This is an excruciatingly slow week at work and I am flat out amazed that someone else hasn't posted this yet. I was going to wait for someone else to take it but right now I need something to do and this is some spectacular wank. I first got it from Cleo's twitter, but it's a hell of a lot bigger now.

Rachel Lefevre played Victoria in the Twilight movie. She was generally regarded as acceptable in her acting and well-liked as a person.

Then Summit suddenly announces that they've recast the role. Why? Because at some point Rachel signed up for a ten-day shooting gig that overlapped with the Eclipse shooting schedule.

Shit hits the fan at record speed. Here we have Rachel's response. It's basically "What the FUCK?!" but in very polite terms. It was followed very recently by Summit's response to her, which is basically "We totally didn't just dump the bitch over ten days in some other film. Oh, wait, yes we did."

We also have a pithy little article from eonline laying out the possible (rather nasty) logic behind the move.

Oh, and lion_lamb wanks away. Interestingly, there's a lot of "FUCK YOU SUMMIT" but some folks taking the studio's side, a bit of tinhatting and ample fapping. I didn't venture all the way through the thousand comments, but I'm quite sure there's more.

I'm sure there is much more coverage and much more wank, people should feel free to draw it to my attention. Also, there will probably be plenty more wank to come. Thanks to cleolinda for dropping most of these links on her twitter.

ETA 1: Courtesy of Cleo's twitter again: Summit responds to the fan reaction. Ohh, there are going to be good times.

ETA 2: GAME ON! This update brought to you by eilisliana

Watchmen screenwriter David Hayter writes a sincere but slightly tongue-in-cheek open letter on Hardcore Nerdity to Watchmen fans and non-fans, to urge them to see the movie more than once in order to understand it.

One of his other points is that he thinks those who hate the movie on principle without having seen it should let it marinate in their minds and give it a chance:

It may upset you. And it probably will upset you.

And all along, we really meant it to. ...All this time, you’ve been waiting for a director who was going to hit you in the face with this story. To just crack you in the jaw, and then bend you over the pool table with this story. With its utterly raw view of the darkest sides of human nature, expressed through its masks of action and beauty and twisted good intentions... Like the Comedian on the Grassy Knoll. ...You'll be thinking about this film, down the road. It'll nag at you. How it was rough and beautiful. How it went where it wanted to go, and you just hung on. How it was thoughtful and hateful and bleak and hilarious. And for Jackie Earle Haley.

Trust me. You'll come back, eventually. Just like Sally.

Comments begin in the 'we love Watchmen (although some of us have reservations about the swinging massive blue dong), go Dayter' mould, until people, from page three onwards, suddenly notice the metaphor he used to describe how the movie should make you feel:

DUDE. No one asks to be cracked in the jaw and bent over the goddamned pool table. Was there NO OTHER ANALOGY you could have used? Do you realize that you're comparing your movie to a rapist and the moviegoers to victims asking for it? And what is this "You'll come back. Just like Sally" crap? Do you have any f***ing idea how offensive that is? Could you not have come up with some other analogy, some other pithy tag, something that doesn't make it out like the Comedian was doing Silk Spectre a f***ing favor when he beat her bloody and tried to rape her?

Did you mean to do that?? If not, erm, consider your words more carefully next time you do the "open letter" thing, because wow, did that part get away from you.

Dayter comments on page 7 with an apology claiming he does not condone violence against women, which is edited into the original article. People briefly thank him for apologising, and then attack him again. Dayter responds graciously via huge spoonfuls of sarcasm and retracting his apology (page 8):

Clearly, you can't get less hateful or spewy than that. I humbly retract the statement.

Anyway, I'm sorry you disliked the film.

And you're right, I don't know why I ever set out to do this in the first place. It's really the world I'm hurting. Damn my family, and their almost-constant need for food!

On top of all of this there's huge amounts of movie rage, but the best thing about the whole altercation is the people at Hardcore Nerdity going so far as to make a video response urging people to LEAVE DAYTER ALONE, starring a very angry Dr. Manhattan.