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wisdomseulogy · 14 days ago

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Part 2: How puritan culture, misogyny, and homophobia are affecting fandom spaces and fanfiction.

During difficult times, people will desire harsh rules to make them feel safer or to make them feel morally jus and accepted. But what is ‘morally just’ when it comes to fanfiction? Why do people read controversial things? What is puritan culture and how does it relate to misogyny and homophobia?

This is the second part of my series about fanfiction and fandom culture and how it relates to what is going on in society at the moment. This will be a lot more polarizing than the first part in this series, but I hope it will be a good read even if you don’t agree with everything I say. This is an opinion piece based on my personal lived experience which may not match up with everyone else’s lived experience.

Originally, I was going to combine my discussion on puritan culture and commercialization, but with the growing amount of hate that authors are getting on AO3 these days, I feel it imperative to speak at length about puritan culture by itself. I will include commercialization in my next part of the series!

This is also the only part of the series that will include 18+ themes.

Lastly, thank you so much to everyone that read and interacted with part 1! It really makes my day to see that people are actually reading this!

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Fandom spaces have changed and evolved so much over a relatively short period of time. With the prevalence of social media today, fandom spaces have also become very toxic microcosm of society. That is not to say that toxicity has never existed in fandom spaces, but I would argue it is worse now more than ever.

There are a lot of different reasons for this. You have the fact that fear and anger drives engagement and thus money for people on apps like TikTok, (which I will be talking about in the next part of this series) and you also have the rise in misogyny and homophobia in America as the country turns more and more conservative with each passing day.

(I am an American and a lot of my opinions come from being in America. Though, these issues can be present in many different countries and social circles, I am just specifying America since that is what I know personally)

But how did we get here as a community and what can we do to stop the rise of misogyny and homophobia in fandom spaces (specifically relating to fanfiction)?

The first step is understanding the history and what has brought us here. I started attending cons and reading fanfiction in 2008, so I saw a lot of this firsthand.

Before AO3 was made, people would post fanfictions on places like fanfiction.net, livejournal, Quizazz (Quotev), Wattpad, etc. But there started to be issues when people began posting sexual related fanfiction content (smut, lemons etc.). Fanfiction.net and livejournal infamously purged anything on their websites that they didn’t agree with that was of a sexual nature.

People's fics were being deleted left and right and there was nowhere for people to post their fics without fear that it might be taken down. And on top of that, the original creators of the works that fics were based off of weren’t happy with people writing fanfiction using their characters and plot.

Anne Rice, who wrote The Vampire Chronicles, infamously was so against people making fanfiction with her characters that she sought out legal action against the fanfiction creators. But, the saving grace of fanfiction is that it cannot be monetized and the authors are not making any money off of the fics they are posting.

(However, this is becoming a hot issue with people printing out and selling copies of fanfiction on places like Etsy. But again, that will be in the next part of the series.)

People who are discovering fanfiction after 2015 are more likely to not know this history, because AO3 was created so that fanfiction writers would not have to deal with any legal action or purging of their fics. It is quite literally a utopia for fanfictions authors and fan creators to be able to post their stuff without fear of any real sort of repercussions.

However, with how America is moving more towards a conservative political stance as a whole, this liberty is being threatened. Especially with the KOSA bill which would allow complete internet censorship by the US government on anything they deem to possibly be bad. It is framed in a way to try and protect children, but it is, at its core, a complete government ability to censor the internet. This would include fanfiction.

And you might have already seen that AO3 is preemptively taking precautions in case something like this happens.

But why is fanfiction important and why do we need to fight to allow it to stay uncensored?

Fanfiction is one of the last non-monetizable forms of art. You cannot make money on it and the people who write and create fanfiction are doing it not for money but out of love and appreciation for the characters or the storyline.

In a world where everything is commercialized, the last place that capitalism has yet to reach is fanfiction. It is a reprieve from a society and world that demands that things only have worth if they are monetarily valuable. Fanfiction is the last line of defense we have against late stage capitalism and censorship.

