#fandom content

[cybernaght]

The fandom echo chamber: fanon, microanalysis and conspiracy brain 

As someone who has been in fandom spaces, on and off, for 20 years, I find some fascinating trends popping up in the last decade that I thought to be fandom-specific but clearly aren’t. So, I would like to do a little examination of where those things come from, how they are engaged with, and what it says about the way we consume media. This is a think piece, of sorts, with my brain being the main source. As such, we will spend some time down the memory lane of a fandom-focused millennial.

This is largely brought about by Good Omens. But it’s also not really about Good Omens at all.

Part one. Fanon.

The way we see characters in any story is always skewed by our very selves. This is a neutral statement, and it does not have a value judgement. It’s simply unavoidable. We recognise aspects of them, love aspects of them, and choose aspects of them to highlight based entirely on our own vision of the universe. 

Recognition comes into this. There is a reason so many protagonists of romance novels have a “blank slate” problem. Even when they do not, we love characters who are like us or versions of us that we would like to be. And when we say “we”, I also mean, “me”. 

(I remember very clearly this realisation hit me after a whole season of Doctor Who with writing which I hated utterly when I questioned why I still clung so incredibly hard to Clara Oswald as my favourite companion. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. Oh. Well. That would do it, wouldn’t it?)

Then, there is projection, and, again, this is a neutral statement. Projection exists, and it is completely normal and, dare I say it, valid way of engaging with — well, anything. Is the character queer? Trans? Neurodivergent? Are they in love? Do they like chocolate? Are they a cat person? Well, yes, if this is what the text says, but if the text does not say anything… You tell me. Please, do tell me. Because, in that moment of projection, they are yours. 

And then, there is fandom osmosis, and that is the most fascinating one of them all, the one that is not very easy to note while you are inside the echo chamber. It’s the way we collectively, consciously or not, make decisions on who or what the characters are, what their relationships are, and what happens to them.  

(Back when I was writing egregiously long Guardian recaps on this blog I actually asked if Shen Wei’s power being learning actually was stated anywhere in the canon of the show. Because I had no idea. I have read and reread dozen of fanfics where that is the case, and at some point through enough repetition, it became reality.)

We are all kind of making our own reality here, aren’t we? 

Back when things were happening in a much less centralised manner - in closed livejournal groups, and forums of all shapes and sizes - I don’t remember there being quite as much universally agreed upon fanon. Frankly, I don’t remember much of universally agreed upon anything. But now, everything is in one place: we have this, and we have AO3, and it’s wonderful, it really is so much easier to navigate, but it’s also one gigantic reality-shifting echo chamber, with blogs, reblogs, trends, and rituals. 

Accessibility plays its part, too. If you were, say, in Life on Mars (UK) fandom between seasons, and you wanted to post your speculation fic, you had to have had an account, and then find and gain access to one of the bigger groups (lifein1973 was my poison, but ymmv), and then, if you feel brave you may post it, but also, you may want to do so from your alt account if you wanted to keep yours separate, and then you would have to go through the whole process again. And I’m not saying that fan creations then were somehow inherently better for it than fan creations now (although Life on Mars Hiatus Era is perhaps a bad example - because some of the Speculation Fic there was breathtaking), but there is something to say about the ease of access that made the fandoms go through a big bang of sorts.

(I mean, come on, I can just come here and post this - and I am certain people will read it, and this blog is a pandemic cope baby about Chinese television for goodness sake.)

The canon transformations that happen in the fandom echo chamber truly are fascinating to witness as someone who is more or less a fandom butterfly. I get into something, float around for a bit, then get into something else and move on. I might come back eventually when the need arises, but I don’t sustain a hiatus mind-state. This means that when I float away and return, I find some very intriguing stuff.

Let’s actually look at Good Omens here. Season two aired, and I found it spectacular in its cosy and anguished way; deliberately and intelligently fanfic-y in its plot building; simple but subversive, and so very tender. (I will have to circle back to this eventually, because, truly, I love how deliberately it takes the tropes and shatters them - it’s glorious). And, to me - a person who read the book, watched the first season, hung around AO3 for a few weeks and moved on - absolutely on-point in terms of characterisation. 

