Tag: the cw

entirelytookeen:

adreadfulidea:

So I did, and I wrote — I didn’t dare even start off writing gay characters, but I had sort of outlandish characters in there, and I would get notes literally from executives saying, “Could this character be less gay?” even if it was, like, a straight woman. Or, “The language coming out of this character’s mouth seems very flamboyant, which we think is too gay and will offend some of our viewers, can you take that out?”

And then two things happened. It just sort of made me mad, so I just sort of leaned into it. I wrote a bisexual character, I wrote about … a lesbian character, I had gay characters. And I would have meeting after meeting and they’d ask me to take them out and I’d say, “No, I won’t do it, why do you want it taken out?”

They were interested — this was at the WB — they were interested in gay people who were tragic. They were interested if you were gay and you would kill yourself. Or if you would try and commit suicide. They weren’t interested in gay sensibility, or the language of being gay, which is sometimes not just gay characters.

So I fought and I had great executive producers that backed me, and I kind of got those characters on, but then the show was canceled after two years.

But in that process … I had one meeting with an executive about a script, and I showed up at the meeting, and he started imitating my voice, and making feminine hand gestures — which I don’t have — and I never thought my voice was gay until he repeated it back to me. I literally was stunned into silence and he was being really, really brutal to me.

                                            – Ryan Murphy on being a gay writer in Hollywood. 

Ryan Murphy is nowhere near my favorite.

But I’m reblogging because this is his experience, and the network he’s talking about? The WB?

Later joined up with UPN to become: the CW. 

“they were interested in gay people who were tragic.”

The article linked is a rundown of his interview on a podcast, the entirely of which you can listen to here.

Quelle surprise.

We need more tweeters for Where Is Our Supergirl

rey-gaywalker:

y’all let’s tweet this

I’d forgotten.  Will help.  

If you’re on Twitter, please have a go – The CW really needs its arse kicked over the sexist tropes it won’t let go of.  

From the Clexa movement to this – if we can focus attention on this one network, push it for change, others are more likely to follow.  

When I see the numbers we trended with today – 120k tweets – I’d just like to wave that at Jroth and say

‘Here, look, you – look what you threw away.  We would have loved you.  We would have raised this show to the stars.  For a brief time you had the happiest, funniest, most joyful fandom and you threw it away.  It meant nothing to you.  Did you honestly think it would last once the extent of your queerbaiting had been revealed?  Did you really think we were all going to go Wow, what an amazing story this was, she had an AI all along!  Let’s keep watching to see what other further enticement there be.

Your queerbaiting might have been just naive arrogance.  Your willingness to kill off the lesbian beacon of fan’s dreams might have been a massive misunderstanding of her importance.  You didn’t see it or you simply didn’t care.  I refuse to believe you didn’t know.  You saw the tweets, you engaged with many of them.  You saw the artwork.  You saw how fan’s were celebrating her and somehow it meant nothing to you.  A story you hadn’t even thought through fully meant more to you.  That’s fine, really.  That’s what  a writer is, ultimately, right?

Except you’re not just a writer, are you?  You’re the show runner.  You’re the one responsible for everything that goes on with your show, including the actions of your cast and crew.  It’s your job to know everything that goes on, so you can sell it, make it work for your network, make them money. 

Did no one at your network see the rising fandom? Did no one see the raising of the social media profile?  Did no one else pay attention to the tweeting and tumblr posts and the like?  Did no one say to you – there it is, Jason.  The audience this show has been waiting for.  Treat them with care.  We don’t want to lose that.  Did no one delight in our delight?  Did no one think Yes, we’ve made people happy and let’s go on doing that because it’s going to make us money? 

That last bit, really.  It’s a business, of course.  You are the manager in charge of one of their properties.  You lost them a potential fortune with your behaviour, with your inability to keep your audience.  Why were you not sacked? 

If I were in charge of a huge department that brought in millions then suddenly dried up, I’d have to account for myself, for the loss, and either prove I can make up for it – or lose my job. 

So series 4 is where you show them you can still ‘bring it?’  How is that going for you, really? 

We would have loved you.  You could have had a huge success, one with a grateful and joyous fandom that would follow you anywhere.  You proved to not only be bad at business – not recognising your customers – but bad in the aftermath, too.  You made yourself look ridiculous.  No one, not in this crowd, is ever going to take you seriously again.  They’ll never buy anything that has you associated with it. They hate you.  You are, really, a liability for anyone you work for. 

