Well, some context - this was happening at the time of the Kitten Jihad. Basically, there was a Willow/Tara posting board called the Kitten, the Witch, and the Bad Wardrobe, or the Kitten Board for short. Lots of the members were gay, and it sort of had the reputation of the place where gay BtVS fans hung out. I checked them out when I first got into online fandom, but one of the mods was very anti-Spike for reasons I never found out, and her attitude kind of permeated the board, so I just lurked for a bit and then went to find more Spike-friendly premises.
ANYWAY, early in S6, one of the main spoiler sources was a Spuffy shipper. She found out that Joss planned to kill Tara off, and she thought that the Kitten Board might like to be prepared for such a devastating blow to their ship. So she let them know what she'd found out - but apparently, the anti-Spike mod flat-out refused to believe it, and accused the spoiler person of lying in order to stir up shit. They asked Steve DeKnight, who sometimes posted on the Bronze Beta, another general posting board, if Tara was going to be killed. DeKnight said something like "Tara will die over my dead body!" which the Kittens took as proof that the spoiler source had been lying to them. So, more bad blood between Spike fans and Willow/Tara shippers, albeit one-sided bad blood.
Then Tara died, and the Kitten Board went absolutely postal, and the Kitten Jihad against Mutant Enemy was born. They started a letter campaign accusing Joss of being homophobic, because Tara dying and Willow going evil was a textbook example of the Dead Lesbian cliche. They lobbyied for a boycott of the show, and other stuff I'm not recalling - maybe they were one of the groups that took out ads somewhere. Eventually the mods deleted the whole posting board in a sort of catastrophic implosion. They eventually brought it back, with super-strict membership criteria and rules that Tara's death was never to be mentioned, ever - you were literally not allowed to mention any BtVS episode past "Entropy" on the board, and they became fandom hermits.
Joss et al. claimed that they weren't familiar with the dead lesbian cliche, and they certainly weren't homophobic, but the violence of the fan reaction to "Seeing Red" across all factions really startled them, I think. (DeKnight even apologized for being misleading, sorta.) Rumor has it that the Kitten Jihad had enough impact on ME that they scrapped tentative plans to get Willow and Xander together in S7, and went with Willow/Kennedy instead, but there are all sorts of rumors about stuff that was supposed to happen in S7 and never did, so who knows.
So anyway, the Jihad was in full swing at this point, and a lot of gay fans were involved. And I had a line in my review to the effect that I was one lesbian in fandom who wasn't out for Steve DeKnight's head. (It probably makes me a Bad Gay, but the truth is, while I like Willow/Tara well enough, they don't have a dynamic that grabs me. If the show had ever gone Buffy/Faith, it would have been a different story. But I digress.) It was kinda-sorta understandable why the guy was under the impression that there were no gay Spike fans.
We actually had a good conversation and parted ways amicably - I think he was suitably embarrassed by his assumptions once he 'met' me, so to speak.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 01:15 am (UTC)ANYWAY, early in S6, one of the main spoiler sources was a Spuffy shipper. She found out that Joss planned to kill Tara off, and she thought that the Kitten Board might like to be prepared for such a devastating blow to their ship. So she let them know what she'd found out - but apparently, the anti-Spike mod flat-out refused to believe it, and accused the spoiler person of lying in order to stir up shit. They asked Steve DeKnight, who sometimes posted on the Bronze Beta, another general posting board, if Tara was going to be killed. DeKnight said something like "Tara will die over my dead body!" which the Kittens took as proof that the spoiler source had been lying to them. So, more bad blood between Spike fans and Willow/Tara shippers, albeit one-sided bad blood.
Then Tara died, and the Kitten Board went absolutely postal, and the Kitten Jihad against Mutant Enemy was born. They started a letter campaign accusing Joss of being homophobic, because Tara dying and Willow going evil was a textbook example of the Dead Lesbian cliche. They lobbyied for a boycott of the show, and other stuff I'm not recalling - maybe they were one of the groups that took out ads somewhere. Eventually the mods deleted the whole posting board in a sort of catastrophic implosion. They eventually brought it back, with super-strict membership criteria and rules that Tara's death was never to be mentioned, ever - you were literally not allowed to mention any BtVS episode past "Entropy" on the board, and they became fandom hermits.
Joss et al. claimed that they weren't familiar with the dead lesbian cliche, and they certainly weren't homophobic, but the violence of the fan reaction to "Seeing Red" across all factions really startled them, I think. (DeKnight even apologized for being misleading, sorta.) Rumor has it that the Kitten Jihad had enough impact on ME that they scrapped tentative plans to get Willow and Xander together in S7, and went with Willow/Kennedy instead, but there are all sorts of rumors about stuff that was supposed to happen in S7 and never did, so who knows.
So anyway, the Jihad was in full swing at this point, and a lot of gay fans were involved. And I had a line in my review to the effect that I was one lesbian in fandom who wasn't out for Steve DeKnight's head. (It probably makes me a Bad Gay, but the truth is, while I like Willow/Tara well enough, they don't have a dynamic that grabs me. If the show had ever gone Buffy/Faith, it would have been a different story. But I digress.) It was kinda-sorta understandable why the guy was under the impression that there were no gay Spike fans.
We actually had a good conversation and parted ways amicably - I think he was suitably embarrassed by his assumptions once he 'met' me, so to speak.