#I'm far more active about ship stuff in my server but posting is hard because I'm just hurting a lot ...

[ciaran-archive]

I wanna thank you for that post about how people in fandom overestimate the impact and reach of fandom -- like, I've been getting increasingly anxious about how mainstream fandom is and all the policing of self-expression and the imposition of "acceptability" that seems to be creating and how, whenever horrible harassment in fandom is talked about by people not in fandom, they treat it really dismissively, but I'm now realising... most people probably just don't know the full extent of it.

Like that fear I have of interacting with people in fandom nowadays b/c of toxic discourse and my particular sensitivity to it b/c of PTSD... it's not that people are dismissive of that, it's just that these are social dynamics that are super obvious to me, and COMPLETELY incomprehensible and irrelevant to anyone who isn't in fandom. I'm not making a mountain out of a molehill when I'm not understood, we're just talking from super different viewpoints.

That may not seem like a big realisation but one of my big problems has been feeling like I have no allies in my "own" spaces within fandom, and having become super active in fandom originally b/c I felt very alienated from non-fandom spaces in the first place. Like, those weren't people who were ever gonna respect my feelings, so I embraced the stereotype of a weird loner. Realising that it's not malicious exclusion is pretty big for me.

[re this post]

im glad i could help!! that was a very sarcastic post, not really meant to help anyone so much as dunk on an annoying take i see far too fucking much of, but im still glad it alleviated some of your anxiety.

fwiw, it is hard to find your own people (in fandom or out of it). here are some things that i’ve done that help with that - not always, not even for very long, but enough that it’s worth doing.

make stuff!! making stuff is the easiest way of planting a flag over the things you like and drawing people to you. you can link your social media in the notes of your fic/art/meta, and thus draw people into talking to you. 

have a continuous presence on social media. figure out where your fandom is active (usually twitter :/) and make an account and just. talk about the things you like. make threads. follow people who seem friendly. decide what you want to say, and say it, and encourage other people who are making the things you want to see.

if you have money, commission fanart and fanfiction! often when you commission an artist, especially on twitter, they let you post whatever you commissioned from them, which draws that activity to your account. use it to plug your fic or content like it.

discord servers!!! they’re my most preferred way of doing fandom. finding like 10-20 people who are into kind of the same stuff and chill (take a risk! moderating takes energy but it’s worth it for a space that’s fun to inhabit) is worth more than 500 twitter followers.  (the way i did this in my last fandom was by joining a server for a ship i wasn’t into, and being dragged by the mod and her friend into making a more general fandom server, and when that blew up i dragged all the people i liked into my own server and invited more people i liked. you don’t have to go through such lengths, but joining other people’s servers and figuring out what kind of space you want to create by elimination and emulation is useful)

find fandom events and participate in them - a lot of big bang servers let you join as a cheerleader/beta reader if you can’t write or draw, and that’s a nice way to just talk to people.

understand that 90% of your interactions are going to go nowhere, and make your peace with temporary relationships and low-effort talking that fizzles out quickly. don’t invest in people who are clearly uninterested in you.

develop a firm sense of boundaries, what you’ll allow, and stick to that. don’t compromise on your boundaries, because you have to keep yourself safe first and foremost. a relationship with someone who violates your boundaries can be worse than no relationship at all.

another thing: fandom is more mainstream now than it used to be. that doesn’t mean it’s actually mainstream - fandom as a whole has a certain cultural weight, but our tastes as an audience rarely affect the kind of content that gets made - in fact, the most effect it has is on the kinds of articles that are written about the media being made. the attitudes of fandom are loosely monitored by some news companies, but that actually makes very little difference. the idea of fandom is more mainstream than fandom itself, and that’s going to be the case for a while. at least, as long the self-expression and sexuality of queer and neurodivergent people are marginalized, fandom will be too. corporate media hates anything that can’t be monetized, and fandom is always going to be made up primarily of people who just don’t have the spending money to be a demographic worth targeting specifically.

not only that, but most corporate efforts to cater to fandom fall hilariously short because rich people are really bad at understanding that you can’t just throw nostalgia and money together and create a good story. this is evident over and over. 

but overall you’re right - most people outside of fandom just don’t get what’s going on, and explaining the particulars to them is incredibly difficult and often not worth it. that’s the case with most subcultures! imagine someone explaining 90s grunge scene drama to you now. the mutual unintelligibility of culture is fascinating and hilarious, and worth embracing. it can be frustrating and isolating and embarrassing, but that’s the case for anything that people put so much passion and time and love into, and it’s not a bad thing. 

i hope that helps!! good luck.