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I feel like with the new ~fandom drama~ or whatever going around, I should re-introduce my favorite theory of fandom, which I call the 1% Theory.

Basically, the 1% Theory dictates that in every fandom, on average, 1% of the fans will be a pure, unsalvageable tire fire. We’re talking the people who do physical harm over their fandom, who start riots, cannot be talked down. The sort of things public news stories are made of. We’re not talking necessarily bad fans here- we’re talking people who take this thing so seriously they are willing to start a goddamn fist fight over nothing. The worst of the worst.

The reason I bring this up is because the 1% Theory ties into an important visual of fandom knowledge- that bigger fandoms are always perceived as “worse”, and at a certain point, a fandom always gets big enough to “go bad”. Let me explain.

Say you have a small fandom, like 500 people- the 1% Theory says that out of those 500, only 5 of them will be absolute nutjobs. This is incredibly manageable- it’s five people. The fandom and world at large can easily shut them out, block them, ignore their ramblings. The fandom is a “nice place”.

Now say you have a medium sized fandom- say 100,000 people. Suddenly, the 1% Theory ups your level of calamity to a whopping 1000 people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot for anyone to manage. It is, by nature of fandom, impossible to “manage” because no one owns fan spaces. People start to get nervous. There’s still so much good, but oof, 1000 people.

Now say you have a truly massive fandom- I use Homestuck here because I know the figures. At it’s peak, Homestuck had approximately FIVE MILLION active fans around the globe.

By the 1% Theory, that’s 50,000 people. Fifty THOUSAND starting riots, blackmailing creators, contributing to the worst of the worst of things.

There’s a couple of important points to take away here, in my opinion.

1) The 1% will always be the loudest, because people are always looking for new drama to follow.

2) Ultimately, it is 1%. It is only 1%. I can’t promise the other 99% are perfect, loving angels, but the “terrible fandom” is still only 1% complete utter garbage.

3) No fandom should ever be judged by their 1%. Big fandoms always look worse, small fandoms always look better. It’s not a good metric.

So remember, if you’re ever feeling disheartened by your fandom’s activity- it’s just 1%, people. Do your part not to be a part of it.

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Lol looks like this episode has resurrected the usual fuckery once again. Another reason why the rebooted series is good - Im hoping this is the last of this garbage.

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jenmorrisonlive #onceuponatime #emmaswan @colinodonoghue1 (x)

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Honestly, you all should know better than to hijack a post with your vile shit. Make your own posts on your own damn blogs. JFC

Also, if that photo from yesterday was of Jared in costume, kid finally ditched the scarf. Looks like Mom and Dad have had some influence on his style.

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Isn’t it sad that it’s the same everywhere? (X)

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“You’re only shipping those two characters for fun!!!” i mean… yes?

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Hey Nonnie:

I don't think it's you shipping DQ that's the problem, it's that you ship CS and especially OQ. Majority of ERs find OQ and Hood gross, so how can a fandom accept someone who thinks that was a good ship, and ever worse, thinks that two women, in your case Regina and Mal, need that gross jerk. SWEN will always side-eye you for shipping OQ.

Ah yes. Thanks nonnie. Totally needed that one.

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i spent a lot of time today thinking about about bad behaviour in fandom. not because it’s new, per se, but the widespread disrespect for boundaries, both with the actors and with each other, is new in its sheer volume. entitlement to others and entitlement to your space without regard for its impact on others is a new thing and i have a need to pick at why it is and where it has come from.

at a macro level, there’s been a huge shift in what fandom is. until fairly recently fandom was a few things, but universally it was creatively focused and carried out in privacy. yes, people were fans of the actors more often than not, but that was distinctly separate from fandom, which above all else was about doing things with the material. it occurs to me that fandom may have been the wrong word for what we were, because the reason people found themselves entering fandom was as much as out of frustration as it was with adoration. we wanted to do something more with the material. it absolutely is not this way anymore. being in fandom now is about being a fan, the loudest and the more intense that you can be. it’s like cheering for a sports team, as if your encouragement will get your chosen team over the finish line first.

and also who can be the “best” fan. see also: ship polls, getting acknowledgement from people  involved in the material, and your chosen ship becoming canon.

the goals have changed. it’s not about doing something yourself. it’s about getting other people, namely the material creators, to do something for you. and it is all very, very public.

