#when they're really so problematic and controversial at their core

[genericpuff]

yeah i don't think this is the kind of advertising rachel needs right now-

[marybeatriceofmodena]

I'm curious, do ppl hate Love Never Dies because they think Eristine is problematic and it's made canon in it, or is it due to something else? I havent watched it yet or anything but i like the vibes, lol

Heh... Love Never Dies has always been controversial at the very least? It came out at a time where Erik/Christine was still the most popular ship in the phandom - it still is, by the way. That didn't change despite a clear shift in fandom and ""problematic content"" around 2013, so a good 3 years after the musical came out. If anything, Raoul/Christine shippers have been a minority for most of the phandom's history, and both sides of the debate at some point more or less decided to agree to disagree (I mean, the homophobic slurs Raoul would get at times were starting to REALLY be in poor taste), except on the point that without the love triangle, there wouldn't be much of a story, and there are various ways of interpreting said love triangle. So, quite frankly, I don't understand why some people on either side are trying to restart discourse in the POTO fandom but I digress. And look, if you see people in the tags saying that Erik/Christine is problematic, they're probably new, and not really representative of the phandom at large. Anything having to do with Sierra Boggess is more controversial.

I really don't think the controversy stems from it making Erik and Christine bang and have a love child - I know there are some people who are against the idea of any kind of sequel, in fanfic form or otherwise, for a variety of reasons, but most of them were being responsible adults about it and didn't actively seek fanfic. As I mentioned before, a lot of folks were Erik/Christine shippers and thought that Christine was more into the Phantom than into Raoul, that's nothing new. But a lot of them also had issues with how LND dealt with it, for several reasons. It didn't come from an "anti" sentiment, it was very much them having issues with the material that was presented to them.

Raphael/phantoonsoftheopera (who is a long time fan of POTO) goes into more detail here and I think he sums up a lot of phans' thoughts back in 2010 when LND came out (whether they shipped the Phantom and Christine or not), and I think @musicalhell is another one who was also around at the time (feel free to pop in, and hope I'm not bothering you with the tag).

As for the rest, I wish I could defend ALW's choices here in the same way I'd defend Lana Wachowski for Matrix Resurrections - i.e. you're allowed to not like it but this is this creator's baby and they're allowed to do whatever they want with it, so let's all respect art for the sake of art here. But LND is very much a vanity project, as ALW has proven multiple times, that is mean-spirited to its core in various ways. For my fellow SW fans, it's the TROS to POTO'S TLJ. The cast and crew were treated in a really shitty way back in the original London production days, same with critics of the show, and there was even a case where a journalist and long time phan who provided a critical review of LND was demeaned in an article as some sort of sad housewife who was obsessed with POTO. Mind you, ALW has tried to make LND work FOR YEARS, with various productions and tours opening here and there, but it always underperforms. And mind you, the Eristine crowd is still hanging around, and POTO is doing extremely well whereever it goes to this day. If the Eristine content was good, the crowds would follow, "problématique" posts and tweets or not. They aren't there.

[unoisveimved-un-proffesional]

Hooooo boy. I'm having a field day with this one :)

Both of these sides attempt to shut down any and all conversation surrounding the topic and so I really think it's kind of stupid. Fictional characters are objects, we're not. I personally put a lot of care into certain objects, and how someone makes and treats objects does tell you a lot about their character. You SHOULD ask when you see a character depicted in a way "Why did they depict them in this way?" Dummies. I fall on the anti-freedom in fiction side on a philosophical level but pro-freedom in fiction on a practical one. Why shouldn't we ask why? Is it personal? Invasive? Say it. Say there is a deep personal reason for why I decided to write and make this thing in a controversial way and put it out there, but I'd call you a hypocrite. If you want something you made to get out there, and you put it out there, you've already exposed yourself and no attempting to hide will help you, people will just guess what you're thinking if they really care or are really interested.

