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vergess · 1 year

Text

Copying this to my main for the sake of my organization.

TLDR: some self-aggrandizing asshole decided to vomit some egregious levels of ignorance while pretending to be an authority on the sociology of fandom.

Anyway, to save us all some trouble, the point by point is going under a cut.

Not only because of pervasive issues of (especially anti-Black) racism, misogyny, transphobia/homophobia, and the like, but the particular way those things take shape within fandom.

There is no "particular way" racism "takes shape" in fandom. You're thinking of GENERAL SOCIETY, the supergroup that includes fandom.

Your ignorance of fandom specific and society-wide sociological information is already a screeching red flag, btw. This is why so many "intellectually incurious" people stopped listening at word one. People have been saying that the vulgar masses need to have our culture and art shaped by academic, political, or religious "trained thinkers" since the dawn of civilization. You're literally bringing up an argument OLDER THAN LITERATURE ITSELF and pretending that you have new insights. No wonder people fucking ollied out.

What I mean is that people almost invariably approach fandom at the level of character, often at the level of ship - your primary way of viewing a text is filtered through favourite characters and favourite relationships, as opposed to, say, favourite scenes, favourite themes, favourite conflicts.

Yes. You're literally providing a textbook definition of transformative fandom here. But you're presenting it disingenuously as fuck, by acting like that's the ONLY type of fandom that exists. Again, your ignorance is on display, and it's going to get bigger quick!

Because in the very next pgaragraph we find:

This is reinforced through the architecture of dominant platforms that host fan content, particularly AO3

And here we go. Because if you thnk AO3 is the major platform for fandom, you're WILLFULLY IGNORANT.

Youtube is the major platform for fandom. Next up is tiktok. After that comes other socials, like Reddit, FB, twitter and tumblr.

AO3 is AFTER all of that. It's a small, indie platform. Even in the scope of fanfic, FFN and Wattpad both are larger.

You picked a small site MADE SPECIFICALLY FOR HOSTING QUEER SHIPS FOUND UNACCEPTABLE TO HOMOPHOBES, and then looked around asking yourself, "wow, why are the people on the gay sex website so obsessed with gay sex."

I would like to believe you are simply ignorant, and inadvertantly malicious. But I do not think that is the case, as I will detail later.

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat,” which doesn’t indicate perspective or theme but rather that there is, broadly, some kind of “problematic content” contained therein - often of a sexual nature, frequently as a warning about “bad” ships.

You literally just made this up based on rumours you heard from antishippers. This has ZERO relation to reality.

Dead Dove contains everything from graphic violence to body horror to rape to surrealist meditations on the way the human mind cannot cope with the scale of the universe.

But you wouldn't know, because you're cheerfully ensconcing yourself in an enclave of people telling you what you want to hear, and pretending that's "decades of study and experience." You haven't been 'engaging for decades' you've been swimming in a tiny corner of a tiny pond and claiming the ocean doesn't exist.

Now this is not an inherent problem, as in, it is not inherently incorrect to approach a text and primarily derive pleasure from it by focusing on a given character or relationship,

The sheer HYPOCRISY on display. "Oh it's fine to do this, but don't do it on the websites you MADE SPECIFICALLY FOR DOING THIS ON, because I personally would like to see you do other things. What? Those things are available on dozens of much larger and more active platforms? No, no, I want to see YOU obey MY demands specifically."

It's "not incorrect" to do, it's just that the people doing it are incorrect, for magical mystery reasons that you'll never actually specify, because you can't. You cannot actually give a reason why any of the things you dislike are bad because they aren't. There is no harm being done. Your disliking something does not mean is is harmful to you.

If someone were FORCING you to engage with this disliked stuff, sure, thats actually horrific! Fucking beat the shit out of them!!

But as far as "I opened this fic and I didn't like it" goes, that's not harm, that's someone making a thing you didn't like. Just close the goddamned tab.

And I think a lot of mainstream media encourages (even requires) audiences to engage with their stories at these character- and ship-levels. […;] If you do not care about the familial drama […] because you think the institution of monogamous marriage and the nuclear family is stupid and violent and heternormative, then you will have a difficult time engaging with the show in general.

Okay, I'm going to give you the benefit of my doubt here. Either this is you saying fandom self selects for people who enjoy garbage, a shocking condescending and fundamentally untrue but at least plausible statement.

Or you're saying fandom is responsible for the actions of major media producers, violating basic concepts like linear time. Which would be absurd, but not wildly out of keeping with the rest of this essay.

Let's assume the former.

That's not just a thing we've studied to death and found to be untrue after decades of sociological research.