and yet congruously there is this entitlement to treat your own space in fandom as if it were private. the belief that what you want to do is yours to be done regardless of consequence because it’s your space. most overtly i see this in things like not tagging nsfw content, in not rating fic, in not recognising that just because you choose to engage in fandom, a space that is at times highly sexual in nature, doesn’t mean those around you must be forced to participate with you. in shoving graphic fanart in actors faces. in making actors read fic about their characters.

a part of this, i’m starting to feel, is owed to the growing but fracturing spaces that fandom inhabits. disregarding twitter, which is a steaming pile of bad behaviour directed at anyone with a speck of name recognition, fandom is ironically in what feels like a very public/private split at the moment. yes, we’re all here on tumblr. but tumblr is horrible for conversation, and so most people have shifted to a secondary space for conversation. so much of the dialogue that makes fandom great is now taking place away from easy access to broader fandom. everybody’s got a group chat or five, and that’s where you’re a person and not just a faceless tumblr of other people’s content. with that split, a lot of institutional memory and general good behaviour modelling is fading away, especially as those who have been around for an age start to pull back from engaging in this new era of fandom because it’s not what we signed up for.

i don’t have any conclusions about all this, other than that it all makes me very uncomfortable. i don’t want to be associated with this public face of fandom, and i never have. but as fandom becomes more and more mainstream, i can only see this escalating. and as a fan of the power of language and the capacity it has to define what we are, a part of me wishes some great schism will come. 

yet i can’t help but feel some responsibility for this place i’ve called home for nearly 20 years. i want us all to be better, even if we don’t all want the same things out of this space we all share.

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Gotta love it when certain people are parodies of themselves.

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Wow, ok. I’ll bite @zannereid27. You reblogged off my reblog to this blog, which is my fandom side blog. You’re actually one of only 50 followers on this blog - hi!

I use this blog to make very infrequent posts to occasional vent frustrations about fandom and talk about fandom issues that tend to make people feel uncomfortable. This is very clear from my “about this blog” page.

I don’t tend to use the negativity tags here because it is INHERENT to the premise of the blog. In fact, I’ve reblogged things here that I actively disagree with, but reblogged them because I thought they were thoughful or interesting in some way.

I understand feelings are running high (when AREN’T they running high ffs), but hijacking this post was not the way to go. Next time please make your own post, or take it to PM.

 A note to my followers here: I don’t post often, but when I do it is not usually tagged in the way I tag on my main blog. Also don’t expect sunshine and roses here. If you want a happy dash, best to unfollow.

zannereid27:

gusenitsaa:

zannereid27:

fandom-odette:

annaamell:

gusenitsaa:

I think I might just start unfollowing every single person who complains about abc just keeping once for the money.

Did you think ABC was a charity? A fanfiction writer? Here’s a Clue, I want to ABC to make money on once upon a time. I want the writers and producers and actors to make money from once upon a time. Them making money on something that has given us so much is not a fricken bad thing.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Originally posted by bootsandvodka

Wow, it’s comments like this that make you wonder why people say that ouat fandom is terrible and unfriendly, people feel that if they express their own opinion they’re going to be harassed and shunned

Originally posted by 101treehugger101

I guess I felt the same need to express myself as you did.  

Difference is I did it on my own post and tagged it as negativity so people didn’t have to see it if they didn’t want to. 

Originally posted by giphygiff

The problem is is that you’re threatening it to on follow people if they don’t agree your opinion, that’s really passive aggressive and while you put it under negativity tag other people didn’t. if you really don’t like what people are saying and can ignore it, just unfollowed them don’t make a passive aggressive post about it. It’s a big problem in this fandom with people bullying and pushing their opinions on the others. #if you were just expressing her opinion and being positive about it I wouldn’t of said anything I probably would’ve given you would like#The fact is you are shaming people#or at least trying to#I know there’s a lot of opinions going around right now#if people are feeling a lot of things

First of all,  it wasn’t a threat,  it was something I was considering because I was frustrated.  Are you actually telling me that I can’t express my own frustrations on my own blog under a negativity tag because other people might reblog it without negativity tags and that might upset people? 

You don’t see the irony of telling me to just shut up about my own fandom frustrations on my own tagged post on my own blog… and then telling me I’m being a bully?

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I think I might just start unfollowing every single person who complains about abc just keeping once for the money.

Did you think ABC was a charity? A fanfiction writer? Here’s a Clue, I want to ABC to make money on once upon a time. I want the writers and producers and actors to make money from once upon a time. Them making money on something that has given us so much is not a fricken bad thing.