So imagine my surprise when the fandom disagreed so vehemently that there are actual multi-tiered theories on how characters were not in possession of their senses. Nothing there, in my mind, ever contradicted any of the stated text, as it stood. This remained a strange little mystery until I did what I always do when I flutter close to an ongoing fandom.

I loaded AO3 and sorted the existing fic by popularity. And there it was, all there: the actual earth-shattering mutual devotion of the angel and the demon; willingness to Fall; openness and long heart-aching confession speeches. There was all of the fanon surrounding Aziraphale and Crowley, which, to me, read as out of character, and to one for whom they became the reality over the last four years, read as truth. 

Again, only neutral statements here. This is not a bad thing, and neither this is a good thing, this is just something that happens, after a while, especially when there are years for the fandom-born ideas to bounce around and stew. I can’t help but think that so much of what we see as real in spaces such as this one is a chimaera of the actual source and all the collective fan additions which had time and space to grow, change, develop, and inspire, reverberating over and over again, until the echoes fill the entirety of the space. 

Eventually, this chimaera becomes a reality. 

Part two. Microanalysis 

Here are my two suppositions on the matter:

1. Some writers really love breadcrumb storytelling. 

Russel T Davies, for instance, on his run of Doctor Who (and, if you are reading it much later - I do mean the original one), loved that technique for his seasonal arcs. What is a Bad Wolf? Who is Harold Saxon? Well, you can watch very very carefully, make a theory, and see it proven right or wrong by the end of the season. 

Naturally, mystery box writers are all about breadcrumb storytelling: your Losts and your Westworlds are all about giving you snippets to get your brain firing, almost challenging you to figure things out just ahead of the reveal. 

2. We, as humans, love breadcrumbs.

And why wouldn’t we? Breadcrumbs are delicious. They are, however, a seasoning, or a coating. They are not the meal. 

Too much metaphor?

Let’s unpack it and start from the beginning.

Pattern recognition colours every aspect of our lives, and it colours the way we view art to a great extent. I think we truly underestimate how much it’s influenced by our lived experiences.

If you are, broadly speaking, living somewhere in Western/North-Western Europe in the 14th century, and you see a painting in which there is a very very large figure surrounded by some smaller figures and holding really tiny figures, you may know absolutely nothing about who those figures are, but you know that the big figure is the Important One, and the small ones are Less Important Ones, and the tiny ones are In Their Care. You know where your reverence would lie, looking at this picture. And, I imagine, as someone living in the 14th century, you may be inspired to a sense of awe looking at this composition, because in the world you live in, this is how art works. 

If you, on the other hand, watch a piece of recorded media and see the eyes of two characters meet as the violins swell, you know what you are being told at that moment. You don’t have to have a film degree to feel a sort of way when you see a green-tinged pallet used, when cross-cuts use juxtaposing images, or notice where your focus is pulled in any given shot. This stuff - this recognition of patterns - has been trained into us by the simple fact that we live in this time, on this planet, and we have been doing so long enough to have engaged recorded media for a period of time. 

As humans, we notice things. Our brains flare up when they see something they recognise, and then we seek to find other similar details and form a bigger picture. This often happens unconsciously, but sometimes it does not. Sometimes we do it on purpose: finding breadcrumbs in stories is a little bit like solving a mystery. It allows us to stretch that brain muscle that puts two and two together. It makes us feel clever. 

So yes, we love breadcrumbs, and, frankly, quite a lot of storytelling takes advantage of this. It’s very useful for foreshadowing, creating thematic coherence, or introducing narrative parallels and complexity. It’s useful for nudging the viewer into one or the other emotional direction, or to cue them into what will happen in the next moment, or what exactly is the one important detail they should pay attention to.

