#Bad thing feels good more at 11

[enneamage]

I was reading your post about RPF and was hoping that you could explain to me why so many people like to write it. I would go so far as to say I am repelled by it and don't understand the appeal whatsoever. tbh I don't even like fan fiction for what I think is the same reason: it isn't canon. It seems presumptive of any individual that has nothing to do with a creative project to contribute to it as if it is part of the original. It is even worse if we are talking about something that is irl. Why is it not enough to create a fictional work with all of the same traits that the writer believes the fiction or irl subjects have, and then just change the names? If the content is good enough, it doesn't have to be propped up on irl people in order to get readers.

Oh nelly here we go.

Whenever people ask about RPF fic I’m used to trying to use what footholds they do have in fan culture to direct them to why people write these kinds of taboo extremes, but you seem to be pretty squarely affirmational in a sea of transformational people, so this is going to start right from zero.  

I wouldn’t choose an RPF fandom to be babies first fandom justifying experience because of how deep in the pocket it is compared to some other transformational fandoms, so starting there is hard. If you’ve never had the experience of being exposed to something and wanting more of something, or different from something, or had your imagination wander off with what you’ve just seen, a lot of what transformational fandom does in general will seem baffling, let alone rpf spaces.

Basic Transformational Fandom

Transformational fandoms tend to kick off in media that provides a fun sandbox or (even when it’s good) leaves a little bit more to be desired. From there, the people left wanting start to group up and create markets for the creation of fanwork, and eventually someone puts hand to keyboard to make something. People sometimes think that transformational fandom is recent but the truth is that Fanficiton Fanzines stretch back well beyond the creation of the internet, people have been craving transformational content and art for a long time, and are very stubborn when it comes to finding each other to do it.  

Speaking from personal experience, even though fandoms often reliably form around media, I haven’t participated in the fandom for every piece of media I’ve consumed, so I know what it’s like to be interested and disinterested in the fandoms around what I watch/read/ect. There’s been times where I was very into a fandom in a traditional “I want as much of this as possible and also X and Y to smooch” way, times when I was kind of put off by what a given fandom was doing so I took the pass, and times when I was more interested in what the fandom was putting out than the actual content itself. It can take some shopping around to find a spot where what a market has lines up with what appeals to you.

So there’s… a bit of a leap between the usual premise of transformational fandom and rpf spaces. My understanding of the people who pipeline from regular fiction to RPF is they develop the instincts in one context and then they just retain and use that capacity when they switch to another. That sounds a bit slippery-slope but I mean that they just don’t have to start from scratch if they came through more traditional and less taboo fandoms. People still tend to draw the line because RPF is still mostly taboo (the fact that this fandom has such a large, open presence of it is wild to me, I’m really not used to it but such is the fine line of Minecraft roleplay) but some people find it easier to cross because of their background.

The Fantasy Market

There’s something of a midway between fic and conversation that doesn’t get covered as much even though it feels like the missing link between regular idle fantasising and RPF. People tend to want peer-to-peer contact with other people who share the same interests as them, and exchanging ideas or scenarios surrounding those interests is a go-to for that.

The line between trying to find the truth vs feeling out an appealing scenario brings be back around again to my imago post, so if people wanted to collect their “parasocial relationships are the devil” ticket here’s an easy one. You may have seen these kinds of posts around—“[name] would like a teddy bear. He would pretend he didn’t at first but eventually he would become the type of guy to get all the way out of bed if it fell on the floor in the middle of the night to go get it.” It’s not fic, but it’s a longform hypothetical that someone would post to their peers, maybe to get a full on conversation going about how much milage [name] would get out of a stuffed animal. From there they get to feel closer to their fellow fans, and also feel like they understand a bit more about the person they’re all interested in, since pattern finding is a big part of human cognition in general and it's fun to do it together.

On the hormonal end of the spectrum, thirstposting is a deceptively complicated art, somewhere between personal venting and posting for the people around them to resonate with. I know people mostly like to act like thirst tweets are always embarrassing and unwelcome, but honestly having a brother in arms in Times Of Great Thirst usually bonds a community pretty tightly.  

Self-inserts and X readers have never been my thing, but they’re an important link in the evolutionary chain of how we get from one person daydreaming to a whole community of readers and writers. There’s a market for good ideas about a certain person or situation even if they aren’t fleshed out, but a few steps in you start looking at content that looks more like fiction. A good offshoot of this step that people don’t often talk about or understand in these terms were the original POV tiktoks and concept/Imagine blogs. The people love a good scenario, and environments where some of the best imaginations are grinding out content to fuel your daydream can be great for that.  

I think that the people who didn’t enter through ‘regular’ transformational fandom probably found their way through this door instead. Fantasy tweet becomes thirst tweet becomes thread fic becomes wattpad, graduates to ao3 maybe, whoops we’re reading novels now.

