a part of fandom or get out.

And honestly? This mentality really bothered me. But, once again, I was pretty much about to ignore it.

But something weird happened. We found out that the stills were deleted from the marketing site, then restored, then the 5×17 stills were released. It was pretty clear that, yes, there had been a mistake that Fox was trying to correct, before realizing that the stills were out for everyone, so they might as well just leave them.

I summarized this on the discord (referencing tweets from the 911 News Twitter account. Only to be told that, great the new stills are here, I’m still wrong, just drop the stills and stop talking. And this was coming from a group of people, not just one. Regular members, and members from the various tiers of moderation.

At the same time, I was having a lovely conversation with someone in another part of the server, who was lamenting that they had just left their first server. I told them my philosophy: when it’s time to go, go. There’s a reason that you want to leave, and it’s totally valid. You can miss it, but you won’t enjoy forcing yourself to stay.

Which hit me like a ton of bricks. I was basically being a hypocrite. I was ignoring everything that I was telling this person to do.

So, I left. Without a word, without a trace.

I tried to message the head mod when I left, but the moderation team had their private messaging on lock down. So, I’ve settled for vaguely talking about it in the author note of my first fic in months, as well as two vague posts on Tumblr and Twitter, and now this. I made it very and blatantly clear that I wanted to talk about my issues with the handling of the server privately. There has been no response to those comments. The only comment I’ve received at any point since May 4th was a comment for on my newest 9-1-1 fic, where I was just told to “you do you boo”. I’m still trying to figure out of they were being sarcastic or not…

I’m 1000% aware that if one of them come across my blog and read this, they will argue about every single point. I could put money on it. But this is what happened from my POV.

It’s been a week since I left. The knot that has been my insides has finally eased. I survived watching 5×17 and 3×17 without seeing a myriad of comments, most of which would be people whining that their headcanons were wrong. (AGAIN).

And I have to say? I enjoyed it so much more.

So, in conclusion to this long post, I say this. I’m discord-less and have one foot out of the fandom (at least, publicly). But at the same time, I feel fine. I finally feel like I can publicly talk about characters and storylines without having to keep the words coming out of my mouth respectful.

I feel like myself again. <3

Until next time!

(Quick note: the reviews for 5×17 and 3×17 will be up in the following days. Just needed to get this out first.)

Let it not be said that I tried.

So, as I’ve talked about more often than frankly healthy, I fell in love with The Old Guard mid last year. I loved the story, liked the comics (though the art left something to be desired), and started really following the actors. I’ll be the first to say that it became a borderline obsession.

Hell, it even got me back on Tumblr! I’d been very on-and-off during the pandemic, but this movie really caught me, and I fell into the community. There was a strong writing side, the art side was amazing, and the research side was on point.

So… what happened?

Well. A couple of things.

Burnout is real, and so is honestly holding onto hope with no real news. Since the end of January, when we found out that TOG2 was in active development, we’ve heard exactly one thing from anyone involved. During a Instagram AMA, Matthias Schoenaerts (Booker) was asked if there was a sequel, which he answered “YES”. And… that’s it. That’s all. Nearly ten months from the first film dropping, and nothing else but a production magazine listing it in development and one of the actors confirming. And I’m sorry, but that’s just not enough proof.

My family has had ties to Hollywood. Not in a substantial way, but we have. My grandfather knew some of the Hollywood greats from the 50s and 60s. And during the 80s and 90s, my uncle was frequently a script delivery driver. He’s also made friends with people in the industry.

I won’t say that no news means trouble, because it could all just be tied up in the contract stage or the writing stage. You know, before the public get’s involved. But I still feel off, because every other day Netflix is announcing sequels to shows and movies released around the same time or after TOG, and yet we get radio silence.

But that’s not the only reason I’m kinda down.

When the film was released, the fans picked apart each scene. Because that’s what you do. Every scene, every frame, every line of dialogue. That’s how we saw Joe sleeping with his leg between Nicky’s legs, Joe and Nicky holding hands on the train while sleeping, Nicky’s little skip during their final assault on Merrick’s penthouse… It’s part of the fandom.