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OUAT, Friday nights, and the broken business model of network television

So, OUAT is moving to Fridays at 8 PM and I have some thoughts. These are my personal opinions – no insider knowledge, and no judgment on people who disagree.

This move to Fridays at 8 PM does not surprise me at all. I think it’s good news. In fact, it exactly matches what I’ve thought about this show and about network TV’s future.

Lots of people are upset about this change, because traditionally Friday nights are where TV shows go to die. They aren’t considered competitive nights for TV. Friday nights aren’t where “prestige” TV is generally scheduled. So I 100% get why a lot people are upset. It’s possible that people are right to be upset and to fear the worst. Here’s why I have a different view.

The business model for the traditional major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) is broken. Ratings have been falling for years. People don’t watch TV line anymore. This is a problem because ratings typically dictate how much networks can charge for advertising – advertising dollars have been their main source of revenue. Ratings have been declining for scripted and reality shows, but live sports coverage was always the exception to this rule. But this year even ratings for live sports have gone down. Tons of ink has been spilled about these issues – streaming, the internet, more sources of content, lots of things are to blame for this.

The networks and their parent companies have been frantically trying to find alternative business models to survive. As an added bit of context, both ABC and ESPN (broadcasts live sports) are owned by the same parent company. So there is even more pressure for them to explore alternate revenue streams for their programming. Signing deals with streaming services like Netflix is one of the potential solutions to this crisis.

I reblogged this excellent post to my fandom blog a while back about the business model employed by the CW, and how they don’t use ratings as the metric by which to measure success of a show. I think the deal that ABC signed with Netflix for OUAT and the move to Friday nights at 8 PM demonstrates that ratings are no longer seen as (and will no longer be used as) the metric for this show’s success.

I think this is evidence that ABC has finally gotten it through its thick skull that the ratings-based metric is no longer a viable yardstick to use if it wants to continue making money. Banking on ratings is a recipe for disaster. Any major network that continues to pursue ratings and only ratings as a means to make money will fail. They need to find other sources of revenue, and other ways to make money. So I see this move with OUAT as a very good sign for the future of network TV. They are finally entering the 21st century!

So what does this mean for OUAT? It means that we can expect much lower ratings. It means that these lower ratings are not likely to particularly impact chances for a season 8. It might mean a lower operating budget for making the show and/or a lower marketing budget and/or a different marketing strategy.

I also think Friday’s at 8 makes sense for a show like this. OUAT has long been seen as a family show, and Friday nights are a good night for that in general. They don’t expect high ratings for Friday night shows. We were never going to be on Thursdays or Wednesdays. It looks like ABC is going to try its hands at reality/variety shows on Sundays, which again makes sense.

I also think Friday’s at 8 with a show that is positioning itself to welcome new viewers makes sense. They will tell stories that weave in new fairytale characters and go on fun filled adventures. The show will continue to be written for a GA audience, and it will be up to fandom to decide how to intersect with/transform canon.

Look – l wish OUAT was a show that got super high ratings and that could be considered a powerhouse for ABC in the way the Shondaland shows are. That was never really the case. This is a genre show aimed at a family audience. It’s also a show with a large and very dedicated fan base. I suspect that the fan base does play a role in the show’s longevity, and in its deal with Netflix. I don’t know how all the factors come into play when they are making financial decisions (because renewing a show or not is a financial decision), but clearly they believe that this new business model is promising.  It is a risk, but I think the bigger risk is sticking to a losing model. 

Tl;dr  I think ABC is making the right decision in signing a streaming deal and moving OUAT to Friday nights at 8. I think it bodes well for OUAT itself and for ABC as a company. I could very well be wrong!

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Tfw you really want to say Something but you'd rather just focus on the things that bring you joy, which I guess makes me a terrible person?

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to hell with the pancakes let’s bang on the kitchen table

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Why The CW doesn’t give a frickity frack about your “live” viewership

El Mayarah - we’re all in this mountain of salt together.

Ready?

To start, we need to establish a couple of key points, and then I need to take you through Supergirl’s journey from CBS to The CW. Don’t let me lose you.

In marketing, as simply as I can say it, a metric is a way of measuring performance and operating statistics to track how you’re doing over time and how much closer it enables you to reach your goal.

In this specific instance, think of metrics as a number. Depending on the goal, the metrics chosen will depend on what sort of goal you want to achieve.

