You’re Mine, You’re Mine, I’m Yours

tatlmaslany:

“There’s a bizarre focus on the fact that she’s bisexual or a lesbian and has been killed off, and that really reduces her to one thing in representing something, as opposed to being an individual,” Maslany said. “I find that to be a problematic complaint.
“She’s so much more than her sexuality and to make it about, ‘well, we killed off a lesbian character,’ that’s really reductive.”
Maslany is certainly sympathetic to the cause, but simply thinks that Orphan Black needed to tell its story without compromise.
“I understand because there’s such a lack of representation and 3D representation and you’re protective of those characters. There’s a trope too, a predictable storyline, which is that the LGBTQ characters get victimized somehow.
“But Delphine is only a victim because she made herself a hero. She was ultimately doing right by people.”
Putting aside the larger issue, the show’s co-creators Graeme Manson and John Fawcett have received no end of prickly feedback from fans angry over the loss of a beloved character.
“We knew that it was going to provoke a reaction, for sure. I think it was still a little surprising the intensity of the reaction,” Fawcett said.
“From the very beginning, we said we would constantly pull the rug out from people,” Manson continued. “If there’s a backlash, we earned it.
“If you did everything that the fans wanted, it wouldn’t be a drama anymore,” he added. “There would be no mystery to it. Delphine and Cosima would just be naked in bed and that would be the show. We’d just keep cutting to them over and over and everyone would be happy, right?”
Maslany says the reaction is a “huge testament” to Brochu’s portrayal. And she welcomes the conversations that have ensued.
“It’s really complicated territory but I think that it’s important to talk about it for sure. I’m glad people are talking about it.”
Source

delphemeral:

Inspired bythis post, and the conversation that is starting to bubble up again as we approach the season 4 premiere. I think it’s easy to lose sight of the truth that your own experience is yours, and not that of others - easy to insist that others view things the way you do, to insist they experience a show the way you do… without recognizing that they are not you. In the last year, there have been many posts that have explained why Delphine fans feel the way they do. There are many angles, there are many reasons, there are many thoughts and discussions and debates. And I feel that those pieces are too often forgotten when there is a fresh commentary on Delphine fans and the way they engage with Orphan Black.
In short, Delphine fans have reasons to be mad. They have reasons to feel betrayed. They have reasons outside of Delphine to dislike the plots of Orphan Black. There’s a lot of effort to reduce everything to just “oh, you’re just dumb shippers who can’t appreciate a good show!”. Hmm, nope. Not the case at all.
I can only speak for myself, and for what I have seen from Delphine fans, and for what I have experienced myself. This is what I think, as a Delphine fan. This is why I am disappointed with Orphan Black. This is why I don’t really care to watch the show anymore. And I hope it explains some things to people who just want to dismiss critical thought and the desire to have discussions and dissect issues with media and art like “Ugh, can’t you just enjoy what you HAVE?” Hmm. Pick an issue on Tumblr, ANY one, and try that line. I dare you.
So, without further ado… some busting of the myths about Delphine fans.
1. DELPHINE IS THE ONLY THING THEY CARE ABOUT WHEN IT COMES TO ORPHAN BLACK.
Nope. But in a lot of cases, she became the only thing that was left to care about, or that fans cared about the most by the end of season 3.
This will get broken down a lot further as you make your way through this post, but for me, in watching season 3, week by week there was this general sinking feeling. I kept asking myself:
Why are we wasting time on this plot?
I don’t care about these characters?
Why aren’t we addressing so and so from last season?
Why is this character behaving this way?
Why are they retconning this?
How does this make any sense with this other plot?
I thought these characters already resolved this issue?
I could not understand where the plot was going. I could not understand why, instead of developing the solid core of the last two seasons, we were going off into distant plot threads where characters seemed to ignore their development from past seasons, seemed to ignore important plot points from past seasons, seemed to act in ways that were out-of-character specifically so that the plot would “work”… but week after week I watched, hoping it would right itself.
The sinking feeling got so intense that even by the time Delphine’s final scenes and the Cophine scene in episode 3x10 came around, my brain was screaming that so much plot damage had been done that they’d need a whole other season to just heal the relationship Cosima/Delphine were supposed to have - you know, having been lovers and stuff who supposedly would have had the skill to communicate with each other - and just get them back to that original baseline. Not even develop any further. Not even get to the longed-for peak of a ship where they get to be happy for a little bit.
Delphine, whose transformation into Topside/Dyad/CloneClub boss bitch agent I thought I would hate, I ended up loving. I got to see Delphine work outside the Cophine relationship, I got to see the darker parts of her, her motivations, her power as a character on her own. And Evelyne’s performance was stellar. She truly played season 3’s Delphine with maximal skill and understanding and nuance.
Isn’t there anything you like about OB other than Delphine, you may ask? Of course! There are a lot of things. So many of the characters. The sci-fi. Neolution. The broader conspiracy. The why. But so many of these things for me fell flat in the third season. I wanted to be excited about Neolution. That moment when Nealon revealed the power of Neolution, in that montage side by side with Sarah about to hand the genome over to a Neolution agent - that was really compelling. That was great television. What the fuck were we doing all season before that? Dicking around, filling up time? Assassinating characters? Ignoring major plot points? Creating new plot holes? Retconning?
The entire season left a sour taste. I clung to Delphine, the one plot that continued to compel me. As an individual watching a show or engaging in a fandom, I’m allowed to have certain parts of a work of art speak to me. I’m allowed to have an interpretation, to have feelings that don’t line up with others’ feelings. I may not agree with the writers. I may not agree with other fans. But what I do know is, as we closed season 3, Delphine’s plot was one of the few things I cared about, and that I didn’t trust the writers with one bit.
2. THEY HAVE NO REASON TO DISTRUST THE SHOWRUNNERS.
When you trust someone to cultivate and care for the wonderful world they have established in the first season of their show, and they fail to do that, you begin to doubt your trust in them.
But this is really a very generic example. Because the distrust of the showrunners as it relates to Delphine specifically goes a lot deeper than this.
There have been all kinds of posts on tumblr in the last year where we’ve seen some of the more disappointing commentary from showrunners and even some cast members about their own fans, and their own fans’ engagement with the art that they create.
When I saw Graeme go in on Cophine shippers on Twitter, I was really turned off. When Jordan said keeping Cophine going was exploiting their sexuality, my jaw dropped. When John said he was so in love with this wonderful new smut ship he had created for Cosima, I could only shake my head. Of course you would… like to see two of your manic pixie dream girls naked in bed together for no significant plot-related reason. I’d rather see a ship I’m invested in have their intimacy and love displayed on-screen, but maybe that’s a “female” thing. I honestly don’t know. It’s certainly a “me” thing.
So here is a list I will come back to later on, but is just some of the things that really eroded the trust some of the fans had in the writers:
Showrunners have been setting Cophine up as the main love story for two seasons (and even into the third season).
Showrunners teased Cophine’s epicness with Cosima’s near-death experience.
Showrunners said that Cophine was even more of a thing by the end of the 3rd season.
Showrunners have been teasing Delphine’s fate since they shot her.
Showrunners have turned around and become trolls talking about the slow burn of Shay/Cosima and how much they love Shay/Cosima.
Showrunners have dismissed Cophine shippers.
Showrunners wrote a shitty third season that undermined what they teased to an extremely loyal Delphine/Cophine fanbase that far outstrips the fanart, fanfiction, and spec output of any other portion of the OB fandom. This made us feel used and strung along, and now they are stringing us along again.
Showrunners blamed Evelyne’s schedule as a reason to kill her and make room for their badly written “drama”.
Showrunners drop their own plots and plot threads and introduce new elements merely for drama.
Showrunners refuse to develop and address their characters and their psychologies, instead using them as 2-dimensional pawns to the plot which just leads to character assassination.
I do not trust, for one second, that I can be satisfied with what they write from here on out, and these are just some of the reasons why. I no longer place my faith in their hands. I have seen many fanfic writers and OBSpec take a lot more time and care with the plots and characters that the showrunners developed, than the showrunners themselves did. I long for quality and a satisfying story, not just for Delphine, not just for Cophine, but the entire show. There was a time when I was watching OB for the entire show, just like everyone else. But now, why would I finish a book that’s gone so far off the rails? Why would I torture myself, so the writers could redeem themselves? There are many other stories of redemption that deserve my time and patience more than writers who throw their own plots in the blender.