But it was art, I get it.  Your half-arsed story was more important to you.  The half-arsed story you came up with on the fly as you were making series 3.  That’s how important it was. The half-arsed story that borrowed from so many other, better products.  You were determined to show off, weren’t you?  Bit you in the arse, didn’t it? 

You hurt people, Jason Rothenberg.  You hurt them and you didn’t have the decency of character to look those people in the eye and apologise, or try to learn about their pain and, maybe, if you could, ease it or make up for it – or, in your own vernacular – overcome it.  You sat behind the screen like so many men of your privilege do, knowing your experiences and point of view are superior to theirs.  These are just wanky, whingey kids.  Ignore them, boss. 

And we were, ignored by you and your bosses.  Only – I don’t think that’s really true.  The more you refused to talk about it, the more your bosses refused to acknowledge it – the more I think it really did get to you.  I think it does bother them.  I think they were paying attention.  Not just to us, but to the negative media you received. To the dwindling numbers.  Someone did say what the fuck is this? 

But it doesn’t matter now.  We’re all moving on in one way or another.  You’ve helped galvanise a generation of queer youth to taking over your industry one day. Congratulations on that.  I hope I live to see it. 

It’s kind of funny, these days, especially, since Dump took office.  The world is galvanised against him.  We all want better, we all deserve better than the standard-issue white heteronormative, patriarchal bullshit we’ve been fighting against for so long.  Believe it or not, you represent that bullshit.  You are one of many.  A liability to the whole world. 

Think about that, if nothing else.  You could have been loved, admired – an agent of change for many.  You certainly wanted us to think you were.  You’ll never fool anyone again.  And these fans that trended so hard for their hero today?  They will never let you forget. 

suprasternalnotsh:

inspectorboxer:

normalgiraffes:

Something I’ve noticed is that when we criticize Mon, someone always jumps into the notes to defend him. And the way they defend him is always the same – “well, he’s new to this planet, he doesn’t know how things are here!” / “he’s still learning, give him a chance” / “Well, but Kara likes him that’s all that matters” / “He lost his whole planet he’s probably traumatized” / “When he choked Kara and threw her through a window, he was scared and confused because he’d just woke up” / etc.

But here’s the thing: he is not any of those things. People are defending him as if he is a real person. He is not.

When we criticize Mon, we are not criticizing him as a person, because he isn’t one. He is a fictional character. We are criticizing the way he is being written. We are not angry at Mon the person because he does not exist.

We are angry because on a television show about a female hero, one marketed toward young girls, we just got an episode where two men fought over which one of them Kara belonged to, completely disregarding Kara’s agency and (lack of) consent.

We are criticizing the writing because we have yet to see a single reason why Kara likes him, or why he is somehow worthy of her, because his attraction to her, and him feeling bad because he thinks she doesn’t like him is not, by any measure, a reason why she should return that affection. As written, her interest in him is completely inexplicable, other than the fact that the actor playing this character is conventionally attractive. That’s not me saying “Mon is a terrible person and Kara doesn’t even like him”, because again, he’s not real. That’s me saying “The writing this season is terrible.”

We are critical of his character because, as we learned last season, they can easily write a character being confused on Earth, and not understanding how things work without writing the character as an admitted misogynist.

We are critical because if they wanted to show a character being scared and confused, there are dozens of ways to do that without him violently assaulting his future love interest, but they chose to write it this way.

We are criticizing the writing because if they wanted to show a relationship between two characters from different worlds, they could have done that with James and Kara, because James is from Earth and Kara is from Krypton. But they chose to suddenly and abruptly break up a relationship that they spent an entire season establishing and still haven’t adequately explained why in the story, and put Kara in a romantic relationship with Mon instead.

Mon isn’t real. He is a fictional character. We aren’t angry at him, because he doesn’t exist. We’re angry at the systemic culture of misogyny and racism, where the writers and producers and network executives think breaking up an interrracial couple after a season-long slow-burn before they even have a date so they can bring in a white guy; where the writers may have intended to write a brash hero, but think that means he should belittle and humiliate his love interest, our title character; where nobody seemed to have stopped to think “perhaps we should not have our future male romantic lead violently assault our female lead in a manner extremely reminiscent of domestic violence in a show aimed at young girls?”; where nobody seems to have stopped to think, period.

