It was all sarcastic. I was still ??? at what I heard at the panel and it made less sense the more I thought of it. My point was that most people in this fandom love Gen and Curtis and Mark (and Mark Pellegrino, and Ruth Connell...), and are perfectly capable of telling the difference between their characters and them. I’ve seen all sorts of stuff in this fandom but I wouldn’t say that confusing an evil character with their actor, and hating the actor because of it, is tendentially one of our struggles. We have no definitive proof that the whole taw mess isn’t some finely orchestrated scam, but whatever the truth is, it was incredibly transparent that that person was giving that impromptu speech to defend himself against accusations, and to reframe the accusations he received as “just naive people who confuse me with my evil character” Re: Mark Sheppard panels: yes, Mark’s panels are all truly like that. You’re “late”? He’ll probably ask you why, then tell you it’s not a good reason. You leave? He’ll tell you that you’re dead to him and not to wave at him. He doesn’t like your question, or isn’t in the mood to reply? He’ll just say “no” or send you back. He’ll definitely yell at someone at some point and so forth. And he’ll tell you that you wasted your time doing a photo op with any member of the j2m trio... see where this is going? It’s all in good fun, he challenges people in the audience but he’s never serious when he’s rude to you, and everybody in the room knows it. His panels are always some of the funniest and among the ones I anticipate and recommend the most, he’s absurdly entertaining. He walks around and makes you laugh to pass the time, and once in a while someone will ask a question about Crowley or fandom dynamics and he’ll give you a very acute speech on it like he did this weekend. I love his panels and I love that they sound so terrible from the outside but they’re really, truly, the opposite of terrible.