There's no two ways about it, you're a real fucking person and what you make in fiction is only from that real person, from their perspective and ideas. The author is a funnel of which reality gets torn up and shot through and put back together on the other side to show its insides, or at least insides got through the author. Observing that authors work puts it through your own funnel and abstracts the core of the work even further from the reality it was extracted from. I think the new popular wave of postmodernist Death of the Author and all chaotic fictional philosophies of its type are kind of, short sighted and immaterial. The idea itself isn't that bad, but it's limited in its scope with its liberal succinctness. It, or more accurately the way it is taught by its largest following, presents very little room for expansion in either thought or action. The idea itself was a question meant to spawn more questions and unique questions for every instance it is observed in and every work possible to be made, one half of a full analysis. But that very first line of questions is being wrongfully capped with the most liberal of answers; "Don't worry about it." "Don't think about it too much." "Don't ask. It means nothing." In the delicate hopscotch of this logic, 1-23-4-56, you're jumping straight into fucking 100 from 1, that's what we call a leap in logic. You're skipping the whole. Damn. Process!

You still think those thoughts even if you never act on those things, and its in your purest best interest to ask Why? Why do I think these things? Whenever I think something particularly awful and disgusting, it's because my brain runs through possibilities, outcomes, hell even escape routes in case there's a sniper somewhere, and it has no moral or ethical boundaries on what possibilities there are. Naturally the most immoral and disgusting "possibility" catches my attention because it's inflammatory. I want to be a nice liked person so of course it immediately demands my attention, but I have to stop thinking about it once I decide that's not what I'm gonna do, because it's only a possibility I recognize unconsciously without boundaries and consciously put boundaries on. I'm woefully more embarrassed by the ideas that are explicitly offered to me as "Things I should do" rather than "Things I could do". Mostly because they're right. I also find the rhetorical conflation with intrusive thoughts and thought provokingly problematic (particularly fan)works, a little embarrassing. It really betrays the One-Size-Fits-All liberal framework they're working in.

Eventually you're not talking about Nazi's and Purists and obnoxious "good vibes only" fuckers, you're talking about critics and their reviews. Everyone's a critic, that's a fact, and a critic more than anything is someone meant to ask questions and look for those answers. It's why good critics observe, take-in, consume, and analyze what they're criticizing more than once, to look for those answers. Even if from the beginning they hate this, if they want to produce a quality critique they have to put it in front of them over and over again. Maybe by the end they realize they were being too harsh, falling into a fallacy, or they end up realizing it's worse than they at first thought or have their initial reactions reaffirmed, whatever the case, their case and critique is so much more valuable and strong because it has significant time and effort and work backing it up. Hell critique is as much an art as it is a science, it's like cooking. You can even think of it as fan-work, it relates to a thing they didn't really invent nor are claiming they did and expressing ideas about it, it's kinda like fanfiction huh? Should we tell critics, whether they're paid top dollar to say "It ain't thaaaaaat baaaad" or are out there on their free time telling a fic with 12 views "This is the most honest display of complete and utter incompetence of writing and literacy I've ever read", to just shut up and let people enjoy things? And not make their art?! Now you're the motherfucking obnoxious "good vibes only" people!

You hide behind an objectively true (at least i see it that way) statement in a way to combat the other idiot moralist liberals like yourself, but lump in with that crowd the analyst's, who make their own art and express themselves through the critique of other things, as equal opportunist attackers to make judgements on something as "moral", even if they're going out of their way to avoid moralization and focusing on just the factual, textual, and subtextual, posing questions about the nature of how something comes to be.

You're a reactionary and an obnoxious centrist, down to your personal philosophy, and you've given that demon an inch and it will take a mile of your life and obscure the wonderful world of ruthless critique from your eyes. What if it's not about whether I enjoy something or not? What if I want to use whatever you made as a platform to speak my mind on trends and ideas in our society? I'm doing it right now.

