#fandoms studies

[tuiyla]

I wonder sometimes if glee was one of the last gasps of TV that wasn’t primarily streaming driven. The another anon made a doctor who comparison and I think that’s apt - that being a show who’s ratings have been so changed by the shift to streaming, something fans never stop arguing about. Game of thrones, maybe, is another? But glee was *so* huge, mainstream wise for five minutes.

Yeah that checks out. Coming to think about it, streaming got bigger and bigger just as Glee ended. Sometimes I think about season 6 and how different the world already was, a contrast to the first season's 2009 immediate post-Obama election vibe.

Doctor Who is a fascinating example because of its longevity but also the fact that it constantly changes, and fans often conflate the reasons behind (lack of) viewership with the show's content. Sometimes it's just the world changing around the show. You'd think something like Doctor Who is uniquely equipped to adapt to that but, well, depends on your perspective how successful that has been.

I think the main reason Glee is hard to compare to another media property is because it was, by all means and despite initial intent, a teen show. GoT with its explicit violence and high fantasy is literally a different world, and so was everything else even nearly as popular. I don't know if I'd say Glee was the most popular teen show of the 2010s but it certainly... occupied a unique space in the mainstream, in the zeitgeist. One that the likes of Gossip Girl or PLL or The Vampire Diaries could never. Maybe it was the musical thing, maybe the dramedy, maybe just this unique cocktail. But it was so insanely ubiquitous and though it did drop off a lot people's radars in later seasons, there's a reason it is still talked about in the mainstream today. The tragedies, yes, the scandals, sure, but also because the grip it had on pop culture never really went away.

Like, when Pitch Perfect came out? Everyone went "oh like Glee." Rachel Bloom, when doing initial promo interviews for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, had to clarify again and again that, not exactly like Glee, these were original songs. Can't imagine what branding Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist must have been like. And then, of course, the teen show right of passage of being compared to Glee in some way or another.

[fanhackers]

Fans' attitudes toward AI-generated works

Irissa Cisternino, a PhD candidate of Stony Brook University, is writing their research on topics related to technology, art and fandom. You can participate by filling out a survey and additionally, signing up for an interview. The survey is expected to last until at least the end of April, those, who signed up for the interview, will be contacted later. You need to be at least 18 years old to participate in either, be able to understand and speak English and identify as a fan.

After the completion of the research, it will be accessible as the dissertation of the researcher. If you have further questions, you can contact Irina Cisternino at irissa.cisternino@stonybrook.edu or Lu-Ann Kozlowsky at lu-ann.kozlowski@stonybrook.edu.

[zarstarss]

leyendecker art study but it’s ghostsoap because im autistic as shit and everything i draw has to have The Funny Characters

(original is called Portrait of Two Men!)

[evenlyevi]

blues

[creek-ink]

which one??

ref^

[calebauer]

they will find each other in any lifetime

[renthony]

In Defense of Shitty Queer Art

Queer art has a long history of being censored and sidelined. In 1895, Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence in the author’s sodomy trials. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the American Hays Code prohibited depictions of queerness in film, defining it as “sex perversion.” In 2020, the book Steven Universe: End of an Era by Chris McDonnell confirmed that Rebecca Sugar’s insistence on including a sapphic wedding in the show is what triggered its cancellation by Cartoon Network. According to the American Library Association, of the top ten most challenged books in 2023, seven were targeted for their queer content. Across time, place, and medium, queer art has been ruthlessly targeted by censors and protesters, and at times it seems there might be no end in sight.

So why, then, are queer spaces so viciously critical of queer art?

Name any piece of moderately-well-known queer media, and you can find immense, vitriolic discourse surrounding it. Audiences debate whether queer media is good representation, bad representation, or whether it’s otherwise too problematic to engage with. Artists are picked apart under a microscope to make sure their morals are pure enough and their identities queer enough. Every minor fault—real or perceived—is compiled in discourse dossiers and spread around online. Lines are drawn, and callout posts are made against those who get too close to “problematic art.”

Modern examples abound, such as the TV show Steven Universe, the video game Dream Daddy, or the webcomic Boyfriends, but it’s far from a new phenomenon. In his book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, queer pop culture analyst Matt Baume writes about an example from the 1970s, where the ABC sitcom titled Soap was protested by homophobes and queer audiences alike—before a single episode of the show ever aired. Audiences didn’t wait to actually watch the show before passing judgment and writing protest letters.

After so many years starved for positive representation, it’s understandable for queer audiences to crave depictions where we’re treated well. It’s exhausting to only ever see the same tired gay tropes and subtext, and queer audiences deserve more. Yet the way to more, better, varied representation is not to insist on perfection. The pursuit of perfection is poison in art, and it’s no different when that art happens to be queer.

When the pool of queer art is so limited, it feels horrible when a piece of queer art doesn’t live up to expectations. Even if the representation is technically good, it’s disappointing to get excited for a queer story only for that story to underwhelm and frustrate you.

But the world needs that disappointing art. It needs mediocre art. It even needs the bad art. The world needs to reach a point where queer artists can fearlessly make a mess, because if queer artists can only strive for perfection, the less art they can make. They may eventually produce a masterpiece, but a single masterpiece is still a drop in the bucket compared to the oceans of censorship. The only way to drown out bigotry and offensive stereotypes created by bigots is to allow queer artists the ability to experiment, learn through making mistakes, and represent their queer truth even if it clashes with someone else’s.

If queer artists aren’t allowed to make garbage, we can never make those masterpieces everyone craves. If queer artists are terrified at all times that their art will be targeted both by bigots and their own queer communities, queer art cannot thrive.

Let queer artists make shitty art. Let allies to queer people try their hand at representation, even if they miss the mark. Let queer art be messy, and let the artists screw up without fear of overblown retribution.

It’s the only way we’ll ever get more queer art.

_

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[tacxx]

Rahh!!! Trying different styles!!

(Too scared to tag the original creators)

[dreamsandcherrypie]

SOMEBODY SEDATE ME pls an thank ya

[bluevallery]

[jaioes]

Mornings

My first larger piece in a little while! Also my first wolfstar piece in ages!

referenced from the amazing photographer Meg allen !!

[vulcan-moon]

team dark week #3: power/control

shadow and rouge sparring session! in normal hand to hand combat (no skates, no flying, no chaos control, no gadgets), i think rouge could hand shadow's ass to him bc she's had more formal training lol

[anparna]

…and what kind of artist would I be, to NOT draw Spike pouting? I mean…🙈

[pilvimarja]

About to make myself a cup of tea and read a whole master thesis on the culture of anti-shipping in fandom spaces 🫖🧐👀

[crabsnpersimmons]

i'd love to celebrate my birthday with y'all! no pressure to say or do anything, just wanted to share and "invite" you all 🥰

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will