I’ve seen arguments where people say “well, it’s their show… they can do whatever they want”. You’re right… they can choose to produce pure shit. And I, as a critical viewer, can choose not to watch, because I don’t like to waste my time watching pure shit. Seems kind of logical, right?
3. THEY HATE SHAY BECAUSE SHE MESSES UP COPHINE.
Nope. This is a very simplistic view that tries to make what is essentially an issue with the plot and writing into a “frivolous” (thanks, Graeme!) issue about ship wars.
If you spent some time around Cophine shippers post season 2 and on the approach to season 3, you would see that although they were upset about the way Cophine ended in season 2, it was clear that they were being set up as the major love story on the show. The plot dictated this.
Cosima had just come back from the brink of death. Delphine had just threatened Rachel that things would get personal if Cosima died. The creators characterized Cophine as the central love story of the plot, and we were gearing up for a season where we believed we would see the characters on their own paths, playing the game in their own ways, until they could be reunited. This was the payoff many of us were hoping for - out came the spec, the fics (sooooo much fic, so many excited fans), the general hopefulness that not only the Cophine plot but other paused plots (Neolution, DNA patents, the legal implications of cloning) would come back to the fore to be developed.
Sometime in that hiatus, the news dropped that Ksenia Solo would be joining the show, and that her character Shay was “destined to become a friend to Cosima”, who we were all lead to believe was about to go on this great spirituality vs. science arc in the third season. We also saw comments that we’d really see Felix and Cosima grow a greater bond. It all seemed so magical! That another favourite Canadian actress (and I had been a fan of Ksenia since her wee days on Renegade Press) was going to join the show, that Orphan Black was going to explore the waters of philosophy, that Felix was going to be used as something more than sassy gay comic relief…
Boy, were we ever wrong. Somewhere in there, fans started to become wary of what the new Shay plot would actually be. There was news that male clones were being introduced. News that Allison would be a drug pusher.
Then the season actually happened, and instead of focusing on the main characters and the main plot, we got all kinds of side plots that were, in my humble opinion, boring and pointless. They did nothing to drive the plot forward. They took away from screen time that should have been spent developing the plots that had already been laid. This disappointed a lot of people who had waited months and months to see how writers would develop the arcs they had already set up. We were all very invested in the show, in the fandom. We have spent hours and hours building this up in our minds, in our discussions - looking forward to seeing it grow and develop.
So when fans at first could not understand that a) Delphine was suddenly back and b) she was breaking up with Cosima, they soon clung to Delphiine’s plotline because it was the only one that could potentially keep the plot grounded in the arcs of yesteryear and act as a foil to the absolutely irresponsible way Cosima was acting. Neolution, Topside, Dyad - Delphine had literally become the only mouthpiece to ground those plots and keep them moving in the show (while we wasted so much screentime on Castor, Alison’s drugs and school trustee plot, a plot where Helena chooses to distrust Sarah AGAIN even though we solved that last season), and at the same time, Evelyne Brochu was giving the performance of her fucking life on this darker, layered Delphine. Here were moments that for us, we were actually entertained, enthralled - by the end of the season, I had checked out of most of the plots because what might to the writers have appeared to be “tight, fast-paced writing filled with tantalizing drama” was really just a bunch of plots that went nowhere. We spent an entire season in limbo - ignoring Helena’s canister of stem cells, Cosima’s cure research… I almost can’t even remember what happened otherwise, I was that bored.
So when Shay appeared as yet another messy plot thread and immediately, Cosima was in her bed the next episode, and in her bed again, and at her apartment, and in her apartment again… it was like, wow. I guess Cosima actually isn’t anything more than her sexuality? Why am I watching two characters having tender, intimate post-coital moments that I am not invested in AT ALL? Why isn’t Cosima coughing blood everywhere? Why does her hemorrhaging in the bath tub go… absolutely nowhere?
This may be hard to believe, but I think a lot of Delphine/Cophine fans were open to the idea of Cosima dating someone else for a while, had it been handled better. Had there been development. Had there been plot. Had we gotten to know Shay a little better (in what John Fawcett calls… a slow burn on this character/this relationship! HAHA!), had her role in the plot made any sense at all instead of her being a “scratching post” that was really a “scratching post for Cosima to let out all her anger about Delphine”, then perhaps it would have been received better.
Instead, as Cosima was still openly harbouring love for Delphine, still having intense emotional moments with her, she was back at Shay’s the next day. What? What is this plot? What is Cosima doing, other than using this person? Dragging her to Dyad as a “fuck you” to Delphine - what other reason did Shay have to be there? And then to use her as a way to progress this storyline of “yes yesssss the hot dark bisexual femme fatale character of COURSE would have tried to slit her wrists in the past” and for Delphine’s forced martyrdom and blessing - “be good to her”.
It was overall just one giant trainwreck of a plot. Take the shipping out of it. It’s about plot, character development, and staying true to the writing that the writers set up themselves in the last two seasons. They have said they have had an overall plot all along. I must call bullshit on this, and the retcon and non-sensical character behaviour is only one part of it.
4. THEY IGNORE ALL THE SHADY THINGS DELPHINE HAS DONE.
Hmm, nope. I’m one of the Delphine fans who actually didn’t like Delphine until I had gotten through the second season. I was a staunch Cosima fan, and in my brain I could not understand why anyone would support the relationship when Delphine’s allegiance seemed so uncertain.
Yes, I started there.
I think you’ll find a lot of people who eventually gravitated toward Delphine started as Cosima fans, with Cosima being their favourite part of a show that was exciting and female-centric in the sci-fi sphere. How could anyone support the trojan horse that was Delphine Cormier?