The answer should be clear, don't pass moral judgement, learn facts. Facts don't come from inside of you, they come from out there, they come from you engaging with out there, they come from conversation and observation and QUESTIONS. Never stop asking questions, never stop asking "Why is this bad?" "What is bad?" "Why is it built this way?" "What does it do?" "What has it done?" "Who is that?" "Why did they make this?" Never skip to the answer, go through the whole thing step by stop, hop by scotch. Never stop asking those questions, even when it gets uncomfortable. Strip it ALL down naked, exposing its skin than lay it down on the vivisection table and take out its heart, put it under a microscope, get its blood type on paper, while you're at it write down how it tastes, what it sounds like, how it jerks when you yank it, where it's soft and where it's located, do that with anything and everything you can get alone with, ESPECIALLY yourself.

I see what's behind the popular liberal pro-fiction opinion; disinterest and incuriosity, disrespect towards fiction and the nature and art of observing it. You're the author of your own model of the world, reflection of the stories you read, and the critic of everything you've seen. You should always criticize, if it exists. If you believe your criticism is worthy of an audience, make it known, shout it from the rooftops! Don't let anyone make the mistake of not noticing their mistakes! Don't let those mistakes fester until they become regrets! This isn't the realm of high conceptual philosophy, its a practice to be put into reality.

I agree with everything here in that post and its reblogs on a factual and surface level, but cannot disagree more with its philosophy and goals, whether OP or anyone involved intended for it or not, the reality of our social climate has slipped through in their words. It's obnoxiously liberal and idealist. It doesn't go the full mile. It stops at painting an opposition of thought so cartoonishly out of line all they have to do is state surface level intuitively understandable facts and not at all engage with the real opposition. I've been on this same side digging into an anti-fic once too, because you all have the same problems. You'd rather not actually think about it and just ignore the actually interesting conversations one could have about ACTUAL WORKS and not just the nebulous idea of a "problematic work" which you unconditionally fall into one side or the other of. I'm not the centrist! You are! I'm outside of this, I'm in the real world where shit gets so motherfucking crazy you can't help but ask Why. You're weak Sasuke, you lack Curiosity.

What am I getting at? Do whatever you want, it's all meaningful. Whether you like it or not, you're going to do it, and you're going to be confronted by the meaning of it. There is no "could" in this world, there only is what has been done, and what will be done next, and that is all that matters. Whether you like it or not, everything is connected, tangled up into a giant knot, and you can't stop anyone from following the threads. What happens in your mind IS real. What you put out from your mind IS real. It's all made of REAL things, put through the filter, through the funnel, tangled and up and rearranged, abstracted, and communicated. You should always ask

Why?

I really think everyone needs to truly internalize this:

Fictional characters are objects.

They are not people. You cannot "objectify" them, because they have no personhood to be deprived of. They have no humanity to be erased. You cannot "disrespect" them, because they are not real.

[song-of-amethyst]

For the blorbo ask game: the one and only Pandora Hearts and/or the cesspool of worms and suffering RotE and/or Tsubasa

Send me a fandom and I’ll tell you my:

(cesspool of worms and suffering--i'm interpreting this to mean the fitz and the fool trilogy because the you i know and love would probably do that to me)

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most) I think a lot about Bee and Fitz and the Fool though perhaps less in a blorbo sense and more in a 'I wish things were different' sense.

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped) That would be little Bee 😂

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave) Molly was a real gift in this trilogy I can't believe she was only present for half a book Molly ily and your candles you deserved better

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week) Celerity 😭 also Starling tbh and that messenger lady Fitz and Bee burned

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave) I think Fitz fits the bill 😂 ngl i still had a big fitz apologist side, at least for the first book or so, although one's patience understandably wears thin by the time they're reading the last one lmao 🔪

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason) Dwalia, probably. She's dumb as hell it'd be almost too easy xD

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell) Lant, because I'm petty xD (not that there aren't objectively far worse people/characters but thinking about them makes me want to eeby deeby the entire books 😌)

