#but i understand the fear of the fickleness within the entertainment industry

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

I don’t think the harassment is acceptable. I think people are really out of pocket doing that, but I do think him establishing what is and isn’t part of his job is fine. And maybe did need to be said, because clearly people didn’t know.

As for using Buddie as promo… idk. The marketing team is gonna do whatever ABC feels will garner the most viewers, and right now it’s Buck being bi and the long held desire to see him and Eddie become canon. They’re gonna milk it however they can, which falls back on Tim, thus him feelings like he needed to explain himself, presumably.

I do agree it could be toned down though, because Buck is now canonically dating someone else, and I don’t recall them teasing Buddie for real when he was with women. So doing it now the way they are is purely because they’re banking on Buddie fans, while also currently not committing.

Plus, everything Buddie related from before has to now be assumed not canon, so it’s putting everyone in a messy spot. Because we have canon, fanon, show runner confirmed but not on screen, and canon jokes that are now floating in the in between because no one knows if the they’ll be acknowledged in canon or get scrapped.

I think people should just calm down and wait to see what the season brings, anyway. Once it’s over and we get an idea of where all the characters are at, then start asking bigger questions or letting out the more angry frustrations.

Hi! Sorry for the late reply. The sheer amount of work that goes into television hasn't often been well realized in fan spaces. The writing, how it translates to screen, the process of acting, all the work by the crew, the pressures from moneymen, managing the expectations of the audience, the long hours and repetition of scenes. How multiple people working on a creative project means multiple interpretations— all of which bleed through. The showrunner has every right to protect himself and the people who work for him. I was mainly trying to draw on my own experiences in how these harassment campaigns happen, how they continue, and how they can be mitigated.

US TV production has a long and rocky history when it comes to queer narratives. That doesn't really end now that there are canonically queer characters on screen and this fallout is part of the response to that tension.

For example, if I engage in the whole Buddie vs. Bucktommy thing (sorry), I'd say both perspectives have a point they don't realize they're making about queerness in television storytelling.

The thesis I feel like Buddie fans are making is there are two queer coded main characters who love each other, who have seasons of build up in their individual characters and in their relationship. Why can't they be together? Because they're two male main characters on network television? Be bold, be brave. Wouldn't it be amazing if they did commit to that story? Wouldn't it be game changing? Sexuality and friendship and love is not set in stone, it's okay to be flexible. M/F relationships are allowed that space to develop within a story and you know if one of them were a woman they probably would be together already.

The thesis I feel like BuckTommy fans are making is that Buddie was never going to happen, realistically, and it's amazing enough that they committed to Buck being canonically bisexual. Why do you want to rock the boat? Don't you see that if you can't embrace this development it could be snatched away at any moment. The show is its own thing within its own context and not the blinkered interpretation you have of two characters. This queerness is canon.

Those two thesis's (thesi?) are rubbing up against each other and building straw men of the other to attack and tear down. A showrunner wading in was only ever going to combust that tension further and that's what happened. What keeps happening.

[worldscollideca]

Valiant doesn’t hate you (despite my claims to the contrary)

The long and furious blog I posted last week and subsequently shared across many social media platforms, (up to and including Valiant’s Facebook page) was my frustrated reaction to what i saw/see as manipulation of the fan base, abuse of the direct market system and at the very least a skewing of sales that inaccurately forecasts readership going forward while simultaneously putting undue pressure on the stores that (right or wrong) cave and acquiesse to these marketing schemes, endangering their own longevity and directly harming the businesses of other brick and mortar stores in the immediate area. And then there is the online effect. We all know that as soon as one of these rare/special/unique/lackluster variants hit the shelves they miraculously appear on the resale market at prices even more exorbitant than what was the in store sticker price. A few short hours after I posted my concerns and frustrations I received a phone call from Atom at Valiant Entertainment, who wanted to discuss my concerns and to correct a few inaccuracies/vagueries that had been posted by both me and the proprietors at Collector’s Paradise. Firsty, he cleared up the misconception that there would be original/exclusive story pages contained within the additional 8pgs of exclusive content. The additional pages are to contain sketches, additional virgin art and some info about the process involved with the creation of the store’s variant cover and about the relaunch. This information calmed my indignant fires some, but I still find the whole process elitist and not in the best interest of the Direct Market. While most of our stores are independant we are part of a larger collective organism that operates not against our “competitors” but with and because of them.  I am not a fan of the “industry” labels applied to much of what we do we are a community and sure the publishers jockey for shelf space and hype while . I do not think “Dollar First”. My method as a store operator is not to undercut the other shops or to do something they are unable/unwilling to do but to offer things that they don’t. Fill a vaccuum. If they do good biz selling Funk-yO toys, I’m not afraid to let my customers know that “Foxy Marv’s” is the place to get em..