Look. I get that people who ship it think Mon is handsome, and that you think he just needs to be given a chance and he’ll change for Kara because he loves her so much. But he’s not real. He’s not capable of that, because he doesn’t exist. You can’t remove him from the context of the world we live in, because fiction doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and a show for young girls about a female hero normalizing that this is what romantic relationships should be like is incredibly irresponsible, and just plain bad writing.

There are hundreds of different ways they could have written this character. They chose to write him as a misogynist. They chose to take the romantic lead role away from the black man playing a beloved character, and give it to the new white boy instead. They chose to show our new romantic lead being physically violent to our female lead on more than one occasion – and specifically showed her being physically vulnerable to his strength (the scene where he chokes Kara and throws her through a window? Watch it again. He chokes her with one hand, picks her up by the throat and throws her with one hand – as Kara struggles and uses both hands to try to free herself and can’t, watch Kara on the ground as he kicks her in the stomach, sending her body sliding clear across the room). They chose to show him treat Kara as a prize to be won. They chose to write it in such a way that it, at best, is something very close to emotional abuse. They chose to show him disrespecting Kara. And they chose to have Kara be interested in him. They chose to sideline Supergirl in her own show (the only plot Kara has this season is supporting Mon).

They did not have to write him this way. But they did, and it’s reprehensible and irresponsible.

So, no. I don’t hate Mon. He doesn’t exist. What I do hate is every single one of the decisions made by the writers, producers and network executives that led to them thinking this was how to write a romantic relationship. It isn’t.

How many young girls will aspire to this kind of relationship because of this show? How many will be treated cruelly and think it’s just the way things work in relationships because of the message the writers are teaching them? Shows have shoved this nonsense down people’s throats for decades. It’s not revolutionary, it’s not cute, it’s not “banter” as the EP calls it, it’s damaging. They could literally be harming young woman with this story line. Whoever is responsible for turning a show about empowering women into a show about treating them poorly needs to be fired.

As they like to say in comics, with great power comes great responsibility. The Supergirl writers need to start taking some for their actions.

It is not only young girls who will be affected by this irresponsible portrayal, those who will be impacted the most are actually young guys watching this show, as I am sure there are plenty who still do, despite the perceived negative connotations a of a female superhero show.

What the majority of the US based online fandom does not seem to be fully aware of, is the fact that this show is being broadcasted in other areas of the world, alongside the other superhero shows from the same network. It is reaching a wide spectrum of viewers, from different cultures and backgrounds. If anyone is still under the illusion that media, precisely superhero themed media content, is not influential and essential in shaping one’s perception and outlook on life, especially among teen and younger viewers, then well, I feel sorry for them.

Nowhere this influence is more crucial than in patriarchal and conservative societies. Turning on the tv and seeing a genuine female superhero, the main star of a show, a lone girl on the show’s poster, that is not something trivial, common or inconsequential. This is a show that is shaping the imagination of young girls and boys from my region, who are not being brought up in the same environment and culture as US viewers,
who have not grown up with superhero comics,

who lack real life role models, and who, despite an easier access to the internet with its infinite content, are still enamored with comic book heroes, who still turn up in huge numbers to watch DC and Marvel movies anytime they get released.

I am worried about these viewers more than any others. These mostly young guys will tune in to watch the latest episode on a cable network that broadcasts to millions of subscribers in more than a dozen countries, think HBO but bigger. These young guys and girls will continue to be subjected to this toxic semblance of a romance, all the while the message that their mind is processing is that the patriarchal practices that they are witnessing first hand in their societies, the objectification of women, the misogyny, the verbal and physical abuse, the remaining horrible traits that this male character is exhibiting, all these features are being normalized, justified and ignored in the narrative, all in favor of the MALE love interest, at the expense of the FEMALE superhero. 

So no matter where the writing ends up taking Kara and Mon-El’s relationship, the damage that has been inflicted on the show’s image, its message, its core values, in the aim of imposing this relationship, through heavily marketing it as a counterpart to the other main couple of the show, that damage is permanent and irrevocable. Its negative ramifications cannot be swept away with a convenient “cautionary tale” twist. Kara’s character was literally obliterated in order to accommodate for the insertion of a “white male savior”, the Danvers Sisters dynamic, the literal heart and soul of the show, has been dismantled to further facilitate this insertion. These atrocities and all the other messed up storylines, plot holes, bad characterizations and missing development are supposed to be resolved how exactly? During a few minutes of exposition between fight scenes?