Because this is something media does intentionally, and something we pick up both consciously and not, it is very hard to know when to stop. We don't really ever know when all of the breadcrumbs have been collected. It becomes very easy to get carried away. There is a very specific kind of pleasure in digging into content frame by frame, soundbite by soundbite, chasing that pleasure of finding. 

But it is almost never breadcrumbs all the way down. They are techniques to help us focus on the main event: the story. I truly believe those who make media want it to reach the widest possible audience, and that includes all of us who like to watch every single thing ever created with our Media Analysis Goggles on and those who are just here to enjoy the twists and turns of the story at the pace offered to them. And I think, sometimes in our chase to collect and understand every little clue we forget that media is not made to just cater for us.

One can call it missing a forest for the trees. But I would hate to mix my metaphors, so let’s call it missing a schnitzel for the breadcrumbs. 

Part three. The Conspiracy Brain. 

If you are there with me, in the midst of the excited frenzy, chasing after all those delicious breadcrumbs, then patterns can grow, merge together, and become all-encompassing theories. Let’s call them conspiracy theories, even though this is not what they truly are.

So, why do we believe in conspiracy theories?

One, Because We Have Been Lied To. 

All conspiracies start with distrust.

If you are in fandom spaces - especially if you are in fandom spaces which revolve around a queer fictional couple - especially-especially if you have been in such spaces for a period of time, you have most certainly been lied to at one point or another. 

We don’t even have to talk about Sherlock - and let’s not do that - but do you remember Merlin? Because I remember Merlin. Specifically, I remember the publicity surrounding the first season, with its weaponised usage of “bromance” and assertions that this whole thing is a love story of sorts, and then the daunting realisation that this was all a stunt, deliberately orchestrated to gather viewership. 

And, because we were lied to in such a deliberate manner for such an extensive period of time, I genuinely believe that it forever altered our pattern recognition habits, because what was this if not encouragement to read into things? Now we are trained to read between the lines or see little cries for help where they might not be. Because we were told, over and over again, that we should.

(Yes, I think we are all existing in these spaces coloured by the trauma of queer-bating. I am, however, looking forward to a world where I can unlearn all of that.)

Two, Cognitive Dissonance.

The chain reaction works a bit like this: the world is wrong - it can’t possibly be wrong by coincidence - this must be on purpose - someone is responsible for it.

Being Lied To is a preamble, but cognitive dissonance is where it all originates. In so many cross-fandom theories I have noticed a four-step process:

A) this is not good

B) this author could not have made a mistake 

C) this must be done on purpose

D) here is why 

(Funny thing is, I have been on the receiving end of the small conspiracy spiral, and it is a very interesting experience. Not relevant to this conversation is the fact that a lot of my job revolves around storytelling. What is relevant is that my hobbies also revolve around storytelling. And one of them is DnD. Now, imagine my genuine shock when one of the players I am currently writing a campaign for noticed a small detail that did not make a logical sense within the complexity of the world, and latched on to it as something clearly indicating some kind of a secret subplot. Their thinking process also went a bit like this: this detail is not a good piece of writing — this DM knows how to tell stories well — this is obviously there on purpose. It was not there on purpose. I created a clumsy shorthand. I erred, in that pesky manner humans tend to. And, seeing this entire thought process recited to me directly in the moment, I felt somewhere between flattered and mortified.)

This whole line of thinking, I think, exists on a knife’s edge between veneration and brutal criticism, relentlessly dissecting everything “wrong”, with a reverent “but this is deliberate” attached to it like a vice, because it is preferable to a simple conclusion that the author let you down, in one way or another. 

Three, Intentionality 

I believe that there is no right or wrong way of engaging with stories, regardless of their medium, and assuming no one gets hurt in the process. While in a strictly academic way, there is a “correct” way of reading (and reading into) media, we here are largely not academics but consumers; consumption is subjective.

However, this all changes when intentionality is ascribed. 

The one I find particularly fascinating is the intentionality of “making it bad on purpose” because, as open-minded as I intend to always be, this just does not happen.

