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Originally posted by Gophermuncher:
Have you posted this on the universal boards?

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Originally posted by Cardie:
Hear, hear. Acting like a jerk never accomplishes anything. When representing Browncoats out in the world, act like Book, not Jayne.

Cardie

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Originally posted by firefloozysuzie:
Gorram it. I fled the official Universal board to escape the sanctimonious preachifyin' only to find that here at FFF it's just as bad.

Do you think that if we're all little angels, with shiny halos, then nobody will have a word bad to say about us? If folks are looking to paint all the Flans as villians over a couple of bitty incidents -- incidents which may or may not have been blown out of proportion by our detractors, I may add -- then do you think that 99% of us being model citizens will make any difference???

Ninety-nine percent of us already *ARE* taking our Browncoat repurtations seriously. And among those reasonable and fair-minded individuals, there's still some who'll do righteous things that will later blow up in our collective faces. And why is that? Because we can't completely control how events will unfold, people. Plus there's no accounting for the deep-seated bias some folk have against sci-fi fans. So to my mind there's not really any point to crawling around on our bellies in mortal terror, fearin' that any wrong word or any 'wrong' action (don't wear that loud orange hat, now!) could turn prospective ticket-buyers again' us.

Speaking as a Browncoat, I don't cotton to having other Browncoats telling me how to 'behave' or to watch every word I say, or be meek when I'm attacked, lessen I piss off the powers that be. No, I absolutely do not like being dictated to.
Nor do I like being told what to think. If I had inclinations like that, I'd shut off my computer right now and go watch FOXNews.

Today has been real discouraging. So many Browncoats attacking other Browncoats, second-guessing their intentions, telling Browncoats that they owe some "responsibility" to the Collective, er, I mean, "the community."

Guess I'm going to have to stay off the boards until all this well-intended despotism goes away.

"I aim to misbehave"
Says so right on my shirt.

You folk can't take the sky from me.
Not even to "save" the Big Damn Movie.

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Originally posted by firefloozysuzie:
nxojkt,

Gosh! You're right about everything NX!
How would the 99% of us with a decent upbringing, and a minimal amount of smarts, ever know how to
conduct ourselves without benefit of your wise counsel? Until you posted your Guidelines for Responsible Conduct, I was completely out of control. (Sarcasm --where's the emoticon for that?)

Apparently you conventiently missed my point:
The few Browncoats to whom you aim your lecture
probably don't recognize that they're your intended audience, and if they do, they probably don't give a r*t's a$$ about how their actions affect othere.

Whereas, them as has half a brain, and a modicum of decency, may take offense at your presumption that we all don't understand the most obvious rules of civilised conduct, and we
need to be lectured to like errant kindergartners.

I consider your post to be offensive because it a) states the obvious and b) assumes that the rest of us require instruction on how to behave.

In my book, that makes YOU as big a jerk as the people you are complaining about.

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Originally posted by infra172:
$$$$$ is the only thing that matters. Acting nice didn't save our favorite show. Acting nice won't get companies that put out phony competitions to pony up. You have to hit companies with boycots and negative press.

Threatening theatre owners is out of line but I believe if a company rips you off you don't piss yourself and beg for a nice review.

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Originally posted by Diz:
If it doesn't matter who was to blame in the internet contest incident, then can we stop boiling it down to half-truths and thinly-veiled blame? There was so much more to the incident then a company not shipping a "free" prize to winners the next day. If people are going to keep putting that way, making the winners sound like spoiled brats stomping their feet and demanding Browncoats fight the power (which is not at all what happened), then all that will serve to do is fan the flames some are trying to put out. JMO.

Most of the threads over at the OB have been locked--good. Right now, they only people keeping this going are the people who are continuing to debate this topic. Myself included; I recognize the irony.

As for what happened last night, you have to expect some people would be cheesed off. However, from the beginning of the blow up, most everyone has been advocating cool heads and restraint. I was one of the first people who responded after the email had been posted, and I asked people to halt any actions they may be thinking of doing; many others have concurred. So it's less a matter of what is happening now, and more a matter of learning from this mistake.

