Ahem some harsh words

[sombrefan]

Stop complaining about Buffy season 8 on LJ. You bring forward some great arguments and criticism but no one outside LJ takes a blind bit of notice about what you write in your LJ. If you're really bothered about it, you need to get your concerns debated as widely as possible. As far as people are aware, the fandom as a whole likes Season 8. Let's look at the level of success regarding your complaints.

Pop-culture press awareness of your concerns - 0%
Online Fandom awareness of your concerns - 5%
Getting Joss and Dark Horse to seriously address your concerns - 0%

So well done there. Look LJ is safe, you can do a nice long rant and get all your friends agreeing with you and everything is lovely and glowly but you've achieved sod all. Maybe that's what you want, armchair criticism without actually having to do anything. And using terms like "crackfic"? Seriouly, good job in putting forth a term that the casual fan knows nothing about. The joke is even funnier when you have to explain it.

"So Mr Conscending how would you go about it?" I hear you ask. Well if you didn't get the hint earlier, avoid LJ. Instead you and a trusted handful of friends should set up a site. Something along the lines of "Fans concerned about Buffy". Introduce yourselves and write about what the show and the characters meant to you and why you feel dismayed about the direction Season 8 took. Talk about why you felt so concerned to stand up and speak on the matter. I wouldn't go on and on about the failings of season 1-7 cause then you look like a picky sod and people might wonder you were a fan in the first place. Have banners, regularly update the site with blog entries on commentaries on season 8 issues, why the characters feel different etc. And as already stated avoid fannish terms like OOC, OTP etc.

Now ideologically driven essays can put people off. Just saying. By all means write them but be aware that some of them come across may come across as very zealotry and people will focus on that rather than your argument. So remember that when you write. You want to get your message read by as many fans as possible rather just preaching to your band of friends who share the same views as you. And don't make demands like "Joss should answer this right now!" etc etc. You just look silly . Coach your words in such a way that you don't come across as a hardliner.

Now obviously you want your site to be read. Target sites like IO9.com and SciFi Wire. Their writers get paid by the hit. And what do people love to read more than anything else on the Internet? Negative stories of course. What do you think gets more hits on Whedonesque? Items like "Praise for Dollhouse" or "Criticism for Dollhouse"? The latter. Believe me when I say, the pop-culture sites will eat up items like "Growing fan backlash against the Buffy comics" or "Fans launch site to save Buffy". And obviously get the site linked to at Whedonesque as well. You might also want to think approaching Newsarama, Bleeding Cool, Comics Beat, Comic Book Resources, Girl-Wonder etc. Now obviously this is just my way of doing it. "And why are you doing it", you ask? Well the game needs to be raised and I want to see worthy arguments out there rather than happening in a fan space that's isolated from outside.

ETA: I redraft on the fly which can cause problems who link here. But I will state it's not just season 8 we have to think about, it's also season 9 and beyond. Because as far as I can see the Buffyverse's long term future is comics. And a open debate is needed. Those critical of season 8 need to have their voices heard.

Comments

[penny-lane-42.livejournal.com]

Exactly. So much of it centers around what kinds of discussion the readership of a particular site is expecting. On a site like whedonesque or MTV.com or whatever, most readers go in expecting very surface (or at least non-academic, non *ism centered) kinds of discussion (though this is not true of every reader, nor of every discussion). If you're in journal fandom, you expect to find as much really hardcore meta as you do porny fic or pretty picspams--I mean, the existence of things like metafanom and linkspam is proof of lj/dw/etc.'s bent towards the kind of discussion we're talking about.