It certainly does not happen in long-form media. Even in the bread-crumb mystery box-type long-form media. 

When television programs underdeliver, they also underperform, and then they get cancelled.

If all the elements of Westworld Season 4 that did not sit together in a completely satisfactory way were written deliberately as some sort of deconstruction for the final season to explore, then it failed because that final season will now never come.

(There will likely never be a Secret Fourth Episode.)

And look, I am not here to refute your theories. Creativity is fun, and theorising is fantastic. 

But, perhaps, when the line of thought ventures into the “bad on purpose” territory, it could be recognised for what it is: disappointment and optimism, attempting to coexist in a single space. And I relate to that, I do, and I am sorry that there is even a need for this line of thinking. It’s always so incredibly disappointing that a creator you believed to be devoid of flaws makes something that does not hit in the way you hoped it would. It’s pretty heartbreaking. 

Unfortunately, people make mistakes. We are all fallible that way. 

Four, Wildfire.

Then, when the crumbs are found, a theory is crafted, and intentionality is ascribed, all that needs to happen is for it to catch on. And hey, what better place for it than this massive hollow funnel that we exist in, where thoughts, ideas and interpretations reverberate so much they become inextricable from the source material in collective consciousness. 

Conspiracy theories create alternate realities, very much like we all do here. 

So where are we now?

I am not here to tell you what is right and what is wrong; what is true, and what is not. We are all entitled to engage with anything we wish, in whichever way we wish to do it. This is not it, at all. 

All I am saying is… listen.

Do you hear that echo? 

I do. 

[magic-number-3]

The winds are cold and we are made to warm each other. And the night is long and that is why we keep the fire lit.

Lucy Frostblade | Fantasy High Junior Year

[highlighted-curls-ships-it]

[mooniemilkieway]

can monster high tiktok/ g1 purists stfu for once like

okay i love g1, actually i love all of the generations but it’s so fucking tiring how that there will literally be a g3 monster high posts and some hag will literally comment “omg g1 better mh is ruined mah childhood 😢😢😢” LIKE OMG WE GET IT YOU HAVE NO JOB NOR A SOCIAL LIFE OUTSIDE OF TIKTOK LMFAOAO.

don’t even get me STARTED on how bitches will see draculaura or Abbey or hell any curvy character and call them “fat” or “obese” for having thick thighs LIKE GIRL WHY U HATING LIKE A MAN. it’s giving onision’s rating bodies and calling one of the poor girls bodies “violin hips” OMG STHU

if you don’t like g3 then that is perfectly fine but my god why are u being a literal bigot over dolls when MH always stood for is acceptance.

anyways stan g3 draculaura she outsold all of ur favs

[evasive-anon]

Batfam as Pokemon Trainers

Batman is a dark type trainer generally, but I also really think his team would be made up of pokemon that represent other members of the batfam. His partner would be Corviknight because it suits his aesthetic and its a flying pokemon so it kind reps Dick. He would also 1000% have a male Indeedee named Alfred.

Dick is flying type trainer, this is honestly so self explanatory. He has a Talonflame, Dartix, Staraptor, Honchcrow, Togekiss, and a Sylveon named Haley that he intended to keep an Eevee but it evolved from friendship. EDIT: It's a shiny umbreon it evolved from friendship at night and its colors match Nightwing's. (Thanks, @vythika96.)

Babs uses ghost/electric because the writers tried to fridge her and she's great with tech. Her partner Pokemon is a Rotom named Francis.

Jason is fire/fighting, this is another one that seems obvious to me. He has Blaziken cause it starts its evolution a cute bird and then it grew into a fighter. He also has an Alolan Marowak because he needs at least one ghost pokemon after dying and Marowaks have enough Mommy issues to match him. Pangoro I also think would suit him, they are prone to violence but hate bullies and they look so rowdy. Also think Arcanine, Toxicroak, and Emboar would work for him.

