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jakowskis · 6 months

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@buffetpallascat doing a good ol' days reply because i had enough thoughts on this to warrant some meta, in my typical rambling fashion. hope you don't regret engaging by the time im done dfhkdsf

for starters, you're very welcome, i'm glad you enjoy the post :D

as for your question - i meant moreso that it was typical of the fandom, although it was also very much influenced by societal trends of the time, too. fandom's always had a rocky history with women, especially women who supposedly 'get in the way of "slash" couples', but the way fandom misogyny is performed has changed; i see more willful erasure of female characters these days than flat out blatant misogyny. in tw fan content from the 00s, i've seen gwen hatefully AND casually called some pretty horrible things that i rarely see fictional or real women called nowadays, simply because standards have changed. hell, one of the comms i linked, the twgenre finders one, there was several entries requesting fic where gwen experiences, like, bodily harm? not in a whump-y way, they actually wanted to recreationally read fic about her getting physically injured and suffering, out of some bizarre sense of malice towards her. simply because she 'gets in the way of janto'. and i can't even fathom that existing nowadays. pretty much everyone outside of weird little 12 year olds knows that's not acceptable. not to mention it's just weird.

interestingly i've also noticed a lottttt of change in how the fandom... reacted to and treated janto as a couple back in the day, versus now. people in 2006 were not normal about gay people. we know fandom's history with fetishizing gay men, and it was even worse in 2006 with an exceptionally rare canon gay couple being received by a jarringly hetero-but-'slash'-obsessed fanbase.

i mean, i don't wanna generalize. i saw a poll recently about how fandom is not mainly composed of straight women, contrary to popular belief, at least anymore, and i guess the question is, was it ever? i have seen a lot of the people involved in fandom in the 00s identify themselves as straight, but was that partially because of the culture of that era? have any of those people since come out as some type of queer? maybe, for some of them, that was them exploring their queerness in a safe environment, when the culture around being gay in real life was a lot different.... the same way modern fandom culture continues to be for those of us who aren't in accepting homes. if they were 20smth year olds in the 2010s/2020s, rather than the 2000s, would they still identify as straight?

not sure. but i've made a habit of going on the profiles of old lj accounts, and i'll sometimes wind up going through the journals and the personal posts of authors i respect, etc etc. a significant amount of mid 00s fic writers were straight women in their 30s - 40s, many married, some with kids. very different demographic to modern fandom. very different climate they lived in vs the one we're in.

(although, bonus note, i also once found a thread of bisexuals in 2006 praising torchwood's depiction of bisexuality, and that made me exceptionally happy. but also maybe a little sad, because torchwood's my personal fav bi rep, too, in 2023, and the fact that we've had nothing better in seventeen years is a bit of a bummer. but i digress.)

anyway, this is all to say, i've seen some insanely fetishy shit about jack and ianto that rubbed me exceptionally wrong. that gross dehumanizing, severely homophobic place where it's like... ahh, ok, so you don't see them as people, you see them as sexy dolls you can mash together. but, ofc, that's how i view it as a bisexual person in 2023 who's been on tumblr far too long. they didn't see any problem with it. they might've even seen it as progressive. how can you be homophobic when you're obsessed with the little gay people on ur screen? but it's the opposite end of the 'homophobes reducing gay ppl down to what they do in their beds' trope, and it comes across as dated and icky now.

i mean, i consume a lot of older media, i know how to turn off my 21st century sensibilities and remind myself things used to be different, but it's honestly an impressive difference. there's some fantastic fics from that era of the fandom, in fact most of my favorite fics are from that era, but i often get quite a bit of culture shock reading things. particularly, i'm always impressed by people in the 2000s, an extremely biphobic era, applying their impressive period-typical 'bisexuals aren't real' beliefs to The Bisexual Show. torchwood's rep's not perfect (again, a product of its era), but i've seen a fantastic amount of gay!ianto and straight!owen, because bisexual men don't exist, obviously, and jack's not bisexual, he's the amazing slutty space man, except he's mostly gay because all that matters is janto. and i don't even really see explorations of gwen or tosh's bisexuality at all, because, again, women who?

i found a comm a while back, i didn't include it on my list because it wasn't torchwood-exclusive and didn't have much content in the tw tag, but it was a lgbtfest, and contained fics about the team and their relationships with their bisexuality, and it was really intriguing to me to see queerness as understood by regular people in 2007/2008, y'know, not by gay writers or activists or films. i have no way of knowing if any of them were speaking from any personal place, but it was just interesting, because none of the fics i read in that comm had that same brand of tone-deaf sex-focused homophobia to them, they were progressive for the time, but it was still apparent to me that they were written by people with a mid to late 00s understanding of being gay, and i do think it's interesting, that substantial difference.