It's also just demonstrably, on the face of it, nonsensical.

Transformative fandom appeals to people who wanted MORE from a piece of media, not people who hated it enough to walk away. It's specifically about making an experience greater than it was when you first encountered it, by engaging with it communally. By ripping at the facade heteronormative white supremacy creates in art, and forcing diversity, sexuality, and liveliness into an otherwise sterile space.

Which you would know if you had engaged with or studied transformative fandom in any meaningful capacity whatsoever.

A standout example I recently encountered was browsing the fandom tags on tumblr for the movie Prey. […] It is a movie that makes the argument that, despite this alien monster running around killing people, the villains of the franchise are these occupying soldiers and settlers, an alien force who themselves have just as little regard for (indigenous) human life. And when browsing the tags on tumblr, what I found was dozens upon dozens of horny posts about how hot the predator monster was

And here's the crux of the issue revealed. You want other fans to enjoy art in a way YOU approve of specifically. Not any actual concern with addressing systemic issues of racial, sexual, etc violence. Just a desire for more of the fan content YOU like, and less of the hornyposting you dislike.

But you went on tumblr, the famously sexual mosterfucker website, and were confused to find a bunch of people want to fuck the monster!

Meanwhile, on youtube, the LARGEST FANDOM PLATFORM IN THE WORLD, searching "prey 2022 racism meta" provides dozens of hours of essays on that very subject.

And if this is your takeaway from an extremely straightforward film with a very clear message, this is not merely a failure to comprehend the content of a text, this is something beyond it

Oh the sheer vanity on display. The assumption that people cannot be hornyposting AND still have complex feelings about a racism narrative?

Man, the book about holocaust survivors who fantasize about fucking nazis is almost a century old. You're operating under DECADES AND DECADES of misinformation, and you're wallowing in it so gleefully. To the point that you act like anyone trying to provide you with even a single piece of legitimate information are worthy of mockery and derision for not Speaking High Academia Goodly Enough All The Time Forever.

I don't know how to explain this to you, but someone can find the monster sexually appealing in spite of, and indeed even because of, the colonial implications of its narrative. AND people can still be critical of colonial racism while being horny for a FICTIONAL MONSTER THAT I NEED TO EMPHASIZE IS NOT REAL AND IS NOT ACTUALLY KILLING OR COLONIZING ANYONE BECAUSE IT DOES NOT EXIST.

People can enjoy fiction without that meaning they want to fuck racists IRL. I'm sorry that you somehow believed that sexual interest in a fictional character makes you TOO STUPID TO EXIST, but fortunately, you're wrong.

a phenomenon wherein fans will move from one fandom to the next in search of two (usually white, usually skinny) guys to draw and write porn of, uncaring of any of the surrounding context of the stories they are embedded in, and consequently dominating a large sector of fandom discussion.

Again, the gays are not "dominating" fandom. The gays are dominating fandom websites made or popularized for being accessible and welcoming to gay sexuality.

Do you also go into the sexual studies aisle at the library to complain that THOSE are too sexually focused, while ignoring the whole rest of the library, too?

The actual dominant voices in fandom are Straight White Men Ages 18-40. Do you really think Star Wars was made with a bunch of teen and middle aged trans people in mind? Do you REALLY?

Because you keep SAYING that the dominant force in fandom is presumed young, presumed white, presumed female, presumed straight fans. But it isn't. It never has been.

Only in the rare enclaves of transformative fandom spaces made by and for people marginalized for their sex or gender is this "obsession" with sex and gender apparent.

Because we MADE SPACES for those subjects to be engaged with.

And now you march into these spaces, made for engaging with these subjects, and demand that instead we do things your way.

You are so ignorant you've looped back around to accusing transformative fandom of being a nasty gay hypersex conspiracy, literally no different from the latest Fox News "special guest scientist" who uses academic language incorrectly to create an illusion of authority, such that hopefully the audience will obey.

Your stance on engagement with fandom itself historically was (and still is) always first filtered through one of these two labels

YOU JUST! MADE THAT UP!!! AND PRETENDED LIKE NO ONE ELSE WOULD KNOW???? Do you think everyone else on this website was born after 2014, the year antishipping started?

Antishipping, proshipping, and even shipping itself have NEVER been the primary, central function EVEN of TRANSFORMATIVE fandom.

Let alone the archival and analytical fandoms you're looking for while claiming they TOTALLY don't exist.

But at least now we can say with authority that you're being a misinformational twat on purpose!! Because you want to REDUCE fandom to something you perceive as "drama" so you can shit on it and demand that it obey your whims and desires.