(Tsubasa)

blorbo Syaoran/Tsubasa. I think it really takes something special to make me blorbo the main character but Clamp really got me with this one 😂 he does give off side character vibes tbf. But also not. I think there's some genius in introducing your main character after 17 volumes and still making it work.

scrunkly child Kurogane 🥺

scrimblo bimblo Mokona! I think that being so small and non-human she gets too often the 'cute mascot' scrunkly treatment when actually she's like everyone's big sister and best friend and I love her relationship with Sakura so muuuch 😭

glup shitto Xing Huo is a bit that for me haha I'm wayy too interested in her non-existent background

poor little meow meow King Ashura of Celes 🙈 I kind of like the parallel with RG Veda, how he ends up destroying the world just because he selfishly wants to save the one person he cannot save, and the fact that said person is his child in RG Veda says a lot about what Clamp intended his side of the relationship with Fai to mean. Also I enjoy the irony that he can actually see the future in Tsubasa while being at his core someone who stubbornly doesn't believe in Fate™. Fun "has seen God but identifies as atheist" vibes

horse plinko Seishirou, probably, because it does sound like fun 😌

eeby deeby Kyle Rondart because he literally adds nothing of value xD

[streetsandsodiumlights]

TWEWY....i bet you'd love a reason to talk about it OwO

oh my god THIS is how i remember that i completely forgot about twewy 2 and haven't played it ;o; googles where to get $60 fast...

anyway all of this is with the caveat that i haven't actually played the game in YEARS nor do i know or care that much about all the lore. i just based an entire core facet of my personality on the message i took away from this game as a 15 year old, as you do

i've picked out the ones i CAN answer bc im not involved in any way with fandom for this game so i dont know who's underappreciated. i know who's overappreciated tho

anyway

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most)

neku......

listen you might have talked to me once about this game. and i might have spent an hour and a half talking about a character who is NOT neku. that doesn't mean anything.

to even understand what this kid MEANS to me you'd have to go back in time seven years to little high school me playing this game for the first time and the actual revelations about the world that it gave me... the way it inspired me to actually change the person i am and how i choose to live and interact w the people around me... it's like one of the core memories from inside out the movie, but it's just this game in the orb

alternatively i would have to explain the entire game from the ground up and the way this single character, THE main character, starts as an antisocial boy who sees no value in relationships with other people (as a defense mechanism, perhaps, bc he doesn't want to lose anyone else... idr if i was projecting or not at the time but i think he had a friend die. so) and who goes about his life like he doesn't NEED to bother with people at all, like they're entirely separate and never need to be acknowledged... and then he develops into someone with not just one friend, but SEVERAL people who he values so highly he manages to bring them all back to life. it's a really fulfilling story that i think about to this day, and i COULD talk for hours about how interesting i find this character, how perfect i think he is for the narrative that gets told, and how much i love the friends he makes and how complex his relationships are with those friends...

look out bc im gonna replay the game and go full brainrot now. you've done this

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped)

you 🤝 me hating to baby our characters... usually the characters who might fit in this category are VERY dimensional, and choosing to baby them ignores the deeper and more interesting parts of their characters. i don't love to do it, and the POINT of this game is that people aren't all just the front-facing persona they choose to put on, and it just feels antithetical to hold someone up and go hee hee look at how baby he is... that being said twewy DOES have a character who is SO shaped. i think mr mew speaks for himself

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave)

listen he's not unpopular but he's also THE image that pops into my mind when i envision a poor little meow meow... it's joshua kiryu, who is probably the character i talked about the most when i talked about twewy with you bc he has so many layers to peel back and it's fun to look at a miserable little liar with powers akin to a god and go Yeah, This Guy, Love This Guy. love this guy.