The Reader / Writer Market

I use the word ‘market’ a little differently than some others might when talking about this stuff. A while ago I started poking around Economic Anthropology in a very amateurish way, because that was the first place I came across an idea that managed to line up with the majority of my fandom experience, the idea that ‘economics’ are the dynamics of human exchange based on wants and needs, not just the study of money and assets. Money only covers a fraction of the number of exchanges that happen in life, non-monetary economy is what I find really interesting, and what I relate to parts of fandom as. Think of the strangely elaborate systems that seem to reliably pop up when people want something, I have seen amazingly complex fandom coordination from young teenagers as long as the desire and the drives were there. Economics gets a lot more saucy once you start to relate to it as a study of human desire and how those desires get met.

The people want what the people want, and in fandom they often want more of the thing they’ve invested in. It’s often not enough, or even very appealing at all, to write something “original” or removed from the scene when the party is in the scene itself. Some people probably give it a go, but truth be told they often don’t get seen as often as work with the built-in audience that a fandom has/is. The goal probably isn’t even to be seen by a lot of people, but to show stuff to the people who would be most interested in that stuff, even if there’s only five people who are invested. People get content, author gets validation and engagement, it’s a little loop that’s a lot harder to get to in the cold world of original publishing. Most people don’t really want to become career writers anyway, they want to see their favorite boys smooch in the form of the kind of stories they read, which are likely already fic.

Footnote about old lit on transformational vs affirmative: A lot of the old conversation is gendered in ways that I understand, because they absolutely mattered / do matter, but modern fandoms like the MLP fandom are shaking up that binary. Men do take part in transformational fandom, just not as often as women on the whole.

[fleouriarts]

feeling bad about my art lately. will probably not post for a while. but i wanted to at least dump some stuff here before i retreat into my hidey hole

[elegyofthemoon]

also to anyone who plays honkai, does anyone have other translations of the game? aside from the official?

i feel like i talked about this with a friend, but the translations just. don't line up with what's being said a lot of the time and it's slightly driving me insane x - x

[quietwingsinthesky]

if i ever have to play beyond two souls again im going to kill someone someone’s life ends with me

[running-in-the-dark]

had a conversation about gym class with my friend who I went to school with today - it was depressing but also nice to hear that her experience with it (at that particular school) was just as bad as mine.

I don't think the way my school treated gym class was entirely normal tbh. it was completely different to the school I went to after, anyway. and everyone I talked to there only knew gym class to be a pretty fun, lighthearted thing. at my old school it was only about achievement, you had to be perfect, if not you were usually yelled at. and if you couldn't participate because you were feeling a bit ill (but not enough to stay home from school) you were ridiculed and/or insulted in front of the whole class. this happened with every gym teacher we had over the whole 9 years there.

it felt like two hours of punishment, there was nothing good about it. and it made at least the both of us feel like any kind of exercise/sport, especially in a group setting, was terrifying - for years after. even my much more positive experience at the other school I went to didn't make that go away.

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

one thing abt being disabled/chronically ill that some people don’t get is that sometimes body maintenance that ensures you have the absolute minimum amount of function can also be something that takes away a lot of control and autonomy. you can argue till the cows come home that making those decisions to try and help yourself (or realistically to try to make sure things aren’t worse than they already are) is something that exhibits control and autonomy and stuff, but they can be so limiting in practice because they’re things that take up so much time but have to be done to do anything else

[stereax]

woohoo spiraling out of control right now (what else is new really I've been fucked up and spiraling for weeks now) and trying to figure out reasons not to delete my tumblr and discord and myself along the way

but you know. talking about myself on my blog automatically means I'm attention seeking and fishing for pity right? should just shut up and stick to the news eh, it's all I'm good for :D

anyway if you need me I'll be in the corner reliving the past, coming to terms with reality, and trying to convince myself I'm not the problem despite every indication to the contrary ✌︎︎

[theygender]

*checking the tracking information for my package from under a pile of overpriced teas and vitamins* this next herbal supplement will fix me

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[toytulini]

honestly sounds like an unwise choice of dog(young high energy likely due to breed temperament and lineage to to have a higher reactivity and distrust of strangers?) have in that environment and im glad hes apparently living with family friends now, hope that helps w the behavioral issues

[mrfoox]

Uh you ever.... Feel okay or pretty decent and then you remember your lifes circumstances and then you're at the verge of tears?

[heavenknowsffs]

Getting reaaaall tired of being made to feel like a failure if i don't wake up at 5 am lmao

[diseasedcube]

Ugh cringe fail remembering that I watched the entirety of Hatsukoi Monster just so I could pretend that it was cutthroat saying the lines

[running-in-the-dark]

yes I've been lying in bed for three hours, listening to the same song on repeat, and yes I have written *checks* 14,000 words of the most stupid, embarrassing shit ever over the last two days, and yes I can actively feel my brain melting in my head, but I'm definitely totally fine.

[carcinized]

oh shit its nearly midnight i am NOT adjusted to this timezone... whatever its ok i leave in like a day. what is Not okay is that i have to be up at like 8 tomorrow so good night tumblr !!

[candyriku]

finally getting a chance to work on chapter 15 today :-)