Since the people this rant talks about might read my main blog, I'm posting this here. I'm changing all the names around, but to any one of them it'll probably still be obvious when I'm talking about them. This is more than just my pent-up frustration, this reflects the frustrations of a good portion of our group. My opinions also are not necessarily the same as those of the rest of the group.
So, first off. We watch anime every week. A specific person, whom I'll call Aaron (yes, I'm starting with A and working up through the alphabet), is the one who provides the computer, gets the episodes, etc. His position is an elected one. Yet, our group has had very little to no say in what we watch. I'm only mildly annoyed at this, as he hasn't really shown anything that I object to, but others in the group have a stronger dislike of it. However, we all agree that a person in an elected position should listen to and consider the opinions of the rest of the group. My opinion of what we've been watching lately also differs a fair amount from the rest of the group. I enjoyed watching two of the series and was curious enough about the third that I didn't mind seeing it. Others felt like "what's the point of coming to showings when we're not watching anything I can enjoy and/or haven't seen before?"
Aaron basically has a general belief that if you don't come to showings, your opinion matters less. However, there is a huge flaw in that thought. Mainly, people who would come to showings if there was a reason for them to do so. The easiest way to make it so they can show up and enjoy themselves is to involve them in the decision-making process and value their opinions.
Outside of his elected position, Aaron is a nice person. I get along with him fairly well. Others take issue with him and some of his interests and actions, but that's normal. The thing that I think makes me different from the rest is that I try to value what I like in a person and overlook any bad points as much as I can until something happens that just can't be overlooked. It seems like a good portion of the group sees the bad points and refuses to see the good until the bad is remedied.
Which brings me to the second person, whom I'll call Bob. Bob has always been a difficult person to get along with. Most of the time it's fine, and he does have a sense of humor that it's possible to trigger reliably, but on occasion and seemingly randomly he'll either go into extreme defensive mode or just be a total jackass. This was highlighted recently. A portion of our group rents a house. One person signed the lease, the rest sublet. Well, the person who signed the lease moved out recently. So, things had to be shuffled around and now it's Bob's name on the lease. Things changed about the house (at least towards those of us who don't live there) quickly. Up until the lease change, the house had been a periodic hangout spot after a showing or meeting. Now, not so much. If he doesn't know why you're there, or doesn't agree with it, you get told to get out. This actually erupted into forum drama in not one but two threads that had to be locked, and he ended up apologizing, but not without a lot of effort on everyone else's parts.
One issue is that Aaron and Bob hang out and get along with each other pretty well (they share a number of interests). I don't agree with the rest of the group, but they really just want Aaron to graduate and move away so that hopefully Bob will go away as well. So, in other words, losing a perfectly good member of the group to get rid of the less desirable member that he's friends with.
Another thing that annoys me, and seemingly only me, is that the rest of the group sees no foul in talking about anyone behind their backs. They're generally faulting people for things they might not have a lot of control over regarding their character. Who knows what gets said about me when I'm not around, and I do know there are subsets of the group that do things that I'm mysteriously not invited to. I'm not asking to be invited to everything anyone in our group does, but when stuff like this happens while I'm there, I can't rule out the possibility of it happening when I'm not there.
I had at one point considered moving into the house I mentioned previously. Now, I don't really want to.
Also, the showing tonight is a movie I know nothing about and a movie that's largely out of context from a bigger series that I have no interest in. Surprise, the rest of the group had zero involvement in choosing these movies. I don't think I'll be going to the showing tonight. I would have much preferred another theme night where people bring in an episode that fits a specific pre-announced theme. Those are always fun.
Now, Charlie, whom I get along with pretty well, is considering running for the position of "director" and managing the showings, since Aaron wants to concentrate on his 4th year classes, which is reasonable. Charlie told me his plan and I like it a lot better than what we currently have. Our showings have three slots, which generally we watch three or four episodes of each series per showing, so that it works out to about 4 hours. He's sticking with the three slots (we tried four a while back, it died horribly, and two is too few, three just seems to work perfectly), but, if I remember correctly, dividing it up as such: The first slot will be a 26 episode series that will go on the entire semester. The second slot will be two 12 or 13 episode series, when we finish the first, we'll start the second. The third is essentially a variety slot. Basically, in this slot, we'll show random episodes. If a bunch of people have been talking about a specific series around the rest of the group and enough people are intrigued, we'll slap an episode of it in so they can see what exactly is being discussed. There's also those series that just wouldn't go over well being shown for an entire semester (or even half of one), but would be perfect for a single night. Other times, the variety slot would be a rotation of short OAVs and movies. It seems like a pretty good idea. Also, we'd still have a couple theme showing nights per semester, which gives the group at large even more opportunity to choose what gets shown.
Now all we have to do is get people to stop (verb: combine the meanings of discredit, insult, and discriminate)ing against other people's tastes and saying they need to stop feeling a certain way or liking whatever they happen to like. Our group has been trying to maintain a "whatever you like, you're welcome here and free to talk about it" mentality, but with random bigots thrown in it gets difficult to maintain that. Also, we kind of have a double standard because we openly don't like furries, but then again nobody likes furries.
Also, regarding showings, the group has been trying to reacquaint itself with its western side for a while. We've technically always been a general comics and animation group, but the core content of the meetings and showings for quite a while has been purely manga and anime. A fair amount of the group for whatever reason (or lack thereof) doesn't like anything western. I'm personally open to the western stuff, but since I haven't ever been the biggest fan of it, I don't know what's out there outside of the mainstream. Bringing showings back into the context, one of the series we watched was a western series, but so many people didn't like even the simple idea of seeing something animated that had English audio that I'm pretty sure that we don't have a western slot for next semester.
This brings in Aaron's belief that if you don't come to showings your opinion doesn't matter. Also, there is indeed someone who came to showings just for the western series, and left after it ended. We really can't say we're trying to bring the western side back into the club if we don't even try. Zero (well, one) of our meetings so far have had anything regarding western series as the topic. That one meeting was early on in the semester and since then we haven't even touched western stuff as a topic. The one person who was exclusively into the western stuff resumed not coming to meetings. Either we need to be a 50/50 group, or we need to be all Eastern stuff and advertise ourselves as such. One or the other.