The beauty of AO3 is that nothing on there is censored. It is a kaleidoscope of the human condition. The good, the bad, and the ugly all combined into one place. The reality of what people have to deal with on a regular basis written through the lens of pre-established characters and plot. Or sometimes original work.

But with the rise of conservatism and puritan culture, fanfiction readers and writers are being attacked by virtue signalers in support of a ‘morality’ that is targeted against women and LGBTQ+ people.

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From this point on, I will be discussing things that people may not be comfortable with. This is the only part of the series that will include 18+ language. Read at your own discretion.

I will not be giving any literary example of these: (i.e. writing out scenarios, quoting direct examples, or going into any graphic description), but these words will be mentioned in a general sense:

Kinks/fetishization

Breeding kink

BDSM

Sexual Assault

Rape/Non-Con

Omegaverse

Yaoi/Yuri

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In part 1, I talked lightly about how what we enjoy can be a reflection of ourselves and that we can use fanfiction to better understand ourselves and the world around us. But when we start talking about kinks, people are a lot less perceptive to understanding why someone might be interested in something.

The fact of the matter is that scientifically, we do not know why people enjoy certain kinks. There are most likely multiple factors going on at once which could include societal constructs/expectations, fearful/traumatic experiences (perceived or actualized), brain development, along with other environmental factors. But, there is no concrete answer as to why someone would develop one kink over another. Which means that saying anyone who has (insert kink here) is a terrible person, is not necessarily correct.

Though there are many theories on why someone may develop a kink, there is a general consensus that to an extent (depending on who you ask), any given person has little over their kinks.

But, I will explore the theory that, to some extent, kinks can come from fears or pain. There is a very thin line between what someone fears and what kinks that person may have. People who fear getting pregnant may have a breeding kink, people that fear being sexually assaulted may have a rape/non-con kink, someone who fears being helpless or hurt may have BDSM kink, etc. I could go on forever with how fear can relate to sexual desire, but I am sure you get the idea.

(Though this is just one aspect of how a kink could be formed, this is not true for everyone.)

In the same way nightmares can help our brain to prepare and react to future bad situations, kinks can help people to experience something fearful in a safe and consensual way. And that is important to understand when critiquing people who read fics with certain tags that may be considered bad.

In an interesting way, the reader is consenting to reading the piece of writing in the same way the writer is consenting by writing it. Since you can always stop reading and you can always stop writing. The power is in your hands.

This is important for understanding why someone may read certain pieces of media. Without any context, someone may think that people who read something like rape/non-con are supporting that act and thus are terrible people. But if you think about the fact that fanfiction is mainly written by women and LGBTQ+ people, groups of people who historically have to deal with the very real threat of sexual assault on a daily basis, it stands to wonder how much of a kink, like this, comes from fear (whether actualized as they have experienced it, or internalized where they know they are at risk).

Reading and writing is a very healthy way to work through complex thoughts and emotions. And fanfiction in particular is very helpful for this since it is easier to project your feelings on things you did not create. Something that is not the writer's creation, yet able to convey the writer's thoughts and feelings in a way that is harder to achieve in original work. In this way, even though a reader insert is meant to represent the reader, it creates a version of the reader that does not exist in reality and thus not held down by reality and only held down by the fictional world/work they are inserted into. Thus a figurative chimera of humanity and fiction. An existence outside of trauma and expectations.

AO3 has such an extensive tagging and filtering system, it is very easy to not have to read something that may be triggering. When attacking authors for their tag usage, the possible real outcome is that authors of things that can be triggering to many people will not attribute the proper tags to their fics and thus people who would have been able to easily avoid that content may be bombarded by it.

It is important to know that just because a piece of media (like a fanfiction) has something horrific in it, that does not mean the author or the reader is glorifying this thing and thus wanting that thing to happen to them or others. In the same way that just because a character is the main character of a piece of media, does not mean that the character is instantly a good person and what they do is good. There is a lot of nuance to whether a character is good or bad and a character can be a combination of both.

Of course, I could talk at length about how the rise of puritan culture is relative to the lack of media literacy taught or understood in school and how this all goes back to covid and politics. But since I am focusing directly on the effects of puritan culture in fanfiction/fandom, I will leave that for another time. However, it is important to understand that these concepts (i.e. just because a horrible thing is written doesn’t mean the author is justifying that thing) should be taught in schools.