Meanwhile, just for the sake of pointing it out AGAIN: antishippers have literally killed people. Literally, no metaphor, people have been KILLED by antishippers. Dead.

Lives ended.

That's not touching on the constant spread of videos/photos showing real, actual child sexual abuse. Nor the dozens of admitted cases of raping shippers to punish them. Now the hundreds of adittmed carses of adults using the label "antiship" as a way to prey on and sexually abuse children.

No, setting all of that aside, because apparently you're the kind of Both Sides cunt that want to put random authors on the same level as CHILD RAPISTS?

THAT. ENTIRE.PHENMONON. ISN'T EVEN 10 YEARS OLD.

2014 was NOT EVEN A DECADE AGO. "Historically," my ass. NOTHING you just said there is true. Do you really think you can get away with lying that brazenly if you use the formal tone?

Because you cannot. Well informed, well educated fans who LIVED THROUGH AND STUDIED the events you're describing exist, and will continue existing. Or did you forget that many of us are "real" academics too? That this is our HOBBY where we engage with our INTEREST INFORMALLY.

Your claim that anyone who is involved in fandom is too fucking stupid to be ABLE to engage with a text in the way you want is based, wholecloth, on the assumption that there is a hard line between literary academia and fandom. Meanwhile, A LOT OF THE INFLUENTIAL FANS ARE ACADEMICS, AUTHORS, AND SOCIAL SCIENTISTS.

But, with classic vanity, you assume that anyone who disagrees is too stupid to listen to, and dig deeper into your cavern of joyous ignorance where something that started 9 years ago and that most people wouldn't even recognize the terminology of has always been a "defining" factor?

No.

That is a lie. Full fucking stop. You are a liar.

Nowhere in this binary is space to describe any other perspective you might take

You're just repeating yourself over and over. "Oh, why do the people on the gay sex website obsess over gay sex." "Oh, why do the people whose hobby is indie romance lit keep talking about indie romance lit on this, the indie romance lit website."

JUST! GO! TO! ANY! OTHER! FANDOM! THEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! STOP DEMANDING THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THE GAY FUCKING WEBSITE REPURPOSE IT TO YOUR WHIMS YOU WEIRD PRESUMPTUOUS CUNT!!!!!

It’s not just that the pro/anti divide is juvenile and overly-simplistic

Bold words from the asshole still equating the child-raping death cult to people who read/write for fun, but I mean… we've established that this is a purposefully misleading shitstorm already so.

it is a declaration that all fan conflict must be read through the lens of shipping and shipping only

Do you think that the fandom meltdowns about the removal of Biologically Evil Races from D&D was about shipping????

Do you think that the backlash against the Black storm trooper in star wars was about SHIPPING?

You just throw out anything outside your blinders, huh. You just ignore EVERYTHING ELSE that ever happens, so you can claim it's 'all' about shipping.

My friend, fandom isn't obsessed with shipping, YOU are.

Which, again, I think is a fundamental error of methodology.

Okay, you keep saying "methodology" in a way that makes me think you don't actually know what it means. It's not a special magic term for "critical lens that will make you agree with me."

There isn't even "a" fandom methodology to speak of. Now, at the more precise level of AO3-centered, transformative, romance based fandom SPECIFICALLY, there are some methodoloGIES (PLURAL) that occur fairly frequently. And THOSE are, I assume, the things you have an issue with. But since you continue not to define what methodologies you disapprove of, it's meaningless filler word to make yourself sound smart.

And don't point to your paragraph about capitalism heteronormativity; that's not a fandom methodology and it's not even discussing a method at all, just contextualizing how a method might arise without actually specifying what the method is.

Don't point to your paragraph about Prey, either. You still didn't actually specify any methods, let alone full methodologies. You simply said, repeatedly, that you personally feel like people were missing the point. Nothing about how many times they read the original text; nothing about note taking; nothing about citation; nothing about research; nothing, nothing, notheng methodological whatsoever. Just your personal disgust that people might be horny in a way you think is "too white."

the thorny issues of representation not just as expressed through individual characters but entire worlds, narratives, settings, and themes

So you've just not been tracking the meltdown of the Harry Potter fandom over the last 5 years, either, yeah?

Because these days, that fandom is LOADED with people explaining in exquisite detail all the ways the world building is, itself, deeply racially, sexually flawed.

Or is that too cringe for you to talk about?

Because the Lord of The Rings fandom is also known for this trend. Star Wars too.

There's shitloads of this stuff out there, you simply refuse to leave the Gay Sex For Monster Fuckers website to find it. Instead, you lounge around here complaining about how the monsters are too fuckable and the gays too sexual.

