Sarah Nakamura's Response to Ep 8 Backlash

[TheMountain]

Taken from Reddit:

 

Since the /r/WoT discussion is riddled with back and forth "no she didn't say that, not exactly!", here's all of her Insta stories presented exactly as they are, and a full transcript.

Full video here: https://streamff.com/v/4c5fb6

Transcript here:

So in December, I thought it'd be a really great time to take a step back from social media, and just focus on my family, relax, unplug. I did - it was wonderful, I turned off all notifications for social media and had only a very select few people who can actually reach me via text.

Uhmm, it was amazing, and I think, just like, the best decision I've ever made in my whole life. But like, *giggles*, I turned on my Instagram notifications last night or the day before, and the stuff that is still coming through from Episode 8 is cracking me up.

Some people are so pressed about Episode 8 that they're coming for my throat - and I find it absolutely hysterical, to be perfectly honest, because it's all men, and I guarantee you that if I were a man they would not be coming at me with that same energy because, guaranteed, they are not going after any of the other people that may have helped to provide support for this show, with that same energy. Guaranteed that it is not happening, so, I'm finding that absolutely hysterical, and uhmm, just the fact that, I'm not bothered - I'm so proud of Episode 8!

The end of the Eye of the World is difficult from a book perspective, and so, how we wrapped everything up while hitting some of the peaks of this scene when it comes to the confrontation at the Eye I felt were right on the money. We also planted a lot of seeds within that whole episode that will bear fruit in the coming seasons, and I felt like it was done deftly and surgically and we just kinda left things to grow, and I am so thrilled with all of that. But man!

Some of you guys really need to take a deep breath, relax, and, think twice about coming after a stranger on the Internet. For those of you asking, I sleep very well at night, and I'm really really proud of the work that I do and the support that I provide. But gonna need for people that are questioning me to looking up the meaning of "consultant" and also the meaning of "advice". I am not a producer - bottom line - I am not a producer, I can't make anyone do anything and I don't let things happen because I'm not a decision-maker. I provide support, I advise, and fight battles that maybe feel like I need to fight? *cuts off*

And just to wrap all of this up, I am all in on the outline and the vision of what is happening for this show - I'm fully sold on all of Season 1 and I am committed to the story that we're telling and how we're telling it, and at the end of the day, super super happy with all of it, and so I support our showrunner with my full heart, and kindly thank you, no, I will not be killing myself, so stop asking

[Lethira the second]

I'm not sure it was a wise move making such a statement off the back of the comments she has received.  I read some of the Twitter stuff after episode 6.

 

I think it is an absolute disgrace that anyone has contacted a stranger on the internet and suggested they harm themself.  I wish Sarah all the best and hope she is able to put such comments behind her and that she may long continue to enjoy her work.

[JeffTheWoodlandElf]

Quote

"I guarantee you that if I were a man they would not be coming at me with that same energy because, guaranteed, they are not going after any of the other people that may have helped to provide support for this show, with that same energy."

Classic. 

 

Never mind that Rafe is getting waaaay more backlash than Sarah. 

 

Never mind that Sarah herself was using her involvement with the show to boost her personal profile and that Rafe/Amazon specifically propped her up in an attempt to reassure fans that the show would be respectful to the books. 

 

The reason that she's received so much flak is that she's a lady. 

 

You can't stand in front of the firing line and complain when you get shot. It was Sarah's choice not to just lay low like the other consultants did. She wanted to be the center of attention, and she got it. Merry Christmas. 

 

(It should be obvious that I don't condone threats of any kind, but it's 2021 so just in case I'm putting this here)

Edited January 12, 2022 by JeffTheWoodlandElf

[AdamA]

10 minutes ago, JeffTheWoodlandElf said:

(It should be obvious that I don't condone threats of any kind, but it's 2021 so just in case I'm putting this here)

Joke or did you forget what year it is?

[JeffTheWoodlandElf]

7 minutes ago, AdamA said:

Joke or did you forget what year it is?

I 100% did. 

 

*googles Bridges Near Me*

[Gothic Flame]

19 minutes ago, JeffTheWoodlandElf said:

The reason that she's received so much flak is that she's a lady. 

I wouldn't be surprised if Rafe makes the same claim later this year.