We exist inside of the context of all of our lived experiences. Much of which we have no control over. We have no control over where or how we are born, who our parents are, and where we live in early childhood and possibly beyond. We have no control over how our brain perceives the world or even how our brain develops. We use thoughts and decisions to feel like we have control, but those decisions were probably already made for us by either environmental factors/corporations/politics/brain and subconscious development.

Many people do not realize that they have a lot of internalized misogyny and homophobia. That is because it is so ingrained into society, our brains interpret it as an absolute or a fact of life without questioning how we came to those conclusions or who is pushing those narratives.

This does not only affect women and LGBTQ+ people. The fandom puritans will go after anyone who they disagree with and bully them into oblivion. But, I will be focusing on my own personal experience as a woman in fandom spaces. However, this is not to discredit what other people might be experiencing or have gone through. This is a much larger issue and is indicative of society itself. Once a person or people are deemed as a ‘witch’ (someone the fandom puritans don’t agree with), the puritans will be sharpening their metaphorical pitchforks and lighting their torches in hopes of seeing demise and hurt.

(This also correlates with the rise of apathy and lack of empathy.)

At the end of the day, each person has had different life experiences and will enjoy different things. And we will probably never know exactly why we enjoy certain things, as scientifically we are not certain, and so there needs to be a lot more grace and decorum when it comes to kink shaming or shaming in general.

Fandom spaces were safe havens for people to be themselves, but when things are uncertain, people will desire harsh codes and morals to feel safe. To feel that they are good or that they are right. And for someone to be good, someone else must be bad. And when justice is not always achievable, people will take it upon themselves to be the bringer of ‘justice’. But justice for who? That is the most important question when it comes to wondering what fandom puritans get from enacting their harsh moral codes on strangers.

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“There is simultaneously an epidemic of hypersexualization and puritan culture and both are targeted against women” (I saw this in the comment section of a TikTok video).

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In the rise of puritan culture, there is also a rise in policing what people can and can’t read based on their biological sex or sexual identity. I have seen lots of videos of people saying afab people cannot and should not read yaoi. I have seen people on tumblr asking creators if they are allowed to read their yaoi fics since they are afab.

I have also seen people say that the omegaverse is blatant fetishization and anyone who reads it is an evil fetishizer.

(For those that don’t know, a kink is anything unconventional that is used, performed, or desired in a sexual way. A fetish relies more heavily on a certain object, body part, or situation. Neither of these are inherently bad. But the word fetish has a lot more negative connotation to it than kink. The real issue is objectification and oppression.)

But policing what people can read is not the right route to go about things since it usually ends up hurting women and LGBTQ+ people more disproportionately. You are also making a lot of assumptions of these people's intentions which may be false or blatantly wrong and only work to further an agenda that restricts the sexual autonomy of women and LGBTQ+ people while acting as if you are trying to help them.

When a fandom puritan imagines a sort of proverbial reader for content they deem as bad, they are projecting everything they dislike onto a person that does not exist. These projections are an extension of societal expectations and societal expectations are not inherently correct. They are created and formed as a way to control as many people as possible. Under the guise that the more control we have over others, the less uncertainty there is. But that is not true. And these expectations are harsher to women and the LGBTQ+ community, people who have had a harder timer speaking up for themselves in society and history as a whole.

When we police what someone can and can't like sexually, we are removing or altering their bodily or sexual autonomy. (Their ability to use their body as they like). Cis male characters have always had sexual agency in media. They are allowed to be with who they like and do as they please. And they are even rewarded for doing so. Teaching that the more people a man is able to ‘conquer’ (take the sexual autonomy from), the more worth that man has as a person and in society as a whole.

(But this also teaches men that without someone else they cannot have self worth. I will be talking about that in a different manifesto later where I break down the male loneliness epidemic and how society is sabotaging men for profit and political gain and that is leading to a rise in conservative values and misogyny.)

