#fandom wank?

[henrysglock]

I'm thinking about it again, so I'm just gonna say it now and get it out of the way: If 001 had been Henrietta Creel, a tall, lean, polite and gentle "All-American" beauty. If she, as a child, had been dolled up all prim and proper in a little pink dress like El's from Season 1 while she played with her spiders. If she had snapped and ranted about social performance, about unattainable, unfair standards she doesn't think she should have to obey, about how her mother despised her, about reproduction and abuse, about how she was kidnapped by a doctor and experimented on to produce a line of super-powered children.

There would be no end to the essays and think-pieces about how tragic her story is, how horribly she was abused, how much of a victim she was, how her girlhood was stolen from her, how she deserved better, how she was really a good girl who finally snapped, and really, who can blame her? (not to mention the #girlboss, female rage, "good for her" posting...unironically...)

But at least in part because he's Henry, a male character who hasn't been pookiefied since Season 1 and doesn't have a sexy ship with Steve Harrington...Assigned Evil at Birth.

[cuwalli]

I love dredging through tags and finding these small blogs with the most insane, unhinged, wildly off-base takes on my Favorite Media and then just backreading all of their content as if it's a Sunday and I'm rubbernecking at the scene of a nine car pile-up

[azure-arsonist]

Our fandom forbearers did NOT suffer through Anne Rice, strikethrough, and other bullshit for fucking ACOTAR and Harry Potter fans to fucking ruin it for all of us by selling fanfiction. I am not losing novel length yaoi epics because some of you don't know how to act in fannish spaces and yes I do blame the booktokification of fanfic but I also blame those of you that treat fandom like content to consume and not a community to engage with.

[darlingofdots]

the vast majority of fanworks are bad, and that's fine, actually. they are bad for the same reason that the average number of legs for a human person to have is less than two: statistics. like with all endeavours and especially creative ones, most people who write fanfiction or draw art of their favourite characters are bad at it. if you line up all the crochet projects in the world, most of them will be, well, bad. some are bad because they're the first thing a person ever made, or the second or third or tenth, and this kind of thing takes practice. others are bad because the person who made them is just not very good at it. maybe they just learned how to make granny squares and they're perfectly happy to never expand or improve on that. most people who dance or bake or garden or braid hair are not amazing at it! and you'd never go to your kid's dance recital or eat your friend's homemade carrot cake and expect the same experience as you'd have at a professional ballet performance or award-winning bakery. And that's if we assume there is an objective measure of Good Art, which there isn't! Some art is just "bad" because you don't like it!

I think though that specifically with fanfiction, we sometimes forget that when we read a book or watch a movie, dozens of people have looked at it and given feedback and made changes and done quality control before the final product reaches our shelves or screens, and that's not counting the original writer's learning process and past experience. A published book is not anyone's first crochet project, even if it is their debut novel. But with fanfiction, the barrier to entry is so low (on purpose! this is a good thing!) that we do get to see a lot of wonky granny squares, and on sites like AO3 they're sitting on the same shelf as the hand-made silk lace wedding dress and you can't always tell just by looking at it which is which. The consequence of this is that we encounter fic that we think is unpolished, has bad punctuation, is out of character, and we are tempted to think "well, this is awful! how dare this person put this wonky granny square on the same shelf as the lace wedding dress!" But that's not how fandom is supposed to work! That wonky granny square is somebody who is really excited about this TV show they just watched and they are reaching out into the void to share their excitement with you. To scoff at them for not making a lace wedding dress is really, really rude. Even if they did make a lace wedding dress, maybe it's just really not your style, or you think they should have used a different pattern, and it's still their wedding dress. You don't have to wear the dress and you don't have to read the fic.

We all know that there is some fanfic out there that is incredible. I think it's important to talk about that! But the vast majority of people who post their writing online are just sharing their little hobby projects that they make for fun and I also think it's important to remember that.

[the-bar-sinister]

Look, I'm going to be honest, I don't care whether people feeding other fans' fanfiction into AI is "legal" or "illegal".

What it is, is rude, entitled, and disrespectful of your fellow fans.

[hekateinhell]

psa

[panther-os]

"lxc ruined the scene by randomly playing the flute"

in the very next scene, lwj leaves mid-conversation to play his guqin because he's feeling too many emotions, I think it's fair to assume this is a standard lan brother coping mechanism - probably one of the few that are lqr-approved

self-soothing after talking about childhood trauma is a normal, reasonable response and characters being more human does not detract from the story

[commander-krios]

I didn’t want to make this post but I really need to.

I have been part of different fandoms for nearly 15 years. I’m in my mid-30s. I have been here on tumblr for over 10 of those years. And no matter what fandom I’m in, there are always those people that makes things weird or toxic for others.

There are the people who insult or belittle people on their faves, in their art or writing, on how they interact with choices in a game.

There are the people who cross the line when it comes to devs or voice actors, etc and makes things creepy or sexual or push boundaries of these people.