No, the big twist escape route will not do, the writing has become irresponsible, inexcusable and downright unethical. If even just ONE impressionable viewer stops watching, misses out on this supposed twist and comes away from the show with a distorted view of “romantic” love, with a mental image of a “weak” female superhero reduced to being the typical damsel in distress, or with a reinforced sense of male entitlement, that’s all it takes to negate any moralistic lesson or absolution that the writers might intend to flesh out for either Kara or Mon-El. Cosmetic fixes in the narrative won’t achieve any remedial effects and frankly, seeing their track record, the current writers are highly unqualified for the task and have run out of adequate screen time to salvage the show before this season ends.

This is the kind of discussion that is so inspiring because it shows the audience is active.  The audience can and will participate in the critical commentaries on these programmes and will make noise and bring attention to the failings of an entire industry.  

We saw it last year when the Clexa fandom rose up to challenge the industry, how that spread through other fandoms to demand better and here it is, now, with Supergirl. 

Keep these discussions going, make the industry pay attention to you.  Make them notice and care and change – or find their work, their money, their effort, for naught. 

suprcorp:

haulet:

if ya’ll are as tired of Supergirl’s racist, sexist, homophobic, and downright terrible content as I am

https://supergirl.tv/contact

THIS is the most direct way to reach the writers. let them know how you’re feeling it’s 100x more effective than screaming aimlessly on social media

The network is owned by Warner Bros, so make sure they get the message as well. 

Bang those pots and pans.  The audience is active.

yesbothways:

tunneys:

this is gross, he doesn’t even respect her enough to listen to her 

I mean… I get that they’re straight or whatever, so maybe being queer I feel stronger about deciding when to share news, but I would potentially punch a guy in the face and definitely break up with him over this.  That’s disrespect for someone’s ownership of their own sexuality.  That’s saying, you’re my property,  because you let me get involved with you.  I can make it public. This is mine and not yours.  Watch me.

Too many decades of straight romcoms where this sort of thing was considered funny and ‘charming.’

Sick, really.

melissvbenoist:

Important people in Kara’s life vs. Tall, dark and blandsome

image

But…but…but…he’s just keeping it real, you know? 

Kara can’t possibly be ‘real’ if she’s constantly being told how wonderful and important and necessary she is. Can’t have that. 

Female heroes gaslit by the standard-issue upholder of masculine values is now, officially, a CW staple. 

Hi I read you think Lexa won’t be mentioned again and you wrote about not supporting the campaign to get hr backon the show. if you a fan why don’t you want to see her again??

I didn’t support the ‘campaign’ for her return because I’m not one to ask my abuser for anything. I don’t want to see anything I love in the hands of my abuser. I know my abuser will not respect the things I love and will merely use them to mess with me further.  If Lexa is mentioned in the show, it will be merely to namedrop, not to rebuild, to, perhaps, torture Clarke even more, not rebuild. 

I am a fan of Lexa which is exactly why I don’t want to *see* her on this show anymore. 

The only caveat I could bring is, if the CW had been smart, they would have replaced Jroth as showrunner and if that new showrunner had shown empathy and understanding towards the audience, and a willingness to rebuild the show in a different direction, to fix the too-many-to-name plot holes and inconsistencies, and show respect for the damage done – I could have been behind any support for the respectful return of her character.  

As it is, The CW/Jroth have shown they basically want the ‘conversation’ around Lexa to disappear. It was pointed out some time ago ADC has been prevented from attending any 1oo-related event (may very well have been pushed away from attending DDC) – as she is Lexa’s ‘face’ – and very popular, and her attendance automatically brings up the ‘discourse’ that they do not want.  They’ll capitalise on the character’s popularity and make a small mint through Funko, but they’re not interested in apologising or behaving the way a responsible adult would, after having harmed so many young people.  

If you’re a fan of Lexa, recognise neither Rothenberg nor his studio respect you. They want you to go away.  

Lexa belongs with her fans now.  I’m happy that she stays there.