Women have internalized this: men are allowed to have sexual autonomy, women are not. Men are allowed to have sex as they please, while women are taught that every time they have sex with a different person, some part of themselves is fundamentally broken.

Wanting to explore sexual desires and agency with characters that already have a precedent of sexual agency is very common. Though, you may not have heard it described in that way.

I argue that yaoi/omegaverse when it is written by women for women is where the reader and writer are exploring sexual desire and agency in a way where they are ‘allowed to’. Men are allowed to have sexual desire and to act in sexual ways, while women are not allowed those same privileges. A woman is only allowed to fit into one of two archetypes: the whore or the virgin. The over sexualized or the prude.

But that is not indicative of the real lived experience.

(When it comes to LGBTQ+ people they are rarely given the option of the virgin archetype and instead are only hypersexualized (which is also a form of control and lack of sexual agency))

On one hand, yaoi/yuri is representative of an actual lived experience for a lot of people. And those stories provide voices and outlets for LGBTQ+ people to be seen and understood. To see themselves in the reflection of the characters eyes. To see themselves seeing themselves.

But I argue that yaoi/yuri or the omegaverse can also be feminist literature. (I use the term feminist broadly as encompassing both women and LGBTQ+ people and the struggle against the patriarchy and a society that is actively working against them. And feminist literature, in this sense, is literature that is by the oppressed for the oppressed against an oppressor (i.e. the patriarchy) I know not everyone will agree with this, but this is my personal definition here.)

(If you do not know what the omegaverse is, the most basic way of understanding it is that in the omegaverse, omegas can get pregnant no matter their primary gender (male, female, etc.) and alphas can impregnate no matter their primary gender. In this way, primary gender like male and female do not matter as much as your secondary gender does (alpha, beta, omega). However, betas are regular people so a male beta can only impregnate and a female beta can only get pregnant.)

Because the primary gender in the omegaverse is not important, there is a lot of commentary on what gender is and how society shapes people.

While writing an omegaverse story, I got to asking myself what an omega is. Since an omega seems to be everything that society deems as feminine or womanly (submission, gentleness, etc.) but in the body of (usually) a man. And an alpha is the embodiment of everything society deems and manly or attributes to men (like aggression, domination, etc.). In this way, alphas and omegas are at the most extreme ends of masculine and feminine standards. Does this come from a desire to see a man go through the most extreme standards of what it means to be a woman in society and still be accepted? Because even if a woman is able to achieve the absolute pinnacle of what it means to be a woman, they will still be hated.

An omega is allowed to be both the virgin and the whore simultaneously. They are allowed to have intense sexual desire (i.e. heats) while also being allowed to not want intimacy. Being allowed to desire an alpha while also being scared of alphas. Oppressed yet holding power.

One of the things I noticed a lot when reading yaoi/omegaverse is the proclivity of rape. At first I was very turned off by it. Why was sexual assault so normalized in yaoi? Is it a negative side-effect of hypersexualization or is it the literary embodiment of an internalized fear of rape and the desire to see a character come out fine? It is very rare for sexual assault to be treated seriously in yaoi/omegaverse if it is between the main couple. This is a reflection of the very real reality of how sexual assault is treated in the countries where these authors are from (including the US).

Does it come from a desire to see something realistic in a male dominated world where the aggressor is given less than a slap on the wrist for sexual assault while the victim is blamed and can be herald as a murder if victim desired to abort a child born of rape? Is the writer trying to imagine a world where they are okay and actually benefiting from an experienced trauma? There are many possibilities, and I do not know the answers. I am just theorizing how I imagine some of these tropes come about. But this is important for understanding that just because someone reads or writes something, does not mean they are actively supporting that thing.

But instead of there being a distinctive right or wrong, everything boils down to how something is perceived. What context does the piece of media exist in? In the same way The Handmaid’s Tale is a piece of literature that actively explores the role of women in a patriarchal society and is not supporting the patriarchal society itself that is presented in the story.