What happened sucked. But it's over. Can we just move on? Forget who is right, who is wrong, and just get on with being Browncoats? It's this kind of thing that will continue the divide in the fandom. We don't need to be advised en masse on the Proper Browncoat Behavior. As FFSuzie said, the vast majority of us have level heads. And as someone who has been vocal on this subject (while also advocating ignoring the Sanchezs and their website), I feel that at least a part of this post is aimed at me.

This is a fandom made up of individuals. No matter what we do, what we advise, there will still be people who think threatening a theater manager is the best way to get a ticket, or sending hate-mail to a website over small issue is the way to get things done. We cannot control what these people do. And they will keep doing it. If we get our nose bent out of shape over every incident like this (admittedly, this seems like a big blow up, but in the grand scheme of things, I think it's minor), all we will serve to do is fracture the fanbase. If we let the actions of these few crack-pots bother us to the degree that we are ashamed of being Browncoats, we are allowing them to rob us of all that is great about this fandom: the generous spirit, welcoming and inclusive nature, and smart, funny people.

So, we have a choice. Drop the current issue and make nice with our fellow fans, or keep dragging this out. At this point, we are only hurting ourselves. Let's rise above this, and just drop it.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
While not exactly excusing the behavior of TWO, repeat TWO people who apparently got out of hand, asking the rest of us to throw ourselves in the dirt and grovel is a bit damned much, I think.

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Originally posted by nxojkt:
I'm sure I'll take some heat for this, but I feel compelled to do so anyway.

We, as a community, have a responsibility to represent the Browncoat community. Many of the things that I'm going to say have been posted by other people in the last few days, but I think they bear repeating.

At one time, "Browncoats" were looked at as model fans. We were the patient bunch that was so passionate about our little tv show that when the DVD came out, we bought it. And we bought so much of it that we're getting a movie out of it. We love our Firefly so much that Universal was rewarding us with screenings of the movie months in advance, with so much anticipation that tickets were scalping on e-bay for $200-300.

Now... not so much.

First it started with the idiots who threatened theatre employees when they wouldn't create extra tickets to sold-out screenings. Joss chimed in on that one, and people seemed to comply, as we didn't hear about any more threats.

Then Nathan Fillion tells us of his comic book store fiasco, thinking it'll make for a cute joke for a few nasty letters to show up and for the guy to lose business. Instead, it got so bad that Nathan had to come back on a plead for us to stop the harassment.

Now there's the IESB.net thing. In case you don't know, the story there is that this website, which had been supportive of Serenity - having a lot of video and print content about the movie - did a contest in which they gave away signed copies of the movie poster. They took too long to get the posters out, and after ignoring e-mails from the winners, were bombarded with nasty e-mails from "friends" of the winners; some that were threatening. In response to this, the folks at IESB.net pulled down all of their supportive, positive content, and put up a scathing review. They've since "apologized" and pulled that article down.

It doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong in each of these situations. The bottom line is that we, as a community, end up looking bad. Recently, on one large site, we were compared to Scientologists. Why? Because they hunt down every negative thing said about them, and attack it ferociously.

We've got to tone that side of things down. When we go after people negatively, we lose. Instead of positive artciles being written about the money raised at Comic-Con for charity, we get articles written about the "Legion of Whedon" that comes down upon anything negative. Pretty soon we'll have people scared to mention Serenity, in fear that they might mis-state something and feel our wrath.

This stuff is just plain silly, folks.

We have passion for Firefly/Serenity, and that passion is a good thing when it results in positive things. When money is raised for charity, when we help Universal realize that there is a fan base out there, when we spread positive word of this thing that we love. These things are positive. Banding together to try to convince Fox to put out a soundtrack for the show is a good thing. Threatening a web site's moderators because they were negligant is a bad thing.

We have a responsibility to ourselves as individulas to act in a classy way. We have a responsibility to ourselves as a community to represent our community well. We also have a responsiblity to the cast and crew of Serenity to not have them answering questions about our bad behaviour. We have a responsibility to them to not piss off people who can help. No, IESB.net is not the largest movie site on the web... but they were a supportive one. I'm sure that the people who sent e-mails did so with the best of intentions, thinking that they were only helping the situation. But we need to do a better job of picking our battles.