i really do look at him like noooo don't go into this game with total disregard for the beauty of humanity and come out of it having learned the value of trust and friendship along the way!! which COULD put him in blorbo territory, except that he's the nastiest little shithead in the whole game, and that's counting people like kariya whose literal jobs are to make people suffer in new and inventive ways. i have feelings for him

his core personality trait is that he never tells anyone anything, especially not the things that would be important for them to know, and decides to go about his business like he's above every other person in the world and doesn't need to bother with them. i love a good foil to my protagonists, but i especially love characters who shine a light on the ways they're different from my protagonists by being so similar. talk to me about him again sometime

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason)

also josh :) by the end of the game i remember feeling like i hadn't seen enough of him. neku and shiki and beat and rhyme all grow into people with a better understanding of themselves and the world and josh remains kind of aloof and above it all. makes me feel like he got something out of it all, but not the RIGHT things. not ENOUGH things. i would like to see him go through more events, and perhaps some of those events would be torment flavored

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell)

minamimoto. he made me do bad math and he's definitely gay

and even though i have no contact with whatever fandom still remains for this fifteen year old game i see TOO much of him and he can go away. i know he comes back in NEO but i dont know what happens in NEO so maybe i'll like him more after i actually get a chance to play it but until then he's just some GUY with a MEGAPHONE who needs it to be TAKEN AWAY. eeby deeby for him

[sclfmastery]

cw abuse mention - so im new to fandom and im curious about something. is it okay to ship toxic/abusive ships? like obviously not if one is an adult and the other is not or they're related but as anna karenina said "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." you know? ive just seen different opinions on that so im curious.

Short answer: Do what is comfortable for you and the people you directly interact with.  Have open conversations about what each of you is comfortable with. Tag  known triggers diligently, and put especially controversial content under a read-more.  At any point in time, when someone with whom you are writing becomes uncomfortable, respect their discomfort and cease to write the content that’s upsetting them. On the other side of the coin, refrain from judging others for writing material you are uncomfortable with, and simply avoid their blog. Block if you have to.  Blocking has gotten a bad rep on social media, but it is actually a very important way to establish boundaries in a society that’s ubiquitous with instant forms of information (and social contact).  Do not feel ashamed for doing what you need to do to feel safe. 

Longer answer: This is a tough one. That’s probably why you’ve seen so many different (often strong) opinions about it, and let me disclaim that I’m no expert. I have written many toxic ships and I have written many ships that are healthy and balanced right off the bat. My end goal, however, is always healthy and balanced, with the understanding by all involved, “do not try this in real life.” 

At the core of this argument is the extent to which creative fiction may explore realms that are necessarily, and for good reason, inadvisable, even harmful and dangerous, in real life.  This of course then brings up questions of “to what extent can fiction influence reality by modeling certain cultural values?” And, therefore, “what is the creator/author/artist’s responsibility to real people consuming their work?”  As an artist and scholar by profession, I am deeply invested in analyzing media for the messages it conveys, and in the fact that art has a transformative power upon society.  There are things you just shouldn’t write about: egregious depictions of rape not responsibly and sensitively resolved, for instance.  

On the other hand, some content creators who explore deeply controversial content claim that it is therapeutic to explore their triggers from the safe distance of fiction, and that, if they tag responsibly and don’t force that content on others, who is to say that they are “forbidden” from doing so? 

It’s a complicated situation and I have come to believe that the best way to deal with it is on a case-by-case basis. Everyone has a different threshold, and every “toxic ship” you might write is a different level of toxic. A good way  to gauge this is the couple’s power dynamic. 