When someone exists in a world with a lot of internalized misogyny and homophobia, they may read stuff like yaoi/yuri/omegaverse and not see that these texts are actively working against the narrative of the patriarchy and the societal oppressors. They may not realize that their hate of its mere existence is political. (I say mere existence since not everyone will enjoy reading it, obviously, but to hate it for purely existing is political. And it ties back to misogyny and homophobia as these are literary tropes that are mainly enjoyed by women and LGBTQ+ people)

Yaoi/yuri/omegaverse is feminist literature. It is observing the world through the lens of someone who challenges the very structure of society. Challenges the very politics that conservatism and puritanism is trying to push. It is creating a world where the ‘other’ can flourish. Where the outcast is seen and allowed agency.

But the main pushers of conservatism and puritanism in fandom culture are not who you would expect, which makes it quite a difficult issue to combat. It is women and queer people working against the interests of other women and queer people. The oppressed policing the oppressed for the interests of the oppressor.

(Though, I would like to point out a tidbit that people rarely acknowledge, which is that we do not gain the ability to think critically about our opinions and the world around us until late adolescence or early adulthood. Though it is different for each person. And thus until a certain age, we are just echoing the thoughts and opinions of others. This can be a reason as to why this is happening.)

In early fanfic culture, it was very common for an author to write “don't like? Don't read” which is something we should continue to live by today. Not everything is created for you. Not everything is meant to cater to you. Not everyone has had the same life experiences as you or the same desires, hopes, or dreams.

But since fanfiction has entered the mainstream and people are finding it for the first time, they do not know the decorum that comes with reading fanfiction. Fanfiction is not censored or made for profit the same way a published book is. There is no editor or CEO with a prerogative that is reading over the fic and deciding whether it can be published and make money in the current political climate.

Fanfiction is human made and reflects humanity in a way that anything monetized cannot. It shows the good, the bad, the fears, the desires, the hope, the fluff and the angst. A celebration of life while also being a eulogy to that life.

The world watching itself be watched.

When we focus on morality and what being morally good is, we lose sight of what it means to be human. No one is 100% morally just. It is something that no one can reach because it is not something that exists in society. But the easiest way to control a group of people, is to make them start fighting themselves. And it also comes from a desire to be loved. Equating that if you are morally just then others will like you and you will be loved and accepted for who you are.

And as the fandom puritan lights the witch on fire, they turn around and search for acceptance for their actions in the eyes of their peers. The burn of their desire to be loved heating their back as they address the crowd. That same desire to be loved killing the witch.

But humans were not meant to be perfect, and holding ourselves and others up to standards that inherently support patriarchy and societal and government control, will only end badly. Instead of using fanfiction as a way to be upset with the world, use it as a way to understand and love yourself.

Find what you enjoy reading and read it. Find yourself in the reflection of the characters eyes as they smile and cry.

In a world that profits and is sustained on self-hatred, self-love is a political statement.

Read what you want to read and move on. And when it comes time, protect fanfiction as one of the last non-monetizable artform.

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I honestly am not even sure if this makes sense. It took me so long to finish because I kept writing and rewriting it. Adding parts and taking other parts out. If you want me to expand on something or think I didn’t explain a concept well enough, please let me know! I am genuinely doing this for fun and enjoy it. :)

Also thank you so much to anyone who made it this far! This one is a lot more polarizing, but I did my best to explain it in a way that was as little polarizing as possible.

In the next part of the series I will talk about commercialization and capitalism as it relates to the world and specifically to fandom spaces. I will expand on the idea that our opinions and ideals are given to us by corporations or politicians in order to further the narrative. And also that fear and hate drives engagement and people who make money on places like TikTok are more likely to fear-monger (whether intentionally or not) in order to get more money.

If there is anything else you want me to touch on in this series please let me know! Otherwise, after commercialization it will be fanfiction throughout history and then a call to action and how we can use these concepts to create a better future.

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wisdomseulogy · 27 days ago

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

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“I see you as you see yourself through all the books you read” - Vampire Empire by Big Thief

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Fanfiction and fandom spaces are some of the few places that capitalism doesn't have a stronghold on. I believe fandom spaces as a whole is one of the last vestiges that we have of what society should be. Though there are many commercial aspects to fandom spaces now and many people and companies are profiting off of it, but the community is still widely the same. Many people fighting for a common good.

