Caya

I honestly didn't know whether to pick "haha" or "sad" as the reaction gif. We need something like this, maybe, for the political thread?

Well then, cat party is a go! Happy birthday!

Hi GodNort, I may be slow today but assist with what? I'll be happy to help.

Can't say about the umbrella, but the 84 years are in reference to that Titanic meme.

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you had a great time.

Oh damn, poor you and poor doggo. Keeping fingers crossed that all turns out well and he just sprained something, poor boy.

If it works for you, I'm happy for you. Guess we're really quite different, personality-wise, I'm more with John Green there.

Yep, that one. I do understand the rationale of Sherlock trying to make light of what he couldn't face head-on, but still, when I saw it I had a serious "wut" moment. It seemed like so much wasted potential. Compare and contrast, to, say, how Plaidder (you saw that one coming, I guess ) handles the Return in Empty Houses. Sincere, yet in character, and in a private moment, without bringing bloody Mary into the mix (so not sorry for the pun ).

*gg* Creators' rights is one area where I think the two of us really have to disagree, since we're been through this before a couple times. I know that's rather easy to say for an armchair artist who's never published anything but fanfic, but I still maintain that art is a collaboration between creator and audience. Maybe because I'm also coming at this from a gamer's perspective, where you are allowed to shape the story (to a lesser or greater degree) the way you like per default. That's where it gets highly theoretical in my argument above, admittedly, since I believe that without the kind of disdain Moftiss showed some of their fanbase like the Johnlockers, that kind of rabid faction would never have formed in the first place. Takes two to tango and all that. But alternate universes, alas, are the stuff of fanfic and so we'll never know.

Oooof, that's gonna be a longish post, so apologies in advance, but it's tricky to talk about Lt. Pierce (the other char in that example) without massive spoilers. What could Moftiss have done differently to make shippers happy? At that point (S3/4-ish), it would've been kinda tricky, because they handled it so diffently right from the beginning. For starters, that other show's protagonist, Lucifer, is openly bisexual (well considering that angels, humans and demons are different species, more like pansexual) and nobody bats an eyelash about that (with him also openly stating that he's the former Prince of Hell, most eyelashes are kept quite busy otherwise ) or questions it. Most importantly, it's never treated as a joke the way John "I'm not gay" Watson's frequent clarifications of his orientation are, or his string of failed relationships before Mary for that matter. Fwiw, I think they did a much better job with Sherlock's "not interested, but feel free to speculate, like I would care" attitude. I don't think that whole TJLC business would've become quite that clusterF*** if they'd treated John's sexuality with a bit more respect from the beginning - if you want to bring across that your char is straight and confident in his sexuality, don't have him utter angry denials in almost every episode, and make him at least a bit competent at having a non-psycho girlfriend. Which brings me to the second char in the above example, Pierce. Who is just that, quietly and unquestioned straight, yet he and Lucifer have a quite different kind of biblical relationship (it's that kind of show). So there is a strong connection between the two of them, never shown as sexual (but leaving room for shippers to interpret it as turning into such if they so choose). The show presents a reasonably logical (hey, it's about the literal Devil taking a vacation in Los Angeles, which puts logic under a bit of strain from the get-go ) explanation for why it's the two of them who have to play that couple, and the chars themselves are at a point in the storyline where an, er, project of theirs that's rather important to Pierce looks like a massive failure. They squabble about this at their "housewarming party", leaving the assembled neighbours to think it's a lover's spat, then when Lucifer returns and presents a heartfelt apology to Pierce, complete with the offer to keep trying to solve this together, this elicits a chorus of "Awww"s from their audience, at which point Lucifer realizes that they still have a role to play and passionately locks lips with the lieutenant, to the latter's surprise. tl;dr: that scene is not treated like an off-hand joke, but carefully set up and fitting into the general storyline. So, to come back to your question, how could Moftiss have made Johnlockers happy? (and yes, I do realize that hindsight is 20/20) At the danger of repeating myself, but respect plays a big part in that answer, I think. Respecting both their chars and their fans, in this particular instance. Even assuming that S1/2 (which didn't draw nearly that amount of fire) had already happened, they could have started by, say, taking Sherlock's return (and the emotional impact it has on John) a bit more seriously - they never fully explained what happened, dropped the "is Sherlock a fraud or isn't he?" storyline like a hot potato, and that dinner scene felt so jarring to me at least. Compare and contrast to the way Sherlock and John relate to each other in the marriage episode, of all places. Again, Lucifer never showed the two characters mentioned in any kind of canonical sexual relationship (without getting into spoiler territory, but quite the opposite actually). And they didn't have to - grain-of-salt-time again as I'm not in that fandom, but I didn't get the impression that there was any kind of backlash about how things went down between them at the end of the third season. Fans are generally quite happy with AU fics if (!) given a reasonable frame to place them in. So, to answer the question at the long last: play out the Return differently, to give the connection between Sherlock and John a chance to reestablish in S3, don't close the door on Johnlock so vehemently both in-show and in interviews. I don't think anyone (well, there's always the odd one out, but you know what I mean) would have minded John marrying Mary then, and shipper fans probably would've loved a scene of, say, Sherlock pulling John into a kiss to hide both their faces from someone they were currently shadowing who'd unexpectedly turned around.