What Delphine fans came to understand was the humanity of the situation, and I believe that’s something people look for when they engage with and critique art. I found that I could relate to Delphine’s choices, I began to understand that there was more to the character than I had previously thought, and a large part of that was the performance Evelyne Brochu put in. Like the other characters, Delphine had to juggle playing the game while trying to protect those things most important to her - in this case, Cosima, and her continued ability to help the clones from the inside. Her actions in season 1 began to appear in a different light, and fill themselves in with new meaning and complexity.
When people rant about her sleeping with Cosima, I can only think… Paul sleeping with Beth, Sarah sleeping with Paul, Donnie sleeping with Allison, Rachel sleeping with Paul. In all of these situations, the only one who dropped the act and declared their feelings and allegiance was Delphine. She found herself caught between pragmatism and her true feelings - she was, in effect, a grey character, who was forced to see the world in grey. Cosima, in contrast, was more black and white - you are either all good or you are evil, and to prove you are either of these things, you have to act in a specific way. This brought conflict and a lot of interesting nuance to their relationship.
When Delphine treated Cosima with Kira’s stem cells in season 2, even though Cosima was against it? If I had the opportunity to use discarded baby teeth to treat my stubborn, terminally-ill loved one who was actively also seeking treatment, and I didn’t know they were from a source that loved one blacklisted until after the treatment had begun to work - until after I had seen that my loved one could live, could recover from an illness that was robbing her of her life - I would have reacted exactly like Delphine. And perhaps that’s the grind. You can either sympathize with her choices, or you can’t. In a miraculous moment of clarity, John Fawcett was aware of the struggle these characters faced, and acknowledged that there was love at the centre of it all:
And that’s why her behaviour for me has added to the depth of her character. I’ll admit, a lot of my love for Delphine comes from the fan community - their spec, their analysis, their critical viewing of Orphan Black. My perspective is shaped by my own life experience, what I can relate to, what I think the plot is trying to say, what I think the characters are trying to say. It is interpretation, it is engaging with the art.
On a show where 100% of the characters are shady - unless we are going to punish all of them, it seems rather like we are picking and choosing for the sake of maintaining our arguments if we only punish one.
5. THEY BELIEVE THE PLOT SHOULD SERVICE THEM AND THEIR SHIP.
Nope. We believe the plot should maintain its integrity and follow an organic development based on what has come before it. Too much of what happens in this plot is for drama and shock value. It’s OK to chill and develop and work with what you have set up - it’s a hell of a lot more satisfying that way. Instead, season 3 introduced a bunch of new characters and plot threads that took away from developing things that were already set up. It was boring storytelling that for me shows an obvious lack of an overall direction and arc. There were “new” moments in season 3 that I did enjoy and for me had more significance - Krystal’s conversation with Felix, for example. But really, by the end of season 3? I barely cared if Cophine happened, the plot and characters had already been so severely damaged. I was just hanging around waiting for Evelyne Brochu, since nothing else appeared to elicit any emotion from me after such a messy season.
6. THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT CHARACTERS GET TREATED THE SAME REGARDLESS OF THEIR SEXUALITY ON THIS FANTASTICALLY FORWARD-THINKING LGBT+ AND ALL OTHER SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES SHOW.
Do you mean they get treated the same with the same tired TV tropes and archetypes? Sure, I agree there.
But just having an LGBT character, a POC, a person with a different body image, visible within your plot… does not mean you are doing them a service. We have:
Felix the 2-dimensional sassy gay prostitute
Helena the adorable killer whose long life of abuse we conveniently ignore
Donnie Chubbs and Sarah Stubbs, the hilarious jokey fat people
Tony the novelty trans clone
Delphine the untrustworthy, violent bisexual
I’m not saying these characters can’t be written as they are, or that they don’t serve other purposes within the plot, but to sit there and NOT recognize the ways in which these archetypes are problematic and just have to blindly sit there and accept media without criticism? Without thought? No, thanks! We’re here discussing things on TUMBLR of all places.
7. THEY DON’T GET THAT EVELYNE IS SUPER BUSY.
Oh trust me, we get it.
Evelyne Brochu is a talented queen and should get all the roles. Her star is rising and we’re all really excited to follow her into other projects. I think you’ll find a lot of us already have.
Does a star being really busy justify a completely disastrous plot in which things like: a couple in a relationship doesn’t communicate at all, Cosima goes to new lows as a character, the clones trust and then for no reason distrust Delphine, Delphine dies, happens?
Sorry, no.
8. THEY MAKE THE SHOW ALL ABOUT DELPHINE WHEN IT’S REALLY TATIANA MASLANY’S SHOW.
A lot of people who watch Orphan Black have stuck with it because Tatiana’s performance is so riveting, so virtuosic. She is truly an exciting performer to watch, to marvel at, and she is 100% why I began watching and why I stuck with the show even when I felt season 2 started to lag a little in plot quality. I am so happy for her success, and that OB has been the platform for her to really exhibit her acting chops to the world. She is a truly remarkable performer and at the core of this show.
Where I look at a show like Dollhouse, where the plot tried to carry forward an actress who was much weaker at creating new, separate characters, I look at Orphan Black as an acting prodigy carrying forward writing/plots that are too weak to stand on their own. Her acting truly made this show, and I don’t think it would have been as successful with any other actress at the helm.
Does that mean we can’t like any of the other characters or actors? Absolutely not.
Does that mean we can’t dislike some of the plots that Tat’s characters are involved in? Absolutely not.
For me, it really came to a point where Delphine’s plot was the only one that interested me, because everything else had ceased to keep me entertained. Repeating scenarios, inter-character drama that shouldn’t have existed, plots that had nothing to do with the main clone story and just took away from it…
Tatiana Maslany is a brilliant actress who has made the most of the plots she has been given - she has truly gone above and beyond them, she has transcended the writing of this show. She is a true ally to the LGBT community and a true gift to acting. I will watch everything she does from here on out, she is that incredible. But do the clones, as they are written and as their plots are written, continue to enthral me and make me want to keep watching? In a lot of cases, no. And that’s not Tatiana.