We need to be aware that not everyone who watches Serenity is going to love it. Hell, not every Browncoat who saw a screening loved it. People have a right to dislike what we love. If Roger Ebert gives Serenity a thumbs down, so be it. We're not going to change his mind by writing him scathing e-mails. What we'll do is piss him off and that anger will be directed at Joss for Wonder Woman or Nathan for Slither, etc... There will be some positive reviews. Promote those reviews and ignore the bad ones.

What we need to do is some damage control at this point. We need to turn our reputation around and get it back to where it was 4 months ago.

The next 5 weeks are important ones, and the success of this movie will be partially on our shoulders as a community. Universal will hopefully do their part, and we have to do ours. But we can't come across as fanatics. Because people don't like fanatics.

Think before you act. Remember that your actions, for right or wrong, will reflect not only on the community of fans, but ultimately upon the cast and crew of the movie. That's a big responsibility. If can't decide whether or not to say something, bounce it off of fellow writers here or at the official board for opinions. Or follow Walt Disney's advice via Thumper's mother - "If you can't say nothing nice, don't say nothing at all."

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First, some of you may not know that this identical thread appeared on the Univ Board at the same time Nxojkt started it here on FFF.

At the time Nxojkt started these threads, three similar discussions on the Univ Board were being "locked down" by Serenity_Leader (Universal's rep and board moderator) with a plea to let the whole matter rest; she asked that the whole discussion be dropped. But as you can see, Nxojkt felt otherwise. According to her Universal profile, it appears that Nxojkt has only posted 3 times on that board since September 2004. That's only one post until s/he felt the overwhelming compulsion to circumvent Serenity_Leader's attempts to stop the bad feelings being generated by this topic.

Look at the first line of Nxojkt post, people, and you should recognize this thread for what it is: Somebody keeping the argument going for purposes of his or her own. By stating, "I'm sure I'll take some heat for this..." the author telegraphs her intention to stir the pot.

Look at the lengthy posts s/he devotes to defending herself and putting down any difference of opinion from other Browncoats. Yup, that's really turning the other cheek and making a plea for peace.

Trolls don't always growl and snarl and attack you from the front. Sometimes they come wearing the sanctimonious robes of a martyr, speaking in the calm tones of moral authority, and covering themselves with a cloak of virtue.

The mirror "Browncoat Responsibility" thread is now buried in the underpages of the Universal Board. I say, let it die a quiet death here and let's stop this fractious Browncoat-on-Browncoat blaming session.

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Originally posted by Diz:

My point is, the tarnishing of our rep is happening in very small circles. Like, tiny. AICN might be a huge site to the fanboys, but to the general movie-going public, not so much. And even the fanboys who frequent AICN know it's a troll pit. We have a huge supporter over there in Herc, and don't think for a moment Serenity won't get huge coverage on AICN the closer we get to release. But I digress.

I understand where you are coming from, but I guess where I am having problems is that I see blame and finger-pointing, rather then building up. If the message truly is, "Browncoats act civil", then I think one of the first things we should be doing is forgiving and forgetting. It is so easy to Monday-quarterback what happened, but while it was happening (the original post was up for almost a week before it all blew up), not one person stepped in and said, "this here might not be a great idea, remember what happened to Nathan?" Now I know this isn't quite fair. I've read posts on the BC board for calls to action because some reporter got something wrong in a writeup, and rolled my eyes mightily. Perhaps I should've posted my thoughts on how it's not such a great idea to flood small town newspaper reporters email boxes with hate mail. My failing. And I didn't do it with this post because I felt they winners were justified in their anger, and as someone who submitted an entry myself, I wanted to support them. So I sent one short, polite email. No one had any idea what would happen; I think if they did, things would've gone a different way.