 For instance, I write the Doctor X the Master on this blog. To me, this is acceptable because both parties have informed consent about how toxic the partner is, and both parties have an equitable power dynamic: neither the Doctor nor the Master is stronger, or at more of an advantage, in terms of social or political privilege. They are both nonbinary and queer, both Time Lords of an elite social caste (important note: for this pairing this is not always true. Sometimes you do have to be very careful, and check both the character’s privilege and your own as a writer: for instance, if you write Thirteen x Dhawan, be aware of how she weaponized his brownness against him, which DOES matter to the human audience watching Doctor Who, as well as the character--the Master--experiencing a power dynamic imbalance, and how that is a very problematic incident that needs to be directly addressed if the relationship is to flourish).  Moreover, at different times in their complex friendship, both parties have shown a willingness to change out of love for the other: meaning there is still the possibility of healthy growth and healing.  I tag triggers diligently and always, and I make sure my writing partners are not feeling uncomfortable. 

 On the other hand, I will never write a toxic ship like Jessica Jones x Kilgrave. Why? Because he is a serial rapist with no remorse who shows no signs of repentance.  Because Jessica is his serial victim, and because she is a woman and he is a cis man. Because he literally has the power of mind control and she isn’t, until the very end of the first season, immune.  Right there we have an inequitable power dynamic that really can never be resolved, and probably shouldn’t, because pardoning the man of crimes so real and so severe to millions of survivors worldwide is just not something it’s worth it to do for a fun writing hobby.

Another example of a toxic ship I’d never write: a historical slave owner x a slave. Like, Thomas Jefferson x Sally Hemings (yes, people actually do this. believe it or not).  Not a good idea to try to render sympathetic and romantic a figure who participated in and benefited economically from the trafficking and abuse of human beings, the effects of which are still felt by black and brown people every day.  Do I even have to say, inequitable power dynamic, based both on gender and on race?  Plus it’s dangerous from a historical, cultural narrative standpoint to romanticize the institution of racism by sugar-coating some of its most infamous practitioners (America already has done this by ascribing “Founding Father” to Jefferson, who was frankly an asshole).  In this case you’re even blurring the lines of fiction and reality because these were real people that you’re “rping.”  

Summary!  Open, considerate communication is really important. The rules are different than when you’re writing a solo fanfic. You are collaborating with another human being, who has feelings and needs.  Always consider the power dynamic of the characters: “should I” is a dynamic question with very different answers, from fictional couple to fictional couple. 

You will make mistakes. I know I have.  Don’t berate yourself too severely, just ask what you did wrong, make a note of it, and move forward better aware of what not to do.  

Folks can reblog this if it’s at all helpful! 

[andromedasummer]

i just saw what you wrote about my tags on your post. i get what you’re saying i really do you certainly have a point. It was just my opinion and those are my red flags, i just don’t like negativity. Also i wrote other opinions that i feel where completely cut out that explain a bit more what i mean. i just watch this sport to have fun i certainly do not base my moral compass on a bunch of rich white guys and i always say this in my blog. people can like controversial things or people and know that what they stand for isn’t okay. i wanted to answer you objectively but i couldn’t because i was blocked. you don’t have to answer this but i just wanted to be clear about that. you seem like a nice person and i didn’t meant to upset you with my tags.

ty for approaching this politely! its a complicated issue for sure thats common in a lot of sports, probably because of the immense wealth surrounding sport as a whole.

i personally can't understand how anyone could get enjoyment from finding comfort or support in people who are just not kind to minority groups, or support political parties that have killed many. especially when nearly all who have done this are unable to reflect or show remorse for these things past a weak acknowledgement or apology.

i find that skill in driving or a charming personality does very, very little for me when i know that person at their core cares very little of the real harm they cause. a person could be the most conventionally attractive person in the world but quite frankly if theyre a bigot and have no problem being one theyre less than dirt to me, there's nothing more unattractive than racism or ableism or fascism. and i wont deny i have that opinion of many motorsports drivers past and present in many series. theyre not worth any time put into "stanning" them and doing so does nothing but offer them support.

one can and should enjoy problematic media because its how you develop a critical mind. i very much enjoyed orlando by virginia wolff, for example and revere it a lot as early trans literature. however the racist content in the story shouldn't be ignored, nor should wolff's own racism. the characters of fictional problematic media can be analyzed and studied to hell and back and not pose risk (unless you get fans who are completely uncritical in their enjoyment).