I have actively been a part of fandom spaces since Obama became president and I have seen it grow and change a lot during that time. But one thing has always remained the same, the desire to have community and a safe place to express love and common interests. Fandom spaces are probably the last place for capitalism to reach. Thousands of people everyday publishing art, not for money, but for others to purely read/see and enjoy.

In this series I will be going through what fanfiction/fandom is and how we can use it to better ourselves and the world around us. Fanfiction/fandom is so much more than just fanfics or fan art, it is a community and a movement. And it can be used to lead us into a brighter future.

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Part 1: Fanfiction as a window into the self

Part 2: How puritan culture, misogyny, and homophobia are affecting fandom spaces and fanfiction (18+ themes)

Part 3: The commercialization of fanfiction and fandom spaces

Part 4: Fanfiction as an art form and how it is existed throughout history

Part 5: A call to action: How to use this to better our futures and continue the culture

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Part 1 : Fanfiction as a window into the self

Chronologically, it does not make sense for the beginning of the series to start with introspection, but it is the most important aspect of fanfiction. If we do not first understand who we are, then it is much harder for us to understand the world around us.

Fanfiction allows us to think critically about the world in a way that is free and easily accessible. Though some places and companies are commercializing fanfiction, there are still millions of fics on AO3 that we can look at. And if you include other websites like Tumblr, Wattpad, Quotev, Fanfiction.net, etc. then there are even more fics for us to turn to.

Fanfiction is such an interesting artform in that it (usually) cannot be commercialized since it is based off of someone else's work. One of the few artforms that people produce for free and to be enjoyed by others for free. An expression of love and commitment to characters, fandoms, communities, etc. outside of the harsh rule of capitalism.

But with the rise of bigotry, facism, and self-hatred in America, I think it is important to show how we can utilize fanfiction and fandom spaces to better understand ourselves.

Self-hatred is the easiest form of societal and government control. In this way, loving oneself is an act of political protest. And I hope that after reading part 1, you will have tools for you to better reckon with yourself and the world around you. Hurt people hurt people. And I wish for a world where there are less hurt people.

The rise of misogyny and redpill content is directly tied to self-hatred. Men hate themselves, hate the world, and are told that all of their problems can be solved if they turn that self hatred against women. This is also the commercial aspect of how fear and hatred makes the most money and gets the most engagement, but that will be a manifesto for another time.

Why fanfiction is important for understanding the self:

One of the most important aspects of fanfiction is that the characters exist outside of the fic in which they are written. This might seem trivial, but it is how we can use fanfiction to understand ourselves since we too exist outside of the context in which we are perceived in.

Back when I was in college and studying fanfiction at Harvard for a summer, specifically poetry and fanfiction, I stumbled upon a video advocating for smut in fanfiction since unlike porn, there is an understanding that these characters exist outside of the sexual context. (I tried to find this video again but couldn’t T.T, if anyone finds it please let me know)

When you read a fanfic that is far from the canon, you subconsciously know that these characters aren’t just representative of what is in the fic. In this sense, the fic is vehicle and the characters and fandom mere passengers. You know that the characters exist outside of the realm of the fic and that the fic does not change them as characters in the canon. Because of this, we often use fanfiction as a way to work through our own struggles, fears, desires, needs, wants, etc. either consciously or subconsciously.

From the outside perspective, you might see people reading something that is socially considered bad and assume that those people are bad. But I think we need to look deeper into why we enjoy certain tropes/tags and how that relates to ourselves.

If someone said that they enjoy reading fics where the main characters die because it feels relatable since the main characters in their life have died, that would be understandable. If someone said they enjoy reading about characters that have terrible things happen to them, because it relates to their own experience, that is understandable. We need to acknowledge that the people who are reading and writing fics are also people; also human.

What happens in a fic will never impact the canon of the fandom it is pulled from. In this way, seeing a character you love going through something you deeply fear or deeply want can be very healing. Humans are story driven people. We love to use these stories to work through our experiences.

Working through how a character can still exist even after terrible things happen to them is a window into how we exist even after terrible things happen to us. A fic might be a small moment in time where pre-established characters are playing out a narrative, but it is a part of a larger picture of the human condition.

