#obviously everyone's entitled to their own opinions on characters it just kinda baffles me. bc she is really good imo

[daz4i]

why does everyone on reddit hate firefly. i get it when like ppl get tired of a character that constantly shows up but at this amount?? and with such vitriol too??? transphobia.

[firelord-frowny]

I don’t really talk about ~fandom~ stuff, mostly because I kinda find the entire concept of “fandom” to be ridiculous and annoying. When I talk about the things I’m a fan of, it’s in the context of my own enjoyment and no one else’s. But I’m gonna talk about fandom shit bc I’m Annoyed and all up in my feelings. 

What I kind of can’t stand about ~fandom culture~ is this weird-ass phenomenon where people will proclaim to be die-hard fans of something, yet turn around and want to bash the creators/writers/directors/whatever any time they do anything at all that that they Don’t Like, and yet STILL turn around again and want to demand more content from these same creators/etc who they clearly don’t actually respect. 

So, right now there’s a bunch of uproar about ATLA bc “Bryke,” the original creators, decided to walk out on the live-action netflix adaptation due to the proverbial ~creative differences.~

Cue ATLA fans foaming at the mouth and insisting that without Bryke, the netflix adaptation will suck for whatever their favorite reason happens to be. Cue a bunch of useless speculation about the reasons for their departure and assumptions that Bryke must have put their foot down about Awful Things that netflix wanted to do with the series. 

And I mean, sure, maybe there were actual ~problematic~ things that pushed them to leave. That’s possible, and maybe even likely. 

But what I find annoying as shit is that I’ll bet a huge majority of these people throwing a fit over Bryke’s departure were the same people who turned their nose up at Bryke for not doing as good a job as they thought Bryke should have done on LoK, whining about how Bryke must actually suck as writers/storytellers bc ~if LoK had the same staff of writers that worked on ATLA, it would have been amazing~ and just. Generally bashing and condemning Bryke. Which, obviously people are welcome to think LoK sucks for whatever reasons they like, but that doesn’t mean they get to fucking riot over it and suddenly become hostile toward people who, five seconds ago, were being praised and hailed. 

So, they all turn their backs on Bryke and insist that Bryke is Bad, but now that Bryke left the live-action adaptation, people wanna be upset about that and suddenly act like they didn’t just spend the last decade slinging shit about Bryke being Bad whatever reason? Make up your damn minds. Either you respect their work and their vision and accept their flaws as human beings, or you don’t. Either you think Bryke is what makes or breaks a good story, or you don’t. Either you believe their involvement is critical to a show being Good, or you don’t.

Obviously, OBVIOUSLY the beauty that was ATLA was not created soley by Bryke. They had a vision, and they had a team of amazing people to help bring that vision to life. That’s not unusual. That’s not cheating. That’s just HOW IT WORKS. That’s how Beyonce works. That’s how James Cameron works. That’s how Christopher Nolan works. That’s how all of these large-scale creative projects work, and claiming that Bryke ~isn’t all that~ is as meaningless as claiming that literally any other successful creator or performer ~isn’t all that.~ None of them are ~all that~ without gifted people supporting them. And no matter how amazing somebody is at something, sometimes they’re going to not quite hit the mark. It doesn’t suddenly mean that they were never talented. It doesn’t mean that all the great things they were part of before somehow don’t count anymore, or that it must have been solely other people’s work that made it great. 

It’s just. Fucking dumb and it honestly offends me as a writer/storyteller when people hold these ridiculous black-or-white and entitled opinions about creators and their work, as if building an entire world and filling it up with character and story and emotion isn’t a deeply personal endeavor on the part of the creators (AND THEIR TEAMS, DUH). I promise you that whatever your favorite show/movie/game/whatever means to you is not even a FRACTION of what it means to the people who actually built it from the ground up. I promise. 

And lastly???

I literally do not care about Bryke having ~mocked~ Zutara. It honestly still baffles me to this day that anyone at all ever brought theirself to be upset about something so dumb. If you get all up in your feelings because anyone at all says anything remotely not flattering about your ~ship~ then you really just need to grow up. It’s not that serious. Like jeez, even as a kid I knew it wasn’t even close to being a big deal. ~oh nooooo someone thinks the hypothetical fictional relationship I’m enamored with is dumb.~ PLEASE. 

I ALSO do not care about katara allegedly ~being reduced to a trophy wife.~ Sorry, but when it comes to the continuation of storylines, sometimes your favorite characters are going to get left behind. It’s disappointing, but it doesn’t suddenly make the people who chose a different path ~bad writers.~ It means they had a different vision from the one you hoped for. Tough, but you’re not entitled to a damn thing. You’re not entitled to a certain kind of Katara or a certain kind of Toph or anyone. It’s not up to you to choose which characters get elaborated on and which ones don’t. TV shows have a limited amount of ttime and money and resources. They have to pick and choose what to cram into a tiny time slot. They do their best, but they cannot satisfy everyone. You’re free to not like it. But it’s honestly ridiculous to go so far as to be angry at anyone over it.

It just. Really offends me as a writer when people have the fucking gall to claim to love something while showing not one single ounce of respect for ALL of the people without whom the beloved thing would have never existed. ALL of them, with all of their flaws and imperfections and shortcomings. 

Feel how you feel about whatever you want to feel it about, but you don’t have to shit on anyone to do that. You don’t have to disrespect someone else’s vision because the story they made wasn’t the exact one you wanted.