For instance, if your goal is to sell off the tallest tree, you would measure it by feet or meters. Height would be the metric you choose to measure whether or not your tree would be a successful sell.

If your goal was to sell the fruit from the tree, for simplicity’s sake, one of the metrics you’d choose to measure would be how much fruit the tree produces in pounds, bushelfuls, or whatever the fuck our lovely farmers do.

Still with me, yeah? Feelin’ good?

Goal: sell tree. Metric: height.

Goal: sell fruit. Metric: fruit yield.

How you define your goals/success will determine what metrics you use to measure it by.

Nielsen ratings are just another metric. It’s a way of calculating viewership that businesses use to determine “for X amount of dollars, how many people will see this commercial?” The number of viewers in the key demographic are generally more valuable than the total number of viewers.

For example, with a higher key demo, ABC was able to charge $419,000 per 30 second commercial sold during Grey’s Anatomy, compared to only $248,000 for a 30 second commercial during CSI, despite CSI having almost five million more viewers on average. (Source: BuddyTV)

Nielsen results are collected through little devices connected to televisions in select households (no, it’s not random, it doesn’t take into consideration public places TV is viewed like dorms or bars, it only recently started account for TiVo, and it currently lacks the capability to measure data for Internet streaming like Netflix and Hulu.) It also collects data through self-reported viewer “diaries”, which carries a certain amount of reporting bias, but that’s problem for another day.

Major networks like CBS measure the performances of their shows through Nielsen ratings (the traditional old school way) in order to determine how much they can charge for advertisements. In other words, CBS needs a show to maintain high ratings in order to generate more income.

But!!! That’s not all. Every show’s primary goal is to make it to 100 episodes. Once a show hits that number, it can be sold for syndication, and everyone who was involved in the production of that show receives residual checks (other networks will pay them to rerun the show on their own network). Super profitable because shows can be rerun for years.

CBS’s goal: have a show hit 100 episodes while looking like a big, juicy chunk of steak for advertisers. Primary metric: Nielsen ratings.

How close a show falls to hitting that 100 episode mark is what determines its renewal status. A show needs to consistently hit high ratings in order to justify the investment to keep chugging it along to the 100 episode mark. (You ever wonder why so many shows drag on past their expiration date? coughWarehouse13cough Hmm…)

So what happened with Supergirl on CBS? Supergirl fell when people lost faith in her.

(Sequart: Nicholas Yanes)

When it debuted on CBS, Supergirl rocked the ratings with a record high of 13 million viewers for the 2015-2016 season (Nielsen ratings at play!). But as you can see, it lost viewers at a steady pace. During the run of its first season, Supergirl went from 12.955 million to 5.995 million total viewers (-53.729%). It scored worse in its 18-49 key demographic dropping from 3.15 million to 1.3 million (-58.7%). CBS couldn’t justify keeping Supergirl when the time slot could be given to a show that could sustain a larger audience. Not only is Supergirl unable to maintain ratings, it’s taking up ad space.

Take a look at how Supergirl compared to other CBS shows during the 2015-2016 season. These ratings play an important part here, which is generally where people get the idea that boycotting a show that’s making choices they don’t agree with by not watching it live will be persuasive action.

Despite its ratings slide over seven years, The Good Wife still has higher ratings than Supergirl. The Good Wife premiered to an audience of 13.71 million viewers. And over the years it lost viewers as most shows do. It has lost so many viewers that its most recent episode, February 21st, 2016’s “Targets” only had an audience of 7.91 million. In contrast, Supergirl premiered to an audience of 12.95 million and is down to 6.69 in fourteen episodes. In other words, Supergirl has lost in just fourteen episodes the number of viewers it took The Good Wife seven seasons to lose.

Compounding this problem for Supergirl is the cost of ad space on her show […] a 30 second spot on NCIS is worth $151,738 and the same commercial time during Supergirl is worth $147,933. So while commercial time during NCIS and Supergirl are close in value, their audience sizes are completely different. For example, NCIS’s 15th episode for the 2015-2016 year was watched by 17.335 million viewers, Supergirl’s 15th episode 6.69 million people. This means that if someone were to pay to advertise on Supergirl, that product would be exposed to less than half the number of people watching NCIS. An examining of the 18 to 49 demographics reveals a similar problem. For the fifteenth episode of Supergirl and NCIS, Supergirl was watched by 1.39 million people between 18 and 49 while NCIS was watched by 2.32 million. When discussing the 18 to 49 demographic, this is a huge difference in viewership. [bolded my emphasis]

This leaves CBS with two options: sell advertising on Supergirl for half of what they can get from a different program or cancel the show and replace with something that has a better return on investment. (Sequart: Nicholas Yanes)

So yes, Nielsen ratings can determine the fate of your favorite show on a big network. The metric (Nielsen ratings) used to measure Supergirl’s success showed that Supergirl wouldn’t make the cut because CBS has a business model dependant on high ratings.