[Aimless]

Thinking back on how, a few weeks ago, WoT forums everywhere were suddenly and inexplicably overrun with weird dudes making weirdly possessive and creepy comments about SN's hiatus from social media, speculating that she had broken down mentally due to workplace abuse by the hated WoT Stepdad. And it turns out she was—as most normal people expected—just a normal, professional person, with a healthy and active life, taking a break from the incessant deluge of creepy sexist nerdrage pouring out from a very small but extremely busy contingent of the WOT fandom. It's true that this fandom generally has a pretty good reputation for being chill and welcoming, but it's also that the angry incels have gotten an inordinate amount of leeway in recent years—to everyone's detriment. Glad to hear these chodes won't be factored into anyone's decisions about anything, moving forward. 

[SingleMort]

No offience meant but I do wonder why this needs to be debated. I mean it's horrible that people are bullying her online and hopefully they get appropriate commupance for that. But why do people put so much stock in things like this anyway? This is just one person who advised on the show and if they are collecting paychecks from Amazon of course they are not going to throw it under the bus, and even if they had what would that prove? Would it make the show better? Would it make all the people who didn't like feel better? I just don't see the point. This all boils down to - 

 

A person who works on the show says the show is great and the people harassing her can f*** off

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by SingleMort

[VooDooNut]

7 minutes ago, SingleMort said:

No offience meant but I do wonder why this needs to be debated. I mean it's horrible that people are bullying her online and hopefully they get appropriate commupance for that. But why do people put so much stock in things like this anyway? This is just one person who advised on the show and if they are collecting paychecks from Amazon of course they are not going to throw it under the bus, and even if they had what would that prove? Would it make the show better? Would it make all the people who didn't like feel better? I just don't see the point. This all boils down to - 

 

A person who works on the show says the show is great and the people harassing her can f*** off

 

Agreed, but there will be no justice for verbal abusers on social media platforms (as they are currently designed), that's why they propagate. I won't say more though, as I've already voiced my opinion of social media numerous times here.

[ilovezam]

8 hours ago, JeffTheWoodlandElf said:

Never mind that Rafe is getting waaaay more backlash than Sarah. 

Yeah... Don't condone abuse of any kind, but one look at Rafe's Instagram comments or whatever completely refutes her assertion that "they're coming after me like this only because I'm a woman", which really feels like a rehash of the tired Ghostbusters style of deflecting criticism.

 

So. Many. Women. Hate. The. Show and it's so disheartening to see their voices invalidated by people who insist that the detractors mostly come from a place of sexism.

[Terry05]

3 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

Yeah... Don't condone abuse of any kind, but one look at Rafe's Instagram comments or whatever completely refutes her assertion that "they're coming after me like this only because I'm a woman", which really feels like a rehash of the tired Ghostbusters style of deflecting criticism.

 

So. Many. Women. Hate. The. Show and it's so disheartening to see their voices invalidated by people who insist that the detractors mostly come from a place of sexism.

I can think of a number of things they are saying to Sarah that they wouldn't say to a man... "they're coming after me like this only because I'm a woman" may be referring to the type of vitriol that is likely in her DMs, rather than just the casual show-hate stuff Rafe gets - though his is more than likely contains a lot of homophobia.

[ForsakenPotato]

I really doubt she's saying all criticism is sexist, she's probably saying the threats and probably other gross crap that she's getting is mostly from men. She's probably validating that by the particular body part pictures she receives.

 

Honestly, before going on forums for GoT and now WoT, I never saw or heard anyone who was legitimately and seriously mad at specific TV producers, writers, or consultants. It's a team sport, and the overall WoT team is accountable for the show, but that's a LOT of people. Whatever decisions folks don't like on the show didn't happen in a vacuum and weren't made by one person, they were probably ok'd by several if not dozens of people, but you would never know that by the way they are often discussed.

 

For every comment that is well thought out with the hope that someone from that team reads these forums and is interested in this small subset of viewers opinions and constructive criticism, there's another comment that will be "clearly Rafe/Sarah/etc etc never really cared about the books or respects the source material, they are totally incompetent". I mean...is that supposed to convince anyone we have good ideas to share?