There are the people who gate keep characters. Who claim that no one can romance their fave because they claim them. That anyone who does is making their character cheat and they will harass you as if we’re talking about real life.

There are the people who criticize everything about a piece of media to find the “problematic” things only to be able to show you why you’re a terrible person to like it.

YOU are the reason fandom is dying. YOU are the reason why people don’t want to share their art or their fic or their gifsets. YOU are why we lose these amazing people because no one wants to hear how much you hate the thing they love.

There was a lot of “don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything” when I was growing up but the internet has made you lose all kindness or respect for other people in fandom. It’s disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

When people stop making fic and art and gifs, you can thank yourselves for that. Because people can only take so much abuse before they give up entirely.

[shieldofiron]

What if I actually get this tattooed on my body

[studentofetherium]

what the fuck is wrong with them

[dreamy-selfships]

No because I'm sick and tired of this new wave of puritan fandom creeps making children believe they're bad or wrong for liking an adult character.

Are you fucking kidding me?? It is NORMAL and I'd say a part of growing up to crush on adult characters. Literally no one is being harmed by it. Are y'all just like, conveniently forgetting the fact that there were entire communities of us dedicated to fangirling over Sherlock/Doctor Who/The guys from Supernatural??

I remember being 16 and absolutely losing my mind over Loki. It was fun and stupid and I wrote so many fanfics and drew so much, it was an integral part of my teen years. I made so many friends and had such a good time roleplaying with them, I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Stop teaching kids shame. Fucking STOP IT.

[solisaureus]

look this is gonna be a hard to swallow pill for the pjo fandom,

but the sun and the star is coming out at a really important time in the USA -- homophobia is on the rise, books like this are being restricted, and policies are being debated and passed to exterminate queer and trans people from the public sphere. having a positive example of a queer relationship in fiction, especially as part of a mega-popular middle grade series, is going to be important to a lot of the queer 10-14 year olds that make up this book's main demographic.

i have never, ever seen a percy jackson book have such a negative reception online. and it's just a coincidence that this is the first queer-focused installment of the series?

people are seeing the extent of the hate and thinking they shouldn't bother reading tsats at all, that they have already heard enough from people who hate the book. I have had people reblog my positive posts and say "maybe i'll give this book a chance, this is the first nice post i've seen about it." that's really fucking sad yall.

maybe tsats wasn't what you expected, maybe it contradicted your headcanons, maybe you prefer ships other than solangelo. you don't have to like tsats. but the amount of vocal hate for it is ridiculous. other pjo books do not get this kind of hate -- picking apart and complaining about every tiny little detail, ridiculing the writing style of both authors, mocking the attempts at sincerity, even sometimes mocking people who did like the book.

i have never seen this harsh of a response before (and i'm old -- I've been a percy jackson reader since the lightning thief came out in 2005) and especially not from such large portions of the fandom to the point where people who haven't read it are feeling discouraged from doing so.

Please look at the big picture. your opinions don't exist in a vacuum. maybe this is a hot take, but at some point the hate is indistinguishable from how homophobes talk about queer fiction. i'm just saying there are better things to turn your anger towards, and if you hated this book so much just do what the rest of us do and write fucking fanfiction to make yourself feel better. fucks sake

[sunderwight]

Fandom wankers in the SV fandom are always just. So. I mean...

Like oh is that fanon not matching your interpretation of the characters? You think the fandom is focusing too much on the wrong aspects of the story? Gonna write an essay about why everyone is misreading the subtext? Gonna pick a fight to defend Luo Binghe from the haters? Gonna piss on other people's poor reading comprehension levels while your own self-awareness score is negative one thousand? Funny. I think I read a book about a guy like that.

[doctortwhohiddles]

Friendly reminder that no celebrity has to stay single just so his fans can keep fantasizing about him. That celebrities do not need their "fans" approval when chosing a partner. That self-insert Mary-Sue fan fics are just that, fiction. Most actors will end up with an another actor, not a barrista or a librairian.

Unless your under 16, being sad and hurt that a stranger got married is not a normal reaction. And throwing insults, making up lies and harassing people over it is even worse.

Being a fan of someone does not give you a say in their personal life. Ever. Celebrities are not your friends, they're not family, they are strangers. Stop acting like they owe you something. They don't.

[qprstobin]

The fact people act like Steve wouldn't notice if a guy/Eddie was flirting with him at all, when part of the hilarity behind the big boy flirtation scene is that Steve CLEARLY knows something about the comment is off lol. That's why he looks so baffled. Steve can be oblivious about other things but come on Casanova over there is going to notice when someone is flirting with him even if it is a guy

[the-bar-sinister]

✨ Write the stories you want to write.

✨ Don't let anyone shame you for the type of stories you write.

✨ Don't let anyone shame you for writing fanfiction, or for writing any other fiction that isn't seen as 'marketable'.

✨ Selling books is not everyone's reason and goal for writing stories.

✨ Write stories because you want to write them.