Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: HRL, rick and morty, tv

Dan Harmon Tells Off Rick And Morty Fans Who Are Harassing His Female Writers

It looks like some Rick and Morty fans were unhappy with the fact that two women, Jane Becker and Jessica Gao, have their names credited on episodes of this current season ('Rickmancing the Stone' and 'Pickle Rick'). They were harassed on Twitter and had their personal information leak. Well, instead of me having to say something about the fact that this crap keeps happening, Entertainment Weekly jumped in and let co-creator Dan Harmon tell them off himself:

"I'm on a Twitter sabbatical, so the last thing I saw about that was [the Reddit thread detailing the harassment], and I've seen the tweets they've sent to the female writer. I was familiar going into the third season, having talked to Felicia Day, that any high-profile women get doxxed, they get harassed, they get threatened, they get slandered. And part of it is a testosterone-based subculture patting themselves on the back for trolling these women. Because to the extent that you get can get a girl to shriek about a frog you've proven girls are girly and there's no crime in assaulting her with a frog because it's all in the name of proving something. I think it's all disgusting."

Did you think Harmon was done? Oh no — he still has more to say about these harassers:

"These knobs, that want to protect the content they think they own — and somehow combine that with their need to be proud of something they have, which is often only their race or gender. It's offensive to me as someone who was born male and white, and still works way harder than them, that there's some white male [fan out there] trying to further some creepy agenda by 'protecting' my work. I've made no bones about the fact that I loathe these people. It f—ing sucks. And the only thing I can say is if you're lucky enough to make a show that is really good that people like, that means some bad people are going to like it too. You can't just insist that everybody who watches your show get their head on straight … And I'm speaking for myself — I don't want the show to have a political stance. But at the same time, individually, these [harassers] aren't politicians and don't represent politics. They represent some shit that I probably believed when I was 15."

Setting aside the fact that Pickle Rick up there as one of the best episode of the show thus far, if some fans have problems with an episode, singling out writers is pointless — there are so many people working on the show.

"It's total ignorance of how writing a television show works," Harmon adds. "It's frustrating enough having run Community for several years to see threads like, 'Oh well, it makes sense this episode was written by Andy Bobrow because when Hilary Winston wrote her episode she tends to linger more on dialogue and Andy is better at the I-want-to-hold-you moments.' And I want to scream at my computer: 'You idiots, we all write the show together!' If you can tell the difference between one writer and another on a show I'm running I've probably gotten so lazy that it hasn't all been blended and refined in the usual process. The reason one person's name goes on an episode is that someone has to and everyone deserves one of those times at bat where they have to do all the grunt work — they have to do all the outlining, sometimes, if they're willing to, they can expand into the post-production process. There's a bunch of reasons why we don't accurately reflect how many writers contribute to each episode in the credits."

OK, enough with harassing female writers on social media and leaking their personal information. Do something else with your life, and contribute to society in a productive way. I'd also like to thank EW for my new favorite meme:

Rick and Morty is currently in its third season and airs on Sunday nights on Adult Swim.

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