My point in this is not so much turn the other cheek and hope it all goes away. Rather, recognize that in any fandom, you have zealots. And, according to the public, ALL fandoms are filled to the brim with freaks. I mean, if we REALLY didn't want to turn off the general public, then perhaps we shouldn't be wearing goofy orange knit hats, Chinese dresses and combat boots, and carrying parasols to opening day. 'Cause nothing scares the public like cosplay! I'm kidding, of course (well, except it does scare them). But there is a point: Who cares what the general public thinks of us geeky fans? It won't make a difference to the box office. It won't, I promise. Did it make a difference to Star Wars? Lord of the Rings? Any of the successful comicbook movies? A good movie is a good movie, and ours will stand on it's own, no matter what people think of our fandom.

That said, I hate for us to be lumped together because of the actions of a few nutjobs. So, to come back around to what you're saying, I kinda agree, said as much in another thread, but I have decided not to let the actions of a few whacks bother me. My main concern now is restoring the peace around here, and hoping all the ill will fades. Firefly and Serenity boards are my oasis in a busy, hectic life. I've been involved in fandoms before (anime and comics; you think OUR fandom has issues-- we're mere babes-in-baskets compared to those fandoms), and this has been the best fan experience I've ever had. I just hope I'm not deluding myself that it can stay that way.

*if none of this makes sense, it's because it's 3am now, and I should be in bed. :)

**edited for clarity. It all makes sense now, hee! (yeah right; off to bed, Diz)

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Originally posted by Ax:
Hmm...I respect the truth of what you're saying, but I guess I wonder if these incidents are really all that indicative of the majority of us Browncoats. You paint it almost as though we've changed from what we were, but I'm not sure that's truth. You've got to keep in mind that Browncoats are a group of people, and just like any other group of people we all have different ideas about how to act and what exactly it means to be 'responsible'. There are always going to be those who want to go on the attack and cause trouble. It's inevitable. Every group of people has some like that.

Firefly is an amazing show, but I doubt very much that it's changed the above facts.

All that said--I agree with you. People _should_ think before they act.

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Originally posted by Diz:
Hello again. Had sleep. We'll see if that makes me any more lucent and less wandering in my points. :)

A couple of more things. First, when I say "ill will", I am not necessarily talking about you and your posts. I am speaking more in general. After the Big Blow Up, I saw quite a few angry posts aimed at folks who, while not completely blameless, did not deserve the condemnations that were thrown around. I've been involved in this situation from the beginning, and trust me: we were all surprised to see how quickly it spun out of control. I believe most, if not all, of the winners acted on the up-and-up. I've seen a couple of them around the boards, and one of them belongs to my Browncoat group. I felt really awful for what people were saying about them on the boards, and many of those folks did not know the full story. It was a tempest-in-a-teapot, really. I've said about 12 dozen times, I do not condone sending threatening emails to anyone, but I also believe the email sent to the winners was way out of line... and I am rehashing this. Sorry. I am just trying to make it clear where I am coming from.

And while I agree with FFSuzie on a few of her points, I am not with her on your intentions. I do believe your intentions are good; but then, so were mine when I sent the Sanchezes an email.

My comments on cosplay were tongue-in-cheek. I cosplay myself, and will be wearing said Chinese dress/combat boots combo on opening day. But I think you give the general public too much credit if you think they think it's acceptable thing. The reason the press covers it is because they all like to point out the freaks.

As far as D&D goes, it's always had the whiff of the occult about it, and that really freaks some people out. Role playing in general scares some of the Norms because it involves magic and witches and other such things. Fans of TV shows or movies tend to be viewed as pretty harmless goof-balls (even fans of shows like BUFFY, which is steeped in the occult). Now if people start to beat up others in the name of Serenity, that might change, but I don't really see that happening. I don't see our fans being any worse than Star Wars or Star Trek fans, so [shrug].

One last thing: if someone is deranged enough to beat up a theater patron for tickets, do you really think an appeal for good behavior will make them reconsider? Once again, I think we are just going to have to make peace with the fact that our fandom, as it grows, will have whacks. We can plead with them to show decorum, but whacks rarely listen. That's why they're whacks.

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