#this turned into a ramble as usual alksjflksdj

[greensaplinggrace]

How do you manage to enjoy the fandom even with all the antis and fandom drama? You seem to have it figured out, please share your secrets!

I mean, it's certainly not a perfect system, but I do have some tricks.

For one, I'm not someone who's afraid to block liberally. As someone who's rejection sensitive and has severe anxiety issues, and as someone who's also been blocked by blogs I really liked for one reason or another, I can assure you that you have nothing to feel guilty about for blocking whoever you need to in order to curate your internet experience. Another thing I do is that I always blacklist any anti tags almost as soon as I enter any new fandom. These two tricks are pretty well known, but I feel like a lot of people don't use them quite as much as they should, largely because of Tumblr's weird insistence on guilt-tripping people about the ways they engage with fandom. But seriously, as someone who's been on Tumblr for years, just block and blacklist as much as you want to or need to. It's fine.

Personally, for fandoms with shipping wars that I heavily multiship in, like SaB and FFVII, I use blacklisting more than blocking, because the fandom is usually so divided that it's hard to find neutral or respectful blogs, and I get the most content from simply avoiding well tagged posts. Anybody who doesn't tag correctly gets blocked, and that eliminates a lot of the people who want to bait or harass others. Cross-taggers are the worst parts of a fandom. People who are anti or don't like things for personal reasons and not harassing reasons are usually very good at tagging things correctly. They're respectful of others and just want to enjoy the content they like. That's amazing and I'm totally here for it.

Also creation tags are amazing! Going into the gifmaking tags is like a breath of fresh air. It's just pure creative heaven in tags like that. You can see everybody's labors of love for this thing they're passionate about without any of the drama. It's incredibly liberating. And its easy to realize in spaces like that that this is just a group of people who love a piece of art so much they dedicate their time to engaging with it and with the people who love it on a regular basis. The people that harass others and constantly abuse fans that like the things they don't, the worst people in the fandom, are always just a very loud minority. Remove them from the equation and you've got something beautiful.

Lol honestly though, I'm not the best person to come to for this kind of thing. A lot of it is simply the stuff I do outside of tumblr. When I get frustrated with fandom, I have my siblings to talk to or vent to. When I see an anti post that I'm not able to avoid, I'll simply post a lot of positivity in the tag instead. I devote a lot of energy to turning negative emotions into positive actions. Sometimes it doesn't work, but other times I'll see someone call the darkling homophobic and then go on a bisexual!Darkling positivity spree, gifset included XD. I also have Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder, so I pace and daydream a lot. It's stress relief to the highest degree for me, and it really helps. I go outside. I play with my niece. I discuss hcs with my fandom friends. A lot of this stuff is simply methods that work personally for me.

Honestly, when I read something really depressing I'll just like,,, go to sleep if I'm able to. A lot of this stuff should absolutely not be agonized over. Eat some food. Take a shower. Socialize. Take a nap. Get off of tumblr. Listen to some music. Watch a funny youtube video. If you're active in fandom, make some content about the things you like.

I'm really sorry if this isn't what you're looking for! Or if you were looking for something less serious and I ended up turning this into a ramble of epic proportions lmao. The truth is that I often have to disengage from fandom to remind myself there's more important stuff in the world, and that there are real people behind these screens. I love rewatching or re-engaging with the original content to remind myself why I love this thing in the first place. Writing fanfiction, creating gifsets, daydreaming about all of my elaborate and fluffy hcs - it all helps me remember that this is something I'm engaging with because I love it too, alongside so many others. Self reaffirmation. If you doubt the other people around you, look at why you're here and what brought you here. Anything that makes you feel unpleasant or bad about that, remove from the equation.