Trivia / Mark Does Stuff

• Creator Backlash:
  • Going into Harry Potter, he expected a disposable series of books, and was basically pretty condescending of the series. In his re-read review of the first chapter he said:
    "Did most of you think that I was going to tear this series apart back then? Because I can sort of see why I thought what I did at the time, but now I want to vehemently defend this. YOU DON’T GET IT, JUST WAIT SHIT WILL GET REAL. I’ve become all of you. And it is wonderful."
  • His read of Monstrous Regiment was a disaster in which some unfortunate timing issues caused him to fall squarely into the same problematic areas he usually rails against. In short, the new demands on his time after becoming a novelist himself caused him to read the site's comments far less, and thus he didn't see the fans' increasingly frustrated responses to a basic misunderstanding regarding the book's use of gender roles and came off like he was bullying them into accepting his own point of view, in some cases over women or transgender people who would naturally have a much more personal view of this stuff. After catching on, he felt driven to make a whole separate post apologizing for everything, including permanently banning one poster who he'd been vigorously defending without a full understanding of what they'd been saying. He also immediately set himself up to do a second read of the book where he could better understand what was actually going on in it.
• Creator Breakdown: They put everything on hiatus after the shocking death of their former boyfriend Baize at just 28 years old, with no idea when they'd be able to come back. In 2021, they decided to end the blog, as it was conflicting with their demands as an author.
• Demand Overload:
  • When Mark started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on his Mark Watches site, the onslaught of Buffy fans broke the server multiple times before Mark had to get a new one to accommodate for them.
  • His video order site was crashed by an understandable onslaught of orders for the Supernatural episode "Fan Fiction" the second it appeared. This also had the misfortune of being a time when he was stuck without Internet for 24 hours, meaning he took a while to even become aware of the problem.
  • It happened again with the Steven Universe Season 1 finale "Jail Break", in which a ton of people naturally wanted to see his thoughts on one of the most shamelessly blatant homosexual relationships in western animation history.
• Missing Episode: His very first video review, for the Buffy episode "The Gift", was taken off YouTube due to the episode's sound being audible. Since he doesn't have the original file, there's no chance of it being posted anywhere else.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • He's a big fan of Tamora Pierce's work, and he got to write the foreword to The Queen's Readers, a collection of essays written by fans on her work.
  • They are also a huge fan of The Camp Half-Blood Series, particularly Nico di Angelo and they were overjoyed when he was revealed as gay. Years later, they're co-writing a book with Rick Riordan.
• Schedule Slip: Starting in 2015, he's taken on such a demanding touring schedule that the Double Feature reviews have to be put on hold several times (though he makes sure to never have this issue on the main books and shows, no matter how much he has to cram into reading/watching before going on trips).
• What Could Have Been:
  • He's said that he wishes he'd done the Marvel Cinematic Universe on the site, since he has a ton of thoughts about it (mostly good ones). He had to settle for doing liveblogs on Twitter. Though he did give the full treatment to Agent Carter.
    • Jessica Jones (2015) will not be reviewed after several warnings that, as a rape victim and PTSD sufferer, the show's subject matter would be too personally upsetting to make the process any fun for anyone. However, he's still going to watch the show, leaving the door open for the other Netflix shows being covered.
  • You have to sigh at some particularly twisty and shocking shows that we won't get to see him do because he's already seen all or part of them. This includes The X-Files, Twin Peaks, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Lost, and Gravity Falls.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was on the list for a while, until he got fed up with the Bronies constantly pestering him to watch it right now, often accompanied by a lot of racist and sexist stuff, plus huge spoilers. He ended up declaring he would never watch the show, even on his own time.
  • Many Death Note fans were disappointed that he opted to watch the sub, meaning he misses out on Brad Swaile's legendarily hammy performance and the chance to recognize the voice of Alessandro Juliani after seeing him in two other shows.
  • Baize couldn't join the Gargoyles videos due to having watched the show as a kid.

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