Tim is psychic trainer. I told myself no legendaries but I honestly think Tim would an Unonwn that just chills with him, constantly hovering at the edge on his vision while he works. It's benevolent and likes him its just shy, but it drives Tim absolutely insane. His partner is an Espurr.

Stephanie doesn't stick to one type she just collects purple Pokemon. She has a ditto, a shiny sloking, a golbat, a stunky or skuntank named Jason, and an espeon she co-parents with Cass. Her favorite move in battle is confusion.

Cass is fighting/dark. HER PARTNER IS LUCARIO. Lucario can predict opponents moves by reading their auras and that is just so like her. Cass and a Lucario would be best friends. They would spar together and just get each other so much. She'd also be an absolute tiger mom trainer to all her pokemon.

Damian, like Steph, has a non-traditional team. He has the pokemon equivalent of his pets. (Noivern as Goliath. Miltank as Batcow. Houndoom as Titus. Meowscarada or Persian as Alfred the Cat.)

Duke is electric. I will straight up admit this is just to match the yellow/black aesthetic he has as Signal. I'm thinking Jolteon, luxray, morpeko, manectric, toxtricity, and killowattrel.

[adarlingmess]

A Raphael Playlist

Image credit: @int9

"Consider your predicament. One skull, two tenants, and no solution in sight. I could fix it all like that […] Try to cure yourself. Shop around - beg, borrow and steal. Exhaust every possibility until none are left. And when hope has been whittled down to the very marrow of despair - that's when you'll come knocking on my door."

[the-eccentric-eclectic]

As much as I live watching and reading content (books, movies, shows) I love the way fandom engages with it more. To see the beautiful drawings, to read the fun headcannons, the dissertations and how fans pick apart and analyse every little detail about a thing. It makes me so happy, and when I like a content, reading fans' content augments that joy so much. So here's to you.

[blackplaaague]

So, I heard someone call Nimona a "cringe, not like the other girls uwu movie."

All I gotta say is....

There's no way you actually watched it.

Because that movie had a lot of silly, goofy moments, but it was also very relatable and heart-wrenching to LGBTQ+ folks like myself.

It's one of those times when I'm angry it's trendy because now, the meanest tiktok girls and transphobes are going to find it and tear apart anyone who saw the allegory. (See: Barbie, Wednesday, every other trending piece of media that had a message beyond its social media presentation in the past year) Yet, at the same time, I want it to become even more popular so as many people as possible see the obvious symbolism and how moving this movie was.

(So, trigger warning for a suicide mention I guess? And spoilers, too?Like, it's heavily implied that's what Nimona was doing in her panic)

The part at the end of the movie? Where Nimona had their breakdown and charged at the city as a monster, intending to end her own life on the statue's sword, because she was in so much pain? And the only thing that made them stop was Ballister telling her she was seen and loved?

I sobbed.

Because I never had that person. I've been in this battle, against society, against my body, all alone.

And seeing that moment? That made me feel like I was so much stronger for making it out alive. Because I've always been the only one seeing myself as I really am.

And yeah, I get it, it's trendy, it's funny, it's not that deep. But it was to me. And I don't mean to be a gatekeeping weirdo, but as a trans, fem-presenting, traumatized, punk teen who feels less than human, this movie was basically made for me, because that's the protagonist's whole thing.

Like... if we're going to boil Nimona down into some "uwu I'm quirkier than you" character, I guess we have to turn the others into bland caricatures, too. Which we already did. Ballister already got the pathetic blorbo treatment, which I'm fine with, because turning any character into the pathetic blorbo of the week is always funny, but now people who only know the movie and comic from 30 second edits will think that's all there is to him, and ignore the part where he kept a trans character from taking her own life.

I know, I'm overreacting, and this is the most invested I've gotten in a piece of media since the Dark Ages of my life where I liked Gravity Falls and disliked its fandom stereotype.

This whole post was probably a bad idea, I know I'm not supposed to get invested in things I didn't create, but it was just on my mind.