like i find fans of kylo from sw absolutely insufferable but i also know their attraction is contained within a fictional character. there isnt as much direct effect on minority groups when youre supporting a fictional fascist. he cant go out and directly harm people.

however, if youre writing fanfics or reblogging gifsets of a real life man, with lots of money and lots of influence, who uses slurs without remorse, or worse, you need to understand that ultimately you are supporting that behaviour, because youre presenting a palatable image of both that person and their views to people who will hear the opinions these people share and possibly begin to think like them. or assume you think like them. why would any minority assume someone who supports a bigot isn't a bigot themselves? doing that is how you get yourself badly hurt, it's a real risk ive suffered the consequences of.

drivers don't exist in a fandom vacuum. theyre present in epstein's black book. they're photographed with fascist politicians. they wordlessly allow themselves to become symbols of hate within communities of fans who find their behaviour supports their racial/political bias. whether you like it or not every single one of these men have bias and beliefs that they will put money into. and when you have blogs dedicated to the ones that are openly morally corrupt, you help maintain the placid public facade they can put on while openly involving themselves in behaviour that causes real life harm.

[grilledkatniss]

I haven't been to a church in over a decade but I know you just don't have a sorta phonebook of churches that point out the pros and the cons of attending one service over the others. You go there because a number of reasons:

It was the closest to your house when you first moved into the neighborhood.

It's the one your friend goes to with his family.

It's the church you used to go to as a kid.

It's the church your in law's go to.

You've already built a sense of community with some of the attendees over the years.

You used to know the father before he became ordained.

It was recommended to you by several people whose opinion you value.

You appreciate the vibe.

The choir is better.

The hours are more to your convenience.

Etc.

It sucks that some of us automatically assume the worst from people. I mean, it's not a sect, he could leave. But why would you let internet trolls tell you where to make testimony of your faith. One's church is the community you've been welcomed into, your now Sunday buddies, not really whatever the Church your Church branched out of specifically stands for politically speaking. At least that's not usually the case.

Sidenote: This is exactly what Jameela Jamil was referring to with the media (somehow, while she made this remarkable study in regards to women in the spotlight, it works just as well here)

Build them up to an expectation they can't meet.

Hyperbolize how impossibly great they are and hyper expose them so people become sick of their face and think they're show monkeys desperate for attention.

Then the "smear campaign", the rumors, the "branded a. liar, a cheat, etc. and people will welcome the exit of this person rammed down their throats.

Then comes the complete take down. Using tiny controversies to overshadow the majority of positivity, to create the reputation that they're problematic..

That being said I did some research and this is probably what Ellen Page was referring to:

In a 2015 blog post, that a PR representative for Hillsong pointed NBC News to, Brian Houston, founder and senior pastor at the church, wrote, “Hillsong Church welcomes ALL people but does not affirm all lifestyles. Put clearly, we do not affirm a gay lifestyle and because of this we do not knowingly have actively gay people in positions of leadership, either paid or unpaid.”

Honestly what do you expect. This is still standard. Doesn't mean they're ANTI lgbtq. As of today apparently the Pope stated he's cool with same sex civil marriage. But it is still frowned upon to get a same sex couple married in church. I guess each religion is accepting within its parameters. The core must remain the same. Outside the core you can be as flexible as you want. If you alter the core, then that's a different religion you're making.

I don't see anyone trying to change other religions. Go do something about the branch of Muslim extremists that'd go beheading teachers for showing a cartoon of Muhammad while trying to make a point on free speech no more than a week ago. (Seriously, is this what's enraging the internet? A Hollywood actor NOT being political? For once?)

You'll say #NotAllMuslims and I'll say 'but some', I'll say #NotAllChristians and you'll say 'but some'. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt while they're not carrying knifes about in the street.

alright somebody add the 'you can excuse racism?' meme