That’s the writing.
9. WHAT THEY EXPERIENCED ISN’T AS BAD AS WHAT LEXA/CLEXA FANS EXPERIENCED.
I’m sorry… what?
Why are we comparing this at all, instead of understanding that we all have different experiences that affect our reactions to media, and that when you yourself experience pain, you should have hopefully developed some compassion and empathy when others go through their own pain?
What happened with Clexa shippers and their revolt, though I am not involved at all, is allowed to happen. People are allowed to react. Likewise, people are allowed to react to Delphine and Cophine. Clexa is a larger, and therefor louder, fandom. But bear with me for a second as I try to explain where OB went wrong by introducing part of this list again:
Showrunners have been setting Cophine up as the main love story for two seasons (and even into the third season).
Showrunners teased Cophine’s epicness with Cosima’s near-death experience.
Showrunners said that Cophine was even more of a thing by the end of the 3rd season.
Showrunners have been teasing Delphine’s fate since they shot her.
Showrunners have turned around and become trolls talking about the slow burn of Shay/Cosima and how much they love Shay/Cosima.
Showrunners have dismissed Cophine shippers.
Jodran Gavaris said there was nothing left to write for this couple, that keeping them going was exploiting their sexuality (… !!!)
Showrunners wrote a shitty third season that undermined what they teased to an extremely loyal Delphine/Cophine fanbase that far outstrips the fanart, fanfiction, and spec output of any other portion of the OB fandom. This made them feel used and strung along, and now they are stringing us along again.
We have a reason to be upset. We have a reason to be angry. Comparisons with other shows and other fandoms have no place in this, and honestly, a lot of the people who are angry belong to both fandoms.
10. THEY’RE A BUNCH OF IMMATURE, TEENAGE SHIPPERS WHO DON’T KNOW HOW TO APPRECIATE “THE ART” OF A SMART SHOW LIKE ORPHAN BLACK.
Mmhmm. I’m 28 years old and have been through many ships and fandoms in the last 15 years. Try again. There is a very diverse range of ages and life experience in this fandom. I am so thankful that we have a lot of respectful, intelligent, critical people who don’t just accept what’s on the tube as amazing and awesome. We can appreciate what we are given, but we can also critique where things have fallen short. If there is no dialogue, no engagement, no thought to compliment our geeking out, our excitement, our love for something…. well. That’s rather problematic, don’t you think? It’s important to see the good, and the bad. To be critical.

