RE: the latest Mark Gatiss kerfuffle
Yesterday, the precious, @shylockgnomes posted this newspaper interview with Mark Gatiss. Needless to say, there isn’t a single comment on that thread (other than mine) that isn’t so salty that you could drink the rivers dry and still not quench your thirst.
It’s frustrating as fuck.
I am posting this knowing full well that I will get hate for it, or unfollowed, but it’s come to the point now that I really don’t care. We are the SHERLOCK fandom ans should know how to read between the lines.
What happened to the fandom mantra:
S4 didn’t go the way fandom thought it should, so we are throwing Mofftiss under the bus for it?? I am no stan of either man. I think they are so full of themselves as to make me vomit, but everything they say, no matter what it is about, is never straight-forward. They always hide their meaning behind their educated hubris. Taking it personally that they aren’t treating us the way we think they should is our own fault. They are who they are and will always be.
So, I commented as such on that post of Torry’s and privately got a lovely response, which I have been permitted to share here. I will keep them anonymous because I don’t care anymore to get hate or people calling me out on this. They can come forward if they want to, but enough is enough. We have to stop acting like wounded children and allowing Mofftiss to continue to play us as they do. We are never gonna get showrunners of Hannibal’s ilk. They aren’t those kinds of dudes. Never will be.
This show is an amazing tour de force of meta, subtext, intertext. Why on earth would we believe the creators of such a complicated tale would ever be straight-forward with their responses. Whether it’s to criticism, or what the show is about. There continued complaint is that media consumers want to be spoon-fed warm pap. Well, isn’t that what all of our whinging amounts to?
I would hope fandom would read this comment sent to me, and just think!
I can't even form thoughts as to why people's reactions are ridiculous. Like....he's not a snob, he's just of a certain class and a certain generation. He's an intellectual and he talks like one. It's exactly like Mark said - something rises up and people want to cut it down. I see nothing wrong with anything he said. It is true that the ratings thing is bollocks. Ratings naturally fall after the first episode of a season. 5 mill for the finale is a perfectly acceptable rating night for a regular episode of much beloved doctor who. The ratings were good, of course they were, the audience were already established, they didnt need to do anything at all to get decent ratings.
And this "attentive smart audience deserves better" attitude?? Ridiculous. Entitled crap. Watch the show. If you don't like Mark as a person, don't read his interviews. Do we need to have our egos stroked for being clever? Do we need to be treated kindly by writers? No. I just don't understand that. They aren't our parents. They created a thing and we love it. They owe us nothing else, in my opinion. But in know that's not the popular view.
It's like people need to be congratulated for being a fan. When all Moftiss have done is create the art they were driven to create, in exactly the way they wanted. They never cared about audience reaction, right from the beginning. All they wanted is for enough people to like it for them to be able to keep making it.They say they thought it would have a cult following....in other words, they WANTED just a cult following.
Honestly, if series 4 cuts the audience back to that cultish few like us who.....omg. That's seriously their intention isn't it?? Dang. That's neat.
I don't think Moftiss have a negative view of fangirls or BC fans or anything like that. I think they have a negative view of people, period. Lol. They're smarter than to stereotype fans, at least Steven is. Even if that doesn't come through in interviews. Mark as a gay man might feel strongly about fetishization and that's unfortunate because I'm sure he misunderstands that many many women get into shipping m/m because of being repressed gay/bi and that's the way that it starts rising up out of your miserable repressed subconscious, and Mark would have no idea about how repression works in women because it's such a insidious thing all tied up with misogyny, and I wouldn't bother even holding that against him unless I sat down with him and had a chat then discovered that he was a total dick. Until then, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that interviewers pick and choose quotes to inflame readers, and to tell the perspective they've chosen to tell. I don't like people holding snootiness against him. First of all, it's just British. And second, it's tall poppy syndrome - taking our most brilliant intellectuals and wanting to bring them down for making the rest of us feel dumb, whereas we should really be letting them run the world. Fuccckkkkk.
It's unbelievable that people are directing their anger at the wrong thing. All that useful anger wasted. Like you wrote just now "imagine that, calling out homophobia falling on deaf ears”