We exist outside of every little moment and scene in our lives. The world still moves on even when we believe ours is ending. And most importantly, we are able to still preserver after going through the worst atrocities.

The sun will still shine the next day even after you read and experience the most devastating and heart wrenching fic. Those characters still exist in our minds and our hearts even after we watch them die in a fic or even in the canonical piece of media.

—- Jjk spoilers for anime only—-

Gojo is still alive because we keep him alive through creating our own forms of media for him to exist in. Fanfiction, fan art, edits, etc. all work as a way to keep him alive even after his canonical death. Characters are not dead until we stop caring about them. Gojo’s legacy will live on in our hearts and in our media and minds. Just as a person would.

—- End of spoilers

(If you didn’t read the spoiler, here is the gist: characters live in our lives the same way people do)

We use characters the same way we use people; to give meaning and understanding to our lives. I personally am a huge fan of any sort of ‘broken’ character and I will admit that does directly relate to my past belief that I was broken. I no longer believe I am broken because I am gone on a journey to better understand myself and humanity as a whole.

To be human is to fail. It is to reach for perfection and fall short every time. Try to capture the sun and smile as our wax wings disintegrate. And yet, we get up and try again. And when we turn away from the sun, we hate our shadows.

Fanfiction is the best way for us to work through our issues and to help others through their own.

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If you can love the joker, or any other broken character, then you can love yourself.

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I love reading about characters going through terrible things. Every now and then I will read something fluffy, but I mostly enjoy angst. I used to say that is because suffering feels more real, but suffering is just as real as joy, but I think we subconsciously like suffering more since it feels like it has more meaning. That suffering is more real than joy.

(For a college class I had to write a sort of dissertation and I chose how in literature happiness is viewed as the absence of sadness or a numbness to sadness while joy is only experienced when we can embrace suffering and live through it equally with the good. So I could talk about this for forever, but I will leave it at that)

My current favorite trope is divorce. I love reading about two male characters getting divorced. Add omegaverse into the mix and it is truly perfection. My parents were never divorced (because they died) but there is something so beautiful about all the emotion and desire that comes with divorce. To love someone wholly and watch that love fade until the past itself starts to feel fictional and questioning whether there was any love to begin with.

There is something so beautifully human about that. Reaching for the sun and failing miserably. Ending up on the ground, in the fetal position, crying and broken. Because we remember what the sun feels like on our skin. In our bones. Maybe we were never meant to reach the sun, but yearning for love and acceptance is so human.

(Of course I visualize this with my personal headcanons about Steve Rogers x Tony Stark which I have posted right before this. But in my headcanon I wonder, what did Tony feel when his ex husband was about to kill him? Pain? Fear? Or did it feel nostalgic as he too wished for that same end?)

When my friend was going through something difficult and wondering why they were feeling the way they were, I asked myself: How would I write Tony Stark going through the same thing. Does Tony wish he could transform into a monster because he already sees himself as one and is confused by his own reflection? Or is it something deeper?

And that is what spawned me wanting to investigate how we use fictional characters to inform our daily lives, form our identities, and work through our trauma.

Trauma takes many forms, and what is incredibly traumatic for one person may not be traumatic to the next. In the same vein how neglect takes many different shapes, but it is all formed from the same clay.

(So do not discredit someone's trauma just because it is not your own.)

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I think the next time you beat yourself up about something you've done, ask yourself if you would hate your favorite character for doing the same thing. I believe that if you can still love the Joker, Bucky, Hannibal, etc. then you can love yourself.

“But they had extenuating circumstances”

”They are broken”

”The world turned against them”

”They had no choice”

“They were doing what had to be done”

“They didn’t really mean it.” / “They didn’t mean to hurt people”

”What they did still affects them”

”They are mentally ill because of what they went through”

Say that to the mirror. SAY THAT TO THE MIRROR.

If you can love a broken character no matter what they’ve done (obviously I understand that there are some exceptions), then you can love yourself. You do already love yourself.