The problem is, as time went on, it seemed like everything took a turn. Suddenly, you couldn’t like Booker without being a horrible person. Nicky was a one point labeled a N*zi, simply because of how he talked to Joe in exactly one panel in Tales Through Time #1 (which, was bullshit anyways). Nile being in the military was labeled as extremely problematic.

Basically, a portion of the fanbase went from nitpicking the film for content and loving every second of it, to nitpicking the film for content and screaming about it.

Now, I’ll be clear, I stayed away from that group. But they got more vocal. If you didn’t like the Immortal Husbands (Joe/Nicky), you were homophobic. If you thought that having them have a threesome with Booker was a good idea, guess again. Or, hell, if you thought of giving Joe a wife before he left for the Crusades and met/was killed by Nicky, just don’t, because the self-imposed “saviors of canon” would come out of the woodwork. Heck, there was a time that if you liked Nicky more than Joe (for whatever reason), you were labeled as racist. Yeah, you read that right. It was frankly disgusting.

Honestly, what killed me the most was all the commentary about the military. Look, I know that the military has done bad things. I’m not excusing it. Hell, I can be vocal about it, too. However… I come from a military family. My father served in the Air Force during Operation Desert Storm. My other uncle (not the delivery driver, the one I don’t speak to), served during peace-time in Germany, including helping out with a volunteer fire department. My grandfather? WWII and Korea. He liberated two death camps. He saved more people I probably could ever name. During his tour in Korea, he saved the woman who would go on to be my grandmother, who worked at the US State Department in Seoul, Korea. And he was also involved in missions into North Korea, but none of us have the clearance to actually know what he did. And now? My mom worked for the Veterans Administration. And I’m trying to get in. I almost joined the military myself, but I have a debilitating fear of real guns (I can watch them on TV or in films, but being around them in the real world sends me into panic attacks. I can barely stand to see them in holsters the few times I’ve interacted with police.)

I understand the racial issues, which is what these people list as the main reason Nile joining the military is problematic. But… that’s not entirely accurate. She flat out says she joined to follow in her father’s footsteps. Yes, getting out of South Chicago, where there were “a million different ways we could have went left” was a factor. But I really think it’s called following her father. Honoring his sacrifice.

Every time I saw a post demeaning the military’s presence in the film, I felt a tiny part of me cry. Because honestly, it seemed like people missed the point. People missed why the military existed in the first place, and why it was in the film.

In the past few months, while I was writing my Febuwhump prompts, I noticed a major shift in the content being posted on Tumblr (where the majority of the fandom lives). There were so many “anti” posts that I didn’t want to check the tags. And I was only doing so when I needed inspiration for whatever prompt I was pulling myself into.

When the discord I’m on (The Immortal Disasters) started getting into 9-1-1, I honestly didn’t give it a second thought to jumping into that fandom. And while there is still discourse, it’s nowhere near as bad as people being accused of supporting n*zis and being racist for liking “insert character here” more than “second character”. (Anti-Ana is basically the real big issue right now, because while I like the actress, the writers have done here character dirty by giving her nothing to work with, no personality, and completely shoehorning her in with Eddie, where they have no chemistry. And also are making leaps in logic that are frankly terrifying considering they’re doing a season-spanning COVID storyline… And on the Lone Star, TK pushed Carlos in a fight and their apology was off screen and no one is happy about it. Though I think the scene was cut for time and a line was thrown in to cover for it.)

Anyway, so, yeah. At this point, I’ve completely stepped back. I’ll continue to work on my TOG/CM crossover, because I love it. But that’s about it, until we get sequel news. I’m stepping back for my mental health. No one deserves to be treated like above for having a favorite character, or for liking a pairing that isn’t mainstream, or for just liking a storyline choice.

Hopefully we get news soon. I think it’s about damn time.

Until next time!

Tag: discourse

Let’s Talk: Making the Choice to Step Away from a Fandom Hub – Why I Left the Discord I Was On