Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-29649445-20160326172628/@comment-16845200-20160329034239

damn, i wish there was a "read more" option on replies. sorry for the mega walls of text below.

but...yep, they queerbaited, and they queerbaited hard. and about the "straight white male" thing, well...that might have been true at first (and even that's shaky). but now? now. it's just. another. goddamn. excuse. i'm really sick of hearing this "i can't understand the pain these people are feeling because i'm a straight, white male." well, let me let you in on something: pain is pain. the response to 307 has been raw and emotional. he claims to have read up on this matter, but if he had, he wouldn't be saying "i can't understand this fully bc i'm a straight, white male." no. stop right there. you don't have to fully comprehend what the entire community is going through to sympathize and apologize and admit that you made a really huge damn mistake. i have still not heard jroth apologize directly for the visceral pain the lgbt* community has experienced in the aftermath of lexa's death - he's "apologized" the way the scenes played out, he's """apologized""" for lexa's death, but he's not apologized for the real heart of the issue, which is still stinging and raw. it's kind of pathetic. and even the way he handled his response when asked about the trevor project? W O W...and not the good kind of "wow."

and oh boy, it doesn't even stop there. it's the way he and the network are still acting now, nearly an entire month after 307. it's the way he and the network acted in the weeks following the 307 debacle. and THEN there are so many factors that have happened since then, starting with alycia freaking debnam-carey's comments abt The Lexa Issue (and i mean that in the kindest way possible) @ paleyfest up til jroth's comments @ wondercon yesterday that have just lit a huge freaking blue-colored inferno under my ass and it isn't going to burn out any time soon. i'm not going to get into the sordid details, but...hooo boy. alycia, and then jason...let's just say that paleyfest was a full freaking week before wondercon and jroth said nothing about The Lexa Issue until after paleyfest.

and hey, you know who's handled this situation with absolute aplomb? javier grillo-marxuach. you know who jroth should've imitated? javier grillo-marxuach. you know who over half the lgbt*/lexa/clexa fandom has forgiven or is well on their freaking way to forgiving? javier grillo-marxuach. you know why javier grillo-marxuach is back in the good books of many lexa fans? because that man walked straight out into the nuclear fallout freakshow that was post-307 and really, really listened to what lgbt* people who were rocked by the episode had to say and showed that he did. he listened, he let people vent, he posted tweets and asks wherein people screamed their heads off at him, and he made no goddamn excuses. he was just there. posting and posting and posting ask after ask after ask. not replying. just. listening. and then when the time was appropriate, he offered words of comfort. he's still dealing with the fallout now and he's dealt with it wonderfully. javier grillo-marxuach. give this man a gold medal.

but jason. jason. jason, buddy. my man.

nothing but excuses or avoidances has come flying out of his mouth. n o t h i n g. he has not touched upon the heart of the issue AT ALL. he claims that he didn't queerbait - jroth, i invite you to go on google and type in the phrase "what is queerbaiting" and read the wikipedia article that comes up, because anyone who has done that knows full well that what you did was queerbaiting - and, well, he's still lying: like, he definitely knew about buffy (for one, that show is like an industry staple, you've gotta have watched some of buffy if you want to go into this industry bc it's just had such a huge effect on modern tv; for another, jroth is writing a show about with a "kickass female lead character" and, well, buffy was one of the harbingers of that genre, so...all in all...jason, not lookin' good), and if you know about buffy, chances are you know about what happened to tara freaking maclay. javi basically confirmed that the writers knew about the dead lesbian trope, too, and given that jroth is the showrunner, if the writers had even any sort of autonomy over the way lexa died jroth'd be the one they'd have to go through to get it approved. (i didn't word that properly but honestly i don't know how?? in short, jroth was the one who approved the whole 'getting shot' biz and that is Not Cool, especially if you had prior knowledge of the dead lesbian trope.) and after his fans made it clear that they did not like this decision at all, he has handled this situation in the WORST way imaginable: every single day he didn't talk about The Lexa Issue only further exacerbated the fans' ire. listen, it doesn't really matter whether or not you think The Lexa Issue is stupid: the fact remains that a LARGE portion of the 100's fanbase did find it extremely offensive, and they were making their opinions heard loud and clear. so logically, it would fall to jason to deal with these fans' reactions...except he didn't. he remained silent probably because he thought that the absolute white-hot fury after lexa's death was caused by a bunch of "bitter, angry teens" and they'd soon find some other thing to get bitter and angry about. well, he couldn't have been more wrong, and the rest is history.

(...though it should be mentioned that the movement currently happening now does have its own issues and needs to be addressed - bisexuality isn't talked about nearly enough, and i've even seen the word bi-erasure being thrown around, though i personally don't think it's reached that level - but actively casting off and totally de-legitimizing what's happened in the aftermath of 307? how insensitive. how cruel. how pathetic. must you be.)

oh, and also: what exactly was happening with ricky whittle before all this went down? and the covert racism that jroth's supposedly "progressive" show is exhibiting. admittedly, i haven't done as much digging into this particular topic as i have the lgbt* issue, so i won't get too into it. but i have thought about it, and written a bit about it, and the fact that it wasn't even mentioned at wondercon (marie avgeropoulos' absence was very, very noted)? at all?

and yet i still see people trying to defend him and say that he's "genuinely remorseful" about The Lexa Issue. he sounds shaky in that interview, certainly, but my question is...''why. now.'' why not 3 weeks earlier. why not 2 weeks earlier. why not a week ago. ''why not before paleyfest. '''why. now.' it's too little, too late.

smh.