Our society is structured in order for people to hate themselves. If someone hates themselves it is easier for them to be controlled through capitalism and the government. If someone believes that they need to search externally for material items or money, then they are easier to coerce.

I think an issue we are having in society is that we are turning our self hatred outward and gripping onto people (celebrities/influencers) and deifying them. Believing that these people cannot be bad and do bad things. Pushing a notion that there are people who can exist outside of the confines of the human condition and be perfect. And that we need to strive for that. To be perfect. To live perfectly. To have the perfect family, the perfect house, the perfect items, the perfect clothes and makeup, the perfect friends and the perfect job. And this narrative is being pushed onto people that cannot be perfect.

Because to be perfect is to not be human. And every person is human. We have been taught and conditioned that there is only bad and good, and we need to strive for being just good and hate the bad, our bad.

But if there was no darkness, then we would not be able to see the light. And this system is only working to hate ourselves more. We need to understand that everyone exists within the concept of darkness and evil.

We inherently put celebrities, politicians, or other people on pedestals and when they fall from grace we are disgusted as we are confronted with our own humanity. That is not to defend what any one person has done, but to explain that no person is free from having bad aspects to their past or present.

A character that is perfect without any negative points, does not feel real or ‘good’. That is because we exist in a word where evil is just as prevalent as good, and two cannot exist without the other.

I personally hate any female character (I specify female character because it is more prevalent, which has to do with my manifesto about feminist literature which I may post later) that is evil just to be evil. Just out of vindictive hatred or jealousy. But there is always a reason. A cause. To bring this idea into a fandom space so that we can better understand it, we know that Bucky Barnes (The Winter Soldier from Marvel) didn’t kill, when he was with HYDRA, for no reason. He didn’t murder people for the sole sadistic desire to see death. He had a reason. But when we are on the receiving end of any sort of suffering, it is easier to believe in these dichotomies. That there are evil people that do evil for no reason and there are good people who are just genuinely good.

But every single one of our actions is a reaction to something else. Bucky was brainwashed by HYDRA and had his psyche split so that he could kill without remorse.

Most villains in media have reasons behind every single one of their actions. In WandaVision, Wanda just wanted to be able to live out an idealized life with her ‘children’. She enslaved and entire town in order to do this, but it wasn’t out of a pure desire to do evil, she had her own broken reason.

Geto had reasons for why he did everything in JJK. Itatchi killed the Uchiha clan in order to save Konoha and protect Sasuke. Light Yagami had reasons why he was killing people.

Of course nowadays, there are a lot more characters that are evil for the pure sadistic desire of hurting others which correlates with the rise of injustice in the world. In times where everything is uncertain and there might not be justice, harsh moral codes and standards make people feel safe. (I will talk more about this in part 2.) Fandom spaces evolve and change overtime as society changes overtime.

We like reading characters that have reason behind their actions. Because everything we do and everything we think is a reaction to something else. And when characters lack motive or reason, they fall flat. Fictional characters are condensed truths about reality and when something is too surface level, it lacks a bit of truth. The more truth a character has, the more complex it becomes. The more human it becomes. The more real.

Every single person is also their own main character. We all have rich and complex lives and our favorite characters/ships/tags/fanfics are windows into our complex identities. The more we understand who we are, the more we can love who we are. Through the brokenness and through the love.

So many terrible things can be tied to some sort of self-hatred. Misogynistic people don’t hate women, they hate themselves. They are taking that hate and turning it outwards as a way to feel better about themselves and what they are going through.

The most important thing for us is to learn to love ourselves. And the easiest way to do that is through fanfiction. I love to read angst and I love to read when characters go through the worst possible experiences. And in a way, how could I hate someone for what they've done or been through when I love characters that have been through the same?

Love yourself. It is the strongest political protest.

And if you need help, start with loving a character.

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I honestly don't think anyone will read this. But I also figured if at least one person read this then it would be enough. This is really just an opinion piece. I also took out a part about religion and how it feeds off of self-hatred since I thought it might be triggering for some people. I also repeat myself a lot 😬

Happy Mothers Day!

#fanfiction #x reader #philosophy #love yourself #stony #bucky barnes #the joker #jjk #gojo satoru

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