Standing up against Brute Force and Cynicism.

[bodlon]

One of the things I love about fandom is that, more than almost anywhere else in the world, it feels like home. It’s that fabled place where everybody knows your name, or at the very least, the language. I’ve seen fans front each other food, drink, and shelter with incredible generosity within moments of meeting one another face-to-face.

Which is why Saturday night at Gally was kind of jarring. I’ve been meditating on the thing, parsing it out, and I’m still really unhappy about it.

The first time I saw Once More With Feeling was at Dragon*Con. It was a double-feature with Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. And it was amazing.

Most importantly, though, it was fun. It was a huge room of people getting together to celebrate things that they love, to sing along with stories in the middle of the night. People were cool to each other, strangers shared chairs and and song and bottled drinks. In that moment, I knew that if I had future opportunities to go to another sing-along for either that I’d be all about it.

Saturday night at Gally I had a chance. My friends and I went. The lights went down, the show went on, the singing started. And that’s when things got a little weird, because the first time Dawn spoke onscreen, a handful of people yelled, “SHUT UP, DAWN!”

It was, in the moment, a little bit funny. Except that it kept happening. Every time Dawn spoke. And it kept getting louder.

Eventually, one girl — slightly built, young, and clearly unhappy with this state of affairs — yelled for people to stop it. She pointed out how Michelle Trachtenberg had been brought to tears by this kind of behavior, and how Joss Whedon didn’t approve of it. She tried to tell them how someone on a “shadow cast” — a term for a group of people who acts out the episode on stage while it runs — might feel.

Several guys in the crowd tried to shout her down. One guy yelled that Trachtenberg should “toughen up” as well, “like Wil Wheaton had to.” It wasn’t until someone shouted that fans shouldn’t bully fans that the crowd quieted down. But still, afterward, there were guys trying to explain how the whole thing was really just like Rocky Horror.

Yeah, no. Some points:

- In audience participation at Rocky Horror, everyone gets lampooned. Everyone. Brad’s an asshole, Janet’s a slut, Meatloaf’s delicious. Saturday night was a dogpile on Dawn. Whatever you think about her character — and I get that a lot of people have a problem with Dawn — that’s not a comparison that stands up to any kind of scrutiny.

- Invoking Wil Wheaton whilst being a dick? Gee, do you think maybe Uncle Willy formulated a certain law from experience? Experience that, if you listen to him, other fans and actors might not have to endure?

- Shutting someone down en masse is bullying. Period. When it’s a small, young woman getting shouted down by a group of men, that looks especially problematic.

- I’m now reluctant to attend future screenings of Once More With Feeling. This wasn’t fun. Watching people be mean for the sake of being mean isn’t enjoyable for me. Combine hostile pack behavior with Buffy, and my first thought is hyenas. Which, you know, ought to be an object lesson in ethics on its own.

We’re better than this, fandom. I know because I’ve seen it, lived it, benefited from it, and tried to do what I can to make it happen for other people when I have the resources. It’s just as easy — easier, actually, because you don’t have to resort to tortured logic — to stop and be kind as it is to disregard someone’s feelings.

Or, as they used to say in one of my very earliest fandoms (which also happens to include a time-traveling phone booth): be excellent to each other.

Now party on before I tell you damn whippersnappers to get off my lawn.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com