got a bit off topic, but now that i mentioned the initial fandom being overwhelmingly composed of women, i can also add that i think internalized misogyny factored hugely into the fandom's disdain for gwen. the 'strong female' trope doesn't just annoy straight men, it also annoys a lot of women (though not consciously) - not because they're opposed to well-written women, but because society tells us certain things that'd be admirable and complex and sympathetic out of a male hero are unacceptable out of a female one. it's the double standard. jack does some awful shit, but i rarely see him criticized. i've straight up seen fans go "jack's kind of a bastard, but it's ok because he's hot", which is fine in jest, i've joked about shit like that with characters, but it's not so cute when those same people turn around and condemn gwen for her actions. hell, or owen. i've literally seen someone say they'd like owen more if he was more conventionally attractive. like, ok, you're clearly just here for the janto eye candy. you haven't brought any substantial critical thinking skills. pls take ur shallow ass and leave. but back to gwen - she was held to a standard none of the other characters are held to. they picked on her for the stupidest shit. and her worse sin, the infidelity, it's bad, sure, but i've seen countless male characters who cheat on their partners who are beloved by their fandoms. it's just fucking gross. i fucking hate hypocrites.

dude, yknow what?? i've even seen fucking tosh bashing. WHO THE FUCK HATES TOSH????

ok im done. sorry for my babbling. but yeah, i think it's a fascinating thing. i love how humans change and develop with the times and how we can map the changes and how they affect media, and it's fun to observe in fandom because it's there, too, but no one's looking so i get to feel like a little scientist fdskjfds. ok i will cease with the excessive babbling now

#mine #txt #torchwood posting #i love writing essays where i say nothing at all

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blackhholes · 8 months

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teen wolf genre theory:

where riverdalian genre theory is based around the characters teen wolf genre theory focuses on the seasons. it is my belief that every distinct season of the show embodies and utilizes its own horror subgenre

season 1 is a classic monster horror. there's something big and dangerous out there and it's up to the protagonists to figure out a way to fight back against it.

season 2 can also be regarded as monster horror but i see it more so as possession horror. it's not possession in the usual demonic way but instead matt taking control of and essentially becoming the second occupant of jackson's body.

season 3a is folk horror. it's human sacrifices and dark rituals. it's the protagonists trying to catch up with the perpetrator in a desperate attempt to stop the killings from continuing.

season 3b falls into psychological horror. stiles is fighting against this inhuman entity taking over his body and mind. this season also features noticeably less gore and body horror than other seasons and instead plays on the emotional beats more. even the viewer grows distrustful of stiles by the end of the season never sure when he's actually in control.

season 4 is slasher horror. it has been subverted though so instead of a single killer taking on the characters of the story it's a lineup and various assassins all with their own gimmicks.

both season 5a and 5b are true body horror. body horror is seen all throughout the show, particularly to show characters losing their agency, but in season 5 it gets pushed to extremes. it's medical experiments performed on teenagers who have no memories of this even happening to them. also 5b can definitely be read as another monster horror season but the monster is created through the use of medical intervention and therefore i do believe it does fit into the body horror subgenre.

season 6a is a ghost story. hear me out it might sound a bit farfetched but stiles serves as the ghost in this season. it's a subversion of classic ghost stories, it's not the presence that becomes the haunting but instead the lack of a presence. the characters all feel this grief and loss they have nowhere to put down and explain everywhere they turn they see remnants of this person whom they have no idea even exists. also claudia definitely counts as a kind of phantom if you wanna take the easy way out.

season 6b is a little harder to place but i believe it's either cosmic horror or apocalyptic horror depending on how you chose to understand the story. if you see the anuk-ite as the main antagonist it becomes cosmic horror, there's this infinitely old entity that's been trapped in the wild hunt suddenly let out. some of the hallmarks of cosmic horror are madness, inevitability, and non human interference on human beings, all of which are seen as the anuk-ite takes hold of the people of beacon hills. but if you see the hunters as the main antagonists of the story it transforms into apocalyptic horror, it's not the end of the world at large but instead the end of the world as the characters know it. they've been exposed to the public who are now taking up arms against them and they must learn to adapt and survive in a society that wants them all dead.

(also before any of you say i just saw the riverdale genre theory and decided i had to make it work for teen wolf just know i explained this entire thing to su like a month before i even heard of the riverdale genre theory. this all came out of my noggin.)

#teen wolf #twmeta #teen wolf meta #teen wolf academia #i guess #for if i want to reference back to this #twgenres

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