You keep harping on about how this is a western individualism problem, but you're literally just refusing to acknowledge that other things exist. Do you think there are no shippers in Vietnam? Because buddy, there for sure are. I'm friends with some.

And this issue is best perhaps epitomised by reader insert fanfiction, circumventing any need for you to project onto a character by literally inserting yourself into fiction, primarily in order to write/read about a character you want to fuck

Ah, you see? You think the gay sex website has too much gay sex on it.

This then intersects in particularly disgusting ways with real world politics, such as reader insert fics about Pedro Pascal going with you to BLM protests.

Wow, you just really uniquely hate shippers, huh. You really went all in on the "people writing fanfiction are sex criminals" thing instead of "people forcing Mr Pascal to read porn on camera are sex criminals."

Do you also think that the guy who made the camera my rapist filmed me with as a child is the real sex criminal, not the rapist holding said camera?

Even if this is (incredibly over-generously) interpreted as a very poor attempt at being “progressive,” it still demonstrates that many (white) fans are often incapable of thinking about anything outside of a character-centric perspective, quite literally centring themselves in the process, and consequently they think it’s totally appropriate to do things like that

Again the assumption that any fan you dislike is white. No wonder you've convinced yourself no other POC are left to speak up: you call us white when we disagree.

The fact that this is also frequently a racist lens is not coincidental, because again, a chronic focus on (fictional) individuality prohibits any structural perspective from entering the discussion

"Why doesn't this character piece focus on systemic issues more!!!!!"

Mate, just go back to reading "real" literature until you've pulled your head out of your ass enough to answer that question.

To say nothing of the bold audacity displayed in the assumption that a character study cannot comment on social issues, because…. because what? Because it's written by a hobbyist? Because it's not in an 150 year old anthology?

Do you also think poetry is incapable of analyzing systemic issues because it has a narrow focus, too?

Your ego, ignorance, and anger have combined to render you absolutely abominable, yet you wonder why people aren't falling over themselves to fulfill your every wish??

Oh it must be because your sycophants are being excluded, not because you've gone off half-cocked and wholly ignorant, making the same stupid, unfounded arguments based on your own assumptions about other people's beliefs, values and actions.

where people come to the conclusion that the topic of police brutality is little more than a fun stage to enact whatever romantic shenanigans you want to get up to with a hot guy.

No, mate, YOU came to that conclusion. That's not "fandom" that's you. You did that. The writer's reasons for producing that fic are unknown to you. You decided all on your own that it was written by a white person for fun, and not by a person of colour who wanted to imagine that someone they idolize would hold similar moral values to them.

You didn't need any straight white fangirls to do it for you. YOU reduced it to sex all on your own.

But I think that this being the dominant mode of engagement

STILL not the dominant mode of fandom. No matter how many times you say that, it's still not true. It remains false and, at this point I feel confident in saying it is a willful lie.

inherently excludes and marginalises all other approaches, and creates a fandom space where the most valuable way to talk about media is to discuss which two characters you most enjoy imagining fucking each other

Finally, and in conclusion, your experiences are not universal. You surrounded yourself with people insisting that This Is The Only Thing Fandom Is, and then you ignore and deride anyone pointing out that you're wrong.

I can, right now, go on my dashboard and ask people to drop me their favourite meta and haedcanons and get dozens or hundreds of replies from people with the most beautifully complex, nuanced grasp of character, setting, causality, and more and be blown away by the connections they make to real world issues.

You, however, it seems can just go on your dashboard and be flooded with things you hate.

But here's the thing: YOU decide who you follow on here. YOU decide which fandom platforms you frequent. YOU, in this one TINY arena, get to have the actual final say.

Use. That. Power. Revel in it. God knows that as QTIPOC we're not given that kind of authority ANYWHERE ELSE in life.

Use it.

Make your fandom space look the way you want it to, instead of making up a bunch of gibberish.

PS: Some (just a small sample) fandoms active on tumblr you definitely forgot when you were pretending you have authoritative knowledge about how all fandom is about The kind Of Sex You Hate and not about engaging with art wholly and joyfully.

Shakespeare.

Dante.

Other renaissance lit, especially italiana.

Queen (band).

Dracula and assorted Victoriana.

Classical Chinese literature.

Classical Greek and Latin literature.

Poetry (western)

Poetry and calligraphy (eastern, incl middle eastern)

Botany (the science) (VERY popular on here)

#Automatic OP tag #vulgar arts #god forbid the people do anything you dislike that MUST be bourgeois trickery

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