EN TI RE LY.

A critical opinion is not equal to hate or negativity.

1. DELPHINE IS THE ONLY THING THEY CARE ABOUT WHEN IT COMES TO ORPHAN BLACK.

2. THEY HAVE NO REASON TO DISTRUST THE SHOWRUNNERS.

3. THEY HATE SHAY BECAUSE SHE MESSES UP COPHINE.

4. THEY IGNORE ALL THE SHADY THINGS DELPHINE HAS DONE.

5. THEY BELIEVE THE PLOT SHOULD SERVICE THEM AND THEIR SHIP.

6. THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT CHARACTERS GET TREATED THE SAME REGARDLESS OF THEIR SEXUALITY ON THIS FANTASTICALLY FORWARD-THINKING LGBT+ AND ALL OTHER SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES SHOW.

7. THEY DON’T GET THAT EVELYNE IS SUPER BUSY.

8. THEY MAKE THE SHOW ALL ABOUT DELPHINE WHEN IT’S REALLY TATIANA MASLANY’S SHOW.

9. WHAT THEY EXPERIENCED ISN’T AS BAD AS WHAT LEXA/CLEXA FANS EXPERIENCED.

10. THEY’RE A BUNCH OF IMMATURE, TEENAGE SHIPPERS WHO DON’T KNOW HOW TO APPRECIATE “THE ART” OF A SMART SHOW LIKE ORPHAN BLACK.

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