[ilovezam]

15 minutes ago, Terry05 said:

I can think of a number of things they are saying to Sarah that they wouldn't say to a man... "they're coming after me like this only because I'm a woman" may be referring to the type of vitriol that is likely in her DMs, rather than just the casual show-hate stuff Rafe gets - though his is more than likely contains a lot of homophobia.

 

I mean the two examples of the vitriol she brings up in her video are:

 

1. How do you sleep at night?

2. Go kill yourself

 

For the record, harassing anybody is wrong, but these things are absolutely things people would be throwing Rafe's way. Maybe she gets some women-specific hate, but by and large the hate obviously comes from people who genuinely dislike the show and not motivated by sexism.

 

Heck, the people who even know who Sarah Nakamura is probably read 13,000 pages of a series where women dominated socially and politically and is chock full of awesome female characters. 

 

Again, any hate thrown her way is still wrong, but blaming it on sexism is how you end up in a Ghostbusters situation and I'm praying hard that we're not already on a path to a Ghostbusters situation.

[ForsakenPotato]

It's amazing how people other than Sarah seem to know better than she does the demographics of who is harassing her.

[ilovezam]

2 minutes ago, ForsakenPotato said:

It's amazing how people other than Sarah seem to know better than she does the demographics of who is harassing her.

It's amazing how Sarah seems to know the motivations of the people harassing her. All are men, sure maybe? But all guaranteed doing it only because she's a woman? Can she know that? Did they add a little footnote in their harassment to explain that?

[Terry05]

7 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

 

I mean the two examples of the vitriol she brings up in her video are:

 

1. How do you sleep at night?

2. Go kill yourself

 

For the record, harassing anybody is wrong, but these things are absolutely things people would be throwing Rafe's way. Maybe she gets some women-specific hate, but by and large the hate obviously comes from people who genuinely dislike the show and not motivated by sexism.

 

Heck, the people who even know who Sarah Nakamura is probably read 13,000 pages of a series where women dominated socially and politically and is chock full of awesome female characters. 

 

Again, any hate thrown her way is still wrong, but blaming it on sexism is how you end up in a Ghostbusters situation and I'm praying hard that we're not already on a path to a Ghostbusters situation.

I'm just going to take her word for it that she is aware of the gender of the people dming her ?‍♂️

[ilovezam]

1 minute ago, Terry05 said:

I'm just going to take her word for it that she is aware of the gender of the people dming her ?‍♂️

 

You're reading me wrong, I totally can believe that part of her statement.

The assumption she's arrived at, that "this is only happening because I am a woman", however, is pretty ridiculous, and instantly refuted with one look at Rafe.

[ForsakenPotato]

16 minutes ago, ilovezam said:

It's amazing how Sarah seems to know the motivations of the people harassing her. All are men, sure maybe? But all guaranteed doing it only because she's a woman? Can she know that? Did they add a little footnote in their harassment to explain that?

Usually when almost exclusively men do something bad to a woman, sexism is at play. I'm not saying (and I doubt she is either) that literally everyone messaging her is trying to be sexist. But if a lot of men think you should go jump off a bridge or be violated in some other horrible way and very few women express the same sentiments...it's not looking great. Sure, she shouldn't make assumptions. But she's not pulling them out of thin air.

 

Anyway, I'm gonna go to sleep now because I can tell this is a losing battle. But it sucks that being a public figure as a women probably means receiving untold amounts of rape and death threats and nasty body part photos from mostly men, and then having to justify why that might have something to do with sexism. It's the old "men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them".

Edited January 13, 2022 by ForsakenPotato

[Terry05]

1 minute ago, ilovezam said:

 

You're reading me wrong, I totally can believe that part of her statement.

The assumption she's arrived at, that "this is only happening because I am a woman", however, is pretty ridiculous, and instantly refuted with one look at Rafe.

I see what you mean.

 

I'm obviously making an assumption (educated guess based of past trolling of women that has been made public) that she is getting more loaded vitriol that she didn't directly mention.

 

But if the exact same people who say "how do you sleep at night" say it to Sarah as well as Rafe then yeah not sexually motivated. It's the other shit that I'm 100% sure is in her DMs that is sexist.

[VooDooNut]

This conversation makes me sad. Hate is hate.

 

If you seek to give useful criticism to any artist, communicating with respect and dignity for another human being is a good place to start.