The CW plays by a different set of rules, and it doesn’t give a frickity frack about your live viewership. If you think you’re sending a strong message to The CW by boycotting watching it live or pointing to its ratings as proof that so-and-so storyline doesn’t work…you’re not. I’m really tired of seeing people use statistical data without context.

(This is what you’ve been waiting for, I know. Look at you, you’re halfway through this with me, I’m so proud.)

For those of you not in the know, The CW is the love child of CBS and Warner Bros., their partnership being an experimental way into the future of network TV business. As previously mentioned, Nielsen ratings fail to take into account how well shows are doing on streaming sites like Hulu, Netflix, or in-network streaming apps to watch shows on. As any marketer knows, a lack of data could potentially result in poor data-driven decisions! Misinformation, or lack of sufficient information, can lead you to the wrong conclusion!

The CW was set up to serve as a way for shows to make money through international sales and syndication, which now includes digital licensing (Hulu! Netflix! Amazon!). Advertising sales are a part of how The CW generates revenue, but not the biggest.

Here are a couple of quotes on how network executives view The CW.

“We’re a hybrid…We’re rooted in broadcast, but we’re also very rooted in the digital world. We’re a very unique premise in TV, and because of that we look at things differently.” - CW president Pedowitz 

“The CW is the case in point where the back end is more important than the front end…The front end is still important — it’s still hundreds of millions of dollars in [advertising] revenue — but the amount of money you can make selling programming in secondary markets is becoming more important.” -  CBS Corp. chief Leslie Moonves. 

“Having a lot of the DC shows on The CW has allowed us the flexibility to cross-pollinate within the shows. That’s exciting and important for us…From a strategic perspective for Warner Bros., it doesn’t get much more important than DC.” - Warner Bros. chairman/CEO Kevin Tsujihara 

In 2015, CBS averaged 10.91 million viewers per show, while The CW averaged 1.98. (Source: Tracking Board)

How does a network survive with such low ratings, you ask? By measuring its success through different metrics.

While other networks make money off of their live viewership, The CW was formed to serve as a launching platform for shows from its parent companies that will be more profitable through syndication (reruns) and digital licensing. Its goal is to get shows up to the 88-100 episode mark to be eligible to be sold. Not only do they count on The CW shows to be more profitable the second time around, the network only broadcasts programming created by NBC. They don’t pay any outside networks to run shows. Any money they make goes straight into their own pockets.

The CW’s goal: syndication. Metric: ???

Fuck if I knew.

If I had to take a guess, it’d be engagement? Fandom loyalty? Netflix insights? The longer and the more people talk about it, the greater the chance people will watch reruns, which in turn make those reruns more appealing to buy.

Take for example, Supernatural and its cult(-like) following:

“The talk now is that the show [Supernatural] will probably end with its 300th episode, an astounding number that would make it one of the most prolific and successful hour-long dramas in history. It is syndicated all over the world and an ongoing cash cow for its creators and the production company behind it: Warner Bros. TV. But it wouldn’t have lasted more than one season, perhaps two, on any other network, simply because its viewer numbers and ratings weren’t high enough. Even last year, in its 11th season on the air, it was the 158th ranked show in average viewers, with just 2.275 million per week, and scored just a 1.0 rating.”

(Source: Tracking Board)

Supernatural is basically free money at this point.

The CW knows its strengths. It’s not looking to compete with traditional television. It’s loading up with a niche they think is trending in the right direction, which at the moment happens to be superhero shows, and capitalizing on binge-watchers. In 2016, The CW and Netflix signed a deal that allowed Netflix to stream new seasons of each series just 8 days after their finale. Especially notable because it includes The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow.

Guess how much Netflix paid them for the digital licensing fee? Go ahead, guess.

One billion fucking dollars.

The deal lasts five years.