My concern is in having the things they want, listening to the customers, constantly building my knowledge so that i can find new interesting things to read. Without it being part of my decision process I am keenly aware that if you provide people with good service and get things they will enjoy into their hands, they will come back again and again to buy things. READ. READERS. THIS IS KEY. Speculative fads come and go and require a kind of his energy reactionary involvement that I’ve no interest in. I sell books. The gimmick of the month, trendy product of the year, or that superhyped licensed product, these are transient, unreliable, and even if they prove somewhat sustainable they neglect the essence of what we do. I was assured through my discussion with Valiant that story, art and quality books are their main goal, tho they feel behooved to try some of these marketing gambits to keep pace with Mickey Mouse and Bat Bunny. I will counter that Image comics is now the 3rd largest publisher of comics, the first to crack a 10% market share and they have done this laregly without any particular hustle. They went through that and now the books are the thing and the only thing, There is certain differences here, being that Image is not trying to cut in on the Superhero genre, content to produce every other kind of sci-fi/western/post-apocalyptic/fantasy/roamnce/BBQcrime drama. With nary a cape in sight. Their readership is different. But there’s that seemingly ephemeral concept of readership again. No matter how far we get from thinking of it,  reading and the stories will always be the core. Part of what was so frustrating to me is seeing devoted readers/customers who have followed Valiant from the Shooter days, thru the Acclaim era, up to the lovingly produced, well scripted, expertly illustrated epoch they are in now. If this was another company, who I had already rock bottom expectations of , who produce souless poorly assembled books that have more variants of a title and Deluxe Naugahyde boxed set ,than they have actual issues, I wouldnt be nearly as aggravated., Valiant makes good comics. they make quality stuff. they have gone to great efforts to resussitate their characters, deal with the divorce from the Gold Key characters, hire talented artists and produce what are generally excellent , quality books. I expect more from them. The ideas that you need these tricks to sell mags is nonsense and it only contributes to, encourages and caters to a increasingly volitile, fickle and fragile demographic. The collector, speculator, investor type might have deep pockets but they are the first to bail when there is any dip in interest in comic books, leaving all the retailers and publishers holding their...books, looking puzzled. But none of should really be surprised,and I know the people at Valiant are aware of this dynamic. Take other booksellers: Indigo/Chapters, Borders and others... they dont need this and dont resort to thist type of marketing to grab attention. Their employees aslo never field questions about 1st prints, variants, exclusive covers or exclusive content. Try this in a regular shop and you’d alientate not just the folks who missed out on said “special” but you’d piss off and probably lose the entire customer base. These people want books, literature, reading material. This is sustainable. This is reasonable. In stead of using fear and consumerist greed against the customer, appeal to what they actually want and whhat they may continue to follow month after month. Pumping out #1′s and Ultra Rare shiny think beyond this month. It’s curious that so many people seem to understand the long game when t comes to sitting on a stack of 1st appearences while waiting for the next Hollywood adaption to drop but they can’t have even a modicum of foresite when it comes to the core of their businesses. All this hype and scheming is not a strength of the direct market no matter how its positioned, it is a detractor that keeps peope away. " I cant get into comics", "i dont know where to start", " I’d be afraid to read them because they could get damaged. " We all have heard this. Or my favourite,”Is this good?” Which is meant as,”Is this gonna make me rich?" These are malignant peculiarities of the comics trade. We need to get past this. 

The so called graphic novel, which we all know is usually just reprints, is the foot in the door to legitiamcy, to have the form fully appreciated widely. And they are getting there. Comics are taught in schools,libraries everywhere have graphic novel sections, but there still is this lingering 1954 attitutde that does not see comics as valid literature or art, just as a collectible commodity to be sealed locked away and sold. Why bother printing the stories inside if this is the case.Just make them into 7″x10″ trading cards? End rarities. Give me ISBNs and barcodes that end in X! This in the end should be no threat to us the, DM retailers because such a wealth of this hybrid artform it cant be fully embraced or understood with a couple shelves of mostly Marvel, DC and Viz books. We provide a gateway, a love and understanding of the medium, a grasp of history and appreciation you wont get in a Chapters deals with Amazon too, and the creeping digital comics threat, but people love books, all kinds of books . There is a whole section of humanity who don’t love comics, and in this case I mean comics as the floppy, stapled, increasingly archaic, NorthAm curiousity, bastard child of Pulps, Newspapers and sleazy tabloid mags. Make the best books you can. make them accessible so that people other than the frenzied OCD colectors can get them. Reject elite one-upmanship. In stead of trying to extract max dollars from dwindling buyers thru schemes like getting them to consume multiple copies. And be realistic here, quite often the store is the end user, stats sales and highfives are based on how many we the retailers panicked and bought. The kind of statistical data released by Diamond or thru other chains of info generally does not describe or track or care about who is taking these things home, if they are a reader, or if the person who just bought 20 copies to put under this bed until they are worth more than silver.  They also don’t track how many are returned/destroyed I believe wholeheartedly in readership. I trust in this. This belief, this principle, this ideal has nothing to do with profit, tho it has borne out over the 30+ yrs of our store that this is still profitable. And durable. Publishers, your company will get space on merit. Sometimes i'll have to shrink that because no matter what we do they just wont buy but it wont be for a lack of effort.  Valiant comics also believes in it’s readership. They are doing what they think is best to get attention to their books. I still disagree with it, but I do believe in the end their goal is to produce quality books to interest new readers and to continue to impress and engage their life long fans. The battle continues in this “post-literate” society to keeps people reading and to make sure books are in their hands. Keep making good stuff and I’ll be on your side. The medium of comics, as a form of art and literature needs to flourish. And it can be bigger and better than ever if we maintain focus wthout succumbing to shortsighted grabs at a brass ring. This is a business, but it is also more than that. Stories are central to humanity. Storytelling and oral histories are of primary importance to how we got where we are and how we maintain it and move forward. It is how we communicate. The comics medium does this in a wholly unique way and we need to strengthen this and affirm it as intrinsic to our human culture. Keep reading. See you all Wednesday.