[bitchdafuqyousay]

im bitching again

I'm once again trying to look through a piece of media's tag. n its fucking Clogged n Cluttered n Flooded with x reader shit. I'm specifically looking up a specific ship of two characters n I've seen more "this post contains blocked tags" than I've seen actual content of what I'm fucking looking for. plus, a lot of the shit isn't tagged right. so I've got __ x reader tags fucking blocked, but I'm still seeing it more than actual goddamn content cause instead of tagging it as x reader they're tagging the shit with the ship I'm looking for, they're tagging it __ x __ so it still fucking comes up. its annoying the actual fuck outta me like christ alive. terrorizing fandom tags n taking over actual fucking content

[marvosa-yroz]

Am I wrong? 😎

[sarahowritesostucky]

💗Reblog for max sample size!

[timmothytheraccoon]

Repost because I didn't have a watermark

[magic-number-3]

"i love you for free"

- Sleeping with Other People (2015) dir. Leslye Headland

[tuurverheydepoetryandprose]

Fandom (or especially social media) culture has gotten so tiring, so insipid, so proudly ignorant and incurious, it’s made me doubt if I want to partake in it anymore.

Like, I am a writer in the process of finishing up a novel and I am honestly questioning if I want it to be published anymore, in this era of anti-canon, anti-complexity readerships & fandoms. I can’t stand the thought of people just draining all the depth out of the plot and the characters and making it just be about self-insert/ship-centric/moralist wish fulfilment.

Like, you put in all the effort to try and make it personal, genre-savvy, thematically rich, narratively fun, well-written, diverse and all the rest of it, and then you read a lot of the media/literature discussion on social media…

So many people fundamentally don’t respect the art of storytelling. They want you to give them action figures for them to use in their own endlessly self-centred narratives. They want everything to be about them, and about how they’re good and pure and destined for happiness. If you introduce any kind of tragedy or ambiguity they treat you like a monster or a war criminal. Anything subversive is wrong. Like what is even the point of making something idiosyncratic when people will strip it down to make it exactly like all the other media derivatives they consume. Some people just have a list of tropes they want to see endlessly recreated. And even if you don’t do that, but they like your work’s aesthetic, they will mutilate it to make it theirs. There’s people defending this kind of attitude calling anyone who wants more out of the narratives they create or enjoy elitist, exclusionary, gatekeeping etc.

Like Death of the Author is fine. Interpretation is in the hands of the reader and the text should be central. But some people are actually fully invested in the Death of the Text. Just take the aesthetics, the names and lore and gouge out any meaning that doesn’t correspond exactly to what you want. Like it’s fine to have headcanons and stuff. But if you’re willing to fully discard or ignore canon then something has gone wrong.

How are you a fan or a lover of literature, of media if this is how you engage with stuff? It’s like respecting the expression of someone doesn’t even come into it anymore, it’s just more fodder to rehash the same stale formulas, while insulting the spirit of the original work.

[mooniemilkieway]

is it just me or did the monster high fandom get like insanely toxic as soon as g3 happened. like before even g2 was released it was such a chill and peaceful fandom w a couple of bad apples. then g2 came along and…yeah the reaction to it was bad, not gonna deny that. but most ppl just ignored it and went along their day.

but then g3 happened and hmmm let’s see: sending death threats/harassing the people behind both the live action movies and animation, homophobia/transphobia (especially on Frankie like holy fuck), racism (but she’s gween 😢😢😢😢 stfu cracker), ableism, fatphobia (no onision just bc someone has thick thighs does not mean they’re obese), and overall just…yikes.

i have my criticisms w g3. it isn’t the perfect generation/reboot but holy fuck are the locals giving it such a bad name because it stands for diversity and accepting people regardless of identity. i think i explained my criticisms already, but honestly being prejudice and speaking over ppl who are represented in g3 is shameful and you deserved to be mocked for it.

tldr, monster high fandom was cool before TikTok’s brain-rotted “im so mean 😛” bitches got their greasy hands on it. Like sis you can’t even ask the counter guy for a pack of ketchup calm down pookie

[twisted-tales-told]