#hashtag niche problems lmao

[literalliterature]

Mmmmm keep thinking about that post that's literally like "hello people who get all of their ideas of feminism from tiktok" (<- almost direct quote) and then smugly presents a quiz about which ideas of Greek "myth" are actually modern inventions. As if to say that like. A person who hasn't sifted through the fuckton of extremely ubiquitous misinformation in the, I will remind you, actually pretty fucking niche study of Greek mythology and literature, is likely to also be a person with unexamined/chronically online feminist ideas lmao.

Like I get it, I get the sentiment, it's annoying that these misunderstandings about mythology are so common and that we are in the era of hashtag girlboss Greek myth retellings but also, the problem with popular modern "feminist" retellings isn't that the myths are inaccurately represented, it's that their ideas of feminism are shallow and they're frankly not that interesting or doing anything new lol. Frankly, you don't have to have any background knowledge of the myths to identify the hollow messaging in a lot of these stories.

[annetteblog]

Hi! Thanks for answering my ask, this is the anon who said fanfics were niche😀 Thanks for your thoughts.

Less critical folks' have been subjugating and harming marginalized groups since the dawn of time. Gullible, impressionable people exist, as do hucksters, racists, bigots and ideologies that form around a 'cult of personality'. Should literature or public discourse be propagated with only 'less critical folks' in mind? By this logic, can't everything that can be taken literally be argued to be 'harmful'? (I am not saying you think this or are promoting it! Just a thought experiment😀)

I see what you mean about corporations like Disney. If only they didn't try to claim 'wokeness' or get clout for having middle aged ladies kissing in the background in Star Wars or having a man in a support group tell Captain America that he had gone on a date with a man. Corporations wait for public opinion and market demographics to shift before they put their money as risk. It is known. But do you know what's shameful? Shrinking John Boyega's picture on a poster for Chinese marketing (Lupita Nyong'o's character was missing entirely). That is shameful. That is pandering to anti blackness and it should be named.

Hello again :)

You’re absolutely right about such harm being done since the dawn of time. But still, even if something is so common, nobody can forbid to poke a finger at it and say “ugh it’s baad” once again lol

And another thought about fics being niche, which I forgot to write yesterday. Yes, the influence of bad fanfiction seems to be less relevant than the influence of a typical Disney blockbuster movie with no representation whatsoever. However, one may argue that the queer representation in some Disney movies is completely irrelevant in comparison with the major worldwide problems like the pandemic, climate change or nuclear weapon. And they would be probably right. But does it mean that we shouldn’t discuss Disney?  We didn’t have Marvel movies last year, but definitely had the pandemic. Should everybody who has a blog about Marvel start blogging about Covid instead? Of course no. If some problem is smaller, it doesn’t mean that we should just ignore it! And if something is niche, it doesn’t mean that we must never ever criticize it. 

About Disney. HOLY MOLY WHAT A THEME

I gotta admit, I’m not into the Star Wars saga (I mean I watched the original trilogy and another one with Obi Wan when I was like... 15?? never came back to it), so I don’t really know what’s going on there now with all of these new movies and other projects. Although I saw that fans were angered about John Boyega’s treatment by the company. I still don’t know all the details actually, but as a non-engaged [in Star Wars fandom/narrative] person I was surprised. Why would they hire him in the first place, if they knew they would end up treating him this way? Just for having some pRoGrESSive titles in the media? Sick. 

But Marvel!!! I was SO pissed (and still kinda am) at everything that was going on there. I’m not going to lie, I was a Stucky shipper back in the days. [still consider May 2016 twitter hashtag “givecaptainamericaaboyfriend” to be a peak of western mass culture LMAO] Of course, even then I perfectly understood that nothing would ever work out in terms of making the ship “canon”. And even leaving the ship aside, I knew that any queer representation is highly unlikely. But somehow everything they had said and done made things even worse than I thought it would be. Ranting about how “progressive” they were, and doing complete bullshit. What a progress, wow, a random noname guy said one phrase. [Fun fact - in the Russian theater dub the phrase was censored, so while watching in the cinema I didn’t even figure out where is the rEpReSeNtAtION exactly.] Honestly, I can go on and on about this, I gotta stop. ugh But yeah, big mainstream corporations kinda suck. 😀 

/ Very side ramble. Stucky fanfiction was sooo good tho. No heteronormativity, mature and complicated themes [PTSD, the consequences of war experience, etc.], well-developed historical settings where needed, amazing language... I’m not sure that I’ve known another fandom with such creative people. Sometimes I miss these golden days *sigh* /