So how does Supergirl fall into this? In part, it’s because I’m fucking annoyed at petty ship wars using statistical data without the proper context, drawing wrong conclusions, AND LEADING OTHER PEOPLE TO THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS.

God. Damn.

Now that you hopefully understand why shows on The CW can’t be measured by traditional Nielsen ratings, also understand this: whatever your reason for hanging onto Supergirl is…wherever it is you’re watching it off of live air in protest…you’re still telling the showrunners you’re interested in what they’re spoonfeeding you.

Unless you’re pirating or watching on illegal streaming sites.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

tl;dr: if something doesn’t make financial sense on the surface, it most certainly does somewhere else.

Supergirl may have lost 67.35% of its total viewership and lost 53.31% of its key demographic but it’s still second only to The Flash on The CW, lol. Nielsen ratings are feedback to the network, but it doesn’t carry as much ultimative power as some people think it does when it comes to The CW.

In otherwards, vocally threatening to boycott new episodes of Supergirl because Karam*l is fucking toxic then going back to watch the good ol’ days of season one on Netflix is you biting yourself in the ass.

The best thing you can do is stop the petty ship war nonsense and tell the network why you fell in love with Supergirl in the first place. Positive reinforcement goes a long way. If all they hear is shipping nonsense screamed at them, they’re going to assume awful romance plots are the way to go.

Do something productive other than boycotting a show (when you’re not really because you’re still watching it on Netflix). Join the movement to bring back the show we love and free it from toxic influences.

Personally, I like @supergirliskarasstory. I think they have the right idea, and they’re a hell of a lot less crass than I am.

El mayarah, space fam.

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Emma’s Wedding Dress & Feminism

I’ve been observing the ongoing debate regarding Emma’s wedding dress, while processing my own feelings in order to form legitimate written words. Yes, with Emma’s dress I do have my own personal opinions and aesthetic sense but they aren’t germane to the argument I’m presenting. This week I’ve witnessed Emma’s wedding dress being derogatorily referenced as a throwback to a 1950′s housewife and a form of prison garb– shackles, if you will. That, Emma Swan, as we knew her in S1 would never, ever don such a traditional gown and to make her do so is transforming this event from a wedding into a funeral. The ultimate death of a once badass character. I’m not going to extensively discuss how Emma’s wedding dress is supposed to be symbolic of Emma’s emotional journey. Jennifer Morrison herself did that on instagram when she said: “ It is a dress that represents the elegance and simplicity of classic timeless strength mixed with the delicacy of feminity and vulnerability. It is the ultimate balance that Emma has been fighting for throughout the 6 seasons. A wholeness. A balance. Not all one thing or another - But rather, a moment that is genuinely, truly, authentically her without barriers and walls.”  And if you think you know Emma better than Jennifer Morrison who’s been playing her for SIX YEARS, you’re high af. What I am here to say is that by denying Emma her choice of wedding dress and branding it with anti-feminist labels; by repeatedly demeaning, diminishing and calling women who DO like the dress as similarly anti-feminist— YOU are weaponizing feminism. YOU are being anti-feminist.  I know there are certain people in the fandom who consider themselves bastions and gatekeepers of feminism. Well, I graduated from one of the foremost women’s colleges in the country. I KNOW my feminist theory. And feminism is about giving women OPTIONS. About broadening horizons. It isn’t an either/or proposition. It’s not black and white. It isn’t leather or lace, housewife or working mother, single or married, jeans or a dress. It’s about empowering women and providing them with choices.  And above all, it’s about supporting women when they make those choices. If Emma WANTS to wear a traditional bridal gown, then that’s okay. It’s her choice. You don’t have to like it. But you don’t get to call her and/or it anti-feminist. You don’t get to police her clothing decisions. Because if Emma CHOSE to wear it–if she wanted to wear this dress because SHE liked it, because it made HER feel good about HERSELF–that’s the opposite of anti-feminist. Emma, and by extension Jennifer Morrison and the fandom, should be free to wear whatever she/they chooses and enjoy reveling in it without fear of shame or ridicule. Feminism is liberation, not constraint.  By policing and judging Emma’s wedding dress, you’re communicating to society that it’s okay to tell a Muslim woman that she isn’t a feminist because she prefers to wear a hijab. You’re permitting slut-shaming based on clothing choices. You’re again placing women into this narrow, tiny box–a box in which YOU feel comfortable with what Emma wears. And that makes you no better than the patriarchal box we’ve been trying so desperately to escape from.