Yeah, that's actually a pretty good example for what I meant by treating their fans with disdain. How did they reference said fan theories? By having a group of conspiracy theorists squabble about the most outlandish of them. Doesn't scream respect, to me at least. Compare and contrast, say, Lucifer's episode Vegas with Some Radish, where they have the main and Ella (one of the most adorable chars on the show, imo) take a side trip to Vegas for a (sort of) case together, have her kick ass *and* switch into something besides her practical lab clothing for a change, and Lucifer call her ravishing and mean it. That's how you are nice to the fans of the rarer ships out there, not by having them mocked in-show even by their fellow conspiracists for their otp.

Just went to check it on Wikipedia, and while the primary showrunner is male, as are most of the writers and directors (and Neil Gaiman, obviously), there are a couple women on the team. Fwiw, that Deckerstar episode was both written and directed by a woman, respectively. Btw, if you want to see a series that really shows that there are women at the helm (in a good sense, mind you) check out Jessica Jones (also on Netflix). Trigger warning though, I've heard from a couple women that the way that show handles emotional trauma from being abused is quite realistic.

Must creators be antagonistic to their own fans, though? Take the following with a big grain of salt, please, as I am not part of that show's fandom and only read up on the hullabaloo on broken long after it happened, but may I present, as counter-evidence, Lucifer, a show my husband introduced me to this fall since he thought I might like it (he may have noticed my penchant for fine British accents ). I saw and liked, it has amazing characters hidden under that silly crime procedural stuff, and the two leads have quite the chemistry, which brings me back to my original point. From what I gathered (again, see grain of salt) that show is based on a DC superhero comic by Neil Gaiman, so when the fandom slowly morphed from (mostly male) comic book enthusiasts to (mostly female) shippers, some creators would probably have reacted with irritation like Mr Moffat, but Lucifer's crew was more like, Hold my beer. I really don't want to spoiler anything here, but the second-to-last episode was called "Quintessential Deckerstar", and I was all, well either they're mocking their viewers or this is gonna be good (then had to explain to my husband why the title made me react like it did, since he'd never come across a shipping name before - like you said, more people watch a show than just the core fans). Sherlock-cynical me expected mockery, but what can I say, it was sweet and well-earned and absolutely perfect (and made up for some of the lengths of S3). Now it's certainly true that things are easier with a m/f pair of leads who were probably meant to come together at some point all along, but what I left out is that, watching Lucifer, you could see that the showrunners were quite familiar with their fanbase and also put friendly nods into the show to all the other ships. For instance, S3 introduced a main antagonist played by Tom Welling of Smallville fame, and he and the main played off well against each other, which no doubt launched plenty of ships - so they threw in an episode where the two of them go undercover as a gay couple (and while Lucifer is openly and happily pansexual, the other char not so much) and share an on-screen kiss (to half bemused and half fascinated stares by the female main ). Never shipped them, but it felt surprisingly good to watch a show where the creators don't look down on part of their fanbase. I swear there's a point to my ramblings, namely that when Fox, as they are wont to do (Browncoats neither forget nor forgive ), canceled Lucifer after S3, the fans didn't take that lying down, but raised hell on social media, online petition platforms and especially Twitter, getting #SaveLucifer as the #1 trending hashtag till mainstream media picked up on the ruckus, which caused Netflix to have a look at the numbers and then buy Lucifer from Fox, and it's getting a S4 next year (currently shooting, afaik). And the show runners are aware and appreciative of their fans' efforts, I think, seeing as one of the S4 episodes is called "Save Lucifer". So the moral here is, be nice to your fans (or at least don't treat some of them with open disdain) and they'll be nice to you.