 

Don't expect a platform that allows hate speech, private DMs (of unknowable content), and unfettered commentary, good or bad, to be the utopian communications center everyone seems to insist it is. 

 

There are far more effective ways of respectfully communicating opinions/grievances/critiques than the cesspool that is the norm.

 

And by the way, "how do you sleep at night?", or "why don't you kill yourself", are poor substitutes for "I didn't like the way Egwene was dressed in this scene. Can you explain your rational for dressing her in this form of attire? Thank you."

[Terry05]

Just now, VooDooNut said:

This conversation makes me sad. Hate is hate.

 

If you seek to give useful criticism to any artist, communicating with respect and dignity for another human being is a good place to start.

 

Don't expect a platform that allows hate speech, private DMs (of unknowable content), and unfettered commentary, good or bad, to be the utopian communications center everyone seems to insist it is. 

 

There are far more effective ways of respectfully communicating opinions/grievances/critiques than the cesspool that is the norm.

 

And by the way, "how do you sleep at night?", or "why don't you kill yourself", are poor substitutes for "I didn't like the way Egwene was dressed in this scene. Can you explain your rational for dressing her in this form of attire? Thank you."

100%

[ilovezam]

1 minute ago, ForsakenPotato said:

Usually when almost exclusively men do something bad to a woman, sexism is at play. I'm not saying (and I doubt she is either) that literally everyone messaging her is trying to be sexist and thinks the show sucks specifically because she is a woman. But if a lot of men think you should go jump off a bridge or be violated in some other horrible way and very few women express the same sentiments...it's not looking great. Sure, she shouldn't make assumptions. But she's not pulling them out of thin air.

 

Ha, I don't exactly disagree, but in this case I genuinely do think there's a very good chance these same men are also DMing Rafe to ask him to kill himself though, and would have hate-DM'd too if it were a man in Sarah's position as the book-lore consultant. 

 

Just now, Terry05 said:

But if the exact same people who say "how do you sleep at night" say it to Sarah as well as Rafe then yeah not sexually motivated. It's the other shit that I'm 100% sure is in her DMs that is sexist.

 

Agree.

 

1 minute ago, VooDooNut said:

This conversation makes me sad. Hate is hate.

 

100% agreed. My point was totally not about that and I want to emphasise hate is not okay regardless. I just think the whole unsubstantiated "this is just sexism!" thing is muddying the waters so much being used as a shield these days, and it's so tiring for my left-leaning Asian self to endlessly reiterate my political position to even talk about why I hated the show.

 

 

 

[ForsakenPotato]

Agree hate is bad whether most of the messages she's receiving are vanilla harassment vs. special sexist harassment! And yeah, the people sending her sexist stuff are probably also sending Rafe homophobic stuff too. She gets the sexist harassment. He gets the homophobic harassment. It all sucks. I don't think she means her harassment is worse than his, just that it has a different energy from her colleagues who are men.

 

@ilovezam I appreciate your thoughtful response and I can tell your heart is in the right place. I think we are interpreting her words differently: sexism playing a big role in the harassment and type of harassment she receives is what I read, sexism being the only or primary driver of harassment is what it sounds like you are getting from her statement (and finding presumptuous). I'm not saying you are wrong or I am right, because only Sarah knows exactly what she actually meant by "if I were a man they would not be coming at me with that same energy". Just trying to clarify, and say that I do truly appreciate the respectful discussion.

Edited January 13, 2022 by ForsakenPotato
tag didn't work the first time

[Strahor]

So, not long ago, personal responsibility was a thing. You couldn't go around and hide behind your gender, race or sexuality. Because, people were interested in answers. And then, after few years, everything went sideways. So, can we tell that episode 8 was the worst, without being label as...pick your fighter? Can we say that there was no point in splitting the story around Rand, if you had no idea how to write it? Can we just say that even at this moment, no one real knows how or is Dragon Reborn even a strong character?

P. S. She isn't there as an fan, she is there as an paid consultant. Meaning what? She is payed for her input. Why isn't she getting to the writers? Dunno. 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Strahor
Missclick

[VooDooNut]

4 minutes ago, Strahor said:

So, not long ago, personal responsibility was a thing.

When was this? Take me back!