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zelda_queenHello, gentle Viewers. This might be a bit of a confusing message to see here, particularly for anyone who previously read this post when there was a sporking of an angry essay here. I shall explain.
For those who stumbled here for the first time, way back when I first started sporking, in 2010, I sporked a series of essays by a blogger by the name of Alecto. Those essays focused her ire on Joss Whedon and the series Firefly and largely accused it of being filled with all sorts of racism and misogyny and of Whedon himself being an abusive rapist. At the time, it all seemed very ridiculous.
Right. Hm.
Here's the thing. I've actually been giving thought to removing these sporkings for awhile now. Honestly, I ran into them when I was young and dumb and said stuff in sporkings that, in retrospect, makes me cringe. I was also still pretty naïve about a lot of issues, which means that a lot of the initial rebuttals I made in the sporking where, in hindsight, incredibly ignorant and not nearly as well-analyzed as I try to do with current sporkings.
I'd waffle off and on to myself about whether to remove the posts entirely, redo the sporking itself, or leave the sporking as it was and add a disclaimer at the top about taking what I said with the knowledge that I was young and stupid at the time and try to do better now.
As of today, 02/10/2021, however, I cannot in good faith leave these posts as they are. I still have a great deal of fondness for Firefly, though I do see now that it has its share of problems. I love a great many works Whedon worked on. But with the accounts coming out of Whedon's behavior, I decided the sporkings had to come down. I'm sorry to anyone who did enjoy it, but I couldn't leave up posts defending Whedon and his works against something that I know now is (A) quite true and (B) caused so much trauma to the actors and actresses he's worked with.
Some of you might be wondering why in the world I'm leaving the post intact at all and not just straight-up deleting it. That was something I considered, but there were a few reasons I decided against it. Part of it is that I'm the sort of person who just has a massive issue with deleting or getting rid of anything in its entirety. I'm a bit of a pack rat in the real world and that mentality can overlap with digital content. Part of it is also me hating the feeling when some work -- fanfiction, art, webcomic, etc. -- I love to revisit is suddenly gone without a trace. By not deleting the post outright, anyone who might return to reread this can have some idea of what happened, at least.
Finally, part of it is me not wanting to pretend past mistakes I made didn't happen. Like I said, the sporkings themselves were cringe-worthy and, should I have stumbled across them for the first time at this point in my sporking career, I probably would have left them alone entirely. The sporkings were a stupid thing I did and I won't pretend I didn't do them. To anyone in Viewerland who I may have inadvertently made uncomfortable with my arguments but, for whatever reason, chose not to speak out, I wholeheartedly apologize.
For anyone who wanted to revisit the sporkings for their arguments against Alecto, I will sum up my general thoughts in hindsight. Some of her points (particularly about bringing awareness to abusive treatment of women of color, especially aboriginal women of Australia, and about sex through pressure from social, financial, or emotional factors being forms of rape) I do think are valid to certain extents. I am not going to go back and re-read her essays because 2021 has plenty to keep me occupied, but I do think it's valid and admirable to fight against domestic abuse and racism, as well as address the intersectionality between them.
THAT BEING SAID, I also think that a lot of the conclusions she draws are still bass-ackwards. Her argument that Walsh and Zoe's relationship being a given as abusive simply because it's interracial and she never has seen an interracial relationship that wasn't abusive is, to say the least, flawed. The same goes for her assuming Whedon's relationship with his partner, Kai Cole, was abusive. Kai has come out as saying he was abusive, but that doesn't mean make Alecto's argument that Kai must be a gold digger who deserves then-unverified abuse. I also disagree with her adhering to second wave feminism and essentially equating any sort of sex work or sexual content as evil. It really doesn't help spread the message of Sisterhood that she dismissively refers to Inara as a "fuckbuddy".
Thank you for sticking with me through this. I'm still working on sporkings, so please feel free to check out my other content! I hope to continue to improve and provide you with something enjoyable, to take away at least a bit of the ongoing craziness that we're all dealing with.
Part 2- Onward and outward! :D
Return to the Sporking Chamber
For those who stumbled here for the first time, way back when I first started sporking, in 2010, I sporked a series of essays by a blogger by the name of Alecto. Those essays focused her ire on Joss Whedon and the series Firefly and largely accused it of being filled with all sorts of racism and misogyny and of Whedon himself being an abusive rapist. At the time, it all seemed very ridiculous.
Right. Hm.
Here's the thing. I've actually been giving thought to removing these sporkings for awhile now. Honestly, I ran into them when I was young and dumb and said stuff in sporkings that, in retrospect, makes me cringe. I was also still pretty naïve about a lot of issues, which means that a lot of the initial rebuttals I made in the sporking where, in hindsight, incredibly ignorant and not nearly as well-analyzed as I try to do with current sporkings.
I'd waffle off and on to myself about whether to remove the posts entirely, redo the sporking itself, or leave the sporking as it was and add a disclaimer at the top about taking what I said with the knowledge that I was young and stupid at the time and try to do better now.
As of today, 02/10/2021, however, I cannot in good faith leave these posts as they are. I still have a great deal of fondness for Firefly, though I do see now that it has its share of problems. I love a great many works Whedon worked on. But with the accounts coming out of Whedon's behavior, I decided the sporkings had to come down. I'm sorry to anyone who did enjoy it, but I couldn't leave up posts defending Whedon and his works against something that I know now is (A) quite true and (B) caused so much trauma to the actors and actresses he's worked with.
Some of you might be wondering why in the world I'm leaving the post intact at all and not just straight-up deleting it. That was something I considered, but there were a few reasons I decided against it. Part of it is that I'm the sort of person who just has a massive issue with deleting or getting rid of anything in its entirety. I'm a bit of a pack rat in the real world and that mentality can overlap with digital content. Part of it is also me hating the feeling when some work -- fanfiction, art, webcomic, etc. -- I love to revisit is suddenly gone without a trace. By not deleting the post outright, anyone who might return to reread this can have some idea of what happened, at least.
Finally, part of it is me not wanting to pretend past mistakes I made didn't happen. Like I said, the sporkings themselves were cringe-worthy and, should I have stumbled across them for the first time at this point in my sporking career, I probably would have left them alone entirely. The sporkings were a stupid thing I did and I won't pretend I didn't do them. To anyone in Viewerland who I may have inadvertently made uncomfortable with my arguments but, for whatever reason, chose not to speak out, I wholeheartedly apologize.
For anyone who wanted to revisit the sporkings for their arguments against Alecto, I will sum up my general thoughts in hindsight. Some of her points (particularly about bringing awareness to abusive treatment of women of color, especially aboriginal women of Australia, and about sex through pressure from social, financial, or emotional factors being forms of rape) I do think are valid to certain extents. I am not going to go back and re-read her essays because 2021 has plenty to keep me occupied, but I do think it's valid and admirable to fight against domestic abuse and racism, as well as address the intersectionality between them.
THAT BEING SAID, I also think that a lot of the conclusions she draws are still bass-ackwards. Her argument that Walsh and Zoe's relationship being a given as abusive simply because it's interracial and she never has seen an interracial relationship that wasn't abusive is, to say the least, flawed. The same goes for her assuming Whedon's relationship with his partner, Kai Cole, was abusive. Kai has come out as saying he was abusive, but that doesn't mean make Alecto's argument that Kai must be a gold digger who deserves then-unverified abuse. I also disagree with her adhering to second wave feminism and essentially equating any sort of sex work or sexual content as evil. It really doesn't help spread the message of Sisterhood that she dismissively refers to Inara as a "fuckbuddy".
Thank you for sticking with me through this. I'm still working on sporkings, so please feel free to check out my other content! I hope to continue to improve and provide you with something enjoyable, to take away at least a bit of the ongoing craziness that we're all dealing with.
Part 2- Onward and outward